Litigiousness

When substantive and procedural inequities propel faculty members to pursue their rights, such faculty are denounced as litigious. Would that litigiousness were rampant!


Administrators, trustees, and faculty may lament American litigiousness because multiple attorneys for plaintiffs have profited from our inability to fol­low even the simplest procedures. Despite costly legal reverses, faculty and administrators blunder along, cour­ting more legal disasters, so fear of litigation seems to have made little difference. Perhaps campus elites understand that the university’s lawyers will almost always fend off substantive or procedural claims and that facul­ty win lawsuits against educational institutions far less often than myths of litigiousness have misled laypersons to believe.

If faculty had the access to litigation that such a myth suggests, power committees and ad­minis­trators might be less prone to procedural injustices. Campus lore tells us that legal debacles in the mid-1990s for a while scared straight even doughty and dotty members of the Professional Stan­dards Committee [PSC]. While memories of legal losses were fresh, old-timers claim, the PSC’s procedural punctiliousness peaked. As those memories have faded, this revisionism goes, PCs and administrators have “backslid.”

Nonsense! Our persistent procedural shortcomings do not result in more litigation because resort to court is actually far more circumscribed than lamenters presume and because appeals and other procedural provisions in the rules enable our university to cover up missteps.

Consider a woman who stood for tenure in the very year [1994] in which a former member of the faculty was awarded nearly $2,000,000 and the gender discrimina­tion suit by a woman denied tenure two years before was settled. The evaluation in 1994 had been so botched procedurally that the President asked the evaluee to forego a for­mal hearing board and consent to be re-evaluated. [The President had in the interim assured herself that the evaluee would face more departmental resistance the second time around.] The evaluee decided that following the code might be a better idea and easily prevailed in the hearing board. When the evaluee was re-evaluated and denied more than a year after she originally submitted her file, an attorney told her he did not see how she could prevail despite myriad violations of the Faculty Code. This former colleague – who went on to tenure, a campus wide teaching award, and a house overlooking the Pacific Ocean – learned that even filing a lawsuit was far more difficult than the mythology of litigiousness instructs us.

As the next evaluation season dawned in Fall 1995, the President met with the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC] to inform them that a dozen faculty were can­di­dates for tenure and that the President was not about to recommend to the trustees that a dozen faculty be tenured. The President, apparently unchastened by her legal losses the previous year but perhaps emboldened by the denial of the embattled woman from 1994, also discussed her reluctance to accept a dozen affirmative recommendations with three faculty over lunch. Such presidential proclamations would seem to set an arbitrary [and self-serving] ceiling on the number or percentage of faculty recommended for tenure. I have no doubt, however, that apologists could make the repeated, explicit warning sound more like a forecast. I guess that is the beauty of multiple narratives, especially multiple revisionist narratives in service of seeming malefactors.

When the FAC forwarded twelve affirmative recommendations, the President balked at two women. [To the best of my recollection, that president said no to two women and no men in that president’s first tenure “season,” to one woman and no men in her third “season,” and two women and no men in her fourth “season,” but only radicals would detect any gendered pattern in that president’s decisions or in the decisions of the departments that trashed evaluees.] The President informed each woman that a member of the FAC had filed a minority report. That minority report – a sentence indicating disagreement with the recommendation of the five non-administrators on the FAC – issued from the Academic Vice President, who had not notified the rest of the FAC what he had done. [One member of the FAC later resigned over the actions of the President and the Academic Vice President.] Both women “won” hearing boards but were rejected for tenure after some of the procedural missteps at the departmental and FAC levels were corrected. One woman accepted money to move on before her ter­minal year. The other rejected the buyoff and sued. Her efforts were crushed by the new legal team. This litigant learned that the University’s losses in 1994 had taught adminis­tra­tors that litigators able to stymie resort to court and attempts at redress could free decision-makers from bothersome rules, proprieties, and due process.

These examples [and others that I might provide] reveal that, while faculty aware of their rights and willing to assert them may be derided as litigious louts, the ill-treated will surrender their rights in return for a modest sum or be steamrolled by a law firm in the unlikely event that they can interest a plaintiff’s attorney in rolling the dice to vindicate substantive or procedural rights.

