Why Committees Go Rogue -- An Inventory of Hypotheses VI

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None of the foregoing factors -- persistent bureaucrats, stale ideas, blundering faculty, time-serving faculty, or credulous undergrads -- need have been pernicious if The Faculty Senate had done its job.
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Explanation 6 -- The Faculty Senate Overlooked More Than It Oversaw.............

When the Faculty Senate is respectful and deferential but vigilant and demanding, renegade committees cannot go as far wrong as when senators are so respectful and so deferential that committees know they are free to promulagte the policies that they please. However, not all Senates are watchful and not all senators are demanding. Indeed, some senators of late have been even timider and more sensitive than most faculty are, and more than one chair of the Senate has longed to be liked and respected.


Better colleagues than censors, the Faculty Senate has of late overlooked rather than overseen governance.

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In 2008-2009 the Academic Standards Committee [ASC] issued policies with little support either among senators or among faculty as a body. The minutes of the ASC disclose little debate about and no cogent arguments for those policies -- a sure indication that groupthink was afflicting the ASC. The Faculty Senate -- the executive committee of the faculty as a whole -- was and is charged to notice impulsive, precipitous lurches on Senate committees. Indeed, liaisons so much ballyhooed as an advance by recent senates exist to assure that the Faculty Senate will know what committees are doing and will exercise senate oversight. In 2008-2010 the Faculty Senate too often let ill-considered motions and policies reach meetings of the faculty. The senators thereby saved themselves time and trouble but wasted the time and exacrebated the troubles of the faculty.

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A slumbering Faculty Senate with desultory leadership and wavering attention accounts for some of the misdeeds of the ASC 2008-2010. The ASC had no adult supervision aside from plenary meetings of the faculty. That guaranteed that revolutions that should have been stifled without wasting the time of the faculty made it to plenary meetings. "The executive committee of the faculty" was apparently on hiatus 2008-2010.

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Senatorial indolence and deference enabled the fixtures on the ASC to mouth in meetings of the full faculty -- "full faculty," of course, stands for the one in seven members of the faculty who attend meetings -- refrains that pleased uncritical members of the ASC far more than the larger body.

But why did the failing gate-keepers have to keep the gates? Next time!

at the faculty

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