Up Is Down

"You must modify Haltom's Third Law. You have posited that 'Those who profess ethics have none.' But you have noted as well that those who campaign for rigor often or usually have none. Why not combine the two adages?"

Beloved reader, I can go at least this far. Whenever anyone campaigns for more rigor in the classroom, check the teaching evaluations immediately to find what is wrong in the campaigner's classroom. Whenever a colleague demands changes in the forms with which students evaluate teachers, seek out the bad set of evaluations that is spurring the colleague. Whenever an alleged scholar campaigns for rigor in scholarship or for more professional growth, locate the scholar's CV and marvel at chutzpa.

Regular readers of this blog know that at the University of Puget Clowns [© Susan Resneck Pierce] up is down. What my reader apparently does not appreciate is the artistry that the clowns bring to their affectations. Anyone who has professional growth may talk about professional growth; it takes a true bullshit artist to banter about professional growth amid a career-long slump. A colleague who could smear his arms and hands with tuna but still could not get a cat to sit up has some nerve talking about teaching, which makes his act all the more breath-taking. It is one thing to do a high-wire walk without a net, but without a high wire?

And what about the cunning by which the polymorphous incompetent induces colleagues to cover for her? She calls attention to her minuscule scholarship even as she begs someone to create a simple document for her. You think that is easy to pull off, dear reader? She faults another's teaching but is herself infamous for truncating classes for which she has barely prepared. That's genius!

Meanwhile, colleagues have to keep doing the jobs of and for the poseurs. Various frauds drag their feet regarding diversity, compelling more productive scholars and more accomplished teachers to struggle for diversity. Those committed to scholarship have to argue that committees handing out money for scholarship should ask for CVs before granting moneys and proof of accomplishment after the grant has run. Those who have served the university in multiple capacities for multiple decades must wrestle with slackers and slugabeds to induce committees and the Faculty Senate to follow by-laws. Men and women who are quite busy should not have to devote free time that they do not have to inducing women [and a few men] to stop bringing down or driving out women.

Still, I wonder that my reader can generate any juice over these matters. For as long as I have been here, the working faculty have done their own jobs and the jobs of blatherers and bullshitters for, more often than not, a sucker's payoff.

If Colleagues Read and Believed SI

The Captain of the Yankees covers a truth most people learn in junior high. What if colleagues knew this truth?

In the 7 December 2009 Sports Illustrated, Derek Jeter made an obvious point: "If you're accomplished, people will talk about it for you. You don't have to point it out."

Who did not learn this in junior high? If Stud Bucket were a ladies' man, would he have to tell us that he was? If Buffy Moolah came from so much money, wouldn't we discern that without much assistance from her?

So why does this colleague tell me about her breeding? Why does that colleague remind me that he is "a member of the club" in some discipline? She and he point out such "facts" because otherwise I would never guess them. They have to point such facts out because they are not accomplished.

At any university or college, expect the least accomplished colleagues to remind you of their accomplishments.

The Persistence of Blather

At the University of Puget Clowns [© Susan Resneck Pierce] the half-life of blather is measured in years.

This week I beset a faculty senator at the Faculty Club. When I pointed out to her that the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC] was once again flouting the Bylaws, which verbatim require all Faculty Senate committees to elect a single chair, she responded, "There are other committees with two chairs."

The last time I heard that talking point, it issued from the most flagrant blatherskite on the faculty, a member of the FAC. Sensing that I was dealing with a credulous naif repeating a shibboleth, I was gentle: "Yes, and other men had abused their wives before O. J. Simpson did."

Not that it will profit either the blatherskite or the naif, I now plod.

When — not if — the FAC violates the express language of the Bylaws, its claim that this or that committee violates the same language is no defense. If every committee festooned itself with six chairs [as the FAC has done to evade the rules], that would not change the Bylaws, which direct the election of a chair [please note the singular, which appears lost on members of the FAC] as the first task of each Faculty Senate committee. Any claim to the contrary by anyone competent to read the Bylaws is argument in bad faith. Argument in bad faith is no duty of the FAC, although it has long been a habit whenever rules or authority are inconvenient. Does that mean that arguments in bad faith are acceptable because they are an FAC or a UPS tradition?

That multiple committees violate the Bylaws should embarrass senators. Every time the Faculty Senate accepts a report from a committee that violates the Bylaws, the Senate condones or colludes in such violations. As the shibboleth conjured by the blatherskite and aped by the naif demonstrates, senators know that the FAC violates the Bylaws. But challenging the FAC is a bother and could imperil the naif's advancement.

As I have repeated in this blog from time to time, the FAC will not simply elect a chair. That chair could have no responsibilities beyond reporting to the Faculty Senate on the year's actions. The Bylaws require no specific performance beyond that. The election of a single member of the FAC to report to the Faculty Senate would take one to two minutes. Instead, the FAC dodges the Bylaws, the Chair of the Faculty Senate counsels them on how they may avoid authority, and senators lack the backbone or even the spittle to protest. Behold how blather persists!

I hope that the above has helped the senator-naif. I know that the blatherskite is beyond help. She knows that she is blathering. Blather is what she does best. It may be all that she does.

The Good Ol' Days

The University of Puget Sound in the early 1990s: The Myth of the Cave playing to rave reviews from prisoners inured to shackles.

A Puget Sound retiree reminded me today of this university in the early 1990s. I may have conveyed some of this narrative, but I want to contribute to the oral history of those times.

When the president of Puget Sound announced that he intended to retire in one year, administrators and one or more executives of the Faculty Senate conferred on the process for selection of the next CEO of UPS. In those days, Faculty Senate chairs tended to shill for the administrators to a far greater degree than in the later 1990s and early 21st century. The administrators and their apparatchiks announced, among other things, that faculty would select three faculty for the presidential selection committee via the process used for seating faculty on the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC]. That is, faculty would submit names and, pending approval of the trustees, the three named faculty would be on the committee.

No other faculty would know the names of candidates or interviewees. No one interviewing on or near campus would meet faculty. The Dean of the University, through the chair of the Faculty Senate, distributed photocopies of arguments for such secrecy. Indeed, the chair of the Faculty Senate reminded senators than PLU had recently been poised to hire a new president but had been prevented owing to an upsurge from faculty who disliked the choice. When an as-yet-untenured senator asked why it was better for faculty to suffer whomever the committee selected rather than to voice objections prospectively, I was rebuffed.

Then I asked why the indirect election was needful. The Dean intoned, as he sometimes did in defense of administrative brakes on direct election of members of the FAC, that otherwise the faculty might directly elect faculty from the same department or representative of some clique. This pretended solicitude for representation of the faculty made me wince, for even in my early years I had seen through the pretense.

I was somewhat surprised, nonetheless, when three faculty approved by the trustees [or administrators -- other than what administrators or their flunkies told trustees, trustees knew little about faculty then or later] included two faculty with PhDs in chemistry and not a single humanist. As a political scientist, I was not surprised that the selected faculty were more representative of administration dogma than of the teaching faculty. The Dean's concern for representation of the faculty failed elementary skepticism: "What would one expect an administrator to say?" That administrators and trustees were audacious enough to undermine their only announced rationale for indirect election surprised me. Usually deceptions are better protected from detection. [This eerily foreshadowed the presidency of the successful candidate: she probably fibbed about as often as her predecessor, but she did so in ways that made it unmistakeable to everyone except the most reputable and reliable faculty that she was fibbing; indeed, she seemed to me to revel in having power to mislead with impunity.]

