Neglected Beauty of the Obvious

My favorite remark from the first two weeks of Fall 2011: “I have not done anything on my research for weeks. You know, this is a pretty easy gig if all you're doing is teaching.”

For many colleagues who have not soiled their hands or minds with research or ― Gasp! ― publishing, this report is belated but welcome. Still another colleague has figured out the scam worked by so many faculty at so many schools that pretend to value the pursuit of knowledge. Indeed, our colleague need take but one more step to enhance her or his retirement in place. She or he must complain daily about having too little time for research.

The clowns who most often bewail the time that teaching and service and other duties divert them from their windpath-breaking research almost always do no research, almost never produce research, and would not know peer-review if they ever were asked to do it.

You cannot aptly say that these clowns long ago retired in place, for retirement implies something from which to retire or some shift from more to less activity. Many clowns have not since their dissertations had a research program to halt.

Truly impressive are clowns who, bereft of research programs and accomplishments, use research to justify their piling into the three- or four-day-weekend clown-car. These clowns need an exclusively Tuesday-Thursday schedule or a Monday-Thursday schedule so that they can secure another day with which to pursue the work that they never get done or started. Now that is a cushy berth!

So, beloved colleague, aim high. Get a Lantz to pursue an imaginary project. Secure the designation “Distinguished Professor” despite your having published no peer-reviewed research in the last five or ten years. Become a low-level administrator and lament its stunting of your research.

The University of Puget Clowns affords faculty many opportunities for leisure and lassitude.

This is a very easy job when you're not doing much of it.

It is an even easier job when you aren't doing any of it. The colleagues whose service is grudging and desultory and whose teaching is at best a rumor truly have easy gigs. Who are these colleagues? Listen for those who trumpet most their service or teaching. Those who are advertising most are producing least.

Quo Warranto?

By what authority did the Starr Chamber proceed?

My immediately previous entry in "Rump Parliament" -- for senior faculty, that is the blog you are presently reading -- recalled that the Professional Standards Committee of 2003-2004 [always designated "The Starr Chamber" in this blog but only sometimes "the Professional Standards Cult"] was the worst Faculty Senate committee in my nearly 25 years at this university.

Below I list some reasons why I single out The Starr Chamber for dishonor. I do not list all of the missteps and misprisions of the Starr Chamber below.

In each instance below, I ask whence The Starr Chamber derived its authority. I tried to ask members of the Starr Chamber directly and indirectly, but they spurned me repeatedly. The Senate tried to bring these renegades to account, but the renegades did not care to explain themselves and an ad hoc committee colluded with the renegades to cover up the Starr Chamber's record. On another ad hoc committee four senators courageously noted some of the Starr Chamber's shortcomings; the only answer on behalf of the Starr Chamber came from one senator who relentlessly defended the Starr Chamber as acting other authority higher than The Faculty Code. [This dogged, mulish defender did not specify what higher authority he was invoking. I guess that higher authority is confidential.]

My abbreviated list:

The Starr Chamber took over the evaluation of a member of the faculty and directed a departmental evaluation. Whence did The Starr Chamber get the authority to involve itself in any department’s evaluation?

The Starr Chamber set aside recommendations of a formal hearing board. What discernible authority in The Faculty Code or the by-laws permitted the Professional Standards Cult [PSC] such sway?

When the chair of the hearing board protested The Starr Chamber’s takeover of the evaluation, a member of the hearing board not only mocked his stammering but threatened any member of the hearing board who discussed the remedy directed by the hearing board with anyone except the Professional Standards Cult. Is "contempt of PSC" authorized somewhere aside from the febrile mind of this or that tyrant?

The Starr Chamber, informed that it was overruling a hearing board by inverting the remedies that the hearing board had directed, declared that the hearing board had expired the moment the hearing board issued its directives. Where does the code say that? Was this a formal interpretation? If so, why wasn't the Faculty Senate informed and why weren't the trustees asked to approve? Was this an informal interpretation?

The Starr Chamber declared the hearing board to have completed its work despite the fact that the hearing board had held no hearing. The Faculty Code prescribes that hearing boards conduct hearings before making determinations and directing remedies. The Starr Chamber overruled The Faculty Code based on what higher authority?

Starr Chamber heard a formal grievance almost 60 days after that grievance reached the committee. The Faculty Code allows the PSC 15 days. The Starr Chamber overruled The Faculty Code based on what authority?

The Starr Chamber “interpreted” The Faculty Code to demand that the PSC hear a formal grievance within 15 “working” days rather than the 15 days explicit in the code itself. The Starr Chamber reported this “interpretation” to no one – not the grievant, not the respondent, not The Faculty Senate. Square that with the bylaws or the code, if you will.

