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So a few weeks ago, I got a fairly personalized invitation from our President (no, not 45) for today, a midday retreat (conveniently eating the best part of my last day to prep for class). In it, she references needing an expanded body of faculty input about the future of the school. Thirty of us gathered yesterday, thirty more today. She did not come out and say that our Faculty Senate's stance is irritating her, but I've been here long enough to know what lines to read between.
Shortly after the invitations went out, a Super Sekrit FB group got set up, and I was added, and lo, there was great unrest in the land, because the traditional "voices" in what we do here--our Faculty Senate--have been excluded from this invitation. In fact none of the typical voices have been invited to give input. Paranoia rose like a snake and transformed itself, because lo, all the ones who had been excluded have joined the Super Sekrit FB Group and are speaking out about how deeply inappropriate, nay threatening to shared governance, this meeting is. I can't tell if they're butt hurt or legitimately worried by the President openly seeking input from faculty traditionally not empowered to give it. I said in the FB group, before the echo chamber of paranoia drowned me out, that perhaps it wasn't a bad thing to seek input from multiple constituents. Senate doesn't always represent me, after all. (The response to this was that I ought to be running for Senate.)
After three days or so of hand wringing, outrage, tales of impending woe, and silence from a number of us I trust, the Senate Chair, who had been more outraged than anyone else that Senate was being bypassed, wrote reassuringly to we who are going to this gig. She asked us to go in with an open mind.
Oh FFS. YOU are telling ME to go in with an open mind? When you just wrote paragraphs about how Senate is the recognized voice of the faculty and this meeting today not only undermines but subverts shared governance? Puh-lease.
Academic politics. I truly hate the adversarial stance the Senate has taken over the last five years and I wouldn't join it if you paid me. That is some toxic shit right there. No wonder the President is looking for other input. I look at this meeting as a) a waste of my time, b) a waste of my time, and c) a waste of my time. I guess I didn't have to say I'd go to this thing but I'm hoping that the others like me, neither fish nor fowl, will also be there.
Maybe I'll have someone to sit with.
Shortly after the invitations went out, a Super Sekrit FB group got set up, and I was added, and lo, there was great unrest in the land, because the traditional "voices" in what we do here--our Faculty Senate--have been excluded from this invitation. In fact none of the typical voices have been invited to give input. Paranoia rose like a snake and transformed itself, because lo, all the ones who had been excluded have joined the Super Sekrit FB Group and are speaking out about how deeply inappropriate, nay threatening to shared governance, this meeting is. I can't tell if they're butt hurt or legitimately worried by the President openly seeking input from faculty traditionally not empowered to give it. I said in the FB group, before the echo chamber of paranoia drowned me out, that perhaps it wasn't a bad thing to seek input from multiple constituents. Senate doesn't always represent me, after all. (The response to this was that I ought to be running for Senate.)
After three days or so of hand wringing, outrage, tales of impending woe, and silence from a number of us I trust, the Senate Chair, who had been more outraged than anyone else that Senate was being bypassed, wrote reassuringly to we who are going to this gig. She asked us to go in with an open mind.
Oh FFS. YOU are telling ME to go in with an open mind? When you just wrote paragraphs about how Senate is the recognized voice of the faculty and this meeting today not only undermines but subverts shared governance? Puh-lease.
Academic politics. I truly hate the adversarial stance the Senate has taken over the last five years and I wouldn't join it if you paid me. That is some toxic shit right there. No wonder the President is looking for other input. I look at this meeting as a) a waste of my time, b) a waste of my time, and c) a waste of my time. I guess I didn't have to say I'd go to this thing but I'm hoping that the others like me, neither fish nor fowl, will also be there.
Maybe I'll have someone to sit with.