When the Chair of the Board of Trustees later spoke to a faculty meeting, I asked him why the trustees were keeping faculty away from would-be presidents. His face reddened. He sputtered that he knew nothing about that and that trustees did not care who represented the faculty or how many faculty met with candidates. The chair of the board thus exposed as deceitful those who had claimed that the trustees wanted the process to proceed in the way it did.

Once the deceit of the Chair of the Faculty Senate and the Dean of the University had been exposed, the process went forward. I could not find a dozen faculty who knew and cared that all but three of the faculty had been closeted lest candidates or trustees meet the zany loons who do the teaching. When I raised the matter with a 15-year veteran, he croaked, "You'd argue with dean if he said it was raining." I must concede his point. If the dean complained about the rain on a dry day, I should argue. I thought the more pertinent hypothetical was that if that if the dean told that veteran that black was white, that veteran would act as if he believed the dean if rewards sufficed.

The rewards must have flowed because, to my knowledge, that 15-year veteran confronted mendacious, manipulative administrators exactly twice before he retired. Mostly, he mumbled protests and deconstructed absurdities that issued from Jones Hall. Still, that put him far ahead of most of the faculty who had been hired in the 1970s and had prospered in the 1980s. Those faculty not only held their peace but also reveled in their obsequiousness. Veterans traduced newbies who doubted the dubious or observed the obvious. Every day in every way, the university was improving. Pavlovian faculty "freely" associated improvements with going along with each administrative gag. Those who gagged at administrative euphemisms or misdirection lacked the appropriate "personal and professional characteristics" for Puget Sound. Faculty evaluation procedures and other discipline would deal with thralls less than grateful for their subjection.

And why shouldn't the uninquisitive and the credulous rejoice in their shackles? Cheerful credulity and instrumental ignorance profit the shackled in honors, programs, and a reputation for being respectable and responsible. In addition, docile and reticent apologists and apparatchiks have more time for pursuits they value, like pretending to do research.

Why Did I Believe that Paul Simon Could Write?

Standing in line at Starbuck's three days ago, I heard the familiar strains of "The Sound of Silence" for the first time in a while.

The following line struck me as it never had before:

But my words, like silent raindrops fell /

And echoed in the wells of silence. /



What?

Silent raindrops -- as opposed to noisy raindrops?

If they were silent, how could the raindrops echo?

"Songfacts" http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=796 claims that Paul Simon took six months to write the lyrics, averaging a line per day. [Lots of rewrites? The song is but 34 lines long.]

Simon should have sent it to me. Even though I was only twelve, I could have helped.

I liked the song when I was in grade school.

What was I thinking?

What was Simon thinking?

The answers are blowing in the wind.

Pressing the Wigger Patwol

Who would have guessed that pressure makes humans perform less well? Certainly not the Wigger Patwol



The Morning News Tribune (Tacoma WA) on 30 July 2009 ran an item from the Los Angeles Times: "Care less, do better, study says" (p. A7). A study published in the oxymoronically entitled Psychological Science showed that the promise of great rewards often led subjects to perform less well. It seems that the more that rode on performance, the likelier performers were to choke. [In sports-speak, "to choke" means to underperform due to stress or anxiety.]



Raise this item with a member of the Wigger Patwol and watch for hilarity.

Remember that the Wigger Patwol need not include every colleague who brags about how hard he is or how demanding she is. Colleagues who brag about their hardness are, of course, compensating from their shortness. [And some of them are not very tall, either.] Colleagues who tell us how demanding they are usually do not add how little assistance they provide students. To belong to the Wigger Patwol, teachers must 1) tout themselves for being hard and demanding; 2) exhort colleagues to teach as "the Few, the Proud, the Hard and Demanding" do; and 3) police colleagues who seem soft or reasonable. Only colleagues who surveil and criticize others, especially vulnerable others, achieve the distinctive vice of the Wigger Patwol -- to be so busy averring and testifying to rigor than one has no time left in which to practice rigor. To belong to the Wigger Patwol, one's rigor must be far more apparent than real.

In "Rump Parliament" I have often documented how members of the Wigger Patwol preach rigor more often than they practice rigor. If you want to find the worst hand-holders, for instance, start with those who denounce hand-holding most vociferously. Because compensation, projection, and hypocrisy range beyond the Wigger Patwol, I do not use any of those psychological features to define the Wigger Patwol. One who joins the Wigger Patwol likely will develop compensatory, projective, and/or hypocritical rationalizations to boldly go where no rational academic would go. Many who compensate, project, or pretend to virtues they do not practice, however, will not deteriorate into membership in the Wigger Patwol.

Having identified a candidate for the Wigger Patwol, send said candidate the study or the newspaper report. Be prepared with smelling salts. Then ask how faculty should incorporate this finding into the design of their courses.

Professor Javert of the Wigger Patwol will croak, "I rely on daunting, exhausting finals worth 50% of the course-grade to compel students to synthesize the materials of the course!" Watch Professor Javert's head implode when you point out that making the course cogent and coherent is probably the job of the instructor in the course and certainly the product of thought over weeks rather than torture over hours.

If Wigger Patwolmen and Patwolwomen elect due dates very late in the semester for tests and papers worth a majority of the course grade, you are expected to believe this is to foment rigor. It could never be that avatars of atavism are

• making things easier on themselves during the semester OR

• saving grading for when comments will do students no good and therefore may be dispensed with OR

• encouraging students to believe that they are sailing through a course before students evaluate the course, then lowering the course grade drastically with harsh grading of the semester project or a final.

Expect Dr. Gerard of the Wigger Patwol to argue that, as an undergraduate at Nairherdovit University, he aced five-hour examinations while being waterboarded. Once you are certain that Dr. Gerard is unarmed, ask how therapists have progressed over the last quarter-century in reversing the effects of those exams.

Attend informal confabs on pedagogy and, after the wine has been served, supply colleagues copies of the study. Probe for criticisms of methods, samples, measures, presumptions, and other barriers to new information. However well veterans of the Wigger Patwol allege they stood up to undergraduate or graduate torments, they will neither countenance nor condone any arguments or evidence contrary to the claim that "You cannot have too much rigor." They will break under the strain:

• Colleague Queeg will reel from whimpering to wailing about strawberries that are too mushy

• Colleague Ratched will ask whether the principal investigator had enough rigor in his courses and fiber in his diet to be taken seriously.

• Ivy-Leaguers Tor and Kay Motta will ask whether they draw salaries at a liberal-arts college or an encounter group.

A cacophony will then swell, decrying handholding, dumbing down, and other shibboleths that were hyphenated in less permissive times.

The one predictable outcome is that no members of the Wigger Patwol will revamp their courses to create more assignments worth less each to diffuse some pressures and to secure better work. After all, time the Wigger Patwol devote to creating more and better opportunities for learning cannot be devoted to assailing colleagues, mangling curricula, and telling all who will listen about the virtues of pedagogy that never materializes and publications that never appear.

For the 4th -- Mencken's Creed

Has a finer creed been promulgated? Wouldn't we all benefit were this the American Creed?

Henry Louis Mencken offered the following creed for our consideration. <http://www.bizbag.com/mencken/menkcreed.htm>


I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind, that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.

