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.