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STRANGE DISAPEARANCE HAS MANY THINKING THAT JESUS HAS RETURNED

I rushed down to the Fern Hill Room when the secret alarm sounded; our group had decided that if the administration certified the use of surveillance cameras across campus and wired it in as they were "making the campus wireless (?!!)", then we could tie to those systems our own wireless alarm that only our members could pick up. As I rounded the corner, I could see a stream of "Hillers" moving into the room. I followed them. Dr. Wilhemina Stromski, the distinguished (though she liked to call herself the "extinguished" professor due to her brush with clinical death about a year ago) professor of nursing and medcomputing technology. Before I could stop moving and find a chair, her shrill voice began: "I, yes I called you here with absolutely wunderbar news." Sometimes her German surfaced in curious ways. "You wissen, er, you know about the wacklig, uh, wacky plans that were unveiled a few weeks ago, wissen sie, about moving the Fine Arts over to the old Saint Albans? I know it's par for the old golfplatz, all the time decisions are made and whole departments are slid around usually to make room for the College of Obliegenheit, that is, Business, so that they can be close to the herz of the university, the administrative personnel, I mean, administrative human resources. We certainly wouldn't want to give the impression that education plays a wesentlich or important part of the university. Well, we don't know the dummkopfen gruppe, or the misguided group that pushed their brainsturme to the forefront and begin to consider their imagination reality. I mean the administrative groups didn't know their recht vorderfuss from their linke. The Oberverhandlungsleiter finally took a stand and said by no means was the College of Imaginative Play going to be shipped across the river Styx, the second oldest river in the welt. However, the Uberoberverwaltungsrat replied recently that all options are open and each will be considered on their merits. Well, dieser tag a decision has been made; that consideration comment was so much toben or bluster. Those already over at the BAC will stay; they will be joined by the College of Business which will have built in interships right there. In addition, the administration will vacate Martin Hall, with the exception of the Vice President for Pedantisch Einsaugen, that being academic affairs, who will oversee the return of this university to educational zielen, er, purposes. In this way, the administration can play its games over there and the university kann over here intently the matters of the world ausfragen. I think sanity has finally come to Radford Universitat." As I left the meeting I went toward Porterfield Hall and saw a convoy of trucks, small moving trucks, pulling up to Martin Hall. I began to sing: "Erziehungswesen uber alles, uber alles Erbauungen. Weltanshauung kann ich machen wenn ich sehr streng studiert. . . ." and continued humming as I made my way back to the building I was present placed in.

WHEN DID HANNIBAL THE CANNIBAL BECOME A VICE-PRESIDENT?

I passed by the Fern Hill Room and heard a raspy voice announce: "The horror, the horror." Expecting to enter on the tale-end of a reading of Joseph Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS, I spun around and entered the room. There sat Dr. Maurice S. Simon, Professor of Finance, his head now bowed as sweat streamed down his cheeks. I addressed him. "Hey, Simple, what's up?" He remained absolutely still. I spoke again. "Simple. What's going on? What was that all about?" I detected no movement and I could feel panic begin to numb me. I reached over and grasped his shoulder, gently squeezed, and began to rock him back and forth. His head sprang up as though he had just awakened from a trance and he shouted: "It's true, we're eating our own flesh, our own flesh." I pulled over a chair and sat down in front of him. "Now give me some coordinates because I'm lost. You were quoting Conrad, you know, the horror, and so on and just now you said we're eating our own flesh. What in heaven's name are you talking about?"

"Well, if you must know, if you want to carry around this burden, if you want to know the truth about administrative double-speak which allows them to feed us ourselves, and this is hard for me to say because I've believed in this leadership group and all its sub-groups for the longest time, but this is too duplicitous, too, uh, too . . . ." He retreated again into silence and fixed his eyes on the open door through which I had come.

"Come back to me, Simple, come back to me, " I entreated and he responded. He kept staring through the doorway as though he anticipated someone to enter. "This is the way it is. You know this latest buyout served as a way to reallocate personnel, you know, carve down some departments so that others could get the faculty they've deserved for years. We've never gotten the faculty back from the first buy-out, though I believed the promises presented to us that those positions were due any minute, you know, as soon as possible. Then the cuts came. And they postponed the hiring of faculty for the most part. However, my colleagues, whom I didn't believe, said the hiring of administrative personnel, particularly high end, and funding of favored programs continue unabated. Then this middle of the year, that is, before the close of the year, buy-out came along, and faculty, though deserving of the boost they got for their retirement, were shuttled out the door like unwelcome guests. We're eventually told a couple of new promises. Over the next four years, eighty new faculty will be hired, but I think that from the two buy-outs which were supposed to enable us to hire back junior, more economical faculty over a hundred were lost. I'm in finance and I can add and subtract and something's not right in that equation. Then this whole equity study comes along, because we've found some money, and I'm not saying this equity study is out of bounds, it's about time we addressed compression, but the money we've found is the money we have from the faculty that are no longer here. You see, they're taking with one hand and giving with the other. Or," he squinted, "we are eating the flesh of our absent colleagues, or you could say, the administration is eating our flesh because we're doing the work that was being done with fifty more faculty. Maybe I should say we're being eaten . . . some more. And that's not the final indignity. We have about 2.1 million, and this is ongoing funds, but most of it is not being used inr the equity study, and most of it could, it's become hush money or bribery capital. It's being spread around according not to some holy method(olgy?), but according to some slick slogan which has something to do with creative purposes. We're being robbed and told we should be pleased." He gasped for breath and slumped over again. I reached over to take his shoulder as I had before, when he sprung up to his feet and dashed for the door. When he arrived at the doorway, he turned and said: "Mirrors and smoke like the rope-a-dope, takes your attention from the joke, that's being played on you as though adversity shapes the whole life of this university, but if the truth be known or the truth be shown without the confusing verbosity, you would quickly see that's it's you and me getting nailed and flailed and jailed by administrative incongruity." He bowed and simply disappeared.

I SHOT THE SHERIFF, BUT I DIDN'T KILT THE MASCOT YET

The voice rose over my left shoulder and encircled my head. "I'm new here, that is, I'm been teaching in the Art Department for a semester," he paused for a moment and mimed drawing, "and I just want someone to tell me what's the deal with the mascot. O yeah, by the way, I'm Zachary Ludokowsky." "What do you mean," chimed in Bill Martin, chair of the Department of Computer Freezeups, "he's the archetypal highlander. Surely you understand archetypes since you're in art." "You can bet I understand about the universal. In fact, many critics who have seen my drawings believe I invented archetypes and lament that Jung is dead because he would have bowed down before them." He laughed and crossed his eyes. "No, I'm serious, what's the deal? This costume looks like a cross between the Incredible Hulk and an ugly gladiator." Bill smiled and looked down. "By George I think he's got it, I think he's got it. But let me tell you my theory. We could have a man or a woman or both, dressed up in highlander garb, I mean, two regular human beings cheering our teams on to victory in a responsible manner, but that wouldn't fit the philosophy of the administration here. They haven't yet, even the ones who have moved from teaching, figured out what Radford is or does best. This is true because they don't really look, don't live in the now; they are always living out there in the kingdom of their programs which they think is going to turn this university into a premier institution," then he whispered, "among its peer institutions. The simple fact is that Radford can be a very good Radford and even a better Radford if one starts from within and not without, if one nurtures this university rather than commands it to do tricks that are not in its nature. So we have an overdone, freakish mascot which matches Radford, a university that is being experimented with by the mad administrators to create a Frankenstein. Are you following me? Do you see the Frankenstein element in our symbol at the game. Radford, like the mascot, needs to strip itself down to the natural and celebrate that. " He looked pensive and sighed, "However, this mascot is better than that amorphous blob of Red called 'Rowdy Red' and calling the Dedmon Center the 'terrordome'. What a lack of creativity. For what it's worth, I think we should have, as I said before, a nice young man or woman or both dressed as Highlanders, kilt, skirt, socks, nice plaid up to the top of the head and let them inspire us to compete with respect for our opponents. I should add that I've quit attending the basketball games because of the poor sportsmanship of some of our students. In addition, I believe we should start each game not only with the National Anthem, but with the Alma Mater. One, it stresses school spirit and it prepares us for graduation when the Alma Mater is sung by just a few people. Think what it would sound like at the games and at special occasions if the Alma Mater really rang out from the hearts and voices of many present. That would be grand!" He looked beyond me to the art professor. "How I told you more about penguins than you wanted to know? Or, have I helped?" Zachary replied: "A lot." Then he stood and danced a jig to the door as he sang: "If I were a highlander, duh oo duh oo duh oo duh oo duh . . . ."

This was to be the first article of the new year published in the TARTAN, and hopefully one of many during the semester. I sent it in on time for the second issue, but it never appeared. When I asked, for I have an inquiring mind, why it had never been published, the editor presented three reasons: the paper had been reduced in size so that the staff could not publish as many articles; there were more writers, student writers, who needed the exposure for practice for their profession and for future resume filler; and the editor of the opionion section did not choose to print my stuff. I began to haggle of the purpose of a student newspaper, that is, is it there to provide coverage of the campus or is it there to be a source of resume material, but I stopped for my arguments took me nowhere productive. So, I've decided to place my pieces here on my web page. Enjoy!

THE FERNHILL GLEE CLUB SINGS “TELL ME WHY”

Dr. Gerlacker turned to me and commented: “You did a good job holding his attention for so long, but I noticed how you sped up there at the end; you didn’t dwell too long on the evolution of administration. However, I know myths are meant to be evocative not historical so let me dance to the tune you’ve sung. Administration, or the CAD system, originated in an attempt to let the teachers teach. Administrators remained invisible or in the wings and enabled the teachers to stay fixed on their primary task, that is, challenge and instruction.” Dr. Frida Artiste cut in: “Wait, wait! The task of the whole academy was teaching, the whole group dedicated themselves to the student-faculty encounter.” “Yes, you’re right, Frida; however, the administrative personnel of the academy protected the scholastic area so that the central players could maintain the intensity of learning. But here’s my question,” and she turned toward me, “why would someone truly enamored or committed or given to teaching ever take a demotion to administration? I say it this way for two reasons: one, a Dean I respected described his administrative service as a step down, and, two, administration today doesn’t seem committed to the protection of the integrity of its teaching mission. Rather, administration seems committed to abolishing faculty-student engagement.”
I gulped. “Well, er, uh, I guess I see these former faculty colleagues executing the Gorgeous George maneuver.” All the faces staring at me, went blank as all the chins dropped toward the floor. “I heard that he was a psychiatrist who tired of helping one patient at a time experience the catharsis of insight, you know, purgation by means of therapy. He thought if he could play the hero, take dramatic actions, and he, of course, chose professional wrestling, he felt like he could help whole crowds arrive at better mental health.” Dr. Gerlacker stood stunned, and then said: “So, what’s the point.” “Well, teachers who cross over, feel like they can effect more change, change that will lead to better education for all our students, by instituting grand programs or devising far-reaching policies.”
“You’re full of wind, Gorgeous Gregory,” our resident economist blurted out. “In this climate of cuts when pay raises come few and far between, they finesse their way into the administration to get a pay raise and then when they return, they bring back a hefty salary increase.” “Wrong, wrong,” screeched Dr. Wanda Dunnin. “They leave the faculty ranks to escape the classroom which has become increasingly foreign.