I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.

I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty.

I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.

I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech.

I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.

I believe in the reality of progress.

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie.
I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave.
And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.



However, to celebrate the Fourth, let us highlight Mencken's thinking in red and offer emendations in blue. Wouldn't that be mighty white of us?

• I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind, that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.

If not for "generally speaking" and Mencken's balancing of the benefits of religion against its costs, I should dissent from his first credendum. I'd substitute "dogma." Dogmatic thinking, whether religious or not, burdens humans and foils their thinking. Hence, I am closer to Jefferson's "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man," except that swearing on the altar of any god seems to me problematic. I'd go with:

• Dogma has damaged thinking humans for transitory certainty and to no lasting profit.

• I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.

To avoid dogmatic phrasing, I'd have to qualify this a bit, but Mencken is close enough. For me the key word is "trumpeting." If one tells grandma she looks lovely even though she looks much like a comicbook cryptkeeper, one is not trumpeting. Spreading misinformation widely increases ignorance and decreases intelligence. That is the danger. Hence:

• Disseminating facts is never wholly useless and disseminating falsehoods is always vicious.

• I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty.

Here again Henry Louis overstates dogmatically. Neither all governments nor any government need "war" upon liberty. Governments often protect liberties. Moreover, calling government evil invokes the quasi-religious Manicheanism that Mencken denounces. Thus, I'd rephrase:

• When governments war on liberty, they harm more than help; when governments protect liberty, they help more than harm.

• I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.

I am with Mencken here. I love the phrasing. If one demands evidence, immortality, witchcraft, and a host of other credenda must slink back into swamps of ignorance out of which muckrakers or romantics or buncombe artists harvested them. With the slightest rephrasing, then:

• Absent good evidence, immortality and witchcraft are roughly equally likely.

• I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech.

If you cannot refute or ignore thought or speech with which you disagree, you must lump it. What cannot be helped must be endured. Still, I'd insinuate what civil libertarians long have taught:

• The remedy for "bad" thought or "bad" speech is more and better thought and more and better speech.

• I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.

I agree with Mencken here but insist that cynics be given their due. Humans can intellectualize their worlds and their fellows, can analyze what makes up the world, and can theorize how the world runs. Humans are, alas, as likely as not to run from what they discover in pursuit of personal gain -- "If global warming is real, it can be real after I am dead and past sacrificing for others" -- or to explain away unwelcome conclusions about structures -- Romanticism or Idealism, for examples -- or to theorize how the world might run better if only certain thems would accede to this or that us. Thus,

• Humans usually master their worlds better than they master themselves.

• I believe in the reality of progress.

Some progress is real and worth the price. However, humans usually cannot assay the reality or the price until long after it is possible to go back. More, every step forward is at the least a step away from alternatives. Hence, progress may be every bit as real as the opportunity costs of the progress. What Europeans call "handy" phones [cell phones] represent at once progress and nuisance. Progress is real because apparent progress pushes us down and makes it ever less likely that humans shall recover, let alone retreat. I'd prefer to put matters this way:

• Some progress is real; some progress is illusory; most progress is both.

I leave unstated that most users of "handy" phones [as Europeans call mobile or cell phones] should shut the f__k up around me.

• I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie.

Here my fellows cynics and I scream, "Say what?" Those who tell the truth in politics and government we call "losers." Morally or spiritually the truth may be preferred, but in politicking, warfare, employment, and relationships, telling the truth will get you defeated, unemployed, and alone. I believe it better to leave this credendum unstated. "Woven man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen," and all that.

• I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave.

Most of us join Mencken on this one. Still, one must recall that emancipated slaves in the United States suffered mightily when they were no longer the property of wealthy whites. Qualify!

• Generally and over the long haul, it is better to be free than to be enslaved.

• And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.

Mencken did not live to hear philosopher Robert Seger opine, "I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then" ["Against the Wind"]. Ignorance often is bliss. Indeed, "Rump Parliament" exists to upset the blissful ignorance that most faculty assiduously pursue. I cannot fault colleagues for eating lotus. They have families to raise, careers to pursue, and illusions and delusions to protect. What I know about the university and its various departments scarcely makes working here better. Thus, I think we'll ignore Mencken's last belief.

Either list strikes me as a creed worthy of Independence Day. Remember: a fifth makes for a happy Fourth.

If more Americans subscribed to Mencken's creed, maybe one would not need a fifth to celebrate.

Puget Sound Rosetta Orwell Stone Located!

Apologies to Dan Brown, below is my report on the recent Honor Code.



Shortly before her untimely and suspicious demise, linguist Rosetta Orwell Stone had discovered a cryptic code in use on campus. On the underside of a boulder stating the university’s etiology in and dedication to good citizenship and Christian religion, Dr. Stone discovered a new micro-chip off the old boulder. The micro-chip preserved a secret code for phrasing documents from Student Affairs.

Applying the secret code to an honor code recently approved by the trustees, Dr. Stone learned that the honor code hid a remarkable message.

As passed by the trustees, the honor code appears to have been produced when meringue and tapioca, each travelling near the speed of light, collided over a blue dress:

“I am a member of the community of the University of Puget Sound, which is dedicated to developing its members’ academic abilities and personal integrity. I accept the responsibilities of my membership in this community and acknowledge that the purpose of this community demands that I conduct myself in accordance with Puget Sound’s policies of Academic and Student Integrity. As a student at the University of Puget Sound, I hereby pledge to conduct myself responsibly and honorably in my academic activities, to be fair, civil, and honest with all members of the Puget Sound community, and to respect their safety, rights, privileges, and property.”

Not so fast, Dr. Stone cautioned. “The ocean is a desert with its life underground and the perfect disguise above, as the folk-rock group America told us long ago,” said the linguist. “So, too, the honor code is the perfect cover for an insidious oath. ‘Member of the community’ is an anagram for 'botchery if momentum me,' which of course is the official Klingon designation for all subjects of the Klingon empire.”

Dr. Stone’s suspicions were aroused by the sentiment that all members of the Puget Sound community should have their rights respected. “Puget Sound is a private university. Who has rights here?” She rearranged “safety” and “rights” into “thrifty gases” and “privileges” and “property” into “soppy girlie pervert.” The adage “Soppy girly perverts are thrifty with their gases” was, readers will recall, the first of T. E. Lawrence’s seven pillars of wisdom. Hurrying to the mausoleum of Judge John Minor Wisdom, linguist Stone found on its seventeenth pillar "Refragatio non sufficiens," the Latin for “Resistance is futile.”

“That was the breakthrough,” Dr. Stone enthused. “Klingon designations and Borg imperatives in the university’s honor code? Coincidence? I think not.”

Dr. Stone also recalled that the late Paul Newman is alleged to have said, "24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence? I think not." Rosetta thought Paul handsome.

After some Saurean brandy and Romulan baked beans, Dr. Stone was able to piece together the actual code underlying the seemingly meaningless honor code recently promulgated. Substituting for the red-letter oath supra, the honor code cryptically says:

“I am a subject of the University of Puget Sound, which is dedicated to developing hive mentality. I am but a thrall and submit to Puget Sound’s regimen. As a tuition-paying robot, I forfeit all rights and dignity, I lose my individuality in my academic activities, I abandon all pleasures but to please my superiors, and I believe that resistance is feudal.”


