Problems often lie less with administrators than with committee members.
Faculty ignorant of the written code and written bylaws but informed by folklore are often bamboozled by rogue committees or cunning members thereof. What John Mitchell said of the Nixon Administration applies as well to the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC] and the Professional Standards Committee [PSC]: “Watch what we do, not what we say.”
As one watches what such Power Committees [PCs] do, one should keep in mind the lesson imparted by the late Erving Goffman. A social setting that appears to be exactly what one would expect may be what it seems; however, the next most likely possibility is that one beholds a perfect fake. Sloppy fakes or inadvertent mistakes would be unmasked quickly. For deviance to escape attention, fakery must be completed persuasively.
If, for example, the FAC denied a promotion on the basis of the very personal characteristics that faculty in 1994 eliminated from the Faculty Code, the Committee would doubtless hide its actual motives and procedures behind professed motives that concerned teaching or professional growth. As the cliché goes, hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays virtue. Vulnerable faculty must pretend to believe the logic of justification in communications from the FAC, but they should privately expect more than a few committee judgments to hinge on the not-very-secret “Hail fellow well met” criterion.
If veterans of the FAC would dispute my claims above, they would have The Confidentiality Con to shield them: they can say anything they like in the cynical confidence that I dare not reveal what happened in the committee-room. That the FAC insisted on such a vow should suggest exactly how much credence such FAC vets should enjoy.
Is there no way to unmask FAC con men and con women through documents that are not secret? Suppose an evaluee made her or his letter from the FAC available to faculty. Faculty might then see how the FAC departed from authority at least in that instance. If the FAC or PSC interfered, such resistance to oversight and civil discussion would erode the credibility of confidentiality still further.
Please do not misunderstand my claims above. Most FAC outputs will conform to the Faculty Code because most evaluees will not run afoul of their departments. When the FAC departs from proper procedures or written authorities, astute members of the faculty must pay more attention to what the FAC has done than to what the FAC has said – or to what the code or bylaws say.
Still, if colleagues ask the PCs what they were up to, expect The Confidentiality Con and threats and reprisals. Some veterans of the PSC or of the FAC do not know enough about actual authority to fold their con. Some apparatchiks [members of campus elites beneath the President or Vice President] consider themselves and their committee authority higher than the code or the bylaws.
Pay attention and you may identify the enemy that is us.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Monday, January 29, 2007
Drug-Free Workplaces -- A Cautionary Tale
Campus elites have exploited faculty credulity before.
Confidentiality Cons force on faculty a decision common to citizenship: to question authority or to live under questionable authority. Governance brakes fickle or facile changes in the Faculty Code or the Bylaws, so genuine authority seldom imperils the rights or security of the faculty. Fictional authority, by contrast, expands or contracts to suit the exigencies of committees or colleagues. Such Procrustean stretching and lopping is not new to Puget Sound, as the following will demonstrate.
In the early 1990s, Congress passed the Drug-Free Workplace Act. Among other symbols and gestures, this act required educational institutions that got federal funds – which is to say solvent educational institutions – to create severe sanctions for use of drugs on campuses.
Certain apparatchiks [that is, members of elite apparati beneath the level of the President or Vice President] presented the faculty in a plenary meeting with a proposal that, unbeknownst to the faculty, far exceeded the Congress’s requirements. When faculty mocked the proposal, the Dean of Students gravely intoned that the proposal had been imposed on students and staff already. This led a certain campus wag to ask, “Is your point that, since staff and students have been stripped of dignity, faculty should be so stripped for fellowship’s sake?” [Adapted from Robert Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons” http://imdb.com/title/tt0060665/quotes] The case for the proposal depended on belief that federal aid would be denied Puget Sound students unless faculty voted gentle for a good night to liberties.
That campus wag then went to Human Relations to get a copy of the legislation. Having persuaded a staffer that, actually, someone who specialized in teaching law to undergraduates could read a congressional enactment, I then made the far less capacious demands of Congress beknownst to the faculty, and the Professional Standards Committee [PSC] created a far less Draconian measure. The FBI, freed from searching for a bottle of Scotch in my filing cabinet, then apprehended the Unabomber.
The moral of this story seems to me clear. It is not uncivil or confrontational to ask by what authority administrators or other decision-makers act. It is needful and rational. Campus elites have exploited “civility” ― usually a euphemism for credulity and servility ― before.
Confidentiality Cons force on faculty a decision common to citizenship: to question authority or to live under questionable authority. Governance brakes fickle or facile changes in the Faculty Code or the Bylaws, so genuine authority seldom imperils the rights or security of the faculty. Fictional authority, by contrast, expands or contracts to suit the exigencies of committees or colleagues. Such Procrustean stretching and lopping is not new to Puget Sound, as the following will demonstrate.
