Greatest Moments in Faculty Meetings

What is your favorite moment from a plenary meeting of the faculty?

¶ When the University of Puget Clowns assembles its faculty, travesty results. About 90 minutes per show, vaudeville lives again:

• 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.

¶ But what were the greatest shams and shames in a plenary meeting of the Clowns?

Please look over the candidates below and propose alternatives.

¶ 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."

If jobs and careers did not hang in the balance, the spectacle of a tenured, full professor having to connect dots for a recent Ph. D. might amuse me more.

¶ 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?

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?

My Annual Salute to the 2003-2004 PSC -- The Starr Chamber

As malfeasant as the Academic Standards Committee was 2008-2010, the 2003-2004 Professional Standards Committee was worse.

Reading over my seven posts between 3 and 7 December 2010, you might believe that the Academic Standards Committee between Fall 2008 and Fall 2010 was the worst Faculty Senate committee in my 24.5 years at the University of Puget Clowns. To the best of my reckoning, the nadir for committees still belongs to a committee so malfeasant that it merited designation as “The Starr Chamber” after Kenneth Starr and the English court [“The Star Chamber” – one “r”] renowned for abusing its powers.

As is my annual custom, I salute the Starr Chamber -- the "Professional" "Standards" Committee between September 2003 and May 2004 -- as the worst Faculty Senate Committee of my time at the University.

I begin from an elementary distinction to console the Academic Standards Committee [hereinafter abbreviated ASC] that its performance 2008-2010 did not descend to the depth to which the Professional Standards Committee [hereinafter abbreviated PSC] sank:

The ASC 2008-2010 performed as abominably as it could, but supervision by faculty got in the ASC's way; the PSC 2003-2004 plummeted far deeper because faculty could not even learn what the PSC was doing, let alone stop the PSC's doings.

While the ASC ran amuck in academic years 2008-2009 and 2009-2010, the faculty voted down the impostures of the ASC. By contrast, the Starr Chamber was policed neither by the Faculty Senate nor the faculty as a whole and was directed [in fact if not in theory] by an administrator far more powerful, far more cunning, and far more compromised than any fixture on the ASC.

The ineptitude, inequity, and iniquities of the Starr Chamber were Homeric, so there is no shame in the ASC's falling short. I am certain that individual members of the ASC have sunk and will again sink to the inanity and insanity that individual members of the Starr Chamber sustained in 2003 or 2004. Still, a collective effort demands just the right combination of arrogation and anarchy to produce truly malign results.

I need not in this entry rehearse the missteps and mendacity of the Starr Chamber. My entries in this blog for 11 February 2009 and 9 February 2010 preserve acts and statements of buffoonery and buncombe to which most faculty cannot aspire or conspire. Even in those entries taken together, I did not detail all of the failings and double/multiple dealings of the Starr Chamber.

Even the limited record in this blog establishes, however, the degree to which the Starr Chamber parlayed nonfeasance with malfeasance, audacity with mendacity, and recklessness with fecklessness.

Of course, holdovers from the 2003-2004 PSC, having earned their dubious distinction, then characterized a hearing board as "rogue." Don't you admire colleagues who leave the Caps Lock on when they type hypocrisy?

Five veterans of the Starr Chamber still walk among us on campus, so watch out for them.

Moreover, as I noted in my entry for 5 December 2010 [Why Committees Go Rogue -- An Inventory of Hypotheses III] in 2008-2009 the ASC featured three Starr Chamber veterans.

For those three veterans, for all five holdovers, for the two emeriti, and for the single most malign force on this campus over my 24.5 years here, I pray:

Áve Manía, deduco pléna, Dóminium técum.

The Dark Side

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Each member of the faculty is in some measure a perpetrator, a bystander, and a victim. However, when faculty become dean-like, perpetration increases, bystanding becomes more active, and victimization decreases.
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In Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: Jewish Catastrophe 1933-1945, Professor Raul Hilberg differentiated those who created or expedited the Holocaust [perpetrators] from those who did little to stop the Holocaust [bystanders] and from those who died in or suffered through the Holocaust [victims]. Academic politics and government, to be sure, are far less important and far less murderous than the Holocaust was, so I intend no comparison between the misdeeds I cover below and the crimes and outrages of the Nazis and others. Rather I aim to use the concepts "perpetrator," "bystander," and "victim" to explain how administrators go over to the dark side.