The women above and other tenure aspirants also learned throughout the 1990s how Pyrrhic victories in hearing boards tend to be. Indeed, hearing boards usually give departments or the FAC an opportunity to polish up their acts. I should supply stunning examples of misbehaviors eliminated from files after which that president reached the same decision, but I participated in those hearing boards and so may be barred by the Faculty Code from specific references.

If administrators and their collaborators on power committees genuinely feared that faculty might assert their rights successfully, decision-makers might adhere to procedures more often. Litigiousness, were it more than mythical, might induce power committees and administrators to pursue procedural and perhaps even substantive justice.

Campus elites do not fear lawsuits. They fear exposure. They score litigiousness because litigation threatens to reveal arbitrariness and injustices. Were faculty able to litigate rights and justice with some hope of prevailing, campus elites might have to follow rules. Indeed, they might have to read the rules. What a nightmare that would be!


Next – “Multiple Narratives” –The “multiple narratives” dodge is bad enough, but the nescience it portends or presumes is even more troubling.

Kaleidoscope of Questions

A single tenure case raised questions about the Faculty Senate, a hearing board, and the Power Committees.


Why do most men value looks over brains in women? Because most men can see better than they can think.

Many Puget Sound faculty care more for beautiful form than for righteous sub­stance because appearances are more attainable and accessible than actualities and because forms are more easily faked than essences. When procedures are too obviously flouted, our sys­tem provides for formal appeal to a hearing board and for rectification by the Faculty Ad­vance­ment Committee [FAC]. These entities usually tidy up proceedings more than they remedy substantive injustices. Indeed, folklore among the ancient faculty holds that hearing boards are not authorized to consider substantive miscarriages of justice but only violations of procedures. What aspirations! What aspirations?

The very first hearing board under the new Faculty Code raised questions about the ability of a hearing board, the Professional Standards Committee [PSC], the Faculty Senate, and the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC], among others, to meet procedural, let alone substantive, norms. If our colleagues usually do procedural justice better than they do substantive justice and if several colleagues did procedural justice so poorly in 2003-2004, how badly do they routinely bollix substantive justice?


Oh look outside the window,
There's a woman being grabbed
They've dragged her to the bushes
And now she's being stabbed
Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain
But Monopoly is so much fun, I'd hate to blow the game
And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.

Phil Ochs


An evaluee ambushed in her departmental deliberation by allegations and letters from students was informed by the Chair of the PSC that she could appeal informally or for­mal­ly but not both. Guided by this misreading of the code, the evaluee elected a for­mal appeal to a hearing board. What can we do to get junior faculty better advice? Get the PSC to elect more competent chairs?

The hearing board held no hearing. Rather, it directed the de­partment that allegations must be aired in a forum in which the accused would have a chance to answer. The de­part­ment, if it wanted to prosecute the evaluee, would have to use an ap­pro­priate forum, the PSC. In other words, “grieve it or leave it.” What could go wrong with that?

The PSC, without authority and for reasons unknown to me, then took over the process. First, the PSC determined that the hearing board had ceased to exist once it issued its rulings about violations of the code and its recommendations for correcting those viola­tions. Please re-read that last sentence. The official interpreters of the Faculty Code declared that a hearing board that had failed to hold a hearing had completed its work when it issued its recommendations. What time will such creative thinking save in future cases? Will the PSC resolve grievances without hearings, witnesses, or evidence? Will the President decide disputes without grievances or responses?

Although the hearing board did not authorize the PSC to do anything – a hearing board has no such authority to bestow – the PSC or its chair then began to collate and to reformulate allegations. Supplementing the original allegations and rewriting the charges in a manner that would offend due process as understood by students in eighth-grade civics, the PSC thanked the hearing board for its good work but snootily stated that im­ple­mentation of the hearing board’s remedy was a matter for the PSC. Now what authority made implementation a matter for the PSC?

The hearing board protested the actions of the PSC via memorandum to the Chair of the Faculty Senate, which allegedly oversees its committees. That chair promptly de­posited said letter in his desk without informing the senate of its existence. When will the Faculty Senate take oversight seriously?

