Pressing the Wigger Patwol

Who would have guessed that pressure makes humans perform less well? Certainly not the Wigger Patwol



The Morning News Tribune (Tacoma WA) on 30 July 2009 ran an item from the Los Angeles Times: "Care less, do better, study says" (p. A7). A study published in the oxymoronically entitled Psychological Science showed that the promise of great rewards often led subjects to perform less well. It seems that the more that rode on performance, the likelier performers were to choke. [In sports-speak, "to choke" means to underperform due to stress or anxiety.]



Raise this item with a member of the Wigger Patwol and watch for hilarity.

Remember that the Wigger Patwol need not include every colleague who brags about how hard he is or how demanding she is. Colleagues who brag about their hardness are, of course, compensating from their shortness. [And some of them are not very tall, either.] Colleagues who tell us how demanding they are usually do not add how little assistance they provide students. To belong to the Wigger Patwol, teachers must 1) tout themselves for being hard and demanding; 2) exhort colleagues to teach as "the Few, the Proud, the Hard and Demanding" do; and 3) police colleagues who seem soft or reasonable. Only colleagues who surveil and criticize others, especially vulnerable others, achieve the distinctive vice of the Wigger Patwol -- to be so busy averring and testifying to rigor than one has no time left in which to practice rigor. To belong to the Wigger Patwol, one's rigor must be far more apparent than real.

In "Rump Parliament" I have often documented how members of the Wigger Patwol preach rigor more often than they practice rigor. If you want to find the worst hand-holders, for instance, start with those who denounce hand-holding most vociferously. Because compensation, projection, and hypocrisy range beyond the Wigger Patwol, I do not use any of those psychological features to define the Wigger Patwol. One who joins the Wigger Patwol likely will develop compensatory, projective, and/or hypocritical rationalizations to boldly go where no rational academic would go. Many who compensate, project, or pretend to virtues they do not practice, however, will not deteriorate into membership in the Wigger Patwol.

Having identified a candidate for the Wigger Patwol, send said candidate the study or the newspaper report. Be prepared with smelling salts. Then ask how faculty should incorporate this finding into the design of their courses.

Professor Javert of the Wigger Patwol will croak, "I rely on daunting, exhausting finals worth 50% of the course-grade to compel students to synthesize the materials of the course!" Watch Professor Javert's head implode when you point out that making the course cogent and coherent is probably the job of the instructor in the course and certainly the product of thought over weeks rather than torture over hours.

If Wigger Patwolmen and Patwolwomen elect due dates very late in the semester for tests and papers worth a majority of the course grade, you are expected to believe this is to foment rigor. It could never be that avatars of atavism are

• making things easier on themselves during the semester OR

• saving grading for when comments will do students no good and therefore may be dispensed with OR

• encouraging students to believe that they are sailing through a course before students evaluate the course, then lowering the course grade drastically with harsh grading of the semester project or a final.

Expect Dr. Gerard of the Wigger Patwol to argue that, as an undergraduate at Nairherdovit University, he aced five-hour examinations while being waterboarded. Once you are certain that Dr. Gerard is unarmed, ask how therapists have progressed over the last quarter-century in reversing the effects of those exams.

Attend informal confabs on pedagogy and, after the wine has been served, supply colleagues copies of the study. Probe for criticisms of methods, samples, measures, presumptions, and other barriers to new information. However well veterans of the Wigger Patwol allege they stood up to undergraduate or graduate torments, they will neither countenance nor condone any arguments or evidence contrary to the claim that "You cannot have too much rigor." They will break under the strain:

• Colleague Queeg will reel from whimpering to wailing about strawberries that are too mushy

• Colleague Ratched will ask whether the principal investigator had enough rigor in his courses and fiber in his diet to be taken seriously.

• Ivy-Leaguers Tor and Kay Motta will ask whether they draw salaries at a liberal-arts college or an encounter group.

A cacophony will then swell, decrying handholding, dumbing down, and other shibboleths that were hyphenated in less permissive times.

The one predictable outcome is that no members of the Wigger Patwol will revamp their courses to create more assignments worth less each to diffuse some pressures and to secure better work. After all, time the Wigger Patwol devote to creating more and better opportunities for learning cannot be devoted to assailing colleagues, mangling curricula, and telling all who will listen about the virtues of pedagogy that never materializes and publications that never appear.

For the 4th -- Mencken's Creed

Has a finer creed been promulgated? Wouldn't we all benefit were this the American Creed?

Henry Louis Mencken offered the following creed for our consideration. <http://www.bizbag.com/mencken/menkcreed.htm>


I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind, that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.

I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.

I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty.

I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.

I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech.

I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.

I believe in the reality of progress.

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie.
I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave.
And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.



However, to celebrate the Fourth, let us highlight Mencken's thinking in red and offer emendations in blue. Wouldn't that be mighty white of us?