In this entry I shall not differentiate the doers, the done-to, and the done-too-little for the University of Puget Clowns [® Susan Resneck PieRce]. Rather, I aggregate those roles or descriptors. Every academic, I presume, is to some extent a perpetrator of and a victim of and a bystander amid the lesser outrages and delicts of academe. I further presume that the modal academic is mostly a bystander, occasionally a victim, and only rarely a perpetrator. Hence, the mix of roles or dispositions interests me in this post.

I expect that any increase in administrative responsibilities or expectations will increase perpetration even if it does not reduce victimization. What may be less obvious is that the more administrative one's duties, the more that one is expected to be a bystander. Although administrators may often be bystanders, administrative roles require less passive and more active standing by than professorial roles require.

Recall from my entry "Standing By" for 26 June 2010 in "Rump Parliament" that passive bystanders stand by apparently idly and inertly. Passive bystanders know little and want to know less unless a matter or issue lines their pockets or threatens their positions or interests. Compelled or induced into some academic fray, passive bystanders avoid controversy, agree with and reaffirm the basic goodness of as many colleagues as possible, decide nothing, and establish no truths or facts. Passive bystanders want all of us to get along. Indeed, the passive are so averse to conflict that they avert their eyes and close their minds to injustices and improprieties. Even if passive bystanders do not become apologists, they strive not to know, try not to hear, euphemize in every way, and thereby resist being drawn into frays or phrase.

Faculty have far more opportunities for passivity and apathy than dean-like or dean-light figures do. Untenured faculty had better be active apologists, accomplices, or enablers at least some of the time lest they run into "Double Secret Personal and Professional Characteristics," but professing to know almost nothing and to be unconcerned about whatever senior faculty tell junior faculty to be unconcerned about secures tenure and promotuion most of the time. Unternured and tenured alike will usually strive to be credulous and conforming. Knowing and caring get in the way of conformity and credulity. To be sure, passive bystanders must declare their basic decency: "Oh, our colleague got shafted? I had not heard that. How dreadful for her! I am so saddened by this news -- which I had not heard anything about -- that I am not certain I shall recover by my nap."

By contrast, dean-like or dean-light colleagues must be more active and less passive than even sinecures. Associate deans, assistant deans, or petty decanal figures [e.g., chairs or directors or members of Power Committees] may be expected to be cover up administrative decisions or non-decisions rather than to ignore them, to rationalize or apologize for policies or ukases rather than to describe them and conform to them, or actively to support or to cheer on actions or inactions, especially when actions or inactions are indefensible. Hence, a shift to an administrative role may not change the degree to which one is a bystander but will change bystanding from more passive to more active standing by. Administrators are expected to stand by what their superiors have dictated.

Members of Power Committees tend to stand by administrators and other superiors, so their bystanding will be more active while they occupy committees and more passive when they do not so serve. After service on a Power Committee, faculty may revert to passive bystanding, but they may be more active bystanders if the acts they perpetrated on the Power Committee especially rankled departments, programs, or a few conscious colleagues. On rare occasions when Power Committees or the Confidentiality Con is challenged, veterans of Power Committees will stand by the actions of "their" committees with aggressive and defensive rhetoric and, of course, the usual stonewalling.

Some chairs of programs, schools, or departments quite predictably become aggressive bystanders when they are not flat-out perpetrators. Indeed, some departmental chairs were so obviously perpetrators-in-waiting that I am reluctant to pronounce them bystanders at all, except in the sense that a Rottweiler on a short chain is "standing by." A colleague salivating at the thought of having her or his way with a school or program may actively stand by her or his administrative betters to get into positions from which to tyrannize. Such colleagues range between bystanding and perpetrating.

When we reassure ourselves and others that a professor will not be changed by becoming decanal, we probably have in mind that the professor is no perpetrator. But we are not thinking matters through. Even if a decanal figure evades stark perpetration for some months or years, administrative office will move him or her toward more active bystanding. [It should go without my adding that members of Power Committees, chairs, directors, and deans sooner or later become perpetrators. It comes with each job, even if one is temporarily chairing the smallest program. Indeed, for some chairs, perpetrating tyrannies is their reason for accepting responsibilities.]