In the early 1990s, Congress passed the Drug-Free Workplace Act. Among other symbols and gestures, this act required educational institutions that got federal funds – which is to say solvent educational institutions – to create severe sanctions for use of drugs on campuses.
Certain apparatchiks [that is, members of elite apparati beneath the level of the President or Vice President] presented the faculty in a plenary meeting with a proposal that, unbeknownst to the faculty, far exceeded the Congress’s requirements. When faculty mocked the proposal, the Dean of Students gravely intoned that the proposal had been imposed on students and staff already. This led a certain campus wag to ask, “Is your point that, since staff and students have been stripped of dignity, faculty should be so stripped for fellowship’s sake?” [Adapted from Robert Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons” http://imdb.com/title/tt0060665/quotes] The case for the proposal depended on belief that federal aid would be denied Puget Sound students unless faculty voted gentle for a good night to liberties.
That campus wag then went to Human Relations to get a copy of the legislation. Having persuaded a staffer that, actually, someone who specialized in teaching law to undergraduates could read a congressional enactment, I then made the far less capacious demands of Congress beknownst to the faculty, and the Professional Standards Committee [PSC] created a far less Draconian measure. The FBI, freed from searching for a bottle of Scotch in my filing cabinet, then apprehended the Unabomber.
The moral of this story seems to me clear. It is not uncivil or confrontational to ask by what authority administrators or other decision-makers act. It is needful and rational. Campus elites have exploited “civility” ― usually a euphemism for credulity and servility ― before.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Confidentiality Cons
What confidentiality does the code or the bylaws authorize?
To learn how often claims to confidentiality are folderol or folklore, tenured colleagues need simply inquire, “Where is that confidentiality defined or authorized?”
With regard to the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC], confidentiality is mostly a product of agreement among members of the committee. True, the Faculty Code may apply with particular force to members of the FAC, who are not to reveal what closed files hide. Beyond that admonition, the FAC fabricates the confidentiality that members then claim to prevent them from discussing whether the FAC deviates from the code or the bylaws. That is the essence of The Confidentiality Con.
It is by no means clear, for example, that a colleague on the FAC is barred from alerting the President or the Faculty Senate or some other authority if the FAC insists on breaking the rules of evaluation. Whatever co-conspirators on the FAC may think of whistle-blowing, some faculty may even think that a member of the FAC is ethically bound not to suffer procedural or substantive injustices in silence. This may be particularly the case when someone appeals an FAC recommendation to a hearing board. Members of the FAC who know about misprision(s) may have an ethical obligation to notify the hearing board or the appellant.
Matters regarding the Professional Standards Committee [PSC] are only a bit more complicated. The Faculty Code in two places explicitly confers confidentiality. Participants in a grievance hearing are commanded not to “…make public statements, directly or indirectly about the matters in the hearings.” Second, if faculty refer matters to the PSC for advice, the code promises confidentiality. [Please see the interpretation on p. 37 of the July 2005 rendition of the code online.] Each locus of confidentiality is clearly less expansive than cunning or misinformed faculty have claimed.
Perhaps colleagues on the PSC do not realize that neither bylaws nor the code confers the confidentiality by which they claim to be bound. Like members of the FAC who seem not to realize that almost all of the confidentiality that they invoke follows from voluntary agreement among FAC insiders, perhaps members of the PSC are suckers for folklore or victims of groupthink or grouptalk. I think it less likely that members of the PSC are illiterate.
Should we be concerned that so many colleagues who proclaim themselves bound by rules appear so ill-informed about what the rules actually say? That depends on which Confidentiality Con a colleague is running. Many who invoke confidentiality have themselves been conned by folklore and folderol. These poor rubes actually believe that they are restating the code or the bylaws. We should be concerned about what other folderol or folklore they will substitute for the Faculty Code. Many others, alas, know very well that mutual agreement to cover insiders' asses and to deprive outsiders of corroborating information is the mainspring of confidentiality. This more insidious con job should allay concerns that FAC or PSC members do not know the rules. At least some members of each committee had to learn the rules to cover up deviations from the rules.
To learn how often claims to confidentiality are folderol or folklore, tenured colleagues need simply inquire, “Where is that confidentiality defined or authorized?”
With regard to the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC], confidentiality is mostly a product of agreement among members of the committee. True, the Faculty Code may apply with particular force to members of the FAC, who are not to reveal what closed files hide. Beyond that admonition, the FAC fabricates the confidentiality that members then claim to prevent them from discussing whether the FAC deviates from the code or the bylaws. That is the essence of The Confidentiality Con.