STANDING OUTSIDE THE CLOSET DOOR: ADAM AND EVE AND ME

Once upon a time in a not so fairy-tale place, a person maintained, in response to a character in one of my columns, “Dr. Russell Gregory created a character, Dr. . . , to utter the statement [printed] above.” This individual then suggested that I, thinly veiled by this character, had insulted innumerable people by means of my column. Though this person’s perspective appears accurate, I’m afraid it’s not completely correct. In fact, the Fern Hill Group does not exist in a formal sense. There is no Fern Hill Room and no regular meeting time. There is, of course, a poem titled “Fern Hill” by Dylan Thomas. However, that the Fern Hill Group does not exist and therefore my columns express my opinion, and mine alone, is far from truth, and even far from the truth. I walk among my colleagues both in formal and informal settings and I listen. I listen to hopes and dreams and frustrations and accomplishments and failures and, yes, I hear my faculty colleagues when they express their perspective concerning many of the decisions on this campus, the quality of leadership on this campus, the events which shape morale on this campus. I also listen to staff whose friendship I have earned and they relate their plight. Yes, I may compose the column which appears with my name, but the voices are many. I did create that character’s name and place in my story, but that character is alive and UNwell on this campus. If some want to allege that I’m a malcontent and own a bad attitude, then they are the dissemblers; they want to heap blame on me so they can continue to ignore what is all about this campus. I could be wrong, but I believe that one reason why the return rate of last year’s faculty morale survey was higher than expected was tied to my name being on the return address. Many felt that through my column that finally someone was giving the dispossessed a voice. This survey was another vehicle for the “winter of their discontent.” Look at the results of that survey and the issues which surface in my column and you have a match, a correlation, a collection of dedicated teachers who would join the Fern Hill Group if they thought it would be heard any better than the AAUP or the Faculty Senate. To be sure, my voice joins those that I’ve shared; to be sure, I share many of the opinions I’ve forwarded in my stories. Simply stated, though, I speak for many as we “sing in our chains like the sea.” And if anyone believes that I and a few “malcontents” are the only ones who live in my columns, then they’re holed up their offices making plans that press their agenda on this university ratherthan moving among the teachers and students whose activity comprises the express purpose of this institution. I have created characters? I have looked to my right and left and heeded what was said to me.

Down at Old Plantation University (P.U.)

As you know, classes had been in session for several weeks and I hungered for the companionship of my Fernhill friends. However, I had gone by the room several times to find the room bare, completely devoid of chairs. Only as I walked across campus and literally bumped into Dr. Sterling Furz did I find out that our former den would soon be converted to the office of the new Vice President. I asked: “What are we going to have a Vice President of now; what’s left?” He replied: “They haven’t decided yet but they wanted to have an office ready when the time was ripe.” He quickly added: “The uppity-ups have tossed around VP of Shared Governance and VP of Overnight Strategic Plans, but they’re just brainstorming now.” He brightened and continued: “We’ve a new room and I’m surprised you didn’t hear. We’re meeting in the crumbling basement of Fairfax Hall, now among the crates and plaster that’s slaking off the walls, you know, across from the furnace room.” I thanked him and decided to visit, later in the afternoon, the depths of the building in which I officed (I had been turning nouns into verbs all afternoon or “verbing” for I didn’t want to be left behind by my language).

When I arrived, that whole gang, I mean everyone who was left after the big lobotobuyoutomy, was sitting in a circle (“circling”) swapping tales. I slid onto a seat and sponged some news.

Dr. Edith Gooberpeas halted for a moment as I turned toward her, since she had been sharing her observations about the faculty/staff dinner which took place in the sweatshop after the first week of classes. I interrupted her, though I knew it appeared rude. “Sweatshop? It was in the Dedmon, wasn’t it?” “Yes,” she spat, “and remember G-man that we were told to wear our smart casual sauna duds because circumstance necessitated our relocating the festive dinner to the thunderdome?” “Yeah, now I remember, or at least I remember the part I was conscious in. I had a heat stroke part the way through, somewhere in the middle of the million certificate march, I believe. I do remember that Jack, the caterer par excellence, had to turn off his sterno because the food was getting overdone in that convection gym! Oops, go on, I’m sorry I cut you off; what were you saying?” She nodded as she realized that I had recognized, finally, her priority. “Well, did any of the rest of you long for the day when President Dedmon would stand up and cutetify the gathering by announcing there was no program except eating and visiting. Yet that was by and large what we did--eat and visit. This top heavy administration feels like it must make a spectacle of every public gathering as if we couldn’t fill the time by just visiting. Or maybe, they want to even keep us busy when we get together so that we don’t talk about the issues of the university. That’s why they don’t like the faculty senate; they start evaluating the rotten mess we’re in and it conflicts with the 1984ish construct they keep trying to sell. I mean, the president gets up and covingtons around, then the VP for Academic Flair creates his world in words, and, finally, the VP for numerology shuffles and performs card tricks with some certificates that he pulls out of his right sleeve. These certificates must have been left over from kindergarten, but they are handed out along with innumerable salutations to the new retirees and numerous emeritii faculty (I felt myself begin to pixilate and distanciate from Edith as I thought that the next VP would probably be the VP of Ceremony and Certificates). Their three man show was like driving a truck into a picnic held in a steambath.” She stopped to fan herself.

Dr. Sal Mandross waded in. “Personally, I like the evening show. All that attention to the front kept my attention from how many chose not to come. I really think the whole mess was a revision of the IQ test and I failed. Look at it this way, because students are back we can’t have our banquet in Muse where the athletic banquet sumptuously dined in air-conditioned comfort, so we have to eat next to the geysers spouting steam. Besides, they know that the administration uppity-ups are going to take this over, that is, they have taken it over as they have every other aspect of this place, so who wants to come and see the Covselfslavings show? I mean if shared governance has been fiction for several years, we at least had shared meals with the administration playing its appropriate role--background. They have moved into the foreground so we can even have a shared meal! However,” and a huge smile of satisfaction spread across his face, “I came because I knew our president would be there and I just don’t see him much anymore. It’s what I call the Dedmon phenomenon, you know, toward the last of his tenure he became more and more invisible. I remember that student who brought his absence up in an alternative newspaper and she was called into his office. She told me, I knew her from a class she had taken with me, that he called her one morning around eight o’clock and identified himself. She thought it was a joke but soon realized it was the mann-an-sich, the real presidential dude, and he requested a meeting the next day. She claimed she had a class at that time and the voice at the other end of the line said: “No you don’t for I’ve got your schedule in front of me and I’ll see you at that time in my office.” She told me he read her the riot act one, two, and three. Yet, after that article and that meeting, you would see him walking across campus at least once a week and speaking in a pleasant but shallow manner to students. He became more and more invisible but his policies and peccadilloes remained until his exit. And it’s happening again. I don’t know if it really has to do with Richmond visits or lame duck stuff, but the “pres” (and he did the Joey from “Friends” fame finger dance) is beaming up.” Mandross sunk back into his chair and tested inconspicuousity himself, it seemed.

I became aware in the sudden silence that footsteps signaled the move of someone back in a corner to the circle of chairs. I swiveled my head to the left and saw that elder pedagogue, Dr. Eudora Midora, lean over and place her weight on both hands which were fixed to the back of the chair in which Stacy Linginfelder, our secretary who was on break and loved to listen to us “sing in our chains like the sea,” sat. She began in the slow, measured rhythm of her rich southern drawl. “I am so delighted that a deep irony graced our campus last week, you know what I’ma talking about; do you really hear what I’ma saying? We had a southern gentleman who is revolutionary but his name is anything, I mean anything but that. Bourgeois, a Louisiana boy, Bourgeois! Maybe not spelled like the word Karl used so pungently, but it sounds the same, the very same. Lord, colleagues, if that fellow was really a member of the bourgeoisie, with his looks and rhetoric, he’d be a CEO in a large company making money hand over fist while his workers made twenty-four cents an hour in Mexico. Of course, and it’s hard to see because our nation is so affluent, but much of our economic system has been latinized; we don’t get twenty-four cents, but seven dollars an hour in this country is poor compensation and robbery, not a flagrant as that done in other so-called developing countries, but it’s pathetic. The CEO’s are waiting for the proper time to spring the news that twenty-four cents an hour should also be the going rate here so they can keep the profit margin and their bonuses hefty.” Her face bunched up as she softly laughed. “That’s not where I was going! That priest gave me a new image for what has happened here at R.U. and you, Mr. Mandross,” she nodded toward him, “helped me supply the finishing touches. The administration here has plantationized this university! They have moved in, those W M O, white male owners, I realize the irony I’ve entered into this equation, have place their agenda on top of the indigenous and natural population. They’ve turned cultivation, both intellectual and creative, into a business of numbers and success; they’ve altered a natural process, which moves at its own pace, to a mechanical procedure, which should run like some factory. Where’s the heart in that? Where’s the soul in that? Where’s the purpose in that? Goodness gracious, why is there morale here lower than a snake’s belly? For the same reason there is so much hopelessness in Latin America and around the world. Nature is being denied, people are being silenced and few are able to live decently, proudly, and naturally. As my friend and colleague, Nita King DuBois Carver, would say: “The Man’ s gotta knock down his dam, and damn fast!” I would say, along with that great southern songster,” and her eyes twinkled, “Bob Dylan, that a “hard rain’s a gonna fall” if people aren’t freed. On this campus, in this country, in all countries of the world. We’re tired of the Man’s smug assertions that are just that, assertions, his perspective. I’ve only one more comment and then I’ll fall silent. In that marvelous movie, “The Mission,” the slavers assure the representative of the church that they represent the way the world is, it’s just this way and that’s that. He replies: “Thus have we made the world!” Well, the world, this university included, needs to be made another way.” We sat in total silence until someone whispered: “Amen.” We all, one by one, stood and filed out of the room.

QEP--"Quick, Expel Professors"!!!

I walked by the Fern Hill room and to my surprise, people filled it. With the latest round of sleight-of-administrative-plan, so that incredible amounts of time and energy can be spent on superfluosity and the main thing continues to be neglected as the main thing, group meetings had resembled ships passing in the dark during the perfect storm. I passed through the doorway, slid along the wall, and plopped on the floor. Dr. Franny Tula Pointe held everyone spellbound as she made her case, but I knew I had to catch up for I had entered "in medias res." "Folks, and I know you senators are going to get defensive and say that "this" was already in the works, but I would counter and say that it's always in the works because you are "human resources" and/or "teaching staff" to this administration, and not faculty in recognized disciplines. Folks," she began again, "this QEP is dangerous, a killer in our midst. If you know the special code, it stands for SOL, that is, this program that "sets us apart" is designed to complete the transformation of this university into a professional training center with business, not the liberal arts, as the frontispiece, and the manufacture of clonic robots, not thoughtful citizens. The QEP claims that it will bring academic excellence and not only that, will make R.U. a "center of excellence" in quality education. Since Hans and Frans could not be here today, I will speak in their stead, hear me now and believe me later or yesterday whichever fits your weltanschauung, but I'll tell you how to do the QEP in four easy steps. First, engage the administration in the same sort of revision that departments have accomplished. Then the emperor will discover that while everyone else is delightfully light and naked, he's dressed for a Siberian winter." She looked around. "Think about that one because I've shifted the denouement of that story, though in another way, the administration is, in fact, naked. Yet, if you read the QEP stuff thoroughly, you'll find that they're adding another sweater, a director of academic assessment. How many number crunchers do we have to have? I mean, how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck moved to Martin Hall? Second, after we cut the administration by a significant percent, we hire eighty to one hundred faculty. Third, we continue to select better and better students so that the goal of required public education--attendance and retention--is not confused with ours--teaching students who desire to further their education. If I'm correct, the public universities provide an opportunity for students to seek that goal, but if they're not prepared, whether behaviorally or academically, we don't have to coddle them. Now, let me summarize before I move to the last step. We now, in my FQEP, have a streamlined administration devoid of people who devise programs to dilute vigorous education, we have adequate faculty to keep courses small and accessible, we find students who are on the same page as the professors, or who are as hungry for knowledge and application as their teachers . . . . " She paused and looked around as she rolled her eyes and inhaled a deep breath. "Fourth, turn everyone loose! You'll get, or, more correctly, you'll have the natural components for a very active classroom experience. Oh, I'm sure if you support this with some technology you can spice it up, but it's the person to person encounters that change us deeply. Yessiree, Quality Enhancement means quality faculty in numbers large enough to engage quality students in small classes. All this other catdancing is wasted energy, much ado about nothing, chasing after the wind, breaking wind, cutting the cheese, doing the last tango in . . . ." I looked down at my watch and saw that I needed to be back at my department for a meeting about the QEP's implication for my department, so I slipped out. However, I did wonder what happened next.