Multiple members of the faculty have not merely claimed that becoming an assistant dean or associate dean or a chair would not change them but boldly proclaimed such immunity. Understanding more active bystanding explains why such predictions have proved misleading.

Many of the predictions, of course, were designed to mislead. After one professor served in a decanal position, any colleague with three digits of IQ knew what a tyrant he would be if he ever became an assistant dean or an associate dean or, God help us, a "full" dean. To my knowledge, he was tyrannical only in two dean-like or dean-light capacities. So when he explicitly reassured long-serving colleagues that he did not want his "accession" to change relations with colleagues, he was at best being clever. In theory he did not want relations to change; in practice they would. They must.

More than one member of the faculty has counseled a colleague to get out of a position that requires deception or distortions. More than one member of the faculty has asked what happened to a colleague who became more administrative and began to parrot nonsense or support malfeasance. At such times, faculty exclaim, "He's gone native!" or "She's gone over to the dark side." I have shown above why that should be expected.

So when a veteran warns that someone has "gone over to the dark side," the veteran is not necessarily committing to the prediction that decanal darkness will involve flat-out misconduct or corruption. Some combination of dishonesty, misprision, malfeasance, and nonfeasance is highly probable but not inevitable.

On the other hand, the probability that a decanal figure will be victimized is far less than the likelihood that she or he will victimize. Thus, I define "going over to the dark side" as increasing one's propensity to victimize, decreasing one's propensity to be victimized, and increasing one's active bystanding. Those trends are inevitable. That is "going over to the dark side." That is why colleagues caution against taking decanal positions.

If you would be a chair, a director, an assistant dean, an associate dean, or worse, remember your Dante: Lasciate ogne speranza voi ch'entrate. Abandon hope for your own soul. Abandon hope for your colleague's soul. Those who enter Jones Hall or chair a department or serve on a Power Committee plummet into active or aggressive standing by, into covert or overt sins of commission or omission, and into a spiral of rationalizing and covering up.

Yes, I am serving my third year on the Professional Standards Committee after two stints on the Faculty Advancement Committee. Why do you ask?
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The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, 2007

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



Lest we forget, two 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 [mis]behavior and to make recommendations to prevent violations of the Faculty Code and due process in the future. That ad hoc committee produced no findings. I do not know whether to attribute the ad hoc committee's misprision to cowardice, collegiality, collusion, cunning, cleverness, or some other word beginning with "c." What I do know is that the ad hoc committee insulated the 2003-2004 PSC and insulted the Faculty Senate. 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].

The communiqué from the Starr Chamber was a marvel of haughtiness and misdirection. Having committed undeniable errors, the Starr Chamber, like mafiosi, pointed out 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 Academic Dean, 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 second grievance 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.

Pesky, punctilious senators! Why can't they mind their own business? Why do they oversee the Starr Chamber when they could be banning Pass/Fail or addressing plagiarism? Don't they know with who [sic] they're messing?


The Senate had had noted other errors or irregularities that even the Starr Chamber could not have denied had members of the Starr Chamber deigned to speak with senators. It cannot be disputed that the Starr Chamber conducted the second 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 tarried past the Faculty Code's deadline. That was a first violation of the Faculty Code, a violation that one hopes was mistaken but may have been deliberate. To cover its mistake or misstep, the Starr Chamber "interpreted" the Faculty Code to set the deadline at fifteen working days, an interpretation that negated the mandate in the Faculty Code. That is a second incontrovertible error or evasion. It is not only beyond dispute but beyond belief that the Starr Chamber then blew by the "reinterpreted" fifteen working days -- a third incontestable violation of its duty. When the second grievance was eventually heard, one of the two claims advanced by the grievant was more than thirty working days in the past according to the grievant's own complaint. Despite the code's "statute of limitations," the Starr Chamber entertained that grievance. This fourth violation senators did not have to investigate or to prove; a calendar proved that nonfeasance or malfeasance.

Senators may be able to count, but they do not count. The Starr Chamber is far too important to be bothered with calendars or duties or instrumentalities of lesser beings, especially when the Starr Chamber dispenses justice and rights wrongs and picks favorites and follows decanal directions. Besides, for all outsiders know, the Starr Chamber interpreted thirty working days as thirty-three working days because thirty-three made a prettier number and allowed the grievance to be entertained.