• I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind, that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.

If not for "generally speaking" and Mencken's balancing of the benefits of religion against its costs, I should dissent from his first credendum. I'd substitute "dogma." Dogmatic thinking, whether religious or not, burdens humans and foils their thinking. Hence, I am closer to Jefferson's "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man," except that swearing on the altar of any god seems to me problematic. I'd go with:

• Dogma has damaged thinking humans for transitory certainty and to no lasting profit.

• I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.

To avoid dogmatic phrasing, I'd have to qualify this a bit, but Mencken is close enough. For me the key word is "trumpeting." If one tells grandma she looks lovely even though she looks much like a comicbook cryptkeeper, one is not trumpeting. Spreading misinformation widely increases ignorance and decreases intelligence. That is the danger. Hence:

• Disseminating facts is never wholly useless and disseminating falsehoods is always vicious.

• I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty.

Here again Henry Louis overstates dogmatically. Neither all governments nor any government need "war" upon liberty. Governments often protect liberties. Moreover, calling government evil invokes the quasi-religious Manicheanism that Mencken denounces. Thus, I'd rephrase:

• When governments war on liberty, they harm more than help; when governments protect liberty, they help more than harm.

• I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.

I am with Mencken here. I love the phrasing. If one demands evidence, immortality, witchcraft, and a host of other credenda must slink back into swamps of ignorance out of which muckrakers or romantics or buncombe artists harvested them. With the slightest rephrasing, then:

• Absent good evidence, immortality and witchcraft are roughly equally likely.

• I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech.

If you cannot refute or ignore thought or speech with which you disagree, you must lump it. What cannot be helped must be endured. Still, I'd insinuate what civil libertarians long have taught:

• The remedy for "bad" thought or "bad" speech is more and better thought and more and better speech.

• I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.

I agree with Mencken here but insist that cynics be given their due. Humans can intellectualize their worlds and their fellows, can analyze what makes up the world, and can theorize how the world runs. Humans are, alas, as likely as not to run from what they discover in pursuit of personal gain -- "If global warming is real, it can be real after I am dead and past sacrificing for others" -- or to explain away unwelcome conclusions about structures -- Romanticism or Idealism, for examples -- or to theorize how the world might run better if only certain thems would accede to this or that us. Thus,

• Humans usually master their worlds better than they master themselves.

• I believe in the reality of progress.

Some progress is real and worth the price. However, humans usually cannot assay the reality or the price until long after it is possible to go back. More, every step forward is at the least a step away from alternatives. Hence, progress may be every bit as real as the opportunity costs of the progress. What Europeans call "handy" phones [cell phones] represent at once progress and nuisance. Progress is real because apparent progress pushes us down and makes it ever less likely that humans shall recover, let alone retreat. I'd prefer to put matters this way:

• Some progress is real; some progress is illusory; most progress is both.

I leave unstated that most users of "handy" phones [as Europeans call mobile or cell phones] should shut the f__k up around me.

• I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie.

Here my fellows cynics and I scream, "Say what?" Those who tell the truth in politics and government we call "losers." Morally or spiritually the truth may be preferred, but in politicking, warfare, employment, and relationships, telling the truth will get you defeated, unemployed, and alone. I believe it better to leave this credendum unstated. "Woven man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen," and all that.

• I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave.

Most of us join Mencken on this one. Still, one must recall that emancipated slaves in the United States suffered mightily when they were no longer the property of wealthy whites. Qualify!

• Generally and over the long haul, it is better to be free than to be enslaved.

• And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.

Mencken did not live to hear philosopher Robert Seger opine, "I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then" ["Against the Wind"]. Ignorance often is bliss. Indeed, "Rump Parliament" exists to upset the blissful ignorance that most faculty assiduously pursue. I cannot fault colleagues for eating lotus. They have families to raise, careers to pursue, and illusions and delusions to protect. What I know about the university and its various departments scarcely makes working here better. Thus, I think we'll ignore Mencken's last belief.

Either list strikes me as a creed worthy of Independence Day. Remember: a fifth makes for a happy Fourth.

If more Americans subscribed to Mencken's creed, maybe one would not need a fifth to celebrate.

Puget Sound Rosetta Orwell Stone Located!

Apologies to Dan Brown, below is my report on the recent Honor Code.



Shortly before her untimely and suspicious demise, linguist Rosetta Orwell Stone had discovered a cryptic code in use on campus. On the underside of a boulder stating the university’s etiology in and dedication to good citizenship and Christian religion, Dr. Stone discovered a new micro-chip off the old boulder. The micro-chip preserved a secret code for phrasing documents from Student Affairs.

Applying the secret code to an honor code recently approved by the trustees, Dr. Stone learned that the honor code hid a remarkable message.

