The Problem, As I See It
This is a niche post I'm not emailing out -- if you don't work at my university, you're probably not interested
1. We want to work in something more like a democracy, but we find ourselves working in something more like an autocracy.
2. The largest administrative over-reaches include things like summoning an entire new college without consulting faculty; eliminating a whole masters program without consulting faculty; denying case statements for vital faculty positions without sufficient transparency
3. The administrative over-reach that has led us to this conversation is the attempted re-assignment of faculty office spaces without faculty input
4. One of our problems is that the current office space kerfuffle could be described charitably as “far less essential to the successful operation of a university” than the items listed in #2; this is not the “ideal victim” best suited to make a case. The most positive framing would be “the straw that broke the camel’s back”; but we are more like a flock fallen into an unhappy state under the inexplicable actions of a untrusted shepherd, but which continues flocking and grazing because flocking and grazing is what we do; finally the shepherd has led some of us to land where the grass just stinks. Is this the stinky straw that pushes us to action?
5. Another of our problems is that we don’t communicate well with one another. We are currently talking to one another on a non-Drake-email thread that contains fewer than 50 faculty members; it was organized by one person and so bears the marks of that person’s personal connections and disconnections. Yet this is obviously a conversation in which every single member of faculty in all colleges and departments has an interest. Where is the forum where we can talk to all and all be heard?
6. Faculty Senate: can this body create positive change?
7. Surely one of our problems must be that Faculty Senate was the source of a past high-profile faculty failure: the attempted changes to our core curriculum, which did not pass. I’m not a political scientist, but drafting policy and putting it to a vote clearly skips an essential step, literally the politics part. The changes should not have been put up to a vote if it was not going to pass. If we can learn from that experience, we will break out of our cliques, units, hallways, email threads, Facebook groups, even our boxed-in zoom meetings, and talk to one another — students, faculty, staff, administration — without prejudice or fear.
8. Democracy is messy. Democracy requires compromise. We are not always going to be happy with the results. But the theory is that it’s better to get a half-step in the right direction honestly and openly than to take the full ten steps on the faces of your neighbors. If we sit in silos, filter bubbles, cliques, or social circles, we absorb a false sense of consensus — our obligation is to make space for disagreement, to expect it and welcome it.
9. We as faculty have a responsibility to acknowledge the challenges administration faces: we are living in a time of head-whipping change and crisis, and the future of the university is not guaranteed; there are a dizzying array of issues on a campus of our size at all times — most of us remain unaware of most of them most of the time; and being the “public face” of anything is exhausting. We want to be partners with our administrators, not mutual antagonists.
10. We lament the power we lack and ignore the power we have. This is human nature. But each of us has power ranging from partial to absolute over certain realms — We must cultivate our garden.