The Valentine's Day greeting from the Starr Chamber to the Senate featured other deceptions. The most inept 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, however. The Starr Chamber phrasing was thus cunning but misleading. The Senate as a whole had not investigated, but the Senate's ad hoc committee had discovered that "mistakes were made."

"Mistakes were made!" That passive construction does not hide agents effectively enough. The Starr Chamber deserves greater camouflage. Maybe senate proceedings should be confidential.

The recklessness of the Starr Chamber in conducting its proceedings in 2003-2004 made the Starr Chamber's call for careful work ironic and amusing, not to say hypocritical. The hypocrisy followed: "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 double standards employed by Starr Chamber 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 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 were themselves parties who 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. The effrontery of the Starr Chamber recalls the classic definition of chutzpah: A son kills his parents then demands mercy because he is an orphan.

• 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.
  
  Let senators have their truth. The Starr Chamber will settle for arrogance and presumptuousness. All hail the Starr Chamber! The Few, the Proud, the Unelected Elect. By appointment to the Dean, Chief Privy Attendants!
  
  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.
  
  Senators are just jealous. Senators must work in open meetings and must account to faculty for their decisions and activities. The Starr Chamber, like President Dubya, answers to a Higher Power. It does not account for itself or its actions to ad hoc committees, to the Faculty Senate, or to hoi polloi. The Starr Chamber transcends mere faculty governance and accountability. The Starr Chamber rules! The Faculty Senate drools!
  
  
  Still, the 2006-2007 Senate weathered the whining duplicity and 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.
  
  Faculty Code? Bylaws? Authority? Due Process? What were those to the Starr Chamber? What are those to any elect on a mission from God or the Dean, to cite a distinction of which the Starr Chamber proved incapable?
  

Coming Next: "Live Blogging the Senate"

Haltom's Ninth Law: Age quod agis.

Figure out what you are doing; do that; avoid hypocrisy by doing what you said you were doing or would do.



An IMDb entry for "Tombstone" memorializes a minute of dialog that had me guffawing when first I saw it:


###Wyatt Earp: [to Ringo] He's drunk.

###Doc Holliday: In vino veritas. ["In wine is truth" ... ]

###Johnny Ringo: Age quod agis. ["Do what you do" ... ]

Imagine my joy. In a leadup to the O K Corral, Johnny Ringo and Doc Holliday chirp schoolboy Latin at one another. During their exchanges, much longer than I have included, Ringo uses a Jesuit motto, Age quod agis, "Do what you are doing." Does popular cinema get better than Jesuitic Latin?


Alas! "Age quod agis" is more exhortative than predictive. Most humans fail to come clean with themselves or others about what they are doing, let alone to conform to what they say they are doing or said that they would do.

The Jesuits who beset me meant by Age quod agis that one should focus on one's ends and pursue them one by one. Such an admonition against multi-tasking was reasonable and so has long been ignored. This presents no problems, for exhortations acquire both urgency and apparent cogency the less likely they are to be followed.

I, Professor Sisyphus, repeat Age quod agis continually in my writing course for Politics and Government majors to get them to focus monomaniacally on a thesis that they have set themselves. Every paragraph must serve that thesis directly or indirectly. If not, the author is not doing what she or he said she or he was doing. I ask students to spare readers digressions, asides, pseudo-philosophical posturing, and other professorial predilections. "This is your term paper, not my lecture!"

When I am not hectoring students with Age quod agis, I often am pestering colleagues to admit what they are doing even if I should prefer that they stop doing what they have been doing or start doing what they should be doing.

I have discerned little or no impact from my haranguing. Members of multiple Faculty Advancement Committees and the Professional Standards Cult [2003-2004] have stoutly refused to acknowledge or to account for their decisions, inflating varied and often creative Confidentiality Cons to excuse their reticence. I have induced no members of the Wigger Patwol -- those colleagues so busy proclaiming their own rigor that they have little time in which to do anything rigorously except to proclaim rigor -- to see that they are promoting only themselves and not learning.

Still, like a Lee's nail, I press on. I do what I am doing.

What am I doing? I am signaling my small band of readers and listeners that candid speech and transparent processes befit academics and that mendacity and subtrefuges betray academia.

