- Rigor is burlesqued but never practiced.
- Gravitas is parodied but lighter than air.
- Flatulence is celebrated but more substantial than gravitas or rigor.
- Fatuousness is erudition in service of faithlessness and disloyalty to liberal education.
- Obsequiousness is courage among the conflict averse.
- Ignorance is strength especially ignorance aligned with decanal orthodoxies.
- Civility is candor unafraid to voice the thoughts of the powerful.
- Sincerity is unknown absent delusion.
¶ Professor Lance Rosywiz spoke of extensive, controversial changes in The Faculty Code: "I am the kind of person who likes to get things done. Why don't we pass these changes and fix any problems in subsequent meetings?" Was this call to alter the employment contract of each member of the faculty in a fast and facile manner the worst fraud attempted by a chair of a Power Committee? Was this former member of the Professional Standards Cult channeling Professor Irwin Corey <http://www.irwincorey.org/>?
Whether the remark was careless, reckless, half-clever, or half-cunning, was it the greatest spit-take in the history of faculty meetings? Read on.
¶ In the hallway after another inept attempt by an administrator to deceive the clowns, Professor Soviet Tankard opined, "I don't mind if you serve me a platter of turds, but don't call them sausages!"
Is this the funniest remark immediately after a plenary meeting of the faculty? Does hallway badinage count as faculty meeting vaudeville?
¶ The presiding administrator granted Professor Eve Slimehatch 10 minutes in which to defend a curricular proposal the administrator favored. The proposer took 30 minutes to present 5 minutes worth of material, so smarming the assembled colleagues that this presentation is itself a candidate for most fatuous self-abuse at a plenary meeting of the faculty.
Truly to realize how off-putting the presentation was, one had to have been there. I estimated amid that meeting that Ol' Slimehatch had lost 10 votes for the proposal by the manner of presentation.
¶ The speech by Professor Slimehatch prompted one of the great time-wasting members of the faculty, Professor Terry Snarl, to wave a wristwatch at Slimehatch to stop Slimehatch's blathering. One of the greatest moments of irony in faculty history, this incident was the equivalent of the Unibomber's questioning the ethical propriety of a letter to a representative.
I was getting very sleepy, very sleepy. Then Snarl started to wave his wristwatch.
¶ Before he waved his wristwatch side to side as if trying to hypnotize the administrative favorite, Professor Snarl triumphed by beginning a speech explicitly affirming one side of a debate and ending that same speech minutes later announcing that the opposite side in the debate had the stronger case. The seamless segues distinguished this speech as perhaps the greatest self-parody in a meeting renowned for intentional and unintentional self-parodies.
"Madam President, I rise in opposition to this proposal. It is such an affront that I am taken aback. Its passage would be such a blot on the eschatology of this institution that I am compelled to vote in its favor. I thank you."
¶ Professor Snarl also worked behind the scenes to induce the vilest speech ever delivered at a clowns' meeting I attended. A Puget Clown who went to graduate school with a whistleblower used phony hypotheticals to defame the whistleblower and to defend the most notorious philanderer on the faculty. Professor Ed Needspiers followed Professor Snarl's direction to a zone of twilight infamy.
Hypotheticals that are not hypothetical but are flat-out falsehoods. What will these wackos think up next?
¶ After a colleague had observed that politics makes strange bedfellows, the next speaker began,"As someone who has had more strange bedfellows than anyone here, ..."
But seriously, folks!
¶ One member of a youth movement, Dr. Van I. Smugdad, ended a salute to "Science in Context" -- also known as "Science in Contempt" -- by noting that Smugdad had secured a grant via the program. Colleagues who missed the meeting cursed themselves because they were not there to hear a dazzling defense of the only category of the previous core curriculum of which the student body asked the faculty to rid the university: "I got a grant to pursue it!"
What a candid canard! But was it the greatest revelation of the "me" in "team?" Read on!
¶ At the start of a meeting, the President asked for announcements from the faculty. Professor Hazel-Don Annuls said, "I don't know if this is an announcement, but did anyone else have trouble parking?"
You want self-absorption bordering on solipsism? Faculty meetings got it!
¶ As the faculty debated whether to permit candidates for tenure to select open files, two wonderful moments glistened. First, a notorious assassin argued to keep tenure files closed, saying, "I trust colleagues to be fair." Across the meeting hall, a colleague who had inside knowledge of the assassin's notions of fairness mouthed "Unbelievable" multiple times. Another colleague stared at the speaker in what seemed shock and disbelief.
