The FAC flips the Senate the bird then invites senators to pull their fingers

The Faculty Advancement Committee Evades the Bylaws Again!

Every spring of late, the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC] evades the Bylaws. The Bylaws mandate that each Faculty Senate Committee appoint a chair. The Faculty Senate has insisted for years that the FAC follow the Bylaws. Whether through recalcitrance or arrogance, the FAC has instead upheld the cherished Puget Sound tradition that the Professional Standards Committee and the FAC do as they please irrespective of rules. When challenged on their misbehaviors, the power committees ply the credulous with aged canards and newly hatched rationalizations.

Aged Canard 1: The FAC objects to electing a chair because the FAC has never had a chair.

This objection is not quite true. It would be more accurate to say that, over the years, the Academic Vice President or Dean has been unacknowledged chair of the FAC. The FAC has been guided by a de facto decanal chair more often than it has resembled any roundtable of six decision-makers of equal standing or identical function. Ask veterans who have visited the FAC on multiple occasions over the years whether they were able to detect a de facto chair.

If the FAC has never had an official chair, so what? Other than Puget Sound administrators and apparatchiks, who argues that never having followed the rules justifies continuing to ignore the rules? If only Al Capone had known this "argument" was available to him: "But I have never paid income taxes!"

That the FAC has never appointed a chair establishes only that the FAC has never considered itself bound by rules that apply to all faculty senate committees.

Aged Canard 2: The FAC objects to electing a chair because electing a chair might have legal ramifications.

At least one member of the FAC has argued unspecified legal perils might follow from following the Bylaws. How intriguing! Ignoring or evading the Bylaws has no legal downside, but following them imperils the University? Who vetted this legal argument—John Yoo? Did the FAC ask any competent attorney about the advisability of following authority—often reckoned a legal virtue—as opposed to defying both the Bylaws and the Faculty Senate? Or would asking a competent attorney divest the FAC member(s) of this excuse?

The FAC has supplied no legal authority for this "legal opinion" because any legal peril—to the chair of the FAC or to individuals on the FAC—from following Bylaws is a chimera.

Indeed, that one or more members of the FAC would invoke such hokum shows little faith in other FAC canards.


Aged Canard 3: Electing a chair would spoil the egalitarianism of the FAC.

The 2008-2009 report of the FAC features this drollery: "... the Advancement Committee discussed at its first meeting of the year the matter of committee chair. Affirming that it continues to prefer that all voices at the table be equal participants, the Committee elected Priti Joshi, Sunil Kukreja, Andy Rex, Stuart Smithers, Kate Stirling, and Kris Bartanen as co-chairs."

The FAC knows that not all its members participate equally or identically:

• Concerning third-year assistant professors and distinction, five members of the FAC recommend to the sixth member, the Academic Vice President and Dean.
• Unless the FAC has changed recently, the Academic Vice President and Dean handles correspondence for the FAC, while members of the FAC draft letters regarding individual evaluees.
• Through 2005, the Academic Vice President and Dean was never the lead person for a file; the other five members of the FAC took turns taking the lead.
• "Streamlined" evaluations result in no inequalities of participation?

However, the FAC presumes that most senators and most faculty will not know how often the voices around the table will not be "equal." So the FAC bullshits the faculty.

Even if the suggested equality or equivalence were true, this argument would not be cogent. The Bylaws require every faculty senate committee to elect a chair at each committee's first meeting. The Bylaws further require that the chair be responsible for inducing the committee to meet and producing a report at year's end. The Bylaws require nothing else. How a chair's being responsible for the committee's meeting and reporting would roil or spoil the FAC, we are never told. We are never told for the same reason that we are never told why George W. Bush was one of our greatest presidents.

The FAC does not want to follow the Bylaws and so will not. The rest is blather summoned to explain why members of the FAC are above ordinary rules and authorities.

Newly Hatched Rationalization 1: The FAC this year elected six co-chairs.

The latest evasion by the FAC collides with Article V of the Bylaws [boldface added]:

...

Sec. 2. Organization. The Senate shall name a Convener for each committee during the first month of the fall semester for the purpose of electing a Committee Chairperson and orienting the committee based on the committee's prior year-end report, except when otherwise provided in the organization of the committee.

Sec. 3. Committee Meetings.
A. The Chairperson of each committee shall convene the committee during the first month of the fall semester to plan the work of the committee. Times for additional meetings will be at the discretion of the committee members. The Chairperson shall be responsible for presenting reports to the Senate.


