What's Wrong with Collusion?

Do veterans of the University of Puget Clowns [© Susan Resneck Pierce] hear what they have become when they quibble over corruptions of peer evaluation?

Upon hearing scuttlebutt about collusion in a tenure evaluation, colleagues with 50 years of service at our fine university independently inquired, "What's wrong with collusion?"

Such a question asked without irony limns a depravity* of faculty evaluation here. I have quoted from "The Hustler" more than once the jarring characterization of Sarah Packer [Piper Laurie]: "We have a contract of depravity. All we have to do is pull the blinds down."

Some Puget clowns no longer pull the blinds down.





* To go all etymological on your butt, to deprave is to descend ["de-"] into crookedness ["pravus"]. Perhaps our colleagues were straight and whole when they arrived so long ago. Their speech illuminates what has become of them.

Malfeasant or Nonfeasant?

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



Lest we forget, three 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 misbehavior and to make recommendations to prevent violations of the Faculty Code and due process in the future. That ad hoc committee produced no findings, instead insulating the 2003-2004 PSC and insulting the Faculty Senate and faculty. 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.

This 2006 report was one of the most cunning or cowardly or contemptible or clumsy or clownish actions by a committee or subcommittee ever. Was that ad hoc committee truly malfeasant or merely nonfeasant? You make the call!

The resulting communiqué from the Starr Chamber was a marvel of haughtiness and misdirection. Having committed undeniable errors, the Starr Chamber claimed 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 then Academic Dean, himself 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 next grievance hearing 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.

Yes! By their own admission, the Starr Chamber erred once or twice in 2003-2004. Even the senators desperate to fend off any accountability had to admit this fact. Thus, the flimsy acknowledgment of the Faculty Senate merely stated a fact. Was the Starr Chamber in its disparaging the Faculty Senate flat-out malfeasant or merely nonfeasant? You make the call! Maybe you do not mind deceptions from the Starr Chamber. Maybe you expect no better.

The Senate had noted other errors or irregularities that the Starr Chamber could not have denied if the members of the Starr Chamber had spoken to senators or cooperated in any way. No one can dispute that the Starr Chamber conducted a 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 failed of the Faculty Code's explicit deadline.

That was a violation of the Faculty Code, a violation that one hopes was mistaken but may have been deliberate. No one may dispute that violation and argue in good faith. Was the Starr Chamber arguing in bad faith or was it that incompetent? You make the call!

To cover its misstep or mission, the Starr Chamber "interpreted" the Faculty Code to set the deadline at fifteen working days, an interpretation by which the Starr Chamber hoped to negate the mandate in the Faculty Code.

That was another violation of the Faculty Code. If the Starr Chamber believed they could substitute their own deadline for the code's deadline, they compounded their errors. If they knew that they had no authority to overrule the Faculty Code, they deliberately violated the code. Was the Starr Chamber mistaken or misbehaving? You make the call!

It is not only beyond dispute but beyond belief that the Starr Chamber then blew by the "reinterpreted" fifteen working days -- another incontestable violation of its duty. You read that last sentence right: the Starr Chamber disobeyed the explicit mandate of the code [15 days], "interpreted" that explicit mandate to excuse their disobedience [that is, they went to 15 "working" days as the new limit], than failed to hold the hearing within 15 working days.

Was this trifecta of violation merely three mistakes, as the Faculty Senate charitably proclaimed, or was it deliberate arrogation? The Starr Chamber should have thanked the Faculty Senate for calling flouting of authority error.

When the second grievance was eventually heard more than two months after it reached the Starr Chamber, one of the two claims advanced by the grievant turned out to have occurred more than 30 working days in the past according to the grievant's own complaint. That is correct! The Starr Chamber had delayed and delayed hearing a grievance that it could, if even one member of the Starr Chamber could or would have counted to 30, have dismissed in a timely manner. The Faculty Code limits grievances to 30 working days. Despite the code's "statute of limitations," the Starr Chamber at long last entertained that grievance.

Behold yet another violation that senators did not have to investigate or to prove; the grievant's complaint and a calendar proved the nonfeasance or malfeasance of the Starr Chamber.

The Valentine's Day greeting from the Starr Chamber to the Senate in 2007 teemed with still more deceptions. The most inept and/or feckless 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. The Starr Chamber phrasing was thus cunning and misleading in the extreme. The Senate as a whole had not investigated, but the Senate's ad hoc committee had discovered that "mistakes were made."