After the department’s re-deliberation, the evaluee placed no faith in another for­mal appeal – If you wonder why, you are not paying attention – so she informally appealed. Despite the clear dictates of the Faculty Code, the departmental chair did not meet with the evaluee or attempt to recon­cile differences. How did the FAC miss that violation of the new code?

The FAC then took months to deal with the matter, demanding submissions from the evaluee and sending materials back to the department without any authority that I can dis­cern. I was a member of the FAC at this time, so I should be aware of such authority if it existed. Where did the FAC get the idea that it could demand anything from an evaluee?

My answers to the questions above? A rogue PSC, a slumbering Faculty Senate, an un­responsive FAC, and administrators either inept or insidious generated a perfect procedural storm of nonfeasance and malfeasance.

Riding down the highway, yes, my back is getting stiff
Thirteen cars are piled up, they're hanging on a cliff.
Maybe we should pull them back with our towing chain
But we gotta move and we might get sued and it looks like it's gonna rain
And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody
Outside of a small circle of friends.

Still Phil Ochs


Next – “Litigiousness” – When substantive and procedural inequities propel faculty members to pursue their rights, such faculty are denounced as litigious. Would that litigiousness were rampant!

Justice, Fairness, and Other Argot

Code and colleagues invoke procedural regularities that are usually followed; neither code nor colleagues even pretend to substantive justice.


In unintentionally droll remarks in a recent meeting of the Faculty Senate, a senator wondered why the Faculty Code enjoyed its high status and why senators would not consider the possibility that the Professional Standards Committee [PSC] in 2003-2004 acted in a quest for a fairness or justice higher than the code. The minutes of that meeting did not record eye-rolling or snickering.

What would make such a “higher law” argument risible? Well, other than the desperation of the argument and its tacit admission that the PSC rode roughshod over the code, what's so funny?

Perhaps appeals to justice’s trumping the code [and, hence, our contracts with the University] are laughable because, even in theory, substantive justice is so seldom a concern. In practice, evaluatiors avoid violating any procedure in a manner that cannot be hidden from the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC] or a hearing board. Both in theory and in practice, faculty evaluation at most aspires to procedural sufficiency [and often attains it]. Minimal procedural sufficiency keeps us out of courts. Polishing procedural appearances a bit more secures faculty quiescence.

Concerns for actual fairness? That’s rich!

Maybe false negatives [evaluees who merit tenure or promotion but do not obtain tenure or promotion] and false positives [evaluees who get promoted or tenured despite their not meeting standards or criteria] make the senator's remarks ludicrous. Such substantive injustices do not concern most faculty most of the time because most colleagues most of the time do not know the victims of injustice well or do not know in detail what happened or fear admitting that the system errs. Indeed, many of our colleagues work devilishly hard not to learn what was done to this or that unfortunate.

A Power Committee in headlong pursuit of substantive justice mowing down procedures? Hey! That could happen! Alright, except for the part about substantive justice, that could happen.

References to the following of procedures largely exhaust the responsibilities of evaluators and may exceed the capacities of many. Such folks, when appointed to the Professional Standards Committee, suddenly become avatars of substantive fairness fit to overrule the code they claim to interpret?

Stop the routine, senator! You’re killing us!

Committees that often cannot read and apply simple directives are to be trusted to overrule the code that is subsumed in our faculty contracts? Why not? We have the ever-vigilant Faculty Senate to correct such committees should they stray – unless of course those very committees decide that transcendent exigencies demand that senators be snowed or stonewalled or senators shirk their responsibility to oversee committees. But – hell! – what are the odds that something like that could happen? OK, but what are the odds that something like that could happen again?


Next – “Kaleidoscope of Questions” – A single tenure case exposed questions about the feasance of a hearing board, the Faculty Senate, and the Power Committees.

Interpretations, Intentions, and Other Misnomers

Invocations of the intentions and interpretations of texts are common legerdemain practiced by committees.


The Professional Standards Committee [PSC] cites intentions without knowing who framed the words. The Faculty Advance­ment Committee [FAC] interprets away rules for which it does not care. An ad hoc committee interprets intentions behind text without a scintilla of valid evidence. Do not mock these foi­bles of committees. Rather note the inequities and improprieties that such bad habits undergird and hide.