Who would be so wanting in candor as to claim that appointing six co-chairs matched the Bylaws' requirement of "a chairperson" and of "the chairperson?" To ask the question is to answer it.

Perhaps most remarkable, the two newbies on the FAC conformed to the FAC's defiance in their very first meeting. What profiles in credulity! Did they hold out for even ten minutes before abasing themselves?

So here's to the FAC, ladies and gentlemen!

Six doctors who believe that 6 = 1.

Someday Never Comes

As I read a recent memorandum regarding child care, I began to pick up snatches of Creedence Clearwater Revival. I have no idea why the tune crept into my mind as I read that "lean times" prevented the university from doing what it was unwilling to undertake when times were better. As the nuns used to say about every contradiction or antinomy, it's a mystery.


First thing I remember was askin' papa, "Why?"
For there were many things I didn't know.
And Daddy always smiled; took me by the hand,
Sayin', "Someday you'll understand."

Well, I'm here to tell you now each and ev'ry mother's son
You better learn it fast; you better learn it young,
'Cause, "someday" never comes.

Well, time and tears went by and I collected dust,
For there were many things I didn't know.
When Daddy went away, he said, "Try to be a man,
And, someday you'll understand."

Well, I'm here to tell you now each and ev'ry mother's son
You better learn it fast; you better learn it young,
'Cause, "someday" never comes.

And then, one day in April, I wasn't even there,
For there were many things I didn't know.
A son was born to me; Mama held his hand,
Sayin' "Someday you'll understand."

Well, I'm here to tell you now each and ev'ry mother's son
You better learn it fast; you better learn it young,
'Cause, "someday" never comes.

Think it was September, the year I went away,
For there were many things I didn't know.
And I still see him standing, try'n' to be a man;
I said, "Someday you'll understand."

Well, I'm here to tell you now each and ev'ry mother's son
You better learn it fast; you better learn it young,
'Cause, "someday" never comes.

Is it a mystery?

What are the boys afraid of?

A colleague asked a pertinent question at a faculty meeting: "Why are colleagues so afraid of diversity?"



At the most recent plenary meeting of the faculty, Professor Harlequin Sovery Zen made some faculty smirk and others scratch their heads instead of their butts or balls. Dr. Zen ased why minor changes in the bylaws regarding the Diversity Committee so agitated a few naysayers.

Is a rhetorical question still useful if it goes over most heads?

Targets of Professor Zen's pertinent impertinence likely neither smirked nor showed any reaction. Some of these faculty have been raging to one another behind closed doors about chimera once reserved to the rantings of the National Association of Scholars [NAS] and other cranks. Other atavists transmit emails complaining that Puget Sound's longstanding indifference to diversity might be ending. Among the bugaboos that headline such emails:

• Administrators might review departments' decisions about whom to interview or whom to hire. If you thought that deans and the president already did that, you are defying the hive-mind of some of our programs, schools, or departments. If you think that departments have nothing to fear from such supervision, you do not know some of the departments or programs involved. If you were in those academic units, you'd fear exposure.

• Reading lists, pedagogical tactics, and loaded language might be subject to review. Unless the NAS wants to censor I, Rigoberta Menchú or the rants of Ward Churchill or David Horowitz locates "the Left" across curricula and campuses, review and criticisms are not welcomed. Again, to know some of the individuals and some of the schools or departments involved is to appreciate why colleagues respond like feral felines. By contrast, those who know their teaching tactics and lessons will stand review cannot summon much concern. The contrast is telling.

• Some faculty, staff, and students put an editor of The Trail on the spot for an hour or more owing to multiple allegations of racially insensitive content in the student newspaper. A current version of this legend is that the Bias-Hate Emergency Reaction Team [BERT] grilled the editor about content in his or her paper. As the tale is retold, embelllishments turn a meeting into Guantánamo on campus. The more that opponents of the Diversity Committee or of diversity as understood by most faculty require a bloody shirt to wave, the more that we "learn" about "The Blunda in the Rotunda." Too bad that we learn so much that is not true.

Asked of those who spread the objections supra then, Dr. Zen's question answers itself.

What are the boys so afraid of? Startled by symbols and howling the rage of the privileged, the oh-so-conscientious objectors long for a meritocracy that never existed, for departmental autonomy they've not earned, and for security against change as Puget Sound moves from empty promises to the merest threat of sincere efforts to diversify.