The “Fern Hill” Support Group Report

For the next few weeks, the TARTAN has graciously granted me space for a column; in this first installment I want to explain the name and the purpose of this group. At the same time, I will clarify the reason for this column or why this group has decided to go public. The name--”The Fern Hill Support Group”--derives from a Dylan Thomas poem, specifically its last three lines which read: “O as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, [t]ire held me green and dying [t]Hugh I sang in my chains like the sea.” This group of faculty has felt that the stature, the role, the true place, and the support for faculty to live up to their vocation has been eroded by the administrative personnel and structure here at Radford University. They needed a company of comrades to gather so that they could frankly speak their minds, access and assess their feelings, and, at the least, renew their commitment to the profession of teaching, but not necessarily to this (or any particular) institution of higher education. They called on me to lead the group because I am known as a mediator and as a discussion leader. Let me underscore that I did not originate this group; I was secured as a guide as you shall see in the ongoing reports. The proceedings that I narrate or describe allow the voices of the members to speak to the issues of their day in a setting where they sing despite the chains that hold them.

Sac(s) Races

Reba (all the names are changed to protect the committed) stood up like she was about to leave and then she quickly sat back down. “Deadlines, always shoving deadlines down our throats! Whether it’s the new improved SACS process or our response to this new college of technology studies, or some other national security, that is, I mean university improvement issue, some report has to be done yesterday or needs to be done in a week because such-and-such department in the state office of disorder needs this report. Why do those paper pushers over in Martin Hall do that to us?” “Well, I replied, “they’re under a lot of pressure to keep on the good side of Richmond and those deadlines, whatever the source, I’m sure, are as much a surprise or problem to them as to us.” She glared at me. “Whose side are you on, Gregory?” I was about to say I was on nobody’s side and that I was just trying to practice my attentive listening skills when she retorted. “I know bureaucrats in state government and they give more lead time than we get. We’re being scammed and screwed and scrummed! Besides, the main problem between the administrative segment of this university and the teaching segment of this university is that we operate on two different times, and, I believe, they don’t respect ours.” I opened my mouth to ask what the two times were but she filled in before I could speak. “We live in kairos time, event time, flow time, patient time, the time that runs from when we begin and when we end and it’s a struggle to fit that in the other time which is chronos, clock-time, schedule time, calendar time. I find it almost impossible most days to really teach the subject in the fifty minutes I’m given. In a true educational setting, you start and continue until the discussion wanes, then you break until another day when you’ve digested, or at least chewed on the topic. You can’t say in minutes when you will be through with the discussion, but we have to because chronological time rules here. We are told in so many ways that certain tasks have to be done by a certain time or else, as though you can force a duck to dance. And when we are told to worship the God of the calendar or the clock we are told that we need to manipulate the flow of growth, of learning, of evaluation. Kairos should reign and chronos should be the reminder that says we all die some day so we have to finish from time to time. Or, if administrators showed that they understood that we live in two times, we might have better rapport. Do we get understanding? Not from them!” I stood up and held up both hands. “Lots of anger here and we’re really out of time, but I think we need to stay a little longer to see what the rest of you think. I just wanted those of you who have classes or who have to leave to know what time it was. Now, Reba, relax for a while and let’s hear what the rest of you have to say.

Moral(e)ity

“Come to order,” our usual formula that starts our meeting rang out from Hugo’s lips. I had pointed to him because he has such a resonant voice. And the usual response greeted him--laughter and a comment: “Can you ever bring order to a bunch of professors?” More laughter. Bob cleared his throat; he always cleared his throat before he issued a proclamation. “You know if my therapist treated me the way this administration, or certain members of it, treats me, the licensing agency would be after his credentials.” I replied before I could stop myself. “What do you mean, Bob?” “Well, I’ll tell you what I mean. I went to my therapist and told her what I was feeling, what I felt to be true and she took me seriously. She proceeded as though what I said was absolutely true for it was real for me. Gradually, we found out that some of what I said was a skewed perspective, but we also found a lot of truth in what I felt and expressed. Here, if you really speak to your colleagues about morale, I mean if you look them in the eyes and connect heart to heart and head to head, they’ll tell you they feel lousy, unappreciated, worn-down, low, and that’s the tenured and tenure-track folk. Don’t get the others started unless you have a lifetime. However, the administrative double-speak attitude doesn’t allow that; they tell you your mistaken, that “happy days are here again” and they are in control of the situation. That’s like my therapist saying to me when I was suicidal--”How can you be suicidal when you have such a good family (living the good life on credit), a good job (my mechanic makes more than me after I’ve taught 25 years), and a peppy attitude (I had decided to kill myself so I was feeling the pressure was off!)?” I mean they don’t really listen because they think that they are supposed to be in charge and that means they don’t solicit or accept counsel from us; the administration has forgotten where the educational institution came from and why it exists. Does the dog exist for the tail? Dog and tail exist with each other and have to take each other seriously! So what does one do. You come in and do your best. You talk to others just enough to let off some steam but not enough to get the depression to full throttle. And, you don’t hang around certain administrators who only want to hear how we’re doing with the strategic plan, or, as I call it, the strategic plot. They need, I’ll repeat that for people like Russell who is just about to present an apology for the Martin Hall Gang, they need to ask real questions, for example, about how the resources ought to be spread around, and listen to our real answers so that we can really work together here. Right now, they want our help or our sympathy because we’ve been grossly underfunded this year. Heckfire, we’ve been underfunded for several years, check the figures, so why all the fuss now? Have those who work the delegates finally realized they are underachieving? Are they really asking for our help or trying to spread the liability? All this feigned unanimity makes me ill. Okay, Russell, now you can tell me this is all in my head.” I tell you, folks, I was speechless though I did think I should have said something in defense of this Martin Hall Gang, but I was thinking about the Hole in the Wall Gang and lunch and my next lecture.

The Good Wife

Dr. Frug, she like to be called, locked on to a marriage metaphor at the very first meeting she ever attended. “I don’t know how you operate this group, Gregory, but I’m the kind of person who just says what is on her mind, you know what I mean, just says what is on her mind.” I nodded. “I tell you what I feel like around here as part of the faculty. I feel like the faculty is the “good wife” of the fifties. Our husband, the administration, tells us that he loves us and has pledged his life to us, whatever the specifics; he says we’re in this together. But I’m a housewife, I stay in the home and work non-stop even though I receive no paycheck. He works in an occupation in which he receive remuneration. Now you would think if we’re “in this together” he would come home and confer about the expenditure of this money. Nope, honey,” she winked at me and I felt a bit uneasy, “he does no such thing because he apparently thinks that the money is his first, and ours second. So I get an allowance to last me until the next pay period is over and he makes the decision about how the bulk of the money is spent. He may buy a van or a sports car, but he rationalizes it somehow. He may purchase a house with plenty of room for each member of the family or he may buy a tiny house in which his workroom and study take up half the space. He may instruct me to buy wonderful groceries that feed his family well, or he may buy lots of beer and pretzels for his cronies who come over and mess up the house. The point is that he feels the money is really his, not ours. If I ever, heaven help me, bring up a suggestion or try to have more input in the family budget, he gets all defensive, or claims that I can’t understand economic realities, though I’ve a degree in finance, or says he’s sorry that he cut me out and maybe next time he’ll hold a conference with me (sure!) or claims that the budget is already set but next year, or next century, or next millenium, and so on. Gregory, are you catching my drift, are any of you?” “I just assume you’re in the department of Sociology and your specialty is the family and your area is the family of the 1950’s, “ I insightfully observed. “Goodness, you’re as dense as they say. Hello in there. No, nerfbrain, I’m saying that the administration wants us to seem like a team, but doesn’t want us to mess with its plans and devices. I mean, how can you truly have shared governance, if one element in the university makes all the decisions that have to do with the big “F”--FINANCES. And, it’s seeming like the group here believes in the trickle down the leg philosophy. They pump the funds into the administrative budget and framework and whatever is left over goes to teaching and education. That’s despotism which is a very different animal from the educational family. You wanna know something about me, or a couple of things? I’m a lot older that most of you and I was in a marriage like that in the fifties. However, I got out and my family was the better for it. So how do we get a divorce from this husband over there?” “Good gracious, “ I blurted out, “we can’t secede; we’d have hell to pay.” She looked at me and I thought she was about to spit, “What are we paying now?”



NOT Mr. Rogers Neighborhood

I was late so when I arrived at the Fern Hill Support Group all I heard was “like pigs.” I scooted up to my mediator chair, located between the last chairs on either end of a semi-circle, as Kwambe replied: “Bill, don’t use metaphors which compare humans to animals; those images develop a false picture of those simple creatures. You really end up projecting the traits of humans on to animals, traits that are misplaced. If you really want to denigrate animals, attribute to them or project on to them the characteristics of the being with the most brutal, un-nature-al record--human beings.” I interrupted: “What, what what is this all about?” Kwambe turned to me, she blinked, then looked at her watch. “Bill, here, commented that he was glad that the tourists were gone, you know, the students who aren’t really here to obtain an education; they’re just here to get drugged up and destroy. He had seen the city employees cleaning the streets, getting up all the broken bottles, waste paper, broken blinds, fragments of furniture, mismatched shoes, and so on. “The neighborhoods, once family filled, now student infested, once again knew quiet,” he said.” She continued: “He was getting quite poetic and quite specific about certain students, when he went astray and compared them to pigs. That’s when you came in, I believe, when I spoke up for my friends the innocent animals of the world.” Bill cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted: “Animalist!” Kwambe shot a glance his way and replied: “Worldist! “ With more emphasis she said: “She’s got the whole world in her hands!” Bill cut in. “Whatever. My point is this, in my world, not so long ago, people like these students who trash the neighborhoods would have been called slobs, plain slobs, and punished. If they did the same on campus, they would be charged with any number of infractions against the student code. They have no sense of community, no sense of pride, no sense of propriety. And, the citizens who still reside in those neighborhoods are punished for living in the neighborhoods in which they’ve spent their whole lives. They wake up in the middle of the night to find their trees cut down, or to hear a coed relieving herself in the backyard, or to hear bottles, thrown over the fence from a party next door, hitting their car, or to see furniture thrown out a window by a couple of dudes high on crack. Of course the university can look the other way because these students live in the neighborhoods, not on campus. The owners take their money and run; they don’t require responsibility from their tenants. And the community, already chafing from bad publicity about their police, can’t really enforce all the laws. Society uses the laws, but really depends upon the good will of the people, or a vast majority of the people. So the surrounding neighborhoods are trash pits.” He looked at me and Kwambe. He smiled. “I’m going to create my own F.I.A (faculty intelligence agency) and collect names of the offenders. You know, track them for about ten or fifteen years. Show up in their neighborhoods with a bus load of marginal students and several cases of brewski. We’re going to bring it all back home to those philistines.” I said: “Do you really want to do that when you should do unto others as you would have them do to you, you know, be an example?” He narrowed his eyes as he looked through me. “I’m going to start this weekend and practice on you.”


Shared Governance--In Your Dreams!!