My philippics do not move colleagues who have mastered "arguing in the alternative," the protean art of "doing" what one was not doing a moment before. Professor Oohooh ["On the One Hand; On the Other Hand"] parries Age quod agis with Virtus in medio stat -- "Virtue stands in the middle," which I admit that more than one Jesuit also said to me. Via elaborate dramaturgy, Professor Oohooh regales all within ear- or eyeshot with the rigors of agony through which he/she must persevere to reach decisions defensible, if at all, by excruciations that precede decisions. What decisions lack in merit, Professor Oohooh more than makes up in the glory of her/his self-crucifixion. Professor Oohooh's daily performances lead up Golgatha to a moment of decision during some matinee. If decision-makers are evenly divided, Professor Oohooh courts favor with each and all before casting a deciding vote after torment exquisite for him/her and endless for everyone else. If decision-makers reach a decision quickly, Professor Oohooh cautions that a no-brainer decision actually has numerous nuances that -- Lord be thanked -- Professor Oohooh has espied just in time to avoid a rush to judgment. A decision becomes hasty, of course, if taken before Professor Oohooh has run through the best material that she/he has prepared. As the voiceover at the start of Casablanca might have ended but did not: "And the people come to the meeting and wait ... and wait ... and wait ... and wait."

Please notice, however, that Professor Oohooh fulfills Haltom's Ninth Law. Professor Oohooh does what he/she is doing. She/He is chewing the scenery and voguing. He/She is simulating balanced, dispassionate decision-making. Indeed, sometimes Professor Oohooh is so buried in decision-taking that she/he is perfectly willing to avoid decision forever to prolong the throes of passionate simulation. Professor Oohooh does what he/she is doing, albeit that what she/he is doing is avoiding doing.

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

Haltom's Eighth Law: No one may be offended; one must take offense

If you are offended, you made yourself offended.


As I recall, my eighth law issued from my fervid brow. It is overstated, so probably it is all mine. The law posits that statements of the form "A offended B" almost always amount to "B took offense at or over A."

Yes! I discovered another passive construction hiding agency. "I am offended ..." soft-pedals my own role in claiming offense.
                 
Although in principle I suppose that some thing(s) might be so inherently offensive as to circumvent cognitive processes, in practice the taking of offense is usually a psychological and/or sociological and an instrumental and/or tactical production. Malediction, for example, need not offend and may even amuse. Cussing is often comedic, odic, epic, or ironic. Some cussing is Homeric. The Ballardite who gave me Haltom's Second and Fourth Laws used to exclaim, "By the testicles of Pericles!" for effect, not for offense.

Yes! I discovered that context matters. Who knew?

Only after one has eliminated alternative interpretations may one justifiably conclude that one has been insulted or assaulted. In Ballard, where most imprecations were little more than devices to intensify or to pace remarks, one might as well parse flatus as ponder curse words. But then, if in Ballard I said, "I find that offensive," I should expect an avalanche of more extreme remarks. Some of those might be intrinsically offensive: "Is it possible that your parents put all their offspring up for adoption and raised the afterbirth?"

Am I seriously maintaining that offensiveness might be relative? Naw! That's radical talk!

At the start of my second year at the university, the all-time Puget Clown asked me whether I had seen a certain fraternity "birding" PLU boosters at the Tacoma Dome during a recent football game. An alum of the University of Washington, I chortled at my cartoonish colleague. "Way worse than that happened every week in Husky Stadium," I offered. The Puget Clown added what he saw as the clincher: "Yes, but my sons were with me." To preserve the offense that he wanted to take, my colleague effortlessly transmogrified drunken frat boys into corrupters of youth. He thereby converted youthful enthusiasm into intrinsically offensive behavior by pointing out that his sons might have been coarsened or traumatized by witnessing such a disgusting display.

Deft deployment of high dudgeon. "Think of the children!" Good cover, weenie.

I certainly hope that he does not recognize himself else he will take offense when I exclaim, "What a fop!" An Ivy League bozo would not be dealt with so leniently in Ballard, where the impertinent question would be "And what did the sire of your sons think about the matter, you sackless wuss?"

Sometimes, Ballardites also get personal.

If to establish offense we infer intent, we often err. If I take a remark to be an insult, I not only risk being seen as humorless and haughty but also give away my sensitivity to certain gibes. The less humor and the more sensitivity I display, the more I advantage "the offender" and exaggerate "the offense" in the eyes of observers. Observers may then regard me as a fop or a wuss or, worse, a sackless wuss.