How can I be sure of that? Because almost every objection to the Diversity Committee's NEW! IMPROVED! bylaws has nothing to do with the new text or the old text or new words versus old words. When professed concerns have little to do with matters under deliberation, one is entitled to infer ulterior motives for the opposition.

Take the example that the objectors have made into a thrice-told-but-never-quite-tolled-the-same tale. If BERT wears jackboots, that is due neither to the old wording nor to the new wording of the bylaws. Indeed, when the loudest of the objectors raised BERT in meetings of the Faculty Senate, the Dean of Students made it clear that BERT would be run out of the Dean of Students Office if the Diversity Committee abandoned participation. That is correct: either way the scared rabbits get BERT or something very like BERT. Maybe BERT did its job; perhaps BERT convened a Starr Chamber; probably BERT made an editor feel put upon. However, bylaws old or new do not define BERT or circumscribe BERT's conduct.

Would you care for any pickled red herring with your canard, sir?

I could go through the many objections raised by Professor Chanticleer across campus or by atavists in less public settings, but to what purpose? To listen to the objectors for even fifteen minutes establishes that they are exercised about demons and devils that the rest of us cannot see or exorcise.

Suppose, to pursue another scary story, that a big, bad Diversity Czar meddled in hiring of every department, program, and school.

• The objectors cannot plausibly connect such meddling to any existing or any envisioned language in the bylaws or the code.

So what are the objectors really afraid of? Why do they conjure such terrors?

• Departments, programs, and schools confident that their procedures and judgments would withstand critical scrutiny -- the skeptical perusal supposed to define the life of the mind -- should welcome another set of eyes. Faculty who recoil at the prospect that their departments, programs, or schools would be greatly impaired if compelled to explain decisions and processes should share with the rest of the faculty what they know about their own academic units that the rest of us would do well to learn. If they know that their units cannot withstand oversight, perhaps their fears are based on hiring inequities is their immediate pasts.

Whatever the objectors are really afraid of almost certainly resides in the departments, programs, or schools whence such rough beasts, their sour come up at last, slouch toward faculty meetings to be boring.

• Avant garde poseurs object to an emphasis on race, ethnicity, or nationality and admonish the campus to aim to for socio-economic or class diversification. They do so knowing that there is even less support for thoroughgoing socio-economic diversification than for diversification that is more familiar from the decades that other institutions have devoted to diversification. They strike progressive poses but secure most of their support from diehards and blowhards from the racial "Right."

Indeed, the poseurs resemble rabid proponents of laissez faire because they operate with the cynical assurance that policies they advocate will never be tried and hence never will fail.

So kudos to Professor Zen for unmasking the symbolic politickers. Woe to the rest of us that Zen's rhetorical question almost certainly went over the heads of most faculty. Those inattentive, clueless souls voted for the new bylaws but preserved the luxury of what they do not now and do not want to hear about.

Lifting the Manhole Cover

Every Friday I acquire a copy of The Open Line.

Every Friday I fish The Open Line out of my departmental mailbox and exclaim, "The Open Manhole!" before I recycle The Open Line largely unread.

Every Friday at most I read "Noteworthy," a chronicle of recent accomplishments of staff and faculty or "Look who's talking!" a collection of snippets in which the University of Puget Sound made the news.

The latter regales readers with the names of colleagues who may have insinuated UPS into local media: "William Haltom was quoted in the News Tribune to the effect that the current economy is suboptimal."

The former lists alleged and allegedly professional activities: "William Haltom was wrestled out of a bar and onto the dais of a panel at the Western Political Science Association, where he spoke about strategies for padding expense accounts."

Items in each can be iffy: "William Haltom wrestled a bear under a table at Western State Hospital then slept in a padded cell," but presumably boost morale.

Nonetheless, many accomplishments go unremarked. I hope to redress this shortcoming from time to time here in "Rump Parliament."

Notworthy [sic]

Professor Mateman Gangrene successfully glued shut the door of his colleague in a dispute over who was the most immature member of the UPS faculty.

Recent retiree I. Tom Leghorn, formerly Sponge Bob Squarepants Professor of Innerdisciplinary Studies, was named "Bagger of the Month" at Metropolitan Mart.