I settled into my chair; the group filled the small room that we called the “informal faculty lounge.” Dr. Felicia Razzamatazz stood up. “I want to follow up on what Bobber Kajack was saying last week about shared governance. I’ve done quite a bit of thinking about that subject since last week. When I think about the United States separation of powers, I think about shared governance. There you, or I should say “we,” have three separate but equal governmental branches who exercise power in their own ways and also have power over the other branches in a special way. They need to work together so that the business of the nation gets done in a reasonable manner and in a reasonable time. And some would say it works, at least some of the time. But what we have here at Radford U. is either autocracy or oligarchy masquerading as shared governance. As Dr. Frug said several meetings ago, whoever has the money (she shook her hips at the sound of that word, I don’t know why unless she was equivocating in her reference to “booty”) has the power, and I would add, whoever has the power to make policy, makes the policy. There is only one segment of this university that isn’t an “advising” group; that’s of course the administration. What it says, goes. Ever since the senate accepted its role as an advisory body, the faculty has not had any role in the governance of this university. The faculty has transferred its fate over to the number-crunching, blindly multiplying, bwanas who Robert MacNamara us as they claim that they know exactly what they are doing. They dog us like some herd of sheep and we go in the pen, like these recent meetings about the Quality Enhancement Plan, “baa” like a bunch of sheep and leave behind some droppings, and then wait for a report to come out that is strangely like the “powers that be” thought it would be. What a miracle! If we want shared governance, then the facets of this university have to have power over their function and exercise that power responsibly. And the present structure of this university must be changed and “control” should be exchanged for “trust.” Until that happens, all this talk about shared governance is just that--talk! And I’m like Eliza Doolittle; I’m tired of words.” With that last comment, she sat down. I started humming.



Competency and Integrity Are What We Seek (or something)

I took off my coat as I overheard the discussion that had already started in the small room the Fern Hill Group called home. “Jack,” Dr. Stickler said, “what’s going on over in the math labs. I’ve got students who are mathematically challenged; they’re doing great in all their other classes, but the last several times they’ve gone to the math lab, no one has been there. I mean, they say the labs are unlocked but no tutors are present. Are you short handed?”
“Not really. We’ve got plenty of tutors on the list, but they don’t show up for a variety of reasons, or when they show up, if there are no students there, notwithstanding that one may show up during their assigned time, they go home. Now they leave the door unlocked and they fill out their time cards as though they worked the whole time, but they are gone. The experiences of your students are not unusual. Unless we go over to the lab at night and sit with the tutors, there is no way we can know if they are to be trusted. That’s the most troubling aspect to me, that these employees are not trustworthy and they don’t care; they have no idea of the implications for themselves and for our society.”
Dr. Obayait, whom we called “the chairwo” for she headed a prominent department which was the most congenial on campus, added: “You shouldn’t feel alone; I feel we teeter on the edge of a crisis, a crisis, as you have said earlier, of trustworthiness and integrity. One out of every four of the students workers, who have served us, has been marvelous--competent and industrious. Another of the four will be adequate, but the other two will either wade slowly and errorfully, that’s probably not a word, through the assignments, or sit and do their own work. The latter three seem to believe that they deserve the money whether they work or not. Maybe they think we are their surrogate parents who give them an allowance whether they help out or not. Do they think that grading papers, preparing handouts, copying exams, and running errands for the department are busywork? I don’t think some of these students see that they are working alongside others in this university to be the best we can be! I don’t think these students see that attitudes exhibited here and habits formed here will surface again and again in their life after college and their supervisors will weed them out by keeping them in low level positions or by firing them. I don’t think these students understand that college students obtain better jobs not because they have a diploma, but because they have applied themselves in every way, have shown initiative and done everything to the best of their ability, and have garnered the best recommendations one could get. What goes around, comes around!”
I had finally gotten my arm out of the sleeve when I heard Dr. Pandit say: “Chairwo, you’re preaching to the choir. How do we deal with this problem concretely? How do we get narcissistic people who think they deserve everything to understand that they are the weak link that eventually leads to the weakening of the whole structure? That no person is an island? I, personally, don’t know.”


Who Said We Have Met The Enemy And It Is Us?

For once I was on time so I stood in the corner and waited for critical mass. The room slowly filled in silence. For a moment I thought I had wondered into the twilight zone since everyone sat so wordlessly. I finally spoke. “What’s up, docs?” The sluice gates opened; all of a sudden a flood of angry voices saturated the room but one pierced the din. “I am so frustrated, no, I am so angry that the administrators, from bottom to top, head off any faculty generated initiative but finesse theirs through using sleight-of-hand and the old “oops, we meant to.” For example, there was this faculty senate initiative to establish a procedure for evaluating administrators. The senate knew that these would be handed over to the proper supervisor or supervisors and that these would be a small part of the whole assessment. At least, though, we would have a voice. In addition, it was my understanding that the president, not THE PRESIDENT, but ours, stood behind this proposal. However, when it came up in the first board meeting of the academic year, one of the members of the board criticized the faculty for their arrogance and ignorance of the chain, chain, chain of command. I’m tired of all this administrative cold water.”
You know me; I am normally speechless, but this whining stomped my toad. “I’m am so tired of the administration being used as an excuse for our cowardice.” My colleague sat up rigidly and his jaw dropped. I guess he was expecting momma to pat him on the head and say, “Poor, poor thing!” but I was Sergeant Get Your Head Out. “We whine about how all our good ideas are not accepted or passed forward and then let them drop. Therefore our ideas and our activity remain stillborn. There are so many projects that we can authorize, that we can perform ourselves and then if the “proper” group doesn’t accept it, that’s their problem. We need to follow through; we need to decide, personally and communally, what we think would enrich this university and carry on and through. To use another metaphor, we start to swing on a pitch but we see some administrator wince and we pull back. It coulda been a homerun. It could also be a swing and a miss, but if we keep our eyes on the wrong place we doubly lose. So, don’t give me this self-righteous gritching. And while I’ve got the floor. That senate, and no wonder few want to serve in that capacity, sits around those tables like they’re in a zoo. Administrators, like they don’t have enough to do, file in and watch the monkeys, though our visitors stand up from time to time to detail the real world. There’s a lot of chirping and cheeping and scratching and hooting. Then we look at our captors to see if they are charmed or disturbed. Why not stay in the wild as many choose to do; why waste time? If the faculty wants to be taken seriously, especially the senate which claims to represent them, it will find its voice and speak up; the faculty will send its real concerns to the senate and it will enact real solutions that they will carry forth as far as they can or will. If that means they, on their own initiative, conduct evaluations of all the administrators not already so examined and the “proper” body doesn’t accept it, so be it. The university is the richer for faculty living up to their vision and the poorer for those too set in their ways or too afraid to allow true colloquy in the administering of the tasks of this university.” I paused to take a much needed breath and found I nearly sucked the toupee off the guy in the back row. “Just don’t give me this “the administration ruined my party” stuff.”


1984 Plus 20: St. Albans and Radford

The room was eerie when I entered; everyone was scattered about. Some read, others scribbled in datebooks, in journals, and on legal pads. From time to time, someone would look up and scan the room, but I couldn’t determine if they really saw the others in the room. I sat down toward the front of the room and considered whether I should “do my own thing, you know, what I wanted to do” or start a discussion. In that moment between consideration and action, in stormed a guy we called Dr. Apocalypse. Now this guy possessed the gift of drawing all sorts of wild information and weird conspiracy theories to himself. That he was correct at least some of the time spooked most of us to no end. His hair stood up more mussed than usual so I knew he had come in a prophetic mode.
“You know why we’ve entered into this agreement with Carilion, don’t you?” I wanted to reply with all sorts of sarcasm, you know, “I’ve heard the official line, but it hasn’t got me any dates,” but I didn’t have the presence of mind as I gazed into his crossed eyes. I heard myself say, “I think I do.”
“Well you don’t,” came his quick reply. “It’s the alternative to really dealing with the morale thing here on campus, and not just faculty morale, the morale of the staff, too.”
I was already lost. “What do you mean, Poca?” as I addressed him by his nickname. “How can this agreement bring heightened morale?”
He glared at me like he glared at all imbeciles that didn’t see the truth emblazoned in between the lines of every official declaration. “At the least, the place will be for “mini-sabbaticals” as they call them. When a person gets so depressed that she can’t continue their work, they will get the assistance of the Saint Albans Center Services (SACS, for short). They won’t have to teach or clean or cut grass or whatever while they get fine food and good advice. They will be wooed back to usefulness. Now the standard operating procedures of the university won’t change, so individuals will be in and out of this program. Yet, the show WILL go on.” He paused and those who knew him always expected this pregnant pause because it preceded his most pungent information. He wiped his lips which were glistening with the spray of his words. “But you’re not just in and out; there’s a little brain washing too.” I interrupted, “You mean more than we’re usually subject to?” He hissed, “Gregory, I’m serious here, “ and then he said something like shut up. “You know the Business Assistance Center? That’s not really for the outside world. Before you leave from your short and totally free sabbatical, you get a lesson in why Radford University exists and it ain’t to develop thinking, feeling, astute citizens. It’s to create good consumers. They convince you that the only purpose you serve on this campus is to teach people to want goods and services and to get out there, get a job and buy, buy, buy! If you mow the grass and you take a break, do it in public so that people can see that on a break you “do a dew” and eat crackers purchased from a nearby machine. The students will then know what to do on break. If you are a secretary, you should talk about your latest shopping trip when students are in your office. And professors, who have captive audiences for hours, need to push consumerism to the max. And you will be instructed by the Business Assistance Center until you agree completely. One of my best friends is still over there because he just can’t get with the program; he’s too hooked on Marx.” I began to say “You can’t be serious,” when a couple of uniformed guys came in and said: “Here he is, let’s get him back to SACS.”

Lowest Ratio!

"What was it, Russell," my colleague inquired almost as soon as I sat down to sip my tea in peace. "What was it, five years ago when the big buyout occurred? And weren't we told then that it would take two years, then later the administration altered that estimate to three years, to pay off our part of the deal? I thought after that we were going to hire back as many junior faculty as we could to get our teaching strength back up to normal. Was that about five years ago, or a lifetime?" I nodded; I thought that was about right--about five years ago, should take about three years to get our from under our financial obligation, then hire junior faculty like crazy so that our claim that our students had full-time teachers with terminal degrees would remain true. Before I could give voice to my assent, she continued. "That was I guess before our commitment to adjuncts, our commitment to nickel and dim(e)ing our educational responsibility to our students. That was before our commitment to building the largest administration we can. We sure can expand our pool of vice presidents; that doesn't take too much thought or planning. What does one of them cost, I mean, their salary, the salary of their support staff? That amount could place three to four junior faculty in the classroom. Instead the powers-that-be-running-on-empty-in-the-responsiveness-department hire a gazillion adjuncts who run in, spend their precious time, and then run on. I’m not blaming them; they are trying to make ends meet until they get a full-time position in which they can make a living and serve their profession. And the administration wonders why the morale has continued to erode year after year." She became quiet. I thought I ought to say something though I didn't know what. Over my shoulder I heard someone say: "Look on the bright side, with the announcement that Radford has welcomed 9128 students to campus this fall in the recent SCHEV report, they also reported that Radford was numero uno in one category--lowest ratio between administrators and students, 1 administrator or administrative staff member to every 3 students!" He stood up and began to shout "We're number one, we're number one!" My friend got up and left; I thought about all the people, now gone, with whom I had taught and sat silently.