It is by no means clear, for example, that a colleague on the FAC is barred from alerting the President or the Faculty Senate or some other authority if the FAC insists on breaking the rules of evaluation. Whatever co-conspirators on the FAC may think of whistle-blowing, some faculty may even think that a member of the FAC is ethically bound not to suffer procedural or substantive injustices in silence. This may be particularly the case when someone appeals an FAC recommendation to a hearing board. Members of the FAC who know about misprision(s) may have an ethical obligation to notify the hearing board or the appellant.
Matters regarding the Professional Standards Committee [PSC] are only a bit more complicated. The Faculty Code in two places explicitly confers confidentiality. Participants in a grievance hearing are commanded not to “…make public statements, directly or indirectly about the matters in the hearings.” Second, if faculty refer matters to the PSC for advice, the code promises confidentiality. [Please see the interpretation on p. 37 of the July 2005 rendition of the code online.] Each locus of confidentiality is clearly less expansive than cunning or misinformed faculty have claimed.
Perhaps colleagues on the PSC do not realize that neither bylaws nor the code confers the confidentiality by which they claim to be bound. Like members of the FAC who seem not to realize that almost all of the confidentiality that they invoke follows from voluntary agreement among FAC insiders, perhaps members of the PSC are suckers for folklore or victims of groupthink or grouptalk. I think it less likely that members of the PSC are illiterate.
Should we be concerned that so many colleagues who proclaim themselves bound by rules appear so ill-informed about what the rules actually say? That depends on which Confidentiality Con a colleague is running. Many who invoke confidentiality have themselves been conned by folklore and folderol. These poor rubes actually believe that they are restating the code or the bylaws. We should be concerned about what other folderol or folklore they will substitute for the Faculty Code. Many others, alas, know very well that mutual agreement to cover insiders' asses and to deprive outsiders of corroborating information is the mainspring of confidentiality. This more insidious con job should allay concerns that FAC or PSC members do not know the rules. At least some members of each committee had to learn the rules to cover up deviations from the rules.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Beyond the Confidentiality Con
What if even one member of the FAC challenged the Confidentiality Con?
What if I had refused to agree to confidentiality on the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC]? What gallows or hellfire would an administrator have invoked to bring me back into line? Would the Professional Standards Committee [PSC] have ginned up an “interpretation” of the Faculty Code that augmented the modest confidentiality articulated therein? Would the Faculty Senate have been asked to remove me [and would a compliant chair have entertained the motion]? Or would the Center for Health and Wellness have supplied a note that I was too well to attend FAC meetings? [cf. “Animal House” http://imdb.com/title/tt0077975/quotes]
My answer to such inquiries is that it little matters what reactions would have been had I thought of this gambit. Had I refused to join the cover up, a few faculty would have learned that FAC confidentiality is far more a matter of expedience, insulation, and/or cowardice than of any authority to which faculty have consented. Beyond such minimal awareness, some faculty might not have continued to be suckers for any claim to confidentiality. I’d welcome an increase in the number of Puget Sound faculty who ask by what right this committee or that administrator presumes to conceal what attentive, engaged citizens of the campus community ought to know.
I hope that some colleague will refuse to agree to the Confidentiality Con, if only to see if others on the FAC will negotiate. Suppose that members of the FAC restricted confidentiality to substantive matters. Suppose further that members of the FAC reserved their liberty to raise procedural objections. First, a member of the FAC might object within the FAC to procedural deviance. If unsatisfied by the response within the committee, the objector then might refer the matter to a committee, an administrator, or an ombudsperson.
Would the FAC be less likely to abandon the rules if FAC misconduct were more likely to become known outside the committee? I do not know. I do know that FAC misconduct has gone unnoticed and unremarked outside the committee due in part to professed confidentiality.
FAC members who sincerely believe that something other than the Confidentiality Con circumscribes them should be pitied as dupes. FAC members who realize how limited the circumscriptions of the code and the bylaws truly are should be recognized as conspirators. FAC members who know that confidentiality is a con game and who exploit that con game to hide their misdeeds should be despised as grifters.
What if even one member of the FAC disdained to be a dupe, a conspirator, or a grifter?