Dr. Opal Blue read "Are Tautologies Always True?" before an assembly of tin-foil hats as a prelude to speaking to persons wearing the hats.

The Comical of Higher Education will publish Dr. Hans Holder's reminiscences in "Never Quite Publishing but Not Perishing: How I Faked My Way to a Career" as a cautionary tale.

Professor Rapunzel Rapunzel has a forthcoming paper, "Do Blondes Have More Fun? Letting Down Your Hair as Research Design" that will be published when her mother finds room in her journalblog.

Dr. Xavier Titian Loop has republished his study of pet haiku for the 43rd time, breaking the previous UPS record. Dr. Loop thanked his undergraduates for carrying on his research tradition.

Loose Lips Talking

An editorial endorsing motherhood but decrying premarital sex appeared at the website of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer over the byline of John E. B. Good, School of Music.

A writer for the Cleveland Plain-Dealer recently asked where the University of Puget Sound was.

Dr. Dakota Rivents was interviewed by The Trail regarding ways to use bullets rather than ballots to run societies.

Smoot Hawley told Seattle radio station KPTK that the Washington State Lottery qualified him to handicap potential nominees for the Supreme Court.

FOX telecaster Bill O'Reilly called Bill Haltom a pinhead.

Next -- What are the boys afraid of? The rage of a privileged class imbues a faculty meeting.

Live Blogging the Senate

The Faculty Senate met 9 March 2009 at 4:00 p.m. 4:10 p.m. A gentle, genial conversation on a confidential matter wafted through the Faculty Senate today. What a welcome change from whiners asking the Faculty Senate to solve individual problems via institutional changes! And to discuss a matter confidentially when the confidentiality is not a con job -- what a thing to believe! 4:17 p.m. A senator mispronounced a fellow senator's first name for the 20th time this year. But we at the University of Puget Sound make up a "community of lifelong learners." Slow learners, we make up a great many things. 4:20 p.m. The Senate then took up approval of minutes and managed same in only four minutes. Roger Bannister ran a mile faster, but he had no Ph.D. 4:25 p.m. Outgoing ASUPS President Word was deservedly applauded and lauded; incoming ASUPS President Luu was introduced. 4:26 p.m. A senator once again began a "Special Orders" period by announcing that what she had to say was not truly a "Special Order," a habit that she has maintained in different forms and forums for years. Everyone enjoyed a nostalgic moment as we indulged our colleague's solipsism. She once responded to the president's call for announcements at a faculty meeting by saying, "This is not an announcement, but does anyone else have trouble parking these days?" I hope she will diversify her hijinks. Maybe during approval of minutes she could begin to rebut the Surgeon General's report on tobacco in 1964. When the senate gets to "Old Business," why not start things off with "Rectal itch can be annoying?" Order is often over-valued relative to self-indulgence. Immediate gratification is nice but erratic gratification entertains more and better. 4:31 p.m. A replacement senator, Dr. Wayne Rickoll, was appointed. Wayne is honest and straightforward, so I anticipate he'll get nothing but woe from his appointment. 4:34 p.m. Procedures for conducting faculty elections are being bandaid [sic] about. A patch was effected. Paper ballots versus electronic voting excited little interest, I believe -- dozed off. An elections officer was named after gratuitous dislocations. A staff member and a student outraced the faculty. Our staff and students have found us out! 4:52 p.m. Item VIII: The Professional Standards Committee [PSC] asked whether the Faculty Senate would mind it much if PSC posted on the campus web [inside the firewall] the guidelines for promotion, tenure, and evaluations for each department, school, or program. It sounds as if the Faculty Code assigns approval of departmental guidelines to the PSC. Could the PSC make substantive judgments about departments beyond whether they contradict the code? 5:00 p.m. Motion to appoint an ad hoc committee to study the internship program lay about. A discouraging word was heard: Rigor! Rigor began to overtake me owing to my missing an afternoon nap. Deep and restful sleep. He said, "Rigor" again. I found myself growing sleepier. Need strong drink. Must drink! 5:13 p.m. Senate Chair Kreskin forecast future Faculty Senate agendas. Need strong drink. Faculty Senate meetings should be accessible. Perhaps Knapp's? Harbor Lights? Tacoma Dome? 5:20 p.m. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ Next -- Lifting the Manhole Cover

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"

Explaining the Ways of "Disney Does Dartmouth"

Ever tried to explain "Disney Does Dartmouth" to someone from an actual university? It's "... like trying to tell a stranger 'bout rock and roll."