Arafat’s One Condition

I heard from a friend that Mr. Arafat, in a lengthy phone conversation yesterday, told President Bush that he, as an individual, and the United States, as a country, has no business interferring in the struggle between the Israelis and the Palestinians. He did suggest a way for the United States not only to gain credibility in their dealings, but first-hand experience in the strife that plagues the Middle East. President Bush should call an end to the exile of the American Indians, just as Britain and the United States called an end to the diasporan life of the Jews after the Second World War. You see, hundreds of years ago all sorts of European Philistines flooded the North American Continent. They displaced the natives, that is, if they didn’t kill them outright, and eventually placed them on reservations, a nice name for enforced exile. Or, to adopt another chapter from Jewish history, the Europeans (playing the role of the the Babylonians) marched many tribes to strange locations where they were surrounded by an arrogant, wasteful culture. There goes that history repeating itself. Well, Arafat told Bush, in words resembling those of Moses, “Let those people go home!” For example, he instructed Bush to let the Cherokee return to North Carolina and the surrounding region. The present inhabitants would, of course, have to move into camps until suitable places could be found for them. However, there would be no hurry because the important task, the task of merit, to return the native people to the land that that Great Father of us all had given to them, would have been accomplished. There would be other consequences, For example, the TVA would have to remove their dams so that that the Cherokee burial grounds would once again rest above the valleys and twisting rivers. “Do this,” Arafat told Bush, “and in fifty years we will let you talk to us about our struggle. But,” he said with said with a lilt in his voice, “ if you do what I’ve bid you to do, our struggle may cease while we watch your country disentegrate as history, legend, religious claims, and people struggle for their rightful place.”
Bush hasn’t replied yet, but an anonymous staff member did report that the president of Mexico somehow found out about this conversation and phoned the President. When the foggy Bush answered the phone he heard a buoyant voice proclaim: “Welcome home, amigo!”

Fern Hill Group Still Singing In Its Chains

As I turned the corner in the hall down which one could reach the Fern Hill Meeting Room (FHMR or “Let’s go see the Farmer” as we like to say), I wondered if anybody would be there since, as all the speeches aimed at us at the beginning of the year seemed to indicate, we had stepped into paradise at Radford. I reached the room, opened the door, and strode into the room. The place was filled! The way people were chatting and laughing and hugging and joking, I thought I had stumbled into a Baptist Church. I walked through the group to get a sampling of the topics. One guy was talking about his FAR (faculty annual report). He stated: “You know that thing has always spooked me, along with this post-tenure review policy. Not so anymore, because after I read that report on how in the past several years we’ve received half what the average increase has been to state colleges and university and some of the people involved in soliciting funds, the funds we did receive, got big raises, I got a revelation. I figure that the more mediocre I paint myself in my FAR, the better the raise I’ll receive when one comes!” I, of course, cut in. “Wait a minute! You can’t blame them for not getting more funds because that’s a historical problem here at Radford; we’ve been underfunded for years, especially since we started as a women’s normal school.” The speaker shot me a glance. “Gregory, get a brain and then get a life. This is not a historical issue that I’ve laid out; it’s a problem about marshalling our best efforts to get heard. And I might add, we shouldn’t go to Richmond as beggars as we sometimes do. We need to go there with a clear understanding of our excellence. Each of the state’s colleges and universities have a niche and that niche ought to be fairly funded, but who wants to give to a beggar? “
I moved away to where another person was holding court. “You know that she didn’t want to go back to teaching. And what was the line she crossed over finally to get “reassigned” and what a euphimism that is! I wonder when we’re going to get a cogent explanation why the lever was pulled in the big office and she disappeared to the basement. Oh yeah, we were told she didn’t mesh; perhaps she exhibited the wrong kind of diversity, the kind that we don’t want. By the way, I’ve got reliable information that says she is not going back into teaching or administration for that matter. She’s going into comedy. I hear she’s using her whole reassignation as her routine.” Incredulously I suddenly asked: “Where did you hear this? What’s you reliable source?” He pulled a tape out of his pocket and waved it in my face. “This. This is a tape of her at the staff lounge at Virginia Tech trying out her stuff. It’s pretty funny quite frankly, but I just remember the line that she used over and over at just the right times; she would say: “Hey, I think that this is the right room; I think this is where I’m supposed to be, but at any moment I could be called from this place and reassigned! Heck, all of us could be called out of this room and be reassigned!” I mean the people would guffaw until they were gasping for breath. I guess it strikes a resonant chord in folks in today’s ‘jerk and fire’ world. I think the other line I remember just now went “you know at Radford it’s not lock and load, it’s load and lock by tomorrow! When I asked what would happen if I wasn’t out on time, what do you think the reply was? We know you’ll work with us on this project which will enhance the excellence of this regional university serving Southwest Virginia!” . . . She got great bursts of laughter with that one.”
I stopped him as I grabbed for the tape; I didn’t believe him for a moment. The tape, I was sure, was phony and he just used it to give credibility to his lies so he could stir up trouble. I turned and left the room to go get reliable information about Dr. Ferren’s departure and career plans but never could find anyone who would or could talk about it. I finally went back at my office to finish my lecture on the value of diversity in an educational framework.

A University Has Two Foci, Not One Focus

I sat in my favorite chair in the Fernhill Room; I glanced up from my book to realize once again that I remained the only person there. Yet as I looked back down I distinctly heard a statement being directed at me. “I’ve always thought that a quality university woos, works with, and benefits two groups. There are the students, of course, and there are the members of the faculty. Just as we attract the best quality student possible, we attempt to attract teachers who are the best in their fields. Just as we try to provide every possible means for our students to learn and excel within the boundaries of their abilities, so we support our faculty in every way possible.” He stopped and looked at me intensely. I felt he didn’t look at me, he looked into me. “Not!” he eventually blurted out. “I couldn’t go on with my analogy because the dissonance had grown so great in two statements. You see, my dense friend, that’s a major crisis in higher education now. Higher Ed has forgotten that professors have two obligations, not just one, not just to teach, but also to continue thinking and learning and parleying with the rest of their discipline in particular and the whole of human knowledge in general. They are to be valued for their hunger, their desire, their ability to evaluate and re-evaluate the different truth claims of our lives. It seems to me that not only has the appreciation for faculty evaporated but the support which allows them to maintain their drive and expertise has largely disappeared. Faculty when they are undervalued and undersupported either allow their gifts to be underused or a fair number transfer to oases where education, not training by “education production specialists who mass produce graduates” still flourishes.”
When he lapsed into a resigned silence, I weighed in. “You should have been in Faculty Senate at its first meeting. Warren Self, who is the Acting Vice President for Academic Affairs, though he was introduced as the VP at our “start the year” dinner, gave a fairly lengthy address in which he asserted that there are two groups which are the center of this institution--faculty and students. I think you might have an ally there.”
“I might,” he replied, “and I trust him, but I don’t trust the system here. You know you can say anything you want, but action either makes words accessory or drowns them out. If we still had the support system, or lack thereof, for students that we had several years ago, we would still have a consequential number of students dropping by the wayside. I think faculty deserve an analogous complement of programs which support their well-being and success. And if Warren Self can get this university to put its money where its mouth is, then he will have continued to give exemplary service to Radford. But if he can’t, I don’t necessarily fault him, I fault leadership that does not have the vision and courage to do the right thing rather than the expedient thing or the usual practice, you know, when you look to others to see what you should do rather than act on principles and trust that everyone will look to you.”
I looked away to reflect on the thoughts and sentiments of my companion and when I turned to reply, he had left quietly. Indeed, I wondered if he had been there at all except I saw some papers on the floor to the side of the chair where he had been sitting. I reached down and picked them up; they were his request for a leave of absence.


Synchronicity On Its Way


I was sitting in the Fern Hill Reading room minding my own business, reading WOMAN, by Natalie Angier, yadda yadda yadda, when Dr. Sophie ran in. She flopped down next to me and stuck a newspaper in my face. As I tried to get my infi-focals at the correct angle, she pulled the paper back and forth until I nodded. The headline read: “Radford Head Declares Equity Concerning Adjuncts On The Way!” I grabbed the paper and began to skim the article.

What I looked for was a series of assertions which detailed the steps necessary for bringing the adjunct faculty on this campus “up from virtual slavery”. I was looking for sentences like “realizing that the payment per course is unsatisfactory, the remuneration per course has been raised several hundred dollars,” or “as adjuncts were treated in the past, the new schedule of salary and benefits will be the equivalent of . . . ,” or “every effort will be made to connect adjuncts with other extra-curricular activities so that they, like their full-time counterparts, can invest themselves in the institution.” That is not what I read. The article told of a different equity on the horizon. Based on the information, or, in the favorite word of chief administrators, the “input,” which had come from the Office of Infinite Research and Interesting Conclusions, certain administrators and administrative staff would be either offered early retirement or laid off so that adjunct administrators could be hired in their place. This process would not be done haphazardly, the article went on, but would operate under one crucial criterion. Since certain administrative jobs just repeat the tasks done “below” it, that is, supposedly they evaluate, assess, and respond to reports and work done by faculty committees in order to work toward a new level of excellence, they have been deemed expendable. Anyone who has seen the responses to much of the personnel evaluations passed up the chain, chain, chain of command or the responses received from a program review or anyone who has noted the number of reports that are written in earnest every year by faculty or faculty committees at the request of some administrative section which they neatly summarize and bury knows that there’s plenty of padding in the old administrative Santa suit, the article asserted. You don’t need an eight-hour day to bury needless information or repeat conclusions. You might need a couple hours a day at most, so that’s what we will be giving people. And think of the savings! Right now these are yearly employees, but as adjuncts they will be hired when needed and let go when the task(s) is (are) done. Of course the task force, commissioned under the power and authority of the Chief Operating Officer Charged Hegemonistically In Clustering Ostentatious Organization (COOCHICOO), has yet to figure where the savings will be spent since Radford University usually just hires more “administrative faculty” to cater to the students’ growing extra-curricular needs and desires as they define them.

The article ended with a proposed supplement to the strategic plan with a tentative time-table for raising the percentage of adjunct administrators up to the percentage of adjunct faculty. I instinctively whipped the paper over and my eyes caught the paper’s moniker--THE LEEK, obviously a knock-off of the successful and popular satirical enterprise known as THE ONION. I shouted at Dr. Sophie: “This is all a ruse; why did you build me up, buttercup, just to let me down?


Doublespeak Dictionary

I came, I looked in, I was greeted with “So where have you been lately?” I walked all the way into the Fernhill Room and joined three faculty playing ‘Radford University Monopoly, you know the game that you get past ‘GO soak your head’, with a picture of Martin Hall on it, to get two hundred (200) empty promises. Oh, I didn’t ask to enter the game; I find it quite like the game of Monopoly Susan Black-Marx described in her Sociology Course entitled: SOCIAL REALITY: THE UNITED STATES AS LA-LA LAND. She claimed that certain persons and corporations own so much of the means of production that opportunity for the common person is non-existent or spectral. One day as I was strolling past her class, I overheard her screechy voice claiming: “It’s like starting to play Monopoly with twenty people and one person already owns everything on the board except Mediterranean Avenue. Everyone else is trying to get that piece of property while they lose more money every throw of the dice to the monopolist. They kill each other rather than confront the real villian.” I don’t know why, but after I heard that piece of lecture, I never had much of an appetite for Monopoly, especially a Monopoly game that reflected the Radford University Campus.

“What’s up,” I asked. “Gregory, you’re a man with words, a walking thesaurus,” Leonard Moore said as he pushed his diploma along the gameboard to Whitt Hall. He looked at Dr. Brandy Wine and chirped: “I’ll buy it,” and shoved fifty dollars her way. I interrupted: “What do you need in the way of words?” He cleared his throat and looked at me; his eyes unfocused. “I need help understanding the language of the administration; they don’t speak standard
English, you know. Their words don’t seem to mean what I mean by the same words. Can you help me?” “Give me an example of this phenomena and I’ll see what I can do.” “Well, we get a lot of memos that say the upper levels want our input on this or that issue,” he wrinkled his face, “but I never see any result come from my input. I thought I would at least see some hint or shadow of an idea I advance, and not just from me, but from a sizeable number of colleagues. I mean I go to these mass meetings, you know, touchy-feely input meetings, and nothing we input, takes.” Before I could answer, the clear leader in the game of Monopoly chimed in, “That’s easy. You send in your ideas and they put them in the trash. It’s not what you say that’s important; it’s how many people respond so that they can use that number in another report and claim that the faculty had some “input” into that decision. Of course, the trash can played an important part but there’s no place to report that. Shame!”