What if I had refused to agree to confidentiality on the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC]? What gallows or hellfire would an administrator have invoked to bring me back into line? Would the Professional Standards Committee [PSC] have ginned up an “interpretation” of the Faculty Code that augmented the modest confidentiality articulated therein? Would the Faculty Senate have been asked to remove me [and would a compliant chair have entertained the motion]? Or would the Center for Health and Wellness have supplied a note that I was too well to attend FAC meetings? [cf. “Animal House” http://imdb.com/title/tt0077975/quotes]
My answer to such inquiries is that it little matters what reactions would have been had I thought of this gambit. Had I refused to join the cover up, a few faculty would have learned that FAC confidentiality is far more a matter of expedience, insulation, and/or cowardice than of any authority to which faculty have consented. Beyond such minimal awareness, some faculty might not have continued to be suckers for any claim to confidentiality. I’d welcome an increase in the number of Puget Sound faculty who ask by what right this committee or that administrator presumes to conceal what attentive, engaged citizens of the campus community ought to know.
I hope that some colleague will refuse to agree to the Confidentiality Con, if only to see if others on the FAC will negotiate. Suppose that members of the FAC restricted confidentiality to substantive matters. Suppose further that members of the FAC reserved their liberty to raise procedural objections. First, a member of the FAC might object within the FAC to procedural deviance. If unsatisfied by the response within the committee, the objector then might refer the matter to a committee, an administrator, or an ombudsperson.
Would the FAC be less likely to abandon the rules if FAC misconduct were more likely to become known outside the committee? I do not know. I do know that FAC misconduct has gone unnoticed and unremarked outside the committee due in part to professed confidentiality.
FAC members who sincerely believe that something other than the Confidentiality Con circumscribes them should be pitied as dupes. FAC members who realize how limited the circumscriptions of the code and the bylaws truly are should be recognized as conspirators. FAC members who know that confidentiality is a con game and who exploit that con game to hide their misdeeds should be despised as grifters.
What if even one member of the FAC disdained to be a dupe, a conspirator, or a grifter?
Sunday, January 21, 2007
An Apology for Conning Colleagues
Long ago, I should have informed colleagues that the Faculty Code and the Bylaws authorize far less confidentiality than is commonly believed and asserted.
I apologize for perpetuating the Confidentiality Con.
At the inception of the Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Standards [AHCPS], two members of the 2005-2006 Professional Standards Committee [PSC] doubted the success of an ad hoc inquiry because, they claimed, the Faculty Code prohibits members of the PSC from discussing “cases.” [Please see the minutes of the Faculty Senate for 21 November 2005.] The two members were speaking casually and colloquially, and minutes often paraphrase liberally. Still, I heard the PSC members reiterate the misinformation that the Faculty Code imposes on members of the PSC the strictest confidentiality.
As with most attempts by powerful committees to deny accountability and as with most communications from the Professional Standards Committee of 2003-2004, this "Confidentiality Con" is only partly true. The code actually states that no person involved in a grievance hearing “… shall make public statements, directly or indirectly about the matters in the hearings.” [Please see the Faculty Code Ch. 6, § 4, 3, 8.] Since the AHCPS arose out of discussions of a grievance for faculty plagiarism that never reached a hearing, it is hardly evident that the code prohibits members of the PSC from discussing that “case” or any other would-have-been grievance that never reached a hearing.
Perhaps the members overstated the prohibition because confidentiality has greatly expanded over the years. Some members of the PSC or the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC] have naively accepted exaggerations of confidentiality. Others have inflated confidentiality to insulate themselves from scrutiny. Either way, hypertrophic confidentiality has persuaded colleagues that they must keep secrets from colleagues and must frustrate faculty oversight. Those who wield the Confidentiality Con often fool themselves before they fool others.
Whenever protections of personal information are invoked to hide evasions of authorized procedures, confidentiality becomes a confidence game. Wittingly or unwittingly, credulously or cleverly, FAC and PSC members exploit the inability or unwillingness to distinguish between substantive matters that truly are and ought to be shielded and procedures that properly are the concern of every campus citizen. Details that are private should be restricted to those authorized to consider such details. Practices and standards that are public should not be obscured by those trusted to apply the rules.
From the beginning of my stints on the FAC, I knew that the FAC’s professed duty to keep secrets followed more from voluntary agreement among those inside the FAC than from authoritative directives outside the FAC. Observance of duty has kept many personal and personnel matters as private as law or morality or the code demands. Overstating such duties has also kept members of the FAC from having to answer for deviations from the Faculty Code, use of standards or criteria never authorized or no longer authorized, and assorted practices that hypertrophic confidentiality – the Confidentiality Con – prevents me from detailing or documenting.
I begin this blog, then, with my apology. I regret that I did not refuse to consent to FAC confidentiality beyond what the code demands. I should have assented to what the code demanded but no more.
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