In a related development, Dr. Stone’s interment in a Tacoma time capsule has so far been ruled accidental by TPD.

Eating a Symbolic Worm

What is the point of an honor code?


Is the point of an honor code for an institution to indicate its adherence to norms and principles? Did someone doubt the institution’s adherence? Why would anyone, especially the Academic Standards Committee, doubt the institution's honor?

If the point of an honor code is reaffirmation of an institution’s preferring virtues to vices, wouldn’t endorsement of healthy food and sensible diet do students more good than coming out in favor of honor?

Is the point of an honor code largely symbolism? Does one espouse an honor code to posture in favor of virtue – despite the fact that the existence or non-existence of the honor code says nothing about the advocate’s possession of any virtues? Given psychological transference, why shouldn’t we suppose that the faculty most eager to denounce vices are those most familiar with vicious practices? Other than their own experiences as undergraduates, whence do faculty derive their suspicions?

Is the point of an hour code to stem some upsurge in dishonor? If so, exactly what is the theory behind the panacea? Are we to suppose that deviance is increasing because deviants are ignorant of the views of faculty and administrators regarding honor or cheating?

If more than symbolic, an honor code must spell out standards for deviants. Does anyone who has read "The Integrity Principle" or the standards to which students are held imagine that either or both make explicit any standards?

I have students read "The Integrity Principle" and the standards for student conduct each year in Politics and Government 316 -- so students may see how much due process and how many rights they surrendered by attending a private school and especially this private school. The students always conclude that the standards basically say, "If Student Affairs wants to nail you, they always will find a pretext." Last time around, a philosophy major asked whether anyone in the room purported even to understand "The Integrity Principle." He was reassured when no one could say what the author(s) of "The Integrity Principle" might have meant to argue.

In short, students find the standards applicable to students to be so elastic as to be ex post facto laws and "The Integrity Principle" to be incoherent mush. Other than that, the standards of our incipient "Honor Code" are quite explicit.

The content of the NEW! IMPROVED! Honor Code is so nebulous that the Academic Standards Committee incorporated them by citation

"I am a member of the community of the University of Puget Sound, which is dedicated to developing its members’ academic abilities and personal integrity. I accept the responsibilities of my membership in this community and acknowledge that the purpose of this community demands that I conduct myself in accordance with Puget Sound’s policies of Academic and Student Integrity. As a student at the University of Puget Sound, I hereby pledge to conduct myself responsibly and honorably in my academic activities, to be fair, civil, and honest with all members of the Puget Sound community, and to respect their safety, rights, privileges, and property."

How nice to have that all cleared up!

Passing an honor code is like eating a worm. It does little good. It does little harm. It keeps faculty and committees busy. It provides purpose to the aimless and empty. It lets trustees feel useful.

Our New Schedule

Is it too early to see returns on scheduling changes that were supposed to foment professional growth?

I suppose I know the answer, but let me ask anyway.

Colleagues who take Fridays or other weekdays "off" from teaching should soon be producing the professional growth that, we were told, justified the days off. What evidence do we have that "research days" have yielded the anticipated conference papers or published work?

Colleagues who flourished pedagogical reasons for teaching classes over 80-90 minutes had no reason not to show up on non-class days, so they will want to supply some other return to the students or the university from their absences. [I freely grant that the absence of certain colleagues from campus is reward enough in itself.] To refresh your recollection of cover stories, please see "U Stands for Unchained Maladies" 27 October 2007 in "Rump Parliament."

That is why defenders of fewer campus appearances had to rationalize their absences as "research days." I have no doubt that over extended weekends our colleagues were zipping to this library or engaged in that colloquium. So let's see some receipts.

A reviewed manuscript or a sizzling book review might go far toward answering those cynics who supposed that colleagues wanted to sleep in or pursue leisure activities.

If students ask why they cannot meet with their faculty often or at all, it would be pleasant to answer with evidence of the advances in human knowledge that more than make up for personal contact with our faculty. The same is true for colleagues who would prefer their committees not to meet on Thursdays at 8:00 a.m. to accommodate committee members who cannot make meetings on Fridays [ or Mondays ... or Wednesdays].

I see no point in looking at the productivity of recent hires. We have no "before" measures for them.

So let's take faculty who started before 2004. Certainly their CVs before 2004 and their CVs after 2004 should reveal startling increases in productivity by those who had one or more days free from classrooms that they could devote to professional growth. Each faculty member, relative to his or her own productivity before, should be expected to have profited from "research days." Faculty who have not secured days away from campus or hidden behind their office doors should, relative to their own productivity before the change, have exhibited far less growth on average than those who took advantage of "research days."

Is someone in Institutional Research on this matter, or should I undertake it as a hobby?

Scoundrels and Frauds

Puget Sound observes its ideals on Graduation Day.

A colleague spoke from the heart about graduation:

#####I am happy to attend for the kids but usually dislike
#####the speeches. The speeches are high-minded. I get
#####inspired then look around and see so many
#####scoundrels and frauds sitting near me. I feel soiled,
#####but say nothing. The hypocrisy bothers me.

Doesn't seem to bother most faculty or administrators.

Maybe you should turn off your critical faculties and let the nonsense pour over you.

Slumber through the ceremonies and be at most semi-conscious amid faculty governance or other dissimulations.

"Men go to bed with Gilda, but they wake up with me," said Rita Hayworth. Graduate students are seduced into academia; if they awaken at Coyote Date University, they feel used. This is all the more reason not to wake up.

Sleep in.
Talk critical thinking, but never practice it.
Advocate skepticism about change.
Let reassurance wash over you.
Avoid faculty meetings in favor of alternative soporifics.
Go along and you'll get along.
Stage more conversations among the folks.

There are no problems. The only problems are colleagues who espy problems. They're the problems.

But forget about them.

Have a lotus with that beer?

Before you give me grief about spelling out "STALAGS" along the left margin supra, please note that "stalag" was coinage from "Stamm" main body and "Lager" camp. Scoundrels and frauds are not the numeric majority at the university, but those who avert their eyes from scoundrels and frauds or apologize for the condoning of frauds and other abuses are the leading cadre.

Can you assist the FAC?

The FAC has issued a cry for help. Will you answer?

In its annual report dated 5 May 2009, the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC] has implicitly admitted its cognitive disarray:

"As we noted last year, a continuing concern of the Advancement Committee is open file reviews. The participation of all tenure-line colleagues in departmental and program reviews is a long-standing and highly valued practice at Puget Sound. Evaluees have long had the option of open or closed files for evaluations other than the tenure evaluation. The recent vote by the faculty to extend the option of open files to tenure evaluations has raised the salience of the issue of junior faculty participation in all open file reviews. Since the vote to extend open files, FAC members have observed more guarded letters being submitted, particularly by junior faculty though also by some senior colleagues, and a general reluctance by some to weigh in on change of status evaluations."



The FAC's deployment of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy disappoints. It is too bad that the FAC featured no social scientists or scholars familiar with logical validity or cogency.

Can commenters help out?

Please supply arguments that the FAC would advance if members of the FAC cared to be taken seriously.

Please assist your challenged colleagues.

The FAC flips the Senate the bird then invites senators to pull their fingers

The Faculty Advancement Committee Evades the Bylaws Again!