For instance, the Faculty Senate has repeatedly reminded the FAC that the bylaws direct all Faculty Senate committees to elect a chair at the beginning of each academic year. At least one member of the FAC concocted an exception to the bylaws for the FAC that might euphemistically be called fanciful. When the Faculty Senate reiterated in Fall 2006 the radical proposition that the bylaws should be followed, the senators were regaled with fact­lets and folderol. The fanciful interpretations, the inconsequent factlets, and the other folderol exemplify the willingness of the FAC [or one or more of its members – how can one tell?] to ignore published authori­ty in favor of FAC practices and preferences, all the while vaunting the FAC’s fidelity to authority. Don’t you love vaudeville?

The Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Standards [AHCPS], for a second exam­ple, combined bogus interpretation with hokey intent in a single sentence of its report in Fall 2006! Noting that at three places Chapter Six of the Faculty Code directed the Aca­demic Vice President or the PSC to handle grievances within days rather than “working days,” the AHCPS stated that “working” had been inadvertently omitted in those three places. This combo of intent and interpretation was invented by the PSC to reduce its violation of the code when it got around to hearing a grievance weeks after the dead­line(s) in the Faculty Code. How replacing a fifteen-day deadline with a limit of fifteen working days was interpretation rather than substitution the PSC did not say. Neither the AHCPS nor the PSC favored the faculty with the source(s) whose intentions had been in­tuited. Clair­voyants who traduce unknown incorporeals are usually reckoned fakers, not fakirs.

Whatever one may think of the AHCPS’s non sequitur, at least the AHCPS did not engage in such wordplay at the expense of a grievant, a respondent, or an evaluee. The AHCPS proposed to edit the existing language; the PSC pretended that such was what the existing language said or meant because the PSC did not care for what the code demanded. The PSC and the AHCPS loose their interpretations and intuitions under circum­stances that expose their machinations; the FAC hides inferences and insinuations behind sly verbal subterfuges and, of course, the Confidentiality Con.

Every colleague should object to expedient, disingenuous interpretations of authority and to attribu­tions of intentions to anonymous persons but should not thereby be distracted from the greater iniquities worked and insulated when standing committees or ad hoc committees dodge unequivocal authority. Mere "technical violations" of the code or bylaws evince what confidentiality gambits and other cover-ups are least likely to be able to bury.

Vigilance, vigilants!



Next – “Justice, Fairness, and Other Argot” – Code and colleagues invoke procedural regularities that are usually followed; neither code nor colleagues even pretend to substantive justice.

Haughty Culture

When Power Committees deign to speak beyond official communications, they condescend while counseling colleagues to remain civil.


In May 2004 a member of the Professional Standards Committee [PSC] wrote to the Chair of the Faculty Senate that the PSC did not answer to the senate. This PSC col­league seemed mistaken as well as condescending, for the bylaws assign the senate a duty to oversee faculty committees. The senate charges faculty committees at the be­gin­ning of each academic year and receives reports from committees at the end of each academic year, so the senate’s oversight role could scarcely be clearer.

Still, no Puget Sound veteran would deny that the PSC and the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC] often act as if they transcend faculty oversight, control, or even input. As if the arrogations and arrogance of the Power Committees [PCs] were not problem enough, members of the PCs often compound their haughty ways with admonitions to common faculty to keep a civil tongue should misbehaviors be detected. Power Commit­tees do not answer to faculty any more than they answer to the Faculty Senate.

The power and the majesty of the PCs usually remain latent if not dormant, especially in public documents. When PCs’ autonomy or authority is questioned, however, mem­bers of either power committee may brandish their presumptions and presumptuousness. When, for a peculiar example, I suggested in the Faculty Senate that the PSC ought to make even minor inter­pretations of the Faculty Code available for senators to review, the then Dean objected that the senate does not get to review or reverse PSC interpretations. The Bylaws state that the senators do, but faculty should not embrace such mere techni­cal­i­ties as a code that is included in faculty contracts or bylaws that define faculty gover­nance. Now if the PSC claimed to abide by the code or the bylaws, that might be a dif­ferent matter.