Did O. J. worry much about Nicole's slicing his throat?
¶ Second, a senior member of the faculty broke out the finger puppets to reveal the perversity of closed files at tenure. "When you, an untenured member of the faculty, come up for tenure, I may write whatever I please about you, and you may not read what I have written. That is, I may savage you in a manner that denies you your job and defames you forever, and the most you will get to see is a tepid summary that attributes the remark to a colleague. However, when I next come up for a five-year review, I may elect to read every word in your letter. You cannot much harm me, but I get to read your letter and hold it against you if I choose."
¶ Professor Ed Fern Carollens repeatedly denounced false rumors that, if anything, were euphemistic with "respect" to a renowned philanderer. Professor Carollens then acted shocked when the philanderer fessed up, but that performance occurred outside a faculty meeting and thus may not count.
The satellite, rarely overhead, was aligned with the Mother Ship to the endless infamy of Dr. Carollens, who for decades was a strong candidate for the most addled member of the faculty.
¶ Amid discussion of electives that seniors tended to select, a professor observed with disgust that many advisees chose ceramics to complete their degrees. "Ceramics!" the colleague snarled as if seniors were choosing a practicum in child abuse. Many colleagues marveled for weeks that the University of Puget Clowns was so fortunate to have such minor foibles pass for problems at a faculty confab. What they may have missed was the virtuosity of the professor's preening. To identify a happy feature of the undergraduate experience at Puget Clowns as a blot on the rigorousness of the curriculum was genius!
Where else but the circus could one luxuriate in such pretentious nonsense?
¶ Munching potato chips, a colleague wandered into a meeting of the faculty just as a dean completed a curricular rant. The dean insisted that the most reckless thing that the faculty could do was to pass the measure on the floor without much further deliberation and debate. A colleague suggested that the eater of potato chips should call the previous question. This he did without realizing what the dean had just said. The dean glared at Professor Potato Chip as the faculty voted in favor of the measure and against the dean.
Stop it! You're killing me!
¶ A legendary psychotic appeared late in a meeting, moved to adjourn, then left. Could anyone do better than that?
Always good to hear from Professor Rebel Screwtrout!
¶ And what of likening a perfectly respectful presentation to denial of the Holocaust? You cannot make this crap up -- unless you're David Lodge or Richard Russo or Jane Smiley.
Who pulled her finger?
5 comments:
Who sez you cannot tell the playas apart without a program? I recognize most if not all of these offenders. (And I believe the author of the turds and sausages analogy uses this with fair frequency, but it is golden!)
Still, I will later, over beverages, require an explanation of their names. (There was some gender bending noted.) Besides I believe the watch waver has already a nickname related to the ingestion of bodily fluids. I used to call him Henry Clay of the great Missouri compromise. Always ready to come up with a meaningless compromise even when none is necessary, but my name is not apt because at least there were important issues in that historical debate. In any case, three nicknames is at least two too many for such a bit playa.
And, my chronicler, there is one greatest hit of the faculty follies that you have omitted. During the heated debates over the four little words 'personal and professional characteristics' a senior professor (you pick a name) from the department of "We love learning as long as we don't have to work too hard" rose to say that indeed our employment contract (and I quote) "could and should require more junior colleagues to be nice to us." Prof. Simper-Smirk? You be the judge.
I do not know if this counts but here goes. With the departure of Dean Davis more than of President Phibbs, reports by administrators gradually consumed more & more meeting-time, so that by 2020, let's say, there will be no time for faculty-business at a faculty meeting, and no faculty will object. :-) And note that at a FACULTY meeting, the FACULTY Senate's report is ranked third.
To me the greatest moment in the history of Faculty Meetings was Ernie Combes' comment on the common freshman experience: "There is a common experience already. It's called college!"
When Fill Fibber solicited suggestions for improving UPS, Earl Redclerk seriously suggested, "Move the campus to Seattle." Everyone laughed. A few years later, Mildred Pierce sold the law school to Seattle, thus cutting faculty-meeting attendance in half (the law profs always used to attend).
Don Songlacuna once opined that many of our students have to work so much to earn $ for college that it impairs their studies. He wondered whether we should stop admitting such students (not whether we should give them more $$).
The Originator of the Passion Seminar never taught one as far as I know.
And the ubiquitous, anonymous, "Well, when I went to college, all freshmen wore beanies, so UPS freshmen should wear beanies" line of reasoning.
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