Faculty Meetings, Administrators, & Deliberation

Maybe expecting attendance at faculty meetings is not extravagant; expecting increased transparency, superior deliberation, better ideas, and improved decision-making is extravagant. Indeed, such expectations are bullshit.

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On 27 June 2011, faculty at the University of Puget Clowns [® Susan Resneck PieRce 1996] learned of the dates, times, and locations of faculty meetings in the 2011-12 academic year. The dates and times were accompanied by the dean's "plea" for greater participation in faculty meetings.

In this posting I respond to some passages that most intrigued me.

" ... we have scheduled three rather than two meetings per semester. I think it is important that we as faculty colleagues return to a more regular practice of meeting together to talk about topics, issues, and questions of common concern. I think that we have a terrific faculty and am very proud of your many accomplishments, but we have lost the tradition of coming together in recent years.Given a concurrent lack of attention to minutes and other electronic communications, many colleagues feel 'out of the loop' or are concerned about lack of transparency. ..."

Perhaps the dean is correct, but I do not believe she is. I believe that colleagues are concerned about a lack of transparency owing primarily to a lack of transparency. Many colleagues feel "out of the loop" when they have been excluded from decision-making. After all, leaving or keeping staff and faculty out of loops via decision-making far from transparent is a long-standing yet current tradition.

How many decision-makers or decision-making entities reach decisions in the open?

I began "Rump Parliament" with an entry on the "Confidentiality Con," a confidence game in which members of Power Committees such as the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC] and the Professional Standards Committee [PSC] claim that The Faculty Code or Bylaws commands secrecy in proceedings. This claim, almost always untrue, excuses excluding faculty from knowledge about and apprehension of proceedings by which faculty are governed. This claim, far from furthering transparency, rationalizes opacity. Please do not miss what this claim also does: decision-makers who hide behind confidentiality get to pretend that they would love to share with colleagues the inner workings of the PSC or FAC but, alas, are not permitted to reveal goings-on. Indeed, the apparatchiks most respected and rewarded by administrators claim that, if the insiders could only reveal their decision-making processes, colleagues would be impressed with the rationality and fairness exhibited by the Power Committee at every turn. Many of the most important decisions around campus, in sum, are precisely the opposite of transparent; members of Power Committees assiduously assiduously keep colleagues "out of the loop."

Those who repeat the "Confidentiality Con" are uninformed or misinformed unless they have read the code or the bylaws with any comprehension. If they have read the code and the bylaws with understanding, those who repeat this claim propagate untruth. Worse, those who propagate the untruth ought to know that they misstate the truth. Usually we call deliberate untruths "lies." Let's be collegial and settle for "bullshit."

"... [B]ullshitters, although they represent themselves as being engaged simply in conveying information, are not engaged in that enterprise at all. Instead, and most essentially, they are fakers and phonies who are attempting by what they say to manipulate the opinions and the attitudes of those to whom they speak. What they care about primarily, therefore, is whether what they say is effective in accomplishing this manipulation. Correspondingly, they are more or less indifferent to whether what they say is true or whether it is false." Harry Frankfurt, On Truth

The Confidentiality Con is bullshit. Worse, confidentiality bullshits colleagues about decisions on promotion and tenure [the FAC], on sanctioning, dismissal, and evaluation criteria [the PSC], and on other matters of concern to staff and faculty. Please examine any entry in "Rump Parliament" with the label "Starr Chamber" for example after example of non-transparent decisions. Or simply ask yourself how the PSC acquired the moniker "Star Chamber" long before I added an "r" thereonto.

Are budgetary decisions reached in the open? Or are those who decide on budgetary recommendations charged to keep to themselves many arguments, issues, and determinations? How long has such been a "tradition?"

Were decisions about tuition benefits to staff or faculty with children open and obvious to all who attended faculty meetings? I doubt it.

Other decisions are by design opaque. Every time that the trustees go into executive session, they deliberately impair transparency. Even if the trustees believe that they are legally bound to shield their decision-making, they reduce transparency.

Perhaps the Dean would prefer that we read her missive closely. If so, when she wrote "Given a concurrent lack of attention to minutes and other electronic communications, many colleagues feel 'out of the loop' or are concerned about lack of transparency. ..." the Dean may have meant that the problems were the feelings and the concerns, not being out of the loop or actual absence of transparency. Perhaps the missive was aimed at reducing the feelings and the realization. I cannot know.

Perhaps faculty are out of the loop because they have been in recent years targets of myriad electronic messages. The Dean's phrasing may lead colleagues to blame themselves and to forget that each day they must triage electronic communications. I do not know.

To summarize anew: colleagues have ample reasons for supposing a lack of transparency. That many colleagues have only lately discovered the cover-ups, double-talk, euphemisms, and happy talk is to the colleagues' discredit. That colleagues say they are shocked to discover that they have been misled is pathetic. To parlay disgruntlement about non-transparencies with low attendance at faculty meetings is, however, beyond pathetic and beneath contempt. It is bullshit.

"In addition, attendance of only 25-35 persons, rather than a more robust faculty participation, means people do not think of Faculty Meetings as a place to bring topics for deliberation (such as ideas about curriculum development, benefits, or strategic planning). We can do better as a community interested in deliberation, thoughtful discourse, and good decision-making."

The Dean may be correct in this passage -- the faculty could do better. That is, however, not a savvy bet. That may be what expedience whispers in the ear of the Dean. That is not what experience bellows at veteran staff and faculty.

In my 25 years at Puget Clowns, I have seen some deliberation, thoughtful discourse, and good decision-making. I have also seen stampedes, thoughtless blather, and bad decision-making. I have participated in smallish meetings in which progress has been achieved. I have attended meetings with more than 25 or 30 faculty modeling irrational behavior. Please review "The Few, The Proud, The Clowns" -- an entry in "Rump Parliament" for 19 April 2011 -- for my account of redrafting student evaluations in a headlong race against the clock. There were, according to the minutes, 36 faculty in the Trimble Forum,. Many of the "Greatest Moments in Faculty Meetings" -- "Rump Parliament" 19 February 2011 -- occurred with 50 or more faculty in the meeting room.

At the least, then, colleagues who infer from modest attendance at plenary meetings that ideas about curriculum, benefits, or planning may not be usefully discussed risk a non sequitur. Such faulty inferences should not imbue us with confidence in deliberation, thoughtfulness, or prudence in groups small or large. Still less do such inferences inspire confidence in administrators. Indeed, I suspect that such inferences are bullshit excuses.

I have no idea which "people" choose not to bring ideas to faculty meetings, but maybe there are some. I think it more probable that so few colleagues attend faculty meetings that the probability of some proponent proposing at a plenary meeting is less.

" ... There are only 6 ongoing faculty members who, by course schedule, could not attend a Wednesday 8:00 meeting so – as an experiment – we have scheduled one Faculty Meeting in the 7:45 to 8:55 Wednesday time slot in order to give that time a try.

"We have returned the meeting location to McIntyre 103 in order to allow space for more of you to attend the meetings. In all, I hope that with this advanced notice you will be able to make arrangements (such as alternate childcare, school transportation, or other adjustments) in order to be a part of a well-informed and deliberatively active faculty community. In short, I expect attendance."

Who will be the wag who connects the Dean's expectation to a trustee's bold proclamation? I speak of the trustee who intoned that the University had neither a legal nor a moral obligation to honor its promises to faculty with children. Do faculty now get to respond to their dean with "The faculty have neither a legal nor a moral obligation to honor the expectations of administrators?"

I'm just asking.

Of course, for me to say that I am just asking is itself bullshit.