Last Thursday, I dined with a professor from a Research One institution. As I described some customs and usages at "Disney Does Dartmouth," [Thank you, Diana Marrế!] an anthropologist reeled from shock to protest. Trained in encountering and contextualizing seemingly savage practices and bizarre behavior, this anthropologist could not fathom exotica of ersatz-Dartmouth based on her experiences at universities and colleges large and small.

I told her about issues regarding junior faculty and closed versus open files [see my posts in Rump Parliament for 21 and 22 November 2008 for more details]. She gasped, "What are untenured faculty doing evaluating colleagues for tenure?" She seemed unimpressed by the history of the practice at "Disney Does Dartmouth," almost as if she thought reiterating etiology was insufficient justification. [She probably thought Bruce Hornsby's "That's Just the Way It Is" was a lament about classism and racism instead of a call for quiescence and indifference when confronted with injustice.]

As often as she repeated, "Isn't that practice against AAUP guidelines?" I repeated that to the best of my knowledge most colleagues at "Disney Does Dartmouth" neither knew nor cared what the AAUP recommended or required.

When I mentioned candidates for tenure simultaneously evaluating other candidates for tenure, she asked, "Now how does that not raise conflicts of interest?" In defense of my institution, I pointed out that spouses were prohibited from evaluating one another. She seemed unimpressed by this height of ethical rigor. Of course, I have no idea why she might believe that a candidate for tenure or promotion might disparage other candidate(s) in the same department. How could that happen?

Guess how she reacted when I told her that for some competitions internal to "Disney Does Dartmouth" a curriculum vitae is neither requested nor welcome. "I had thought that the CV was the coin of the academic realm. How the hell can my record be irrelevant to whether I get funding?" I assured her that one's record was not irrelevant. Decision-makers attended assiduously to the sorts of performance normally not to be found on a CV. As an anthropologist, she understood favoritism and clientilism but seemed to think the spoils system a queer way of promoting scholarship. I did not trouble her with how patrons have for centuries cultivated sycophants and other dependents. [See my entry for 4 March 2007, "Respectable, Reliable, Reputable" to see how faculty vie for patronage.]

How does someone from a major university fathom the senior colleague who told two disappointed aspirants for a Lantz Senior Fellowship that the "committee" went with someone who had produced almost nothing because "We knew you would accomplish your plans even without the fellowship?" Of course, the professor who got the award returned to campus with little to show for his year off-campus and the two spurned scholars did produce what they had proposed, so the prescience of the committee was vindicated. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" takes on new meaning courtesy of this leading cadre, this vanguard of the faculty.

And what of the persistence of "personal and professional characteristics" as considerations for promotion or tenure? An experienced scholar who believes that, to be professional, evaluation must be impersonal must be puzzled by a university proclaiming that it assesses personnel on "personal characteristics." All schools and many colleagues take "personal characteristics" into account, and candor about this practice has its charms. Still, to mandate such unprofessional evaluation may strike the uninitiated as crass. To strike that mandate from the Faculty Code in 1994 seems redemptive until one realizes that atavists continued to use "personal and professional characteristics" unabashedly at least until University counsel explained in 2007 that the practice was jurally indefensible. Even then some dead-enders stated in a faculty meeting that they could not believe that they had been violating the Faculty Code for so many years.

How do I explain routines at the "Disney Does Dartmouth?"

Do I restrict myself to misogyny, anti-Semitism, racism, and other inequities rife on campuses large and small and say nothing about perversities peculiar to "Disney Does Dartmouth?"

I cannot claim, as in the movie "An Innocent Man," that it's an insane place with insane rules so things end up being logical. The rules are not insane. Rather, we ignore the rules when we please to do so. On those rare occasions when colleagues or administrators deign to account for themselves, "logical" is hardly the first descriptor that leaps to tongue.

Do I transcend? "This too can be understood on a higher plane." Uh-huh. "This too can be understood in a fevered swamp" does not seem sufficiently transcendent. Moreover, to understand or to purport to understand myths and rituals at "Disney Does Dartmouth" is to catalyze one's own demise as scholar and professional.

How does any veteran with three digits of IQ and any awareness of what happens at "Disney Does Dartmouth" explain DDD to those familiar with academia?

Next -- The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, 2007