Except on rare occasions, the FAC and the PSC operate independently of the faculty. The code states that the FAC is to judge its cases independently. The FAC almost always does. Most PSC reflections on departmental procedures or the meaning of problematic passages in the code are not hidden but fly beneath the radar of busy colleagues. Because almost all of the work of these two PCs is meticulous and tedious, committee workers get used to isolation from outside advice or assistance. These isolated labors encourage comaraderie among committee members who have ac­cess to inside information and inside insights. Independence, isola­tion, and insula­tion sooner or later breed groupthink, especially if the independent committees are not blessed or burdened with independent members.

Nonetheless, critical commentary will arise from time to time, especially among col­leagues who believe that a PC has wronged them. PCs and especially the administrators on them characteristically react to in­credulity with a mélange of all-embrac­ing confidentiality, unyielding obscurantism, obdurate groupthink, bad-faith interpreta­tions of authority, and con­des­cension. But for condescension, the other elements of the mélange might be ameliorated. Once a Power Committee takes umbrage at oversight or attention, self-aggrandizing brio exacerbates the other elements into breathtaking super­ciliousness. It does not do to arouse the wrath of the Great and Powerful Oz!

We have seen that the first resort of those who hold themselves above criticism, the Confidentiality Con, is mostly groundless. A committee that greatly esteems itself yet knows that its decisions and reasoning cannot withstand scrutiny will soon expand secrecy into a magnificent fabrication in support of the proclaimed importance of the oh-so-independent committee [and, of course, of the elite status of the less independent thinkers on the committee]. The more dubious the decision-making and the authority, the more persuaded of their own great­ness and infallibility we should expect members to act and the more barriers to discovery and deconstruction we should expect PCs to erect. After all, critical colleagues affront the dignity of the PC.

What the Confidentiality Con does not cover up, other maneuvers must mask. Ad­minis­trators may cut deals that include gag clauses. Committees may profess their own unanimity or solidarity or resolve. PCs will cover the Golden Oldie “If We Were Not Barred by Confidentiality from Disclosing Details, Everyone Would See that Questions Are Baseless” [to be followed by a new release of “Resistance Is Futile” by Dick Cheney and the Borg]. The PSC, especially authorized to interpret the code, will be especially tempted to legislate under the guise of interpretation.

As each defensive stratagem entrenches a Power Committee in this or that defense, the committee reiterates its august independence and subservience to authori­ty, its humble service and unstinting noblesse oblige, its serene in­dif­ference to position or personality and its special relationship to administrators, its many bur­dens and its stoic shoul­der­ing of unauthorized discretion for the good of the order, and other signs, symbols, mysteries, and para­doxes of its transcendence of mundane facul­ty. Too im­por­tant [especially in the view of committee insiders] to be allowed to admit error, PCs com­pound their errors with flim-flam, disingenuousness, self-serving ig­norance, dis­tor­tions of evidence, anarchy, stone-walling, and – if exigencies necessitate – willful half-truths. Charming as it is to see liberal educators en­counter Machiavelli and Orwell, one might prefer that PCs adopt other classics. Maybe something by Thomas More? [On second thought, they would probably go with “A Defence of the Seven Sacraments” or some other papist bull.]

The crowning achievement of PCs, however, is to feign surprise that faculty might so lack civility as to ask PCs to abide by authorized procedures and criteria. The further out­side the rules that the PC strays, the more that its members act hurt that anyone could think that the PC might flout rules. Even as they craft letters to hide their willful devi­ance from the Faculty Code, members of the FAC proclaim their fidelity to the code’s cri­teria and standards and protest the infidelity of colleagues to campus dogmatics. Defenders of the PSC warn that if colleagues are going to be critical or attentive, good faculty will not consent to serve on the PSC. “Civility,” always a term of art, comes to comprise credulity, incuriosity, docility, and servility.

Our colleague was correct, even prescient: the PSC does not answer to the Faculty Senate. Privileged faculty committees are almost always unaccountable to faculty.

Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. Hauteur and calls for civility form the wall that pretended virtue raises around detected vices. Do not look for Mr. Gorbachev or the Faculty Senate to tear down that wall.