Every spring of late, the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC] evades the Bylaws. The Bylaws mandate that each Faculty Senate Committee appoint a chair. The Faculty Senate has insisted for years that the FAC follow the Bylaws. Whether through recalcitrance or arrogance, the FAC has instead upheld the cherished Puget Sound tradition that the Professional Standards Committee and the FAC do as they please irrespective of rules. When challenged on their misbehaviors, the power committees ply the credulous with aged canards and newly hatched rationalizations.

Aged Canard 1: The FAC objects to electing a chair because the FAC has never had a chair.

This objection is not quite true. It would be more accurate to say that, over the years, the Academic Vice President or Dean has been unacknowledged chair of the FAC. The FAC has been guided by a de facto decanal chair more often than it has resembled any roundtable of six decision-makers of equal standing or identical function. Ask veterans who have visited the FAC on multiple occasions over the years whether they were able to detect a de facto chair.

If the FAC has never had an official chair, so what? Other than Puget Sound administrators and apparatchiks, who argues that never having followed the rules justifies continuing to ignore the rules? If only Al Capone had known this "argument" was available to him: "But I have never paid income taxes!"

That the FAC has never appointed a chair establishes only that the FAC has never considered itself bound by rules that apply to all faculty senate committees.

Aged Canard 2: The FAC objects to electing a chair because electing a chair might have legal ramifications.

At least one member of the FAC has argued unspecified legal perils might follow from following the Bylaws. How intriguing! Ignoring or evading the Bylaws has no legal downside, but following them imperils the University? Who vetted this legal argument—John Yoo? Did the FAC ask any competent attorney about the advisability of following authority—often reckoned a legal virtue—as opposed to defying both the Bylaws and the Faculty Senate? Or would asking a competent attorney divest the FAC member(s) of this excuse?

The FAC has supplied no legal authority for this "legal opinion" because any legal peril—to the chair of the FAC or to individuals on the FAC—from following Bylaws is a chimera.

Indeed, that one or more members of the FAC would invoke such hokum shows little faith in other FAC canards.


Aged Canard 3: Electing a chair would spoil the egalitarianism of the FAC.

The 2008-2009 report of the FAC features this drollery: "... the Advancement Committee discussed at its first meeting of the year the matter of committee chair. Affirming that it continues to prefer that all voices at the table be equal participants, the Committee elected Priti Joshi, Sunil Kukreja, Andy Rex, Stuart Smithers, Kate Stirling, and Kris Bartanen as co-chairs."

The FAC knows that not all its members participate equally or identically:

• Concerning third-year assistant professors and distinction, five members of the FAC recommend to the sixth member, the Academic Vice President and Dean.
• Unless the FAC has changed recently, the Academic Vice President and Dean handles correspondence for the FAC, while members of the FAC draft letters regarding individual evaluees.
• Through 2005, the Academic Vice President and Dean was never the lead person for a file; the other five members of the FAC took turns taking the lead.
• "Streamlined" evaluations result in no inequalities of participation?

However, the FAC presumes that most senators and most faculty will not know how often the voices around the table will not be "equal." So the FAC bullshits the faculty.

Even if the suggested equality or equivalence were true, this argument would not be cogent. The Bylaws require every faculty senate committee to elect a chair at each committee's first meeting. The Bylaws further require that the chair be responsible for inducing the committee to meet and producing a report at year's end. The Bylaws require nothing else. How a chair's being responsible for the committee's meeting and reporting would roil or spoil the FAC, we are never told. We are never told for the same reason that we are never told why George W. Bush was one of our greatest presidents.

The FAC does not want to follow the Bylaws and so will not. The rest is blather summoned to explain why members of the FAC are above ordinary rules and authorities.

Newly Hatched Rationalization 1: The FAC this year elected six co-chairs.

The latest evasion by the FAC collides with Article V of the Bylaws [boldface added]:

...

Sec. 2. Organization. The Senate shall name a Convener for each committee during the first month of the fall semester for the purpose of electing a Committee Chairperson and orienting the committee based on the committee's prior year-end report, except when otherwise provided in the organization of the committee.

Sec. 3. Committee Meetings.
A. The Chairperson of each committee shall convene the committee during the first month of the fall semester to plan the work of the committee. Times for additional meetings will be at the discretion of the committee members. The Chairperson shall be responsible for presenting reports to the Senate.


Who would be so wanting in candor as to claim that appointing six co-chairs matched the Bylaws' requirement of "a chairperson" and of "the chairperson?" To ask the question is to answer it.

Perhaps most remarkable, the two newbies on the FAC conformed to the FAC's defiance in their very first meeting. What profiles in credulity! Did they hold out for even ten minutes before abasing themselves?

So here's to the FAC, ladies and gentlemen!

Six doctors who believe that 6 = 1.

Someday Never Comes

As I read a recent memorandum regarding child care, I began to pick up snatches of Creedence Clearwater Revival. I have no idea why the tune crept into my mind as I read that "lean times" prevented the university from doing what it was unwilling to undertake when times were better. As the nuns used to say about every contradiction or antinomy, it's a mystery.


First thing I remember was askin' papa, "Why?"
For there were many things I didn't know.
And Daddy always smiled; took me by the hand,
Sayin', "Someday you'll understand."

Well, I'm here to tell you now each and ev'ry mother's son
You better learn it fast; you better learn it young,
'Cause, "someday" never comes.

Well, time and tears went by and I collected dust,
For there were many things I didn't know.
When Daddy went away, he said, "Try to be a man,
And, someday you'll understand."

Well, I'm here to tell you now each and ev'ry mother's son
You better learn it fast; you better learn it young,
'Cause, "someday" never comes.

And then, one day in April, I wasn't even there,
For there were many things I didn't know.
A son was born to me; Mama held his hand,
Sayin' "Someday you'll understand."

Well, I'm here to tell you now each and ev'ry mother's son
You better learn it fast; you better learn it young,
'Cause, "someday" never comes.

Think it was September, the year I went away,
For there were many things I didn't know.
And I still see him standing, try'n' to be a man;
I said, "Someday you'll understand."

Well, I'm here to tell you now each and ev'ry mother's son
You better learn it fast; you better learn it young,
'Cause, "someday" never comes.

Is it a mystery?

What are the boys afraid of?

A colleague asked a pertinent question at a faculty meeting: "Why are colleagues so afraid of diversity?"



At the most recent plenary meeting of the faculty, Professor Harlequin Sovery Zen made some faculty smirk and others scratch their heads instead of their butts or balls. Dr. Zen ased why minor changes in the bylaws regarding the Diversity Committee so agitated a few naysayers.

Is a rhetorical question still useful if it goes over most heads?

Targets of Professor Zen's pertinent impertinence likely neither smirked nor showed any reaction. Some of these faculty have been raging to one another behind closed doors about chimera once reserved to the rantings of the National Association of Scholars [NAS] and other cranks. Other atavists transmit emails complaining that Puget Sound's longstanding indifference to diversity might be ending. Among the bugaboos that headline such emails:

• Administrators might review departments' decisions about whom to interview or whom to hire. If you thought that deans and the president already did that, you are defying the hive-mind of some of our programs, schools, or departments. If you think that departments have nothing to fear from such supervision, you do not know some of the departments or programs involved. If you were in those academic units, you'd fear exposure.