You'd never guess that I hail from Ballard.

One does not have to be Sigmund Freud [or, in the case of the average Ballardite, be able to spell Froyd's name] to imagine why a person opts to take offense rather than to slough off badinage. If an insult strikes most who know you as wildly off the mark, they will defend you, and you may shake off the insult as sophomoric or soporific or you may embrace it and thereby accentuate its absurdity. If, in contrast, you shift into high dudgeon, you open yourself to "Truth hurts!" or other dazzling ripostes and make friends and colleagues wonder what makes you so thin-skinned.

In addition, Ballardites might wonder if you ever had a scrotum.

The Puget Clown about whom I wrote above frequently insulted junior faculty, especially junior-faculty women. Many colleagues thought him a misogynist. Perhaps he was, although that would scarcely differentiate him from many faculty, male or female. I thought it more likely that he was attempting to be "one of the guys" and was flirting as best he could. He insulted female colleagues because most of them did not wear braids that he could dip in ink wells. The Puget Clown longed to be mistaken for an "alpha male" and thought that churlish insults and catty remarks would advance that mission. When most women dismissed his cattiness and most men thought it unmanly, The Puget Clown got his due. When people took his remarks at all seriously, by contrast, he got to play the wag by assuring the vulnerable colleague that it was all in fun. It often was in fun until the target was denied tenure or reappointment.

You guessed it! The Puget Sound Clowns perpetrated truly offensive injustices while taking offense at trivialities.

Taking offense is much less effective than dismissing remarks as senseless or counterproductive. The latter options cope with sexist, racist, or other inappropriate remarks more effectively than umbrage because a puzzled look or a poker face deprives the would-have-been offender of offense. Ask the bounder to explain his jest, then shake your head and mutter, "I am sure you had some reason to say that." If you hear a discouraging word, simply chuckle, "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Non Sequitur Theater."

You can guess to which orifice such remarks tended to be attributed in Ballard.

The Puget Clown I wrote about above objected to the frat boys' digits as part of an "argument" for delaying rush from August to January. That made no sense. Rather than wrestle with this colleague over whether students were or should be free to assail pigskin opponents, I wondered at the cogency of the sackless wuss's argument. Unless he was pointing out that the faculty were set to perpetrate one obscenity -- regulating when members of a club might seek new members -- on the excuse of the other obscenity -- those fraternity fingers -- his juxtaposition made little sense. I subsequently learned that this faculty member abhorred any student, staff, or faculty entity that he could not order about as he pleased. If I had known that in 1987, I might have interrupted his self-parody. At the time, I thought it as likely that this colleague would gain an important post at the University of Puget Clowns as that Dick Cheney would shoot a rich guy in the face.

A Ballardite would note that his wasn't a very handsome face anyway. Every Ballardite would know how Cheney could mostly miss with a shotgun from a few feet away. "After the third akvavit, I am lucky to piss in the pot I am sitting atop!"

One should husband offense lest one litter one's life with trivial annoyances. Every sapient life-form in modern America finds pretexts for indignation multiple times per hour. Broadcast commercials, liars in high offices, and the vicissitudes of living in the Post-Literate Era, for examples, annoy me. I reserve my being offended for rationalizations of genocide, for practiced stupidities that starve or doom human beings, and for other momentous matters.

Indeed, the same Puget Clown from above abetted the sins of the Professional Standards Cult in 2003-2004 and various inequities worked by the Faculty Advancement Committee year after year. Most offenses were too banal to waste much energy on. Rather than to take offense at power committees, I went on offense. I tried to make the Clown and the committees on which he served account for their actions. The Clown extruded half-truths, tall tales, and Clintonian distinctions; the committees were less persuasive. The Clown and the power committees have provided me ample material for parody, mockery, or burlesque.

Indeed, The Puget Clown and the power committees are the founders of this blog!

A few faculty who dare to learn what has transpired in their name appreciate the inanities chronicled on "Rump Parliament." By contrast, most faculty, uncertain what the PSC did or does, confused about what the Faculty Code might say or mean, but certain that no power committee will assail them if only they maintain their ignorance and deference, strive mightily to maintain their neutrality and their ignorance.