Gripped by Groupthink

The Confidentiality Con exacerbates the tendency of small groups to echo internal communications and to resist external communications.


The Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC] and the Professional Standards Committee [PSC] are each Petri dishes for groupthink. When small, cohesive, and insulated groups attribute to their decisions empirical validity and norma­tive superiority that outsiders cannot see, groupthink defeats skepticism and sober second thoughts that might allow groups to correct themselves. Gripped by groupthink, the FAC or the PSC rations or rationalizes away information that might contradict announced or antici­pated decisions, preferring communications that reinforce the committee’s rectitude to those that raise alternative decisions or perspectives. Whatever “multiple narratives” apologists for such committees may eventually concoct, insiders strive for a singular narrative around which they all may rally.

All groups press toward consensus, cohesion, and cooperation, but outsiders’ views may save a committee from conformity, obstinacy, or collusion. Conformity and loyalty afflict the FAC and the PSC because Confidentiality Cons [and other dodges] deny insiders alternative perspectives that might change their minds. Private doubts may be expressed within the committee while communications still flow freely, but once the committee has taken its decision, private doubts are less welcome and, for some who have served on the committees, may not even be acknowledged within the committee or, even more frightening, in private reflection. Even members of a committee who have submitted their scholarly work to referees and have thereby been saved from errors or less than their best work have preferred loyalty to a committee and conformity to a majority to admitting outside perspectives. Power committees do not believe in "multiple narratives." They craft a singular story and stick to it.

When enlargements of confidentiality beyond authorized rules have transmogri­fied restrictions on the free flow of personnel information [that is, confidentiality nar­rowly and properly understood] into protection of committees from alternative perspec­tives and from accountability [that is, confidentiality improperly extended], the FAC and the PSC have been able to close colleagues out of insiders’ circles. This is how Confidentiality Cons [and subsequent cover-ups, buyouts, and other defenses against faculty’s or trustees’ learning what happens on campus] virtually guarantee groupthink.

Groupthink in turn virtually guarantees that power committees will be given in even slightly challenging cases to defensiveness rather than openness, to communications more tactical than sincere, and to superciliousness.

Factlets, Factoids, Folderol, Folklore, and Fabrications

Fabrications are the last refuge of “Power Committees;” usually, factlets, factoids, folderol, and folklore do the trick.

Please do not imagine that the Professional Standards Committee [PSC] or Faculty Ad­vancement Committee [FAC] manipulate most colleagues most of the time. Expedient or bad-faith fabrications are such risky tactics that they are to be invoked only in emergencies. Most of the time, factlets, factoids, folderol, and folklore are means by which respectable faculty rationalize un­authorized discretion and acquiesce in injustices. Committees mislead faculty only when faculty will not deceive themselves.

Faculty most often deceive themselves by accepting factlets.* Factlets are inconse­quent tidbits of information. Take the tidbit that the FAC “addressed” an evaluee’s serial plagiarism, for example. How much or how little did the FAC know about the plagiarisms? Ordinary faculty cannot know, for the very selection of “address” occludes understanding. Thus did a vague or ambiguous factlet supplant information. Campus “civility” cannot long abide skepticism, so inquiring colleagues risk being thought as ill-mannered as credulous colleagues are ill-informed.

Faculty are also suckers for factoids.** Factoids are presumptions believed because they are published. [Once the tidbit about the FAC’s addressing plagiarism made The Trail, a factlet became a factoid.] Likewise, misappre­hensions about the code grow from confident, often comforting, proclama­tions of half-truths or misinformation in faculty meetings or faculty minutes. Factoids, being publicized, outstrip and outlast facts not publicized or covered up. Perhaps it is needless to add that factoids that encourage quiescence among faculty and staff will be disseminated ritually and routinely from committees, while facts that call widespread beliefs into question will be routinely and ritually obscured.