• Reading lists, pedagogical tactics, and loaded language might be subject to review. Unless the NAS wants to censor I, Rigoberta Menchú or the rants of Ward Churchill or David Horowitz locates "the Left" across curricula and campuses, review and criticisms are not welcomed. Again, to know some of the individuals and some of the schools or departments involved is to appreciate why colleagues respond like feral felines. By contrast, those who know their teaching tactics and lessons will stand review cannot summon much concern. The contrast is telling.

• Some faculty, staff, and students put an editor of The Trail on the spot for an hour or more owing to multiple allegations of racially insensitive content in the student newspaper. A current version of this legend is that the Bias-Hate Emergency Reaction Team [BERT] grilled the editor about content in his or her paper. As the tale is retold, embelllishments turn a meeting into Guantánamo on campus. The more that opponents of the Diversity Committee or of diversity as understood by most faculty require a bloody shirt to wave, the more that we "learn" about "The Blunda in the Rotunda." Too bad that we learn so much that is not true.

Asked of those who spread the objections supra then, Dr. Zen's question answers itself.

What are the boys so afraid of? Startled by symbols and howling the rage of the privileged, the oh-so-conscientious objectors long for a meritocracy that never existed, for departmental autonomy they've not earned, and for security against change as Puget Sound moves from empty promises to the merest threat of sincere efforts to diversify.

How can I be sure of that? Because almost every objection to the Diversity Committee's NEW! IMPROVED! bylaws has nothing to do with the new text or the old text or new words versus old words. When professed concerns have little to do with matters under deliberation, one is entitled to infer ulterior motives for the opposition.

Take the example that the objectors have made into a thrice-told-but-never-quite-tolled-the-same tale. If BERT wears jackboots, that is due neither to the old wording nor to the new wording of the bylaws. Indeed, when the loudest of the objectors raised BERT in meetings of the Faculty Senate, the Dean of Students made it clear that BERT would be run out of the Dean of Students Office if the Diversity Committee abandoned participation. That is correct: either way the scared rabbits get BERT or something very like BERT. Maybe BERT did its job; perhaps BERT convened a Starr Chamber; probably BERT made an editor feel put upon. However, bylaws old or new do not define BERT or circumscribe BERT's conduct.

Would you care for any pickled red herring with your canard, sir?

I could go through the many objections raised by Professor Chanticleer across campus or by atavists in less public settings, but to what purpose? To listen to the objectors for even fifteen minutes establishes that they are exercised about demons and devils that the rest of us cannot see or exorcise.

Suppose, to pursue another scary story, that a big, bad Diversity Czar meddled in hiring of every department, program, and school.

• The objectors cannot plausibly connect such meddling to any existing or any envisioned language in the bylaws or the code.

So what are the objectors really afraid of? Why do they conjure such terrors?

• Departments, programs, and schools confident that their procedures and judgments would withstand critical scrutiny -- the skeptical perusal supposed to define the life of the mind -- should welcome another set of eyes. Faculty who recoil at the prospect that their departments, programs, or schools would be greatly impaired if compelled to explain decisions and processes should share with the rest of the faculty what they know about their own academic units that the rest of us would do well to learn. If they know that their units cannot withstand oversight, perhaps their fears are based on hiring inequities is their immediate pasts.

Whatever the objectors are really afraid of almost certainly resides in the departments, programs, or schools whence such rough beasts, their sour come up at last, slouch toward faculty meetings to be boring.

• Avant garde poseurs object to an emphasis on race, ethnicity, or nationality and admonish the campus to aim to for socio-economic or class diversification. They do so knowing that there is even less support for thoroughgoing socio-economic diversification than for diversification that is more familiar from the decades that other institutions have devoted to diversification. They strike progressive poses but secure most of their support from diehards and blowhards from the racial "Right."

Indeed, the poseurs resemble rabid proponents of laissez faire because they operate with the cynical assurance that policies they advocate will never be tried and hence never will fail.

So kudos to Professor Zen for unmasking the symbolic politickers. Woe to the rest of us that Zen's rhetorical question almost certainly went over the heads of most faculty. Those inattentive, clueless souls voted for the new bylaws but preserved the luxury of what they do not now and do not want to hear about.

Lifting the Manhole Cover

Every Friday I acquire a copy of The Open Line.

Every Friday I fish The Open Line out of my departmental mailbox and exclaim, "The Open Manhole!" before I recycle The Open Line largely unread.

Every Friday at most I read "Noteworthy," a chronicle of recent accomplishments of staff and faculty or "Look who's talking!" a collection of snippets in which the University of Puget Sound made the news.

The latter regales readers with the names of colleagues who may have insinuated UPS into local media: "William Haltom was quoted in the News Tribune to the effect that the current economy is suboptimal."

The former lists alleged and allegedly professional activities: "William Haltom was wrestled out of a bar and onto the dais of a panel at the Western Political Science Association, where he spoke about strategies for padding expense accounts."

Items in each can be iffy: "William Haltom wrestled a bear under a table at Western State Hospital then slept in a padded cell," but presumably boost morale.

Nonetheless, many accomplishments go unremarked. I hope to redress this shortcoming from time to time here in "Rump Parliament."

Notworthy [sic]

Professor Mateman Gangrene successfully glued shut the door of his colleague in a dispute over who was the most immature member of the UPS faculty.

Recent retiree I. Tom Leghorn, formerly Sponge Bob Squarepants Professor of Innerdisciplinary Studies, was named "Bagger of the Month" at Metropolitan Mart.

Dr. Opal Blue read "Are Tautologies Always True?" before an assembly of tin-foil hats as a prelude to speaking to persons wearing the hats.

The Comical of Higher Education will publish Dr. Hans Holder's reminiscences in "Never Quite Publishing but Not Perishing: How I Faked My Way to a Career" as a cautionary tale.

Professor Rapunzel Rapunzel has a forthcoming paper, "Do Blondes Have More Fun? Letting Down Your Hair as Research Design" that will be published when her mother finds room in her journalblog.

Dr. Xavier Titian Loop has republished his study of pet haiku for the 43rd time, breaking the previous UPS record. Dr. Loop thanked his undergraduates for carrying on his research tradition.

Loose Lips Talking

An editorial endorsing motherhood but decrying premarital sex appeared at the website of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer over the byline of John E. B. Good, School of Music.

A writer for the Cleveland Plain-Dealer recently asked where the University of Puget Sound was.

Dr. Dakota Rivents was interviewed by The Trail regarding ways to use bullets rather than ballots to run societies.

Smoot Hawley told Seattle radio station KPTK that the Washington State Lottery qualified him to handicap potential nominees for the Supreme Court.

FOX telecaster Bill O'Reilly called Bill Haltom a pinhead.

Next -- What are the boys afraid of? The rage of a privileged class imbues a faculty meeting.