In sum, if you want to play the victim [especially while decrying the tendency of Americans to play the victim] then go ahead and take offense. But be honest with yourself if with no one else. No one need have offended you. You chose to be offended. In Ballard that makes you a common cockbite.

No offense intended.


Coming Soon -- Haltom's Ninth Law: Age quod agis

Haltom's Laws

Haltom's First Law helps to sort things and persons out.

"Rump Parliament" turns now to rationalization of Haltom's laws. I have formulated various norms over the last 35 years. Some of my norms posit behavioral regularities based on my perverse interpretations of observations and experiences. Other norms prescribe how I aspire to live or ought to live. I have adapted many of these "laws" from the adages or apothegms of others. As far as I recall, some originate with me. I propose to enumerate my behavioral or normative laws so that I can keep track of what I "know."

My first law expresses misanthropy and/or futility -- "F**k them/it/me/this."

This first law is misanthropic in that I mean it to misstate slightly Kipling’s famed advice -- all men count with me but none too much. When I say "F**k them" or "F**k 'em," I mean to dismiss some person(s) as unworthy of concern or solicitude. More polite formulations of this usage might include "Life is too short to worry about this fellow" or "Why concern yourself with such a person?" Perhaps Rick Nelson came the closest to a denotation of Haltom's First Law in his song “Garden Party:” “You can’t please everyone so you got to please yourself.”

I derived my first law from the cliché "F**k him if he can’t take a joke." I complemented that old saw. If he or she can take a joke now, he or she will not be able to take a joke later, so why not f**k him or her now and get it over with? The sooner one turns one's attention and energies from someone who will fritter them away, the sooner one will have attention and energy for those who might profit from one's regard.

Hence, when confronted with whining, misplaced entitlement, or other resentments, I draw on my Ballard upbringing: I exclaim "Uff da!" and move on. I think but usually do not say, "F**k 'em." A variation on this melody recalls my buddy from Far Rockaway who could say "F**k you" as if each word had multiple syllables. And, of course, one might emulate Vice President Cheney's suggestion that Senator Leahy have sexual congress with himself.

When I say "F**k it" rather than "F**k them," I mean that some matter [rather than some person] lies beneath my regard. "To hell with it" would work as well, I suppose, but would not be as pithy. "F**k it" dismisses matters from my mind. It assigns some thing to that 98% of all incidents or issues best forgotten.

"F**k me" I got from Clint Eastwood's film "The Gauntlet." Clint's character lifts a shade and sees dozens of guns and gunmen outside the shack he is in. He exclaims, "F**k me!" That is a little more graphic than "I am a dead man" or "Holy Mother of God!" Still, like "F**k it," "F**k me" expresses the all too common futility of life or situations.

A colleague in 2007 exemplified the use of "f**k this" to express futility. He became exasperated with maneuvers to prevent senators from acknowledging the simplest truths about the Professional Standards Cult [PSC]. Recalcitrant or cowardly senators were engaged in implausible denials, in disinformation that demeaned the Senate as well as the cult [and demeaning the PS Cult is no mean feat!], and in excuses that would shame Bill Clinton. Amid the disingenuous, the deceptive, and the daffy, one senator exclaimed, "F**k this!" and picked up his stuff and left. Some senators pronounced themselves offended [see Haltom's Eighth Law]. Perhaps the most Pecksniffian senator decried the remark as lacking civility. He had a good point: The civil thing to do would have been to condone evasions and occlusions and to avoid admitting that a rogue committee had misbehaved repeatedly. Still, whatever this invocation of Haltom's First Law lacked in civility it made up in honesty. The senator meant, I believe, that the proceedings were a waste of his and the senate's time. That senator complied with Haltom's first law without being aware of it, I think.

So, when colleagues are conniving in some manner that demeans all present, quietly repeat to yourself variations of Haltom's First Law. When colleagues dissemble in committee-work, write on a pad that no one else can see, "F**k them." When faculty meetings again devolve into self-serving badinage, pick up your papers and walk out of the room, stopping to whisper, "F**k this!" to a colleague who can be trusted. When yet another email invites you to throw good time after bad, feel free to say behind a closed door, "F**k it." The alternative is to awaken amid the "Fall Faculty Non-Conversation" screaming, "F**k me!" That might be uncivil.


Coming Soon: Haltom's Second Law! "It Doesn't Mean Nothing."