I was so shocked I was speechless. “What’s another phrase you need interpreted?” the new thesaurus on the block asked. Well, what about “I appreciated your candor!” (to be continued next week)



Confabulalia

I was so shocked I was speechless. “What’s another phrase you need interpreted?” the new thesaurus on the block asked. Well, what about “I appreciated your candor!”

“Oh, yes, that phrase is a precious piece of confabulalia or confoundalalia, as the textbooks label it. When you hear that phrase stream from the mouth of the powers-that-be, you can look deep into their eyes and see this message forming: “OH, SO THAT’S WHAT YOU THINK. I’VE NOT REALLY GIVEN YOU A CLUE TO MY LOGIC BUT NOW SINCE I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE UP TO I CAN CO-OPT YOU TO GET WHAT I WANT, THAT IS, BEAT YOU TO THE PUNCH, AND BE READY TO TRASH OR DISMANTLE YOUR ARGUMENT.” You see, they may pretend to show you their cards, but they always have the trump, several of them, up their sleeves. They’re in charge; they dole out the money the way they want, they propose the initiatives that they want, they work on the projects that they want. I mean, look at the Standard Operating Procedure around here; they hand you something to comment on, but the basic document, with which you probably have oodles of problems with, is not negotiable. It’s basically insulting, and they wonder why morale is bad and crumbling even as we speak. Next!”

“I’ve always wondered,” a shy female professor of communications piped up from the corner, “what they truly want when they ask one to be candid.”

Almost as if he took up where she left off, he piped back, “Well, that’s another easy one. When an administrator says that you are to be candid, that phrase should tell you that you are either being recorded and filmed so that your response may be played back later or edited to be played back. Edited, because they want you to say what they really know you intended to say. The presentation may be another one of those which tries to prove unmitigated faculty support FROM THE VERY BEGINNING, so that your orginal statement--”I have serious reservations, but the idea appears workable”--becomes --”The idea is workable.” Or, the presentation may be about how, in the midst of visionary leadership, certain malcontents still cause trouble. Then they play or show the segment in which you are the most vigorous and angry. In real estate it’s location, location, location; in spin, it’s context, context, context. Next!”

“I have to go to class, a third cohort said as he stood by the doorway, but I got a memo the other day and the memo said my report needed to be more precise. What does that really mean?”

“I respect your being to class on time so I’ll be brief. In short, you didn’t reach the right conclusions. You need to work on that report until you reach conclusions that accord with the position of the administration. And, be assured, if you are guided by your evidence and it never reaches a suitable set of conclusions, you will get that memo again and again. Now, there are times when something else is meant; they are almost finished with their report which runs exactly counter to the information you have, because they have their own way of allocating data to serve their purposes, and they don’t want your report out there to muddy the waters. They want to keep you in your study while they are out there creating a reality that fits their needs. Next!”



With His Self In Charge

During the first week of classes, I wandered into the Fernhill Meeting Room and found only a lone member sitting completely still. His lips were moving, which wasn’t unsual for Dr. Smug, as we called him, for he had so much gossip that it had to come out audience or not. I pulled a chair over in front of him and said: “What’s happening.” He squinted his eyes at me and asked: “Were you surprised Warren nabbed the VPAA slot?” “Not really, “ I replied, “but the competition was fierce; they brought in some really good candidates and I suppose he rose to the top.” “Yes, and it snows all Winter in Aruba!”
He examined me with obvious scorn. “Gregory, you are the weakest link. Why did we waste all that money on a search, as it was called, when everyone, absolutely everyone knew who had the position.” “Wait a minute,” I blurted, “I don’t like where this is going for some of my friends were on the committee and I’m sure they worked diligently as they surveyed the resumes and the actual candidates. “ “Look, Gregory, and I’ll try to make this as simple as possible so that you can understand, only one candidate had two significant middle names--”waiting in the wings” and “handpicked”. You can guess who. Listen, most dense dude, before the 2000-2001 academic year started . . . , well, even before that, rumblings had Warren Self coming back to the classroom to get away from the former VPAA who apparently was fired for bad hair or something; we’ve never been told. But he didn’t return, no he never returned. He had a vice presidency created for him. And here’s the kicker. So that we wouldn’t have to conduct a national search, or in other words, so the president could shove the chess pieces around as he pleased, Warren moved over at the same salary. Someone told me that the president made a big deal about this, as though Self would be making just above minimum wage. However, as anyone who watches the way this administration takes care of its own, the next, the very next meeting of the board, the new VP received a raise. Then the bad hair thing happened and who slid into that interim position before he could bend and shape any way he wanted the VPP&R? Not Big Bird! And then of course came the big search, while the president hardly ever put the word “interim” in his introductions of the acting VPAA. Throw that money around, head honchos, keep those faculty in committee,playing the game of selection.”
“Wait just one minute,” I shouted, “I know Warren Self and he is expertly qualified not only for the position but the position here at R.U. He has taught alongside us; he hears us as no one else. He really tries to mediate between what the administration wants or requires and what is reasonable. He could, better that anyone I know, speak for us to the powers that be. I think you have made a vital mistake; you have confused Warren, who does care about the academic purpose of this university, with those who just care about their domain and their agendas”
He seemed either quieted by my argument or miffed with my opinion for he leaped up, spun around, and headed for the door. But I heard him exclaim as he strode out of sight: “Jiminy Christmas, you fall for their line everytime.”

Academic Rigor With Us

I had gone to the “new” faculty reading room because I thought the Fellowship of Fern Hill had decided to check it out. Not a soul or a body was there, just a smiling picture of Justice Goldberg. I began to hold a conversation with him when in surged a jubilant colleague, Dr. Phoebe Dagmazeltof. “I don’t know if the Messiah has come or not, but the blessings have begun to pour out from the heavens.” I replied: “What? Is it snowing or something.” “No,” she shot back, “something much better than that, and besides, I was employing a metaphor, you foul smelling jug of a sow’s ear. I just came from a forum el presidente and his academic sidekick, you know the VPAA, held over in Cooke Hall. What a forum it was! He, well they, admitted that for a while Radford had admitted just about anyone, especially anyone from Northern Virginia that wanted to callously trash a small SW Virginia town or who smoked like a fool, at least two packs a day, right outside the entrance and exit doors of an academic building. So if you were breathing, from Northern Virginia, and chain smoked, you were accepted in a heartbeat and given a scholarship. However, to do that, you know, to get our numbers up and keep them up, they had to pressure the faculty to put a tire pump to their grades, to inflate them to bursting, and dumb down their courses at the same time. Oh, they admitted, the responsible administrators never sent out a memo in that regard, but they used all sorts of hidden persuaders. During any sort of department review, like the program review, the teachers who had higher “than normal” failure rates were encouraged to allow their students to be more successful, so that they would feel good about themselves and their “Radford Experience.” Some, though, were told, like that guy in English, that if they failed as many students the next term, they would suffer in their evaluations.
Well, enough of this negativity, the present powers-that-be said those days are over. In unison, literally, they said that since we have become so selective in our admissions, we can and should “smarten up” our courses and throw away the tire pumps. As they held their clasped hands high above their heads in a sign of triumph, they exclaimed: “Grade deflation rules!!!” All of us there sprung to our feet, to our leaders gave a whistle, and then flopped back in our chairs. Some cried hallelujah, others cried, still others stared at the roof as though they were staring into heaven. We were brought back to reality, though not much, when the main man encouraged us to get back to our offices and beef up our notes while we constructed new exams, lengthy, detailed essay exams. Well, I came straight here to spread the glad tidings that should be to all teaching faculty, that today, in Cook Hall, was born the salvation of this institution, the return to rigorous standards.”
As usual I was aghast, but not for long, because three more wise colleagues came in and asked if we had heard the news. We acknowledged we had. One of them continued as he said: “Frankly, we had gone to that meeting incensed at the erosion of academic rigor here at R.U., but after that surprising and energizing announcement, we have come to the library to share our mirth and to search for bold new reading lists.” Then as quickly as they came they went out a different way, but that didn’t matter. I went back to my office to add a pinch of data and a dash of insight to my notes before my next lecture.

Autocracy At Radford

I was walking across campus when I saw a remotely familiar figure, Dr. Catherine Roberts Brown, an Emeritus Professor of History. I hurried over to her, as she inspected Davis Hall and greeted her. Since she had retired in 1986, after thirty-three years of service, she was surprised that I recognized her. I told her that one never forgets one’s heroes; she had always brought her insights, forged during years of studying history, to bear on the national, local, and campus issues of the day. I remembered many times I had sat in the food laboratory in McGuffey Hall and listened to her analyses. She would carefully form her thoughts and then let the words tumble out effortlessly. Then, she would pause, her eyes twinkling, and say: “Now, help me refine my view.” All of us at the table, from those with advanced experience and rank to those of us just out of graduate school, would enter into a spirited debate. At the end of those debates, the only winner was openmindedness because of her commitment to the passionate quest for truth.

I invited her to the Fern Hill Room where she quizzed me on the group--its name, its purpose, its relevance to Radford University. I shared with her the ongoing discussions about the reasons cited in a recent survey for the poor faculty morale, that is, the lack of trust and confidence in the administrative leadership of the university rather than complaints about the caliber of students or the state of the profession and so on. I started to feel the ennui that accompanied my thoughts and feelings on this subject. To talk about morale usually created so much heat but very little fire, very little effect because the people with control over the funds didn’t care about listening and the faculty remained loosely organized and therefore powerless. She sensed my predicament and said: “Let me refine your view a bit, my young friend.”

She began slowly. “I came here a year after Dr. Martin became the president. He kept this college within narrow parameters; he never let control range far from him. If he liked you, for example, you received tenure within two to three years. If he wanted a new program, he spoke and everyone jumped. There was no discussion because you don’t reason with an autocrat. If he didn’t like you or any program, you were history.” She giggled briefly and then continued. “When he left, and his leaving was protracted and difficult, I know you recognized that Dedmon cared little for Martin, Dr. Dedmon, seemingly as a move to a new partnership between faculty and administration, guided the creation of an internal governance document that was to bring equity and cooperation to Radford. But you and I know that we, the faculty, scrupulously followed that guide while he did what he wanted. Ironically, one of the last public acts which he worked through the board, was the granting of tenure to someone in a manner not validated by internal governance procedures. Part of the fallout of that decision came in that banker’s attack on tenure, and, of course, his attack was not founded on his understanding of the value of tenure but on the mistaken use of tenure by Dedmon. This guy who’s in the big chair now, it seems to me from what I’ve heard through the phoneline, follows in what I call the grand tradition of Radford, at least the tradition of the last fifty years--autocracy. The leaders, as thy like to called, have what I would call a jaundiced or narrow view of leadership which goes like this--’I’ve got the marbles so I can play the games I want and in the way I want to. I’ll invite you to watch and I’ll even give you a couple of marbles out of my gazillion, and if you’re out of the game quickly, then I guess you’re not too skilled.’ You might as well get used to it, Russell, the presidency of Radford University either attracts or creates persons who think that leadership means they are the exclusive experts on ideas and implementation. Furthermore, they surround themselves with persons long on yes, yes, yes, punctuated by a stiff salute, and wall themselves off from those who critically evaluate and suggest alternatives. Russell, just get used to it.”


Radford At The Movies

Dr. Roberts had just left the room and I sat stunned by her remarks. The silence began to envelop me when I heard a small voice behind me and to the left. “You know Russell,” he began in that voice I knew so well. Apparently in the back corner, Jesus (not the Spanish pronunciation) Exey, a member of the drama faculty, had been sitting. “You know Russell, I was showing a film the other night in my class “DRAM 240: Cinema and the Search for Meaning” and it just struck me; this movie was the cinematic version of Dr. Robert’s view.” “So what was the movie,” I queried. “The Dark Crystal,” came his reply.