Live Blogging the Senate

The Faculty Senate met 9 March 2009 at 4:00 p.m. 4:10 p.m. A gentle, genial conversation on a confidential matter wafted through the Faculty Senate today. What a welcome change from whiners asking the Faculty Senate to solve individual problems via institutional changes! And to discuss a matter confidentially when the confidentiality is not a con job -- what a thing to believe! 4:17 p.m. A senator mispronounced a fellow senator's first name for the 20th time this year. But we at the University of Puget Sound make up a "community of lifelong learners." Slow learners, we make up a great many things. 4:20 p.m. The Senate then took up approval of minutes and managed same in only four minutes. Roger Bannister ran a mile faster, but he had no Ph.D. 4:25 p.m. Outgoing ASUPS President Word was deservedly applauded and lauded; incoming ASUPS President Luu was introduced. 4:26 p.m. A senator once again began a "Special Orders" period by announcing that what she had to say was not truly a "Special Order," a habit that she has maintained in different forms and forums for years. Everyone enjoyed a nostalgic moment as we indulged our colleague's solipsism. She once responded to the president's call for announcements at a faculty meeting by saying, "This is not an announcement, but does anyone else have trouble parking these days?" I hope she will diversify her hijinks. Maybe during approval of minutes she could begin to rebut the Surgeon General's report on tobacco in 1964. When the senate gets to "Old Business," why not start things off with "Rectal itch can be annoying?" Order is often over-valued relative to self-indulgence. Immediate gratification is nice but erratic gratification entertains more and better. 4:31 p.m. A replacement senator, Dr. Wayne Rickoll, was appointed. Wayne is honest and straightforward, so I anticipate he'll get nothing but woe from his appointment. 4:34 p.m. Procedures for conducting faculty elections are being bandaid [sic] about. A patch was effected. Paper ballots versus electronic voting excited little interest, I believe -- dozed off. An elections officer was named after gratuitous dislocations. A staff member and a student outraced the faculty. Our staff and students have found us out! 4:52 p.m. Item VIII: The Professional Standards Committee [PSC] asked whether the Faculty Senate would mind it much if PSC posted on the campus web [inside the firewall] the guidelines for promotion, tenure, and evaluations for each department, school, or program. It sounds as if the Faculty Code assigns approval of departmental guidelines to the PSC. Could the PSC make substantive judgments about departments beyond whether they contradict the code? 5:00 p.m. Motion to appoint an ad hoc committee to study the internship program lay about. A discouraging word was heard: Rigor! Rigor began to overtake me owing to my missing an afternoon nap. Deep and restful sleep. He said, "Rigor" again. I found myself growing sleepier. Need strong drink. Must drink! 5:13 p.m. Senate Chair Kreskin forecast future Faculty Senate agendas. Need strong drink. Faculty Senate meetings should be accessible. Perhaps Knapp's? Harbor Lights? Tacoma Dome? 5:20 p.m. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ Next -- Lifting the Manhole Cover

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, 2007

On 14 February 2007, a mostly bygone Professional Standards Committee soiled itself over the slightest imaginable supervision by the Faculty Senate.



Lest we forget, two years ago the Professional Standards Committee from academic year 2003-2004 [hereinafter, the Professional Standards Committee will be abbreviated "PSC" and the PSC for the year 2003-2004 designated "the Starr Chamber" to commemorate the secrecy of their proceedings and decision-making and the inequity of their methods and reasoning] sent the Faculty Senate a mewling memorandum.

The Faculty Senate, by the barest of margins, had passed a resolution in which the Senate took responsibility for mistakes made by the Starr Chamber in its annus horribilis 2003-2004. The Senate, deciding to exercise oversight just to see what it might be like, had appointed an ad hoc committee to investigate recent PSC [mis]behavior and to make recommendations to prevent violations of the Faculty Code and due process in the future. That ad hoc committee produced no findings. I do not know whether to attribute the ad hoc committee's misprision to cowardice, collegiality, collusion, cunning, cleverness, or some other word beginning with "c." What I do know is that the ad hoc committee insulated the 2003-2004 PSC and insulted the Faculty Senate. When seven senators responded to the absence of findings by acknowledging the errors and misjudgments of the Starr Chamber, that was entirely too much for the Starr Chamber [and for its chronic, conniving apologists on the Faculty Senate].

The communiqué from the Starr Chamber was a marvel of haughtiness and misdirection. Having committed undeniable errors, the Starr Chamber, like mafiosi, pointed out that the Senate had not proved the errors. Even that subterfuge was not quite true. For one thing, senators had noted that the Starr Chamber had proceeded in very different ways to deal with two grievances, one in Fall 2003 and one in Spring 2004. When the Academic Dean, a member of the Starr Chamber, was the respondent regarding a grievance, he and the grievant received the report of the Starr Chamber at about the same time that the President received it. The Starr Chamber after the second grievance sent its report to the President but denied the report to the second grievant and to the second respondent. Logic dictated that at least one release had to be contrary to the Faculty Code, which had not changed in the interim. Senators therefore concluded that the Starr Chamber had committed at least one mistake.

Pesky, punctilious senators! Why can't they mind their own business? Why do they oversee the Starr Chamber when they could be banning Pass/Fail or addressing plagiarism? Don't they know with who [sic] they're messing?


The Senate had had noted other errors or irregularities that even the Starr Chamber could not have denied had members of the Starr Chamber deigned to speak with senators. It cannot be disputed that the Starr Chamber conducted the second grievance hearing more than fifteen days after it received the grievance from the Dean of the University. It is beyond dispute, therefore, that the Starr Chamber tarried past the Faculty Code's deadline. That was a first violation of the Faculty Code, a violation that one hopes was mistaken but may have been deliberate. To cover its mistake or misstep, the Starr Chamber "interpreted" the Faculty Code to set the deadline at fifteen working days, an interpretation that negated the mandate in the Faculty Code. That is a second incontrovertible error or evasion. It is not only beyond dispute but beyond belief that the Starr Chamber then blew by the "reinterpreted" fifteen working days -- a third incontestable violation of its duty. When the second grievance was eventually heard, one of the two claims advanced by the grievant was more than thirty working days in the past according to the grievant's own complaint. Despite the code's "statute of limitations," the Starr Chamber entertained that grievance. This fourth violation senators did not have to investigate or to prove; a calendar proved that nonfeasance or malfeasance.

Senators may be able to count, but they do not count. The Starr Chamber is far too important to be bothered with calendars or duties or instrumentalities of lesser beings, especially when the Starr Chamber dispenses justice and rights wrongs and picks favorites and follows decanal directions. Besides, for all outsiders know, the Starr Chamber interpreted thirty working days as thirty-three working days because thirty-three made a prettier number and allowed the grievance to be entertained.


The Valentine's Day greeting from the Starr Chamber to the Senate featured other deceptions. The most inept PSC in recent memory objected that the Senate had not carefully investigated mistakes. As noted above, the Senate's ad hoc committee had investigated mistakes and malfeasance, so the mistakes of the Starr Chamber were carefully investigated. Because that ad hoc committee issued no findings, neither senators nor members of the Starr Chamber could know what the ad hoc committee might have found. Senators knew that each member of the ad hoc committee admitted before the senators that he or she had discovered mistakes, however. The Starr Chamber phrasing was thus cunning but misleading. The Senate as a whole had not investigated, but the Senate's ad hoc committee had discovered that "mistakes were made."

"Mistakes were made!" That passive construction does not hide agents effectively enough. The Starr Chamber deserves greater camouflage. Maybe senate proceedings should be confidential.

The recklessness of the Starr Chamber in conducting its proceedings in 2003-2004 made the Starr Chamber's call for careful work ironic and amusing, not to say hypocritical. The hypocrisy followed: "In our opinion, the Senate passed its motion without exercising due process, without gathering evidence from all parties involved, and without assuring itself that it had received an impartial and complete account of events." Shall we peel this onion and weep at the double standards employed by Starr Chamber apologists?