Having reinterpreted the code to excuse the tardiness of The Starr Chamber, the committee then convened the grievance hearing more than 15 working days after the committee had received the formal grievance. Yep! The Starr Chamber concocted "15 working days" to excuse the PSC's tardiness, then dallied past its re-imagined code. It seems that for some of its decisions, even the Starr Chamber could not imagine authority.

The Starr Chamber then entertained a grievance that the grievance itself showed to have exceeded the 30 working days allotted by the code. Quo warranto, tyranni et tyrannae?

Having decided against the grievant, The Starr Chamber then issued a report to the President that criticized and characterized the respondent harshly. The Faculty Code authorizes the PSC to condemn anyone whom it chooses?

The President shared the report of The Starr Chamber with grievant and respondent because The Starr Chamber decided that The Faculty Code did not permit or allow The Starr Chamber to share its report with either party to the grievance. The Starr Chamber had shared its report immediately with grievant and respondent in a grievance earlier in that very academic year [2003-2004]. One or the other interpretation might be consistent with the code. It is hard to see how both could be. I am certain the fact that a member of the PSC was the respondent -- the person grieved -- in the first grievance had nothing to do with the differential treatment.

Has this list suggested one reason why the Professional Standards Cult had, over the years and the deans, invoked various sorts of confidentiality not to be found in The Faculty Code or elsewhere?

Do you now see why the staunchest senatorial defender of the Starr Chamber cited only double-secret authority higher than the code?

Did I just pose rhetorical questions?

Quo warranto? By what authority?

Sordid by Faith

Have faculty and students at this university been "sorted by fate" to enjoy classics?

Ten to twelve years ago a now-retired colleague shared with me that he addressed students on the first day of class with the sentiment that they were all fortunate to have been "sorted by fate" to be in that class and that classroom to contemplate some classic texts.

Someone is rather full of himself, what? Fate must be omnicompetent to bother with a dozen or two humans in Tacoma, Washington.

How do I ridicule my erstwhile colleague's sentiment? Let me count the ways.

Unlike Elizabeth Barrett Browning, I actually count the ways below. She said she would count the ways, then she did not count.

On the other hand, in every other respect, Elizabeth Barrett Browning counts far more than I.

First, "fate" usually holds a place for and thus supplants understanding. Fate makes thinking and understanding less likely. We invoke destiny when we have no better explanation or when we do not want to formulate a more concrete, more accurate explanation. Who invokes fate relies on, if not revels in, ignorance.

"Ignorance is strength!" said some author in some classic that I was sorted by fate and assigned by a summer reading list to read.

Second, the perfect, passive participle "sorted" saves us the trouble of identifying agency beyond "fate." This usage is very close to the British "sort out," which [when transitive] means that someone arrays something by class or type, but [when intransitive] is used utterly impersonally to indicate unexplored evolution, unexplained developments, or blind contingencies without little human design. "Let's wait and see how things sort out" invites listeners to be patient while some unspecified force(s) determine advantages and disadvantages.

I suffered some Catholic guilt until I realized that heretics and the faithful had been sorted by divine will. His will be done!

Third, taken together the words "fate" and "sorted" attribute a situation to an abstract, ineffable and impersonal entity that separated us fortunates from those less fortunate, that ordered the universe to bring us into the presence of greats and greatness, and that therefore must like us -- must really, really like us.

Hard not to be happy with ourselves, the class and our class, our status, our situation, our breeding, our genetics, our . . . after that introduction to what is, after all, a college course.

Fourth, "sorted by fate" euphemizes past factors so chronic, common, and substantial that disciplines define themselves thereby. Whatever sorting fate did was ably assisted by stratification, kinship, subculture, class, status, party, conformity, courtesy, credulity, and other factors or forces about which social sciences have nattered from time to time.

You may have already won big prizes!

Fifth, the inevitability of fate excuses us from any trace of guilt or shame that our advancement comes at the expense of many others who cannot afford to attend the University of Puget Clowns or who suffer from some disadvantage(s) related to anthropology, sociology, or other subjects that might complicate moral or personal responsibility. This is especially important for self-esteem on Graduation Day: We stand at commencement like self-made men and women in part because kindly professors conditioned us to believe that fate got us into the classroom and we [great author, great expositor of author, and about 15 receptive admirers of author and expositor] did the rest.

"Sorted by fate" my ass! No wonder Plato opted to rid his ideal state of poets!

Shall we demystify just a little? Maybe a little less ignorance will make for a little more strength, Big Brother to the contrary notwithsianding?

Students who think themselves in the presence of Plato do not comprehend that multiply translated words do not make the man or the thinker. At most students circle an honored text while a teacher circuits his or her notes. Hey, kiddies. It's called a "course"* for a reason. Or as Dr. Joni Mitchell phrased the refrain:

And the seasons they go round and round,
And the painted ponies go up and down.
We're captive on the carousel of time.
We can't return; we can only look
Behind from where we came,
And go round and round and round
In the circle game.