“Don’t you remember that in that movie the crystal was shattered by the one race which tended the kingdom. One of the beautiful people probably thought he could make the kingdom better if all the power were held by one and the rest just followed his leadership. In any case, the crystal’s split meant the harmony was destroyed and all the beings were split in two. The Skekses became the ruling class and thy ruled with power devoid of benevolence and creativity. The Mystics were exiled far away in a natural setting where they exhibited benevolence and creativity without power. I think the movie said that the Mystics went through the motions of their ancient ceremonies without remembering what they meant. And the Skekses tried to protect their hegemony while fighting one another for supreme leadership, especially when the emperor died, and sucking the life out of their subjects. Finally, a gelfling (one that was raised by the Mystics), a race that the Skeksies had tried to eradicate because an ancient prophecy claimed only a gelfling could heal the crystal and thus end the rule of the Skekses accepted the task of finding the missing shard or piece and replacing it in the Dark Crystal. As in every quest, he had to overcome innumerable challenges, but with the help of another gelfling, a female, he repaired the crystal at the last possible moment. Incredibly, the Skeksies and the Mystics rejoined, that is, melded together to form exquisite beings. Subsequently, the whole kingdom experienced the return to harmony and delight.”

“We’ve got the Skeksies over there in Martin and the Mystics in faculty offices all over campus. The Skeksies are continually jockeying for power which they will use, not for the well-being of the kingdom, but for the strengthening of their jaded kingdom. But here’s a question, my colleague; does that mean that we, the faculty are like the Mystics in that we carry on though we have lost the reason why we do what we do? That is, is the bad morale because we’ve lost our way, you know, several hundred people have lost their will and capacity to teach, or because what’s going on in our kingdom doesn’t really parallel the flick in every aspect? And, to push this analysis a bit further, who is the gelfling that can heal the crystal, the real purpose and destiny of this university? What has to happen for the Skeksies and the Mystics to come together? The movie spoke of a deadline, you know, when the three suns conjoined, and if the crystal was not healed, the Skeksies would rule for a long time if not forever. There’s so many connections between that movie and our situation, I get an eerie feeling. What’s our deadline, do you think?”

I looked at him in dismay, but I tell you, I didn’t say like that prophet of old (Isaiah): “Here am I, send me.” I merely squawked: “That’s real interesting.”


But Before“THE MYTH OF THE CAVE,” A Word From Our Sponsor

I had just straightened the chairs, picked up the few coffee cups on the floor, dropped them in the trash basket, and turned out the lights in the Fernhill reading room when Dr. Simone Birkenstuff rounded the corner. “Big news, buddy budbud, uh, I mean Dr. buddy budbud!” She segued to bursts of laughter. I flipped the lights back on and signaled for us to reenter the sacred space. She passed me as I calmly strolled toward a chair and planted herself on the table at the front of the room. “So what’s the story?” I asked as my mind flashed back to the movie “Lovers and Other Strangers”. I repeated myself as I came back to the present. “So what’s the story?”

“Here it is, Cosmic Doright.” I stopped her. “You know for someone who teaches in Political Science, you’re a freaky miss,” I observed. She replied: “Yeah, maybe, but that’s not interesting to me. Don’t interrupt me again if you know what’s good for you,” she squinted and pursed her lips, “you dirty rat, you killed my mothra! But anywho, the news. I’ve been told that a memo is being prepared as I speak, a memo which will ostensibly be from the VPAA,” she shifted to a whisper, “but really issues from the uppity-ups. . . .” I cut in with fear and trepidation and asked: “Who are the uppity-ups?” She steamed me with her glare. “The uppity-ups are the pres and his bosses, the board of visitation. Now let me get on with it! The uppity-ups, because of certain contracts R.U. has entered into must give more time and attention to our benefactors, uh, our corporate backers, you know our sponsors. Lately, we’ve gotten more and more businesses to support our educational, get that, Dr. Buddy budbud, our educational mission here. Like really, dude! The Pepsi deal put us in a new world--major bucks mean major attention. You know that corporate folk expect some bang for their buck, some budabing for their ringaling, some dividends for their investments. I think the new Student Union is to be called the Pepsi Student Center. If Pepsi had been more generous, there was talk that R.U. would have been renamed Pepsi’s University, but the thought of our university being labeled P.U. didn’t sit well with either the foundation or the alumni office. So the news? Next semester, Fall, 2002, we will lecture for 45 minutes and there will be five minutes of commercials, uh, I mean ‘societal supplements’. They will occur more or less halfway through the class. One corporate sponsor which has signed on is Sony and it promises to have big screen televisions installed in every classroom by the Fall. The instructor will see a red light blink on his console one minute before the break so that he can wind his way to a stopping point. In Spring, 2003, the break will increase to seven minutes and by the Fall of 2004, lectures will only have to be thirty-five minutes long. Merit raises will be granted to those professors who can tie their class material to the commercials. Not only that, students’ purchases will be charted and linked to their class schedules. Professors whose students buy products which are “Radford friendly” (or in case of the name change to P.U., “Pepsi-friendly”) will receive a big bonus at the end of the year, that is, gift certificates from the various companies. The winner of the grand prize, primarily based on our tie to Pepsi, gets to instruct Britney Spears in the course of his or her choice. Britney has already agreed to do a promotional video for Radford University; she will pose as a R.U. student and sing, to one of the melodies from the rock opera HAIR: “I’m a resident of the university of love, a resident of the university of love.” The camera will shift right behind her to a gentleman singing: “And I’m president of the university of love, president of . . . .” Then that grand prize winner, professor ematerialist, will be shown with innumerable students lifting their hands and swaying to the music. The camera will flash back to Britney, can of Pepsi descending from her pout lips to the level of her exposed breasts, and she’ll say: “Come join us at R.U. where the love of knowledge and the refreshment of Pepsi and the comfort of Fruit of the Loom and the support of Victoria Secret and the driving pleasure of a Peugeot 950 merge on the highway of life!”

Before I blacked out, I screamed: “Cut!” When I awoke in the emergency room I heard: “We’ll return to ‘The Yawn and the Recitative’ in just a moment but now a word from our sponsor.”

From Pizzazz In The Classroom To Pizza At Muse

“Russell, old pal, old buddy, old friend, old dude, how are you?” I thought I knew the voice that came from the doorway and turned to test my hypothesis. “Well bless my everloving soul, where have you been?” I chortled. There came Dr. George Stonant, formerly of the Department of Geology, across the room. “Where have you been? You disappeared, what, a couple of years ago?”

“Yeah, its been a couple of years. I discovered that all the anger I had for the so-called leadership around here was doing a number on my soul. I didn’t need that, you know, faculty members and students are NOT made for the university, the university is supposed to be made for the faculty and their students. That’s not the way it is, that’s just not the way it is here. Besides, I was gettin tired of the students, too. The more you coddle students, the more you weaken them; the more you challenge them, after, of course, you at first admit to the university students who really want an education rather than a vacation (in an aside he added, “though they do both end in ‘cation’ as one of my students pointed out”), the more you equip them for life with the BIG “L”.”

“So I left, quite, resigned and the cleft closed right behind me like I’d never been here even though I’d been here twenty, that’s right, twenty years. This place has gotten good at skirting true recognition. O yeah, they have that meal, for people with, for instance, fifteen years of service, but that’s sort of a shotgun approach. I really get choked up when they invite you to a generic recognition meal, give you a certificate, and hand you a savings bond. Last year a colleague who had taught here for thirty-four years left and she didn’t get as much as a note. We used to have retirement parties for people who left. Remember those shindigs? Not any more. They wave and call a meeting of department chairs to see who will grovel for the position that is now vacant. “

“But I don’t want to talk about that stuff. I’ve begun a new life. I left here and went to work for the place downtown, you know, the pizza place, “Palacio Pizza”? When I taught here, I went there all the time for lunch and when business slowed, I would go around the counter, after I washed my hands like a surgeon, of course, and help Sergio with the specialty pizzas. He liked me and said I had a knack. He said I really knew how to lay on the stuff so it provided maximum flavor. He told me that if I ever wanted to work for him, he’d hire me on the spot. I don’t know, I think it was the appreciation in his voice or his genuine compliments, but it could have been the song that was playing over his system, you know, R-E-S-P-E-C-T, by Aretha Franklin, but I liked his offer. That afternoon in one of my classes, a student lifted his hand and said: “Dr. Stonant, this book is so hard to read! Sometimes I have to read the chapter a couple of times and I still don’t get it, so I just close my book and just focus on MTV’s “Idiot Sketches for Idiots” and the keg party that’s been going on for a couple of hours. Can you break it down simpler? So I don’t have to read the text?” I left that class, walked to my department chair’s office, resigned, went downtown, and began working for Sergio.

“That’s when the story gets a bit weird. After working there for about six months, one of the administrators, I think it was the Director of Admissions, while at some conference, gets in a coversation with the D.O.A. of Williams College, I think, and that guy tells him that one of their trump cards, you know, one of the draws of that college is their snack bar. They draw kids to their college by hawking the food! They asked a bunch of students where the best pizza could be found and bought out the business so that the pizchef, pizza chef to you, would work on campus. So the Director of Admissions comes back here, pitches the idea, and wham, bam, thank you sam, they buy out Sergio. He takes his money and moves back to Italia and I come with the bargain back to the university.” He grabbed my shoulders as he burst into laughter. “Hold on, dude, here comes the kicker. I have a title--Associate Vice President for Student Nutritional Needs. I’m making, since I’m tied into the administration and I work year round, so to speak, fifteen thousand more buckeroonies than I would as a full professor.” His laughter shook his hands free and he struggled to regain control. When he finally looked me in the eyes again, though tears were streaming down his cheeks, he finished. “I’m still teaching! You see the secret of my pizza composition and my favorite lecture which I once presented in the classroom are tied together. It’s IMBRICATION! If you imbricate the pepperoni or the peppers or the banana peppers or whatever, it gives life to the pie, man. Students who eat one of my creations, are sticking principles of geology in their mouths. If it ain’t going to make it into their heads, their bellies are a good second.” He looked down at his watch and then back into my eyes. “Gotta go; o Danny boy, the pies, the pies are calling.” And he was gone.


University 100 Under Scruntiny

I walked into the Faculty Reading Room and sat down on the couch to read for a few minutes. As I opened my book, I felt myself being pushed up into the air, then I sunk down. After a couple of cycles, I bounded off and ran around behind the furniture. There under the couch was Dr. Hazel Smartz; she had her hands above her to push the cushions up, off her face. I asked her: “What are you doing under there?” She shot back: “I’m trying to hide from those University 100 students who want to do an interview with me. Since they have to do it, they do it without passion. Besides they ask the same questions every time and I’m sick of it. I ducked in here when I saw a couple of students who wanted me to talk to them.” “Don’t you want to help them finish their assignment? Don’t you want them to learn about their teachers and life on the college campus? “ I inquired.

“No. I don’t want them to study the college world; let that sort of activity wait for a semester project in sociology after they’ve learned some methodology and exhibited some discipline. I merely want them to BE university students. That U100 is a waste of time. You don’t get your dishes washed by studying about how dishes are washed; you wash the dishes.” “Yes, but,” I replied, “many of these kids are first generation college students without the benefit of parents who attended college.” “Russell, what’s missing in your deck? Lots of people were first generation Americans and they didn’t take a course in industry or hard work. They jumped into business, into work, into the thick of things and learned as they went. They became successful because of their initiative and energy. They knew you learned as you went if you became deeply involved. The course is a failure because it hovers over rather than enters in.”