• The Starr Chamber violated due process repeatedly in 2003-2004 beyond what I have listed above. For one thing, the Starr Chamber so constructed a list of charges that an accused colleague had to prove her innocence rather than the accusers having to prove her guilt. The Starr Chamber's product passes for due process but the Senate's motion does not?

• The Starr Chamber repeatedly insisted that a confidentiality found neither in the Faculty Code nor in the bylaws prevented them from speaking with the Senate about their activities despite the Senate's oversight capacity and duty. Hence, those who protested that evidence had not been gathered were themselves parties who refused to provide the evidence that they then said had not been accumulated. [Please consult the very first posting in "Rump Parliament" to see that two members of the Starr Chamber had explicitly informed the Faculty Senate that no member of the Starr Chamber would break confidentiality to speak to the senate or to its ad hoc committee.] Having obstructed the investigation, the Starr Chamber then protested that the investigation was incomplete. The effrontery of the Starr Chamber recalls the classic definition of chutzpah: A son kills his parents then demands mercy because he is an orphan.

• A final hypocrisy: the little information the Starr Chamber had released was partial and incomplete, not to mention every bit as misleading as the Starr Chamber's Valentine's Day memorandum.
  
  Let senators have their truth. The Starr Chamber will settle for arrogance and presumptuousness. All hail the Starr Chamber! The Few, the Proud, the Unelected Elect. By appointment to the Dean, Chief Privy Attendants!
  
  Had anyone with even the slightest common sense counseled veterans of the Starr Chamber, he or she would have noted that defensive over-reaction to the merest hint of oversight and accountability did not become the Starr Chamber. It did, however, show what the Starr Chamber had become.
  
  Senators are just jealous. Senators must work in open meetings and must account to faculty for their decisions and activities. The Starr Chamber, like President Dubya, answers to a Higher Power. It does not account for itself or its actions to ad hoc committees, to the Faculty Senate, or to hoi polloi. The Starr Chamber transcends mere faculty governance and accountability. The Starr Chamber rules! The Faculty Senate drools!
  
  
  Still, the 2006-2007 Senate weathered the whining duplicity and hypocrisy of the Starr Chamber. Thus, the Senate was steeled when the 2006-2007 PSC was found to have issued a major interpretation that it had sent forward neither to the Senate nor to the trustees. The Faculty Code requires the assent of the trustees to a major interpretation. It also requires that the Faculty Senate be notified of the interpretation. The PSC once again had ignored or forgotten elementary demands of the Faculty Code, just like the Starr Chamber.
  
  Faculty Code? Bylaws? Authority? Due Process? What were those to the Starr Chamber? What are those to any elect on a mission from God or the Dean, to cite a distinction of which the Starr Chamber proved incapable?
  

Coming Next: "Live Blogging the Senate"

Explaining the Ways of "Disney Does Dartmouth"

Ever tried to explain "Disney Does Dartmouth" to someone from an actual university? It's "... like trying to tell a stranger 'bout rock and roll."


Last Thursday, I dined with a professor from a Research One institution. As I described some customs and usages at "Disney Does Dartmouth," [Thank you, Diana Marrế!] an anthropologist reeled from shock to protest. Trained in encountering and contextualizing seemingly savage practices and bizarre behavior, this anthropologist could not fathom exotica of ersatz-Dartmouth based on her experiences at universities and colleges large and small.

I told her about issues regarding junior faculty and closed versus open files [see my posts in Rump Parliament for 21 and 22 November 2008 for more details]. She gasped, "What are untenured faculty doing evaluating colleagues for tenure?" She seemed unimpressed by the history of the practice at "Disney Does Dartmouth," almost as if she thought reiterating etiology was insufficient justification. [She probably thought Bruce Hornsby's "That's Just the Way It Is" was a lament about classism and racism instead of a call for quiescence and indifference when confronted with injustice.]

As often as she repeated, "Isn't that practice against AAUP guidelines?" I repeated that to the best of my knowledge most colleagues at "Disney Does Dartmouth" neither knew nor cared what the AAUP recommended or required.

When I mentioned candidates for tenure simultaneously evaluating other candidates for tenure, she asked, "Now how does that not raise conflicts of interest?" In defense of my institution, I pointed out that spouses were prohibited from evaluating one another. She seemed unimpressed by this height of ethical rigor. Of course, I have no idea why she might believe that a candidate for tenure or promotion might disparage other candidate(s) in the same department. How could that happen?

Guess how she reacted when I told her that for some competitions internal to "Disney Does Dartmouth" a curriculum vitae is neither requested nor welcome. "I had thought that the CV was the coin of the academic realm. How the hell can my record be irrelevant to whether I get funding?" I assured her that one's record was not irrelevant. Decision-makers attended assiduously to the sorts of performance normally not to be found on a CV. As an anthropologist, she understood favoritism and clientilism but seemed to think the spoils system a queer way of promoting scholarship. I did not trouble her with how patrons have for centuries cultivated sycophants and other dependents. [See my entry for 4 March 2007, "Respectable, Reliable, Reputable" to see how faculty vie for patronage.]

How does someone from a major university fathom the senior colleague who told two disappointed aspirants for a Lantz Senior Fellowship that the "committee" went with someone who had produced almost nothing because "We knew you would accomplish your plans even without the fellowship?" Of course, the professor who got the award returned to campus with little to show for his year off-campus and the two spurned scholars did produce what they had proposed, so the prescience of the committee was vindicated. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" takes on new meaning courtesy of this leading cadre, this vanguard of the faculty.

And what of the persistence of "personal and professional characteristics" as considerations for promotion or tenure? An experienced scholar who believes that, to be professional, evaluation must be impersonal must be puzzled by a university proclaiming that it assesses personnel on "personal characteristics." All schools and many colleagues take "personal characteristics" into account, and candor about this practice has its charms. Still, to mandate such unprofessional evaluation may strike the uninitiated as crass. To strike that mandate from the Faculty Code in 1994 seems redemptive until one realizes that atavists continued to use "personal and professional characteristics" unabashedly at least until University counsel explained in 2007 that the practice was jurally indefensible. Even then some dead-enders stated in a faculty meeting that they could not believe that they had been violating the Faculty Code for so many years.

How do I explain routines at the "Disney Does Dartmouth?"

Do I restrict myself to misogyny, anti-Semitism, racism, and other inequities rife on campuses large and small and say nothing about perversities peculiar to "Disney Does Dartmouth?"

I cannot claim, as in the movie "An Innocent Man," that it's an insane place with insane rules so things end up being logical. The rules are not insane. Rather, we ignore the rules when we please to do so. On those rare occasions when colleagues or administrators deign to account for themselves, "logical" is hardly the first descriptor that leaps to tongue.

Do I transcend? "This too can be understood on a higher plane." Uh-huh. "This too can be understood in a fevered swamp" does not seem sufficiently transcendent. Moreover, to understand or to purport to understand myths and rituals at "Disney Does Dartmouth" is to catalyze one's own demise as scholar and professional.

How does any veteran with three digits of IQ and any awareness of what happens at "Disney Does Dartmouth" explain DDD to those familiar with academia?

Next -- The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, 2007