* Sorted by Sister David into Seattle Preparatory School, I learned that "course" evolved from "cursus," the Latin for track or a road or circuit to run.

University of Puget Clowns

President PieRce called this school "The University of Puget Clowns" at graduation ceremonies. Why do I delight in that moniker?

Faithful readers of this blog know that I delight in "The University of Puget Clowns" [® Susan Resneck PieRce].

To understand why, recall dialogue from a movie now forty years old:

"Frank Burns does not know his way around an operating theater, he does not know his way around a body. And if you will have observed anything, you will have observed that Major Frank Burns is an idiot. He has flipped his wig, that he's out of his head, that he's a lousy surgeon."

"Oh on the contrary, I have observed. And Major Burns is not only a good technical surgeon, he is a good military surgeon. I have also noticed that nurses as well as enlisted men address you as 'Hawkeye.' "

"Yes because that's my name, Hawkeye Pierce. "

"Well that kind of informality is inconsistent with maximum efficiency in a military organization."

"Oh come off it, MAJOR. You put me right off my fresh fried lobster, do you realize that? I'm now going to go back to my bed, I'm going to put away the best part of a bottle of scotch... And under normal circumstances, you being normally what I would call a very attractive woman, I would have invited you back to share my little bed with me you might possibly have come. But you really put me off. I mean you... You're what we call a regular army clown"


[Thank you Internet Movie Database!]

Every time I write "University of Puget Clowns," I think of the movie MASH. I think of the armies of "regular clowns" with whom I have worked over the last 24 years. I think that I am reputed to be a funny guy yet am intentionally far less comical than many colleagues are unintentionally.

Of course, the men and [too often] women rejected by the University of Puget Clowns may not see the humor in the holders of the "Hot Lips" O'Houlihan or Frank Burns professorships.

At Least One Senator Tried

Amid bad faith and cynical evasions, the incoming chair of the senate offers hope.

After Randall P. McMurphy tried but failed to lift a heavy machine, he offered a resounding phrase in the screenplay to "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest:"

"But I tried, didn't I? Goddamnit, at least I did that." http://sfy.r/?script=one_flew

I rehearsed that phrase several times in my head in an attempt to calm down before a report to the Faculty Senate last Monday [10 May 2010]. The always wily, always deceptive Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC] had reported via one of its six chairs. See "The Persistence of Blather" [11 December 2009] and "O! To be Mentored by Mental Midgets now that Spring is Here" [immediately previous entry in this blog, 24 April 2010].

The incoming Chair of the Faculty Senate, in his capacity as mere senator, had asked whether the FAC might move to change the Bylaws [one chair] to match FAC practice [six allegedly co-equal chairs]. He said that he preferred adjusting the Bylaws to circumventing the Bylaws. A novel notion that! Yes, we could follow the rules and, if we would not follow the rules, change the rules so that they resemble our practice.

The feckless, accommodating, thankfully outgoing chair of the Faculty Senate produced a communication from the FAC in which the FAC updated its deceptions and evasions. Does any member of the faculty remember when we had a Faculty Senate Chair who was not supine?

The member of the FAC presenting the report declined to pursue such a change. It would be unsual for a member of the FAC to take a straight path to any object or to acknowledge the authority of the faculty or the senate!

Then, in a usurpation that would have been merely hilarious were it not so pathetic and fatuous, the spokesperson attempted to "charge" the incoming chair to change the Bylaws himself. Ya gotta love FAC logic. A senator attempting to induce the FAC to follow the rules is asked to serve the FAC by changing rules that the FAC is content to flout.

Then senators were regaled with a flagrant misreading of a passage in the Bylaws that, if one were unfamiliar with standard English, might fool a dull sophomore. But let's keep it positive: how many FAC members have failed of our expectations for dull sophomores?

Rather than in anger, how might I respond to such vaudeville?

Shall I repeat "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown?"

Shall I rejoice that the spokesperson for the FAC wore flame-resistant pants amid her rendering of the Bylaws?

Shall I remind myself that many members of the FAC could not have found the meeting?

Shall I rebuke the faculty anew for electing to the FAC colleagues of so little credibility or ability?

Nope. Nope. Nope. And nope.

Shall I rejoice that the incoming chair of the Faculty Senate will not subvert the rules or suborn those who do?

Yep.

At least he tried.

God damn it! At least the new chair did that.

Amid the loons, one sane senator spoke truth to a Power Committee.

At the University of Puget Clowns [© Susan Resneck Pierce], that is a miracle.

On the other hand, at the University of Puget Clowns [© Susan Resneck Pierce], loons run the asylum.