As passed by the trustees, the honor code appears to have been produced when meringue and tapioca, each travelling near the speed of light, collided over a blue dress:

“I am a member of the community of the University of Puget Sound, which is dedicated to developing its members’ academic abilities and personal integrity. I accept the responsibilities of my membership in this community and acknowledge that the purpose of this community demands that I conduct myself in accordance with Puget Sound’s policies of Academic and Student Integrity. As a student at the University of Puget Sound, I hereby pledge to conduct myself responsibly and honorably in my academic activities, to be fair, civil, and honest with all members of the Puget Sound community, and to respect their safety, rights, privileges, and property.”

Not so fast, Dr. Stone cautioned. “The ocean is a desert with its life underground and the perfect disguise above, as the folk-rock group America told us long ago,” said the linguist. “So, too, the honor code is the perfect cover for an insidious oath. ‘Member of the community’ is an anagram for 'botchery if momentum me,' which of course is the official Klingon designation for all subjects of the Klingon empire.”

Dr. Stone’s suspicions were aroused by the sentiment that all members of the Puget Sound community should have their rights respected. “Puget Sound is a private university. Who has rights here?” She rearranged “safety” and “rights” into “thrifty gases” and “privileges” and “property” into “soppy girlie pervert.” The adage “Soppy girly perverts are thrifty with their gases” was, readers will recall, the first of T. E. Lawrence’s seven pillars of wisdom. Hurrying to the mausoleum of Judge John Minor Wisdom, linguist Stone found on its seventeenth pillar "Refragatio non sufficiens," the Latin for “Resistance is futile.”

“That was the breakthrough,” Dr. Stone enthused. “Klingon designations and Borg imperatives in the university’s honor code? Coincidence? I think not.”

Dr. Stone also recalled that the late Paul Newman is alleged to have said, "24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence? I think not." Rosetta thought Paul handsome.

After some Saurean brandy and Romulan baked beans, Dr. Stone was able to piece together the actual code underlying the seemingly meaningless honor code recently promulgated. Substituting for the red-letter oath supra, the honor code cryptically says:

“I am a subject of the University of Puget Sound, which is dedicated to developing hive mentality. I am but a thrall and submit to Puget Sound’s regimen. As a tuition-paying robot, I forfeit all rights and dignity, I lose my individuality in my academic activities, I abandon all pleasures but to please my superiors, and I believe that resistance is feudal.”


In a related development, Dr. Stone’s interment in a Tacoma time capsule has so far been ruled accidental by TPD.

Eating a Symbolic Worm

What is the point of an honor code?


Is the point of an honor code for an institution to indicate its adherence to norms and principles? Did someone doubt the institution’s adherence? Why would anyone, especially the Academic Standards Committee, doubt the institution's honor?

If the point of an honor code is reaffirmation of an institution’s preferring virtues to vices, wouldn’t endorsement of healthy food and sensible diet do students more good than coming out in favor of honor?

Is the point of an honor code largely symbolism? Does one espouse an honor code to posture in favor of virtue – despite the fact that the existence or non-existence of the honor code says nothing about the advocate’s possession of any virtues? Given psychological transference, why shouldn’t we suppose that the faculty most eager to denounce vices are those most familiar with vicious practices? Other than their own experiences as undergraduates, whence do faculty derive their suspicions?

Is the point of an hour code to stem some upsurge in dishonor? If so, exactly what is the theory behind the panacea? Are we to suppose that deviance is increasing because deviants are ignorant of the views of faculty and administrators regarding honor or cheating?

If more than symbolic, an honor code must spell out standards for deviants. Does anyone who has read "The Integrity Principle" or the standards to which students are held imagine that either or both make explicit any standards?

I have students read "The Integrity Principle" and the standards for student conduct each year in Politics and Government 316 -- so students may see how much due process and how many rights they surrendered by attending a private school and especially this private school. The students always conclude that the standards basically say, "If Student Affairs wants to nail you, they always will find a pretext." Last time around, a philosophy major asked whether anyone in the room purported even to understand "The Integrity Principle." He was reassured when no one could say what the author(s) of "The Integrity Principle" might have meant to argue.

In short, students find the standards applicable to students to be so elastic as to be ex post facto laws and "The Integrity Principle" to be incoherent mush. Other than that, the standards of our incipient "Honor Code" are quite explicit.

The content of the NEW! IMPROVED! Honor Code is so nebulous that the Academic Standards Committee incorporated them by citation

"I am a member of the community of the University of Puget Sound, which is dedicated to developing its members’ academic abilities and personal integrity. I accept the responsibilities of my membership in this community and acknowledge that the purpose of this community demands that I conduct myself in accordance with Puget Sound’s policies of Academic and Student Integrity. As a student at the University of Puget Sound, I hereby pledge to conduct myself responsibly and honorably in my academic activities, to be fair, civil, and honest with all members of the Puget Sound community, and to respect their safety, rights, privileges, and property."