Worse, there is no folderol so preposterous that most colleagues will disbelieve it. Folderol is the campus equivalent of urban legend. Folderol may have originated in fabrications, factoids, or factlets, but its etiology cannot be traced. Around Puget Sound, one should not be surprised to hear folderol 170 degrees removed from even the official record. For instance, minutes of faculty meetings in 1994-1995 make it unmistakable that the faculty, with the support of President Pierce and the university’s attorneys, tried to eliminate “personal and professional characteristics” as a category for evaluations for tenure. Nonetheless, some on the losing side of that fight now claim that all that the faculty decided was that assessments of personal and professional characteristics were no longer mandatory. Many of these veterans evince failing memories in their scholarship and teaching, so we should not doubt the sincerity with which they cling to this folderol. By contrast, those who recall the meetings accurately and adequately must denounce the folderol as a subversion of faculty governance. The most important point is that folderol enshrines a frustration of the will of the majority to masquerade for majority will.

Why read the code or the bylaws, which may not support your own position, when you may invoke folklore that you select for its utility? Folklore consists of precedents and traditions – real and imagined – that veterans believe to be valid authority. I have heard dozens of colleagues who have been here for many years state that one who appeals a departmental denial of tenure, for example, must stick to procedural defects and cannot raise substantive violations. A glance at the code instantly disproves this canard, yet multiple hearing boards have dismissed appeals based on a misconception that reading the code would remedy. Folklore spares our colleagues from reading actual authorities, a shortcut that most colleagues deny their students. Recall that the very first folklore raised in "Rump Parliament" was the Confidentiality Con.

Fabrications, by contrast, fester when rogue committees are cornered. Sometimes, they have imprudently relied on factlets, factoids, folderol, or folklore that some bounder exposes as bogus. In other instances, they have improvidently presumed that no one will read the rules or raise a ruckus. Once a committee realizes that sins of omission or commission have been detected, fabrications flow. Usually fabrications are utterly implausible renderings of explicit, unequivocal authorities [implicit or ambiguous authority would have provided the committee plausible deniability already].

Absent plausible deniability, committees deny or affirm implausibly through risible interpre-tations. In 2003-2004, for example, the Professional Standards Committee [PSC] postponed a grievance hearing beyond the fifteen days provided for by the Faculty Code. They “interpreted” the utterly unambiguous “fifteen days” to mean “fifteen working days.” When the PSC then blew past fifteen working days, the committee “interpreted” as a “hearing” a meeting of the PSC to which neither grievant nor respondent was invited. How was this contradiction of the express direction of the code justified? It wasn’t. A fabrication was merely asserted to cover the PSC’s delinquencies and a hearing to which grievant and respondent were invited occurred more than two months after the grievance reached the Dean [the code allows 20 days total]. Little wonder, then, that the PSC of 2003-2004 has been dubbed by some faculty "the Professional Standards Cult."

Only a few faculty, however, have the knowledge and courage to denounce even such obvious fabrications. When those few try to raise such issues, they are met with the Confidentiality Con, with disinformation and misinformation, and with suggestions that faculty should be prospective and civil. Insistence on honesty, integrity, and accountability in the presence of fabrications lacks civility, of course.

Outright fabrications are rare but reveal so much. Fabrications reveal the PSC to be at best lackadaisical about the very authority that apologists routinely invoke to justify PSC Confidentiality Cons. Fabrications also reveal the PSC’s contempt for the faculty that the PSC is supposed to serve. When exigencies loom, the PSC treats colleagues as marks, as rubes ripe for the taking. And woe betide anyone entangled with the PSC should he or she dare to invoke actual authority against fabricated authority. The PSC and FAC are called “the Power Committees” [PCs] both because they have the means by which to silence or to sanction the recalcitrant and because the Academic Vice President has, to say the least, been a member of both committees.

Usually, factlets, factoids, folderol, and folklore will spare the PSC or the FAC from revealing insiders’ disrespect for the faculty and facukty rules and will save administrators from broadcasting their disregard for citizenly virtues. Pseudo-authority, cover-ups, and buyouts usually manage acquiescence from colleagues busy with teaching, research, service, and family. The few faculty who learn what the PCs do will then easily be marginalized by the Confidentiality Con, by cover-ups, and by groupthink.


*I have borrowed this usage of "factlet" from Professor Michael Saks' 1992 University of Pennsylvania Law Review article.

**Norman Mailer invented this usage of factoid in his book on Marilyn Monroe.