Let's see if the new chair will be leader or loon.

Can he do much worse than his predecessors?

Haltom's Tenth Law: As good as it is to be trusted, it is even better not to have to be trusted.

Truly trustworthy people husband trust through transparency and accountability. Those who say "You'll just have to trust me/us" are not trustworthy.


Haltom's Tenth Law pertains to private relations and to public personas. When people want to impart some secret and say, "I trust you," note Haltom's 10th: prefer to be incapable of violating some confidence rather than to be confided in.

Those who vouchsafe me private information need not fear that I might blab, but I cannot spill beans I do not possess. I try to stick with the observable and the verifiable so that friends and colleagues may satisfy themselves that what I assert is true. Nice as it is to hear that I am trusted, I find life easier and more serene when I need not be trusted.

If you cite Haltom's 10th, expect multiple benefits. You will stifle hoped-for leaks by telling a leaker that the rumor is not going anywhere. The less one hears about wife-swapping or recreational drug use, the better. When exposure comes, no part of the consequences will follow from your knowing or doing anything.

You will nonetheless acquire previously latent information because people tend to share with one who would just as soon not know. Careful! You may thereby come to appreciate Bob Seeger's "Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then" ["Against the Wind"] in a new way.

Perhaps the greatest payoff from Haltom's 10th is as a reminder that the more that anyone protests his or her trustworthiness, the less trustworthy she or he is likely to be.

Trustworthiness like other virtues is usually evident. If you must tell those who know you that you possess a virtue, you exemplify the virtue too little. The sexy do not have to cadge compliments; the strong do not advertise their strength; the honest seldom have to protest their integrity.

Moreover, those who cannot be virtuous redouble their efforts to seem virtuous. Masters of virtues are fewer than professors of virtues, just as those who profess ethics are more numerous than those who live ethics [Haltom's Third Law]. The underlying dynamics of being and seeming were covered long ago by Machiavelli and will be covered in the next entry in "Rump Parliament" by your present correspondent.

Hence, when a colleague or superordinate says, "Trust me," the prudent academic distrusts the performance and the performer. Why is reassurance being produced unless there might be good reason not to trust or to distrust? Has anyone but a crook ever assured you that he or she was not a crook? Why tell me you will respect me in the morning unless you suspect that I might believe that you will not?

One requests or demands trust when one knows one is not trusted, will not be trusted, or should not be trusted. The confidence man trades on confidence he entices from you. The politician asks you to put trust in her because she has no better argument.

"Trust me" often serves as a polite form of "Shut up." When an administrator claims that some committee has addressed some matter, that claim is tantamount to refusal to account for the committee. If the committee's decision-making would stand scrutiny, the administrator would be more forthcoming. When committees' processes or outcomes will not bear skepticism, administrators raise trust and civility to suggest that genteel colleagues will not reason why or make reply.

When, for example, an ad hoc committee wanted to assay differences in the tenuring and promotion of males and females at the University, those with access to such information produced it only in its least revealing form and after great delay. When faculty who work with data asked for more revealing data, they were stonewalled with the confidentiality of personnel processes. When these faculty protested that confidentiality could be preserved but good data provided -- for example, by moving averages or other statistics resistent to disaggregation but revealing of gendered disparities -- they were scolded for not trusting those who provided the information. [In one sense, the scolding was merited: if administrators will not find a way to provide reliable, valid information, one already knows what the administrators are striving to conceal.]

Administrators and colleagues might not stifle requests for accountability if they could be certain that faculty and staff would accept accounts. Almost all faculty are unaware of accounts. Made aware of accounts, almost all faculty are indifferent to them. Yet those hoarding latent information fear an outbreak of critical citizenship.

Such fears belie almost all experience in faculty meetings, committees, and the Faculty Senate, yet administrators preempt sensible inquiries with "confidentiality" and "trust" and other shibboleths. Of course, once an administrator proclaims herself or himself worthy of and insistent upon trust, any experienced member of the faculty knows that decisions, the makers of those decisions, and the process by which the decisions were taken cannot survive even the gentlest questioning. "Time to move along." "Nothing to see here."

The majority of the faculty on occasion accommodate insultingly incredible justifications. The routine state of affairs is that almost all faculty are ignorant of and indifferent to decisions, decision-making, and decision-makers. This is the most important rationale behind Haltom's Tenth Law. To be a trusted subject of the University of Puget Clowns, one must be judged to be docile, decorous, and daft [or an "at will" employee, such as staff or untenured faculty].

One who does not have to be trusted or who is not trusted, it follows, receives one of the highest accolades that administrators or power committees can bestow. If such plaudits were medals, the inscription might read "Neither a Dupe nor a Dope!"

Trust me!


Coming Soon -- Haltom's Eleventh Law: Seeming beats being.