How nice to have that all cleared up!

Passing an honor code is like eating a worm. It does little good. It does little harm. It keeps faculty and committees busy. It provides purpose to the aimless and empty. It lets trustees feel useful.

Our New Schedule

Is it too early to see returns on scheduling changes that were supposed to foment professional growth?

I suppose I know the answer, but let me ask anyway.

Colleagues who take Fridays or other weekdays "off" from teaching should soon be producing the professional growth that, we were told, justified the days off. What evidence do we have that "research days" have yielded the anticipated conference papers or published work?

Colleagues who flourished pedagogical reasons for teaching classes over 80-90 minutes had no reason not to show up on non-class days, so they will want to supply some other return to the students or the university from their absences. [I freely grant that the absence of certain colleagues from campus is reward enough in itself.] To refresh your recollection of cover stories, please see "U Stands for Unchained Maladies" 27 October 2007 in "Rump Parliament."

That is why defenders of fewer campus appearances had to rationalize their absences as "research days." I have no doubt that over extended weekends our colleagues were zipping to this library or engaged in that colloquium. So let's see some receipts.

A reviewed manuscript or a sizzling book review might go far toward answering those cynics who supposed that colleagues wanted to sleep in or pursue leisure activities.

If students ask why they cannot meet with their faculty often or at all, it would be pleasant to answer with evidence of the advances in human knowledge that more than make up for personal contact with our faculty. The same is true for colleagues who would prefer their committees not to meet on Thursdays at 8:00 a.m. to accommodate committee members who cannot make meetings on Fridays [ or Mondays ... or Wednesdays].

I see no point in looking at the productivity of recent hires. We have no "before" measures for them.

So let's take faculty who started before 2004. Certainly their CVs before 2004 and their CVs after 2004 should reveal startling increases in productivity by those who had one or more days free from classrooms that they could devote to professional growth. Each faculty member, relative to his or her own productivity before, should be expected to have profited from "research days." Faculty who have not secured days away from campus or hidden behind their office doors should, relative to their own productivity before the change, have exhibited far less growth on average than those who took advantage of "research days."

Is someone in Institutional Research on this matter, or should I undertake it as a hobby?

Scoundrels and Frauds

Puget Sound observes its ideals on Graduation Day.

A colleague spoke from the heart about graduation:

#####I am happy to attend for the kids but usually dislike
#####the speeches. The speeches are high-minded. I get
#####inspired then look around and see so many
#####scoundrels and frauds sitting near me. I feel soiled,
#####but say nothing. The hypocrisy bothers me.

Doesn't seem to bother most faculty or administrators.

Maybe you should turn off your critical faculties and let the nonsense pour over you.

Slumber through the ceremonies and be at most semi-conscious amid faculty governance or other dissimulations.

"Men go to bed with Gilda, but they wake up with me," said Rita Hayworth. Graduate students are seduced into academia; if they awaken at Coyote Date University, they feel used. This is all the more reason not to wake up.

Sleep in.
Talk critical thinking, but never practice it.
Advocate skepticism about change.
Let reassurance wash over you.
Avoid faculty meetings in favor of alternative soporifics.
Go along and you'll get along.
Stage more conversations among the folks.

There are no problems. The only problems are colleagues who espy problems. They're the problems.

But forget about them.

Have a lotus with that beer?

Before you give me grief about spelling out "STALAGS" along the left margin supra, please note that "stalag" was coinage from "Stamm" main body and "Lager" camp. Scoundrels and frauds are not the numeric majority at the university, but those who avert their eyes from scoundrels and frauds or apologize for the condoning of frauds and other abuses are the leading cadre.

Can you assist the FAC?

The FAC has issued a cry for help. Will you answer?

In its annual report dated 5 May 2009, the Faculty Advancement Committee [FAC] has implicitly admitted its cognitive disarray:

"As we noted last year, a continuing concern of the Advancement Committee is open file reviews. The participation of all tenure-line colleagues in departmental and program reviews is a long-standing and highly valued practice at Puget Sound. Evaluees have long had the option of open or closed files for evaluations other than the tenure evaluation. The recent vote by the faculty to extend the option of open files to tenure evaluations has raised the salience of the issue of junior faculty participation in all open file reviews. Since the vote to extend open files, FAC members have observed more guarded letters being submitted, particularly by junior faculty though also by some senior colleagues, and a general reluctance by some to weigh in on change of status evaluations."



The FAC's deployment of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy disappoints. It is too bad that the FAC featured no social scientists or scholars familiar with logical validity or cogency.

Can commenters help out?

Please supply arguments that the FAC would advance if members of the FAC cared to be taken seriously.

Please assist your challenged colleagues.