Was the Starr Chamber's clever phrasing malfeasant or nonfeasant? You make the call!

The recklessness of the Starr Chamber in conducting its proceedings in 2003-2004 made the Starr Chamber's call for careful work as amusing as it was hypocritical. The Starr Chamber then augmented its hypocrisy: "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 multiple standards deployed by the Starr Chamber and its 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 dared to write "due process" without fear that members' tongues would burst into flames?

Was the Starr Chamber's reference to "due process" malfeasant or nonfeasant? You make the call!

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 had 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. This effrontery of the Starr Chamber recalls the classic definition of chutzpah: A son kills his parents then demands mercy because he is an orphan.

Was the Starr Chamber more malfeasant than nonfeasant in claiming that the Faculty Senate did not consult all parties when the Starr Chamber itself refused to be consulted based on a fictitious confidentiality? You make the call!

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.

More malfeasant? More nonfeasant? You make the call!

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.

Malfeasant? Nonfeasant? Pathetic? Embarrassing? You make the call!

Still, the 2006-2007 Senate weathered the whining duplicity and abject 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.

So little genuine supervision or accountability so aggravated the Starr Chamber that I wonder what genuine, routine Senate supervision would do to such popinjays.

Legends of Political Correctness

A member of the small, demented following of "Rump Parliament" wrote:

##########I hear so much about "political correctness"
##########on campus, yet I can't think of a single
##########right-of-center person who's been fired.
##########Meanwhile women ever-so-slightly
##########left-of-center and persons of color keep
##########leaving the university voluntarily or
##########involuntarily. I can name at least ten
##########conservatives who claim that some
##########forces on campus are after them,
##########but none of them is denied promotion or tenure.

I resist my glib reply: Has anyone of any credibility raised "political correctness" issues on this campus? I believe that that question answers itself.

Has anyone to the right of political center been denied tenure or sacked? Not to my knowledge, but I do not purport to know the ideological or partisan bent of most colleagues. Most faculty at Puget Clowns do not know much about most of the beliefs of most colleagues, which may itself suggest that "political correctness" is almost always blather.

What do I know about driving those to the right off campus? When women were abandoning this university in the late 1990s, a dean noted that no faculty publicly protested the departures of certain right-of-center women the way that faculty lamented the departures of some left-of-center women. However, I know of only one colleague who was foolish enough even to repeat that classic example of misdirection. [I shall divulge the identity of that colleague only after two Bombay Blue Sapphire martinis.] The names that the dean bandied included those of a libertarian and a religiously devout colleague. To the best of my information, neither woman was pushed away owing to her beliefs.

If right-of-center colleagues were driven away, we should all have heard one or more cover stories. As has been the case when women and minorities have escaped or been booted, a colleague should have whispered this excuse and another shoould have advanced that justification. When left-wing women have been induced or forced to leave, it has never been about gender to hear the apologists tell the tale. It has never been about race either, of course. It could not have been about ethnicity or religion. Certainly a firing could not owe to an evaluee's being avant garde or frightening. Women who intimidate or antagonize men have always been welcomed wholeheartedly. Minorities who expose the privileges that the majority enjoy have always been invited to enlighten the comfortable and conventional faculty still further.

I have never heard the cover story that would "prove" that political correctness was not involved. Hence, I assume that neither political correctness nor any other misconduct has driven any conservative faculty from campus.

You might exclaim that there are so few conservatives on campus that the odds that one of them would be hounded off campus are remote. That proves a little too much doesn't it?

Any veteran can name progressive or liberal or maybe even radical women or men who have been sent packing. I doubt that any veteran can identify a traditionalist or a conservative or a reactionary pushed out since 1992. If someone wants to bring up the fellow in 1992, I shall be more than happy to review actions and events that led him to resign. Whatever the outcome of that review, I am confident that more lefties who were also minorities have left our happy family than righties. I do admit that the lefties only outnumber the righties by an order of magnitude.

So, if you hear that a colleague is being punished for being too conservative, admit that such is not impossible but is improbable. It is far more probable that someone is exaggerating or even imagining the conservatism of an erstwhile colleague to manufacture a "crusade against nonconformists." It is easier to conjure that narrative than to analyze instances.