I countered: “Do you have a better idea?” She quickly retorted: “I have a couple or three ideas. First, do whatever they do in U100 in a three-day program before the rest of the students come back to the campus, you know, an orientation program. That would get these students moved in, situated and positioned for the beginning of their college career. The different parts could be located all around the campus so that the students familiarized themselves with all the buildings. Second, if R.U. is so wedded to the idea of a class which introduces students to university life, then the course should have academic rigor while it teaches the skills essential for success on the campus. They should focus on listening skills, you know, what blocks listening and what aids good attention. If one truly listens, then one can be taught how to take better notes, how to ask questions, how to search outside the class for understanding. They should focus on reading skills so that all this whining about the difficulty of the texts or primary materials, will be transformed to diligence. And, the keystone of my approach is this; this course should practice these skills as the class studies a short, challenging book. Before I went to college I was sent MAN’S UNCONQUERABLE MIND, and told to read it. When I arrived I went to a professor’s house where he guided us in a discussion on that book. Stretch that out in U100; practice reading skills and listening skills. Help the students identify their strengths and weaknesses before they stumble. Come away with some knowledge and understanding. Third, do away with the whole program for it has no appreciable effect in the awareness or success of students. It’s like a cluster fly and all you can do to them is swat them.”

“I don’t think you really have a clue as to the impact of this program,” I said as two students came through the door. Dr. Smartz disappeared again. “Hey, Dr. Gregory,” one of them said, “we were looking for Dr. Smartz but you’ll do. You see, we have to do an interview for University 100, uh, of a professor. “ Before I could respond, one asked: “Existentially speaking, what role does angst play in your everyday preparation for the vocation of teaching on this campus as opposed to the amount created on another campus, say, the campus of an ivy league school and how does that impact not only your professional development and pedagogical goals, but also your well-being as you try to balance job with family, public with private concerns?”


Over The Fern Hill Yearly Revival

I decided to call an end-of-the-year meeting of the Fern Hill contingent, the regulars, to test their sagacity at the end of the academic year. Several folk had observations they wanted to share with the assembled congregation. Dr. Hearse
stood and informed us that Dean Bonnie Hurburt’s jersey, that is, position was being retired. “Yeah, the whole administrative community felt that she had just about perfected the job of Dean of Students and no one else could really take the position after her. So, they’re just going to retire it.” Of course, Dr. Spoilsport stood up and waved his hands in the air. “In your dreams, Hearse! Even though it would make sense to streamline the administration, since we have a Vice President for Student Mischief that deals with much of the same stuff, or could handle that stuff, and we could cut out the position of Dean, I mean, they’ll let faculty positions and staff positions go begging, no one in the line that stretches down from the Great Upstairs or up will be eliminated. Remember the quote that hangs on the placard in Martin Hall? THERE WILL BE NO EROSION OF ADMINISTRATIVE POSITIONS ON MY WATCH; I’M A BUILDER NOT A CUTTER!”

“Mr. Moderator. Dr. Gregory, sir?” I turned to face Dr. Fay Wraith, who always treated me with the utmost respect. “Yes, Dr. Fay, what’s your game?” She started and blurted out: “You know I’ve been a senator, a faculty senator for only one semester and I want to say . . .” I interrupted her and asked: “Do you know your not at a senate meeting now?” “Yes, I do, because there are no high-paid administrators ringing the room. And that’s what I wanted to comment on. I mean these dudes and dudettes ought to have their pay docked. I don’t think they are paid by the state to sit around for an hour or so as they watch a poor excuse for a soap opera. I mean, they’re not doing what they’re paid to do and I have to admit they bugged the living daylights out of me. I mean, if we need them to be there we can send them a memo and request their information or a report on this issue or that. But they pretend we really need them there. If I were the CEO or the CBO of this place, I would get a report of how they spend their time all day. If they’re hanging out at faculty senate meetings, they’re probably hanging out at all sorts of other entertainments all the time. And that especially goes for all the junior administrators raised on the Peter Principle. I mean, does anyone have a clue about this senate thing?” Dr. Herb Wasserkopf, awakened from his nap by Fay’s enthusiasm, hastily spoke up: “Peter Principle, I think his degree is in Communications or CPR or something like that, is one of my dearest friends and I take offense at your comments, er, and um, that is . . . ,” and drifted back to sleep.

I looked at my watch and asked if anyone else wanted the chance to speak. “I do,” came a confident voice to my left. “I am the morale director of the Fern Hill Group and I take great pleasure in announcing the founding not of a new college, but a new university in residential exile. Though the faculty of this school will be employed by Radford University, their hearts and souls will really work for GONZO UNIVERSITY. I was listening to my colleague up here, Dr. Gregory, earlier this afternoon, ” he nodded respectfully, “and he told his kids in World Religions that when Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of God, Jesus didn’t mean a specific earthly kingdom; Jesus meant anywhere that someone was doing acts of compassion for God. This Gonzo University is anywhere where and anytime when the ravages of the administration dissembling becomes forgotten. Gonzo University happens when faculty, and others for that matter, quit trying to speak to administrators who don’t listen, stop attending where time is wasted, and cease to support what saps the strength of the teaching mission of this present university. Gonzo University is faculty and students feasting together at the banquet of learning.”

I, once again, interrupted: “G. U. pique my interest, but time is up, as usual, so see you next year when we meet again. R.U. ready for summer?”



Graduation Blues

“Ah, the start of a new academic year lightens my step,” I said as I rounded the corner, saw the entrance to the Fernhill Room, and sliced through the door. As usual I entered “in medias res” and heard: “You kidding. I wouldn’t have attended graduation for anything. First, of course, the George Allen thing. How many politicians have we invited in the last several years? I can’t remember, and I’m not including the December commencement, that’s a humane ceremony, well, let me start again. I can’t remember the last speaker at graduation that hasn’t been a politician. I find they are patently uninspiring or they are full of Bull Durham, so to speak. And this guy, Allen, to say the least, was not the friend of higher education. So we invite him to campus for the great brou-ha-ha and give him an honorary doctorate. I think we should have given him a bill for all the funds he robbed from us. I guess someone is making a list right now of all the political foes of Radford, specifically, and higher education, in general, so we can invite them one by one to speak at commencement, listen to their vacuous or innocuous remarks, either is a waste of my time, and hand them a doctorate for being ornery. Here’s your ornery doctor, Senator, now go back to the nation’s capital and do to the whole country what you did to our state!”

“Come on, Bob, lighten up. You know why he received that honor; it’s payback time. He put people on the board and the higher-ups have smoozed with him so he deserves a pat on the back. Don’t you know how the higher primates groom each other when they determine the alpha male? Besides, the local leadership believes that if they bring enough Muhammeds to the mountain, so to speak, they’re just going to love the place and all of a sudden get generous, especially when their loyalty belongs to the flagship institutions. Besides, graduation is not for you, that is, not for the faculty, it’s for the students!”

A rumbling, hoarse voice shot from the corner of the room. “Graduation is as much for faculty as for students, though this administration ignores faculty every chance they get. We have a stake in our students accomplishments and we share that day with the graduates as we both look toward the future irregardless of our differing status. I did not go this year, nor will I go again until some genuine changes occur. I want us to obtain a speaker with rich experience; someone who can challenge and move us whether we agree or disagree. I hate to be so crass, but I’m tired of yo-yos prancing in here and being greeted like they are big heroes. I want us to practice some decorum. I am in the College of Arts and Sciences and by the end of our ceremony, I would say sixty to seventy percent of the students have waltzed off the stage, met their parents in the aisle, and left. At the least that is rude and at the most that behavior is the height of narcissism. I sit in the sun to watch the young men and women receive a symbol of their accomplishment; they deserve my respect and attention. But the whole thing now, it’s general shallowness and indirection offends me. I say do it with pomp and circumstance or give it up. If we have to have graduations all day in the Dedmon Center so the communal aspect of the ceremony is underscored, so be it. Otherwise, just set up a photo opportunity with the president and the respective dean in Heth ballroom so we’re more like a factory, and crank out the newest model of “diploma bearing persons.” He snorted and grew silent.

I surveyed the room, not knowing what to say and chimed: “Great to see all of you; let’s have a great year. I think this is going to be the best year ever!” I don’t know why, but a palpable groan filled the room.


Let Them Eat Crow

“Your semester started okay,” I asked Dr. Sandra Kaminski as she slid into a chair next to me. I was sitting in a small circle of colleagues as I ate my lunch. “Great, just great,” she responded enthusiastically. She grew suddenly pensive, though. “However I feel as though something is missing, like one of my limbs has been amputated, you know, sawed off by a leering doctor pouring equal amounts of whiskey on my bleeding stump and down his throat.” My colleague across from me, Dr. Sander Van Bostwick, screwed up his face and glared at her over his glasses. “What a horrible image! Why would you feel like that? I’m a bit lost because you said the semester began great, and I didn’t think you were being ironic or sarcastic, but then you began talking about amputation!”

“The dinner, to put it in a couple of words, you know the dinner we’ve had for quite a few years where the faculty and staff come together and reunite for another year of teaching and learning.” Her words came like an alarm to Dr. Bill Furtive, who almost asleep, sprang to attention and rapidly spoke. “Look, we all know what is coming down the ole pikester, that is, cuts and more cuts and the president did the right thing to start as early as possible cutting out the fat. I think it was a good decision, a symbolic decision, and the right decision.” He crossed his arms to signal that God’s honest truth had been revealed not at Sinai but right in the Fernhill Room, right at that moment.

“The picnic wasn’t cut, “ Sandra objected. Bill interrupted and added: “Before the Governor’s speech, didn’t know the enormity of the problem, or the shortfall so the president acted at the point he knew more of the facts.” Sandra nodded. She began again: “Well, I think you are right on one point; it was a symbolic decision, but in other ways I think you are Charley Brown who just continues to trust that Lucy will hold the football still on the ground until he kicks it. The way I see it is this, the picnic is the brainchild of the present administration so it stays no matter what the budget deal is. It is public and puts on a good show for kids and parents. The dinner costs some money, I grant you, but where it comes from is not from budget funds that the state will sweep back, or, more accurately, not distribute to us. That dinner is a holdover from the past, a legacy from a previous administration, and so the present administration feels no loyalty to it. And here’s the true rub. Let’s say it did cost a great deal and it was prudent to trim most of its expense. Did the whole gathering have to be scrapped? Why not open the dining rooms in Heth and have the faculty and staff gather for drinks and conversation or light snacks and soft drinks? The meal is lovely, but the reconnecting, the camaraderie is the heart and the soul of the event! No, it was canceled, though I’ve heard, the president gathered his special crew at his house on that very night. No doubt faculty gathered at houses all around the New River Valley, as I did; I skipped from party to party, but that’s not the point. This cancellation was another time when the faculty was shunned, given the short end of the stick, served crow. In other words, this was business as usual for this administration. They seemed to consider how in a time when faculty morale, and some of my sources say I should include the morale of the staff, was already deplorable and deepened by the budget crisis, how could they give faculty another sign that they are an insignificant part of this university.”

She stopped for breath and Dr. Furtive shoved himself to his feet, stared angrily down his nose at her, and pulled both fists to his chest so that two thuds sounded one after another: “You are patently wrong; there is no such message being given the faculty. When you have to cut money, you cut money and that’s that.” I turned to look at Sandra and agreed: “Sandra, it was just a meal and you yourself said the year started great.”

She looked at Furtive first and then at me. “I think I hear Lucy calling you two. She’s telling you that she’s got the ball down and this time she’s not going to pull it away. I guess you two ought to get over there.”


What Does The Faculty Know?

I had tried for the last hour to read one tiny chapter in a novel for my class, “RELN 498: Novels that ought to be in the Old Testament,” but sleep kept getting the upper hand. Finally, I leaned my head backward towards the wall until it was stationary and let sleep overcome me. In my mind, I had just come to rest in the bottom of my sleep cycle when Bill Scott, a colleague with a double appointment, in political science and dance, shook me back to consciousness. “Uh, wha, wha, what’s going on?” Since I was in the deep valley of sleep, where there are no images, no shadows, no dreams, I didn’t have to shift from sub- to full-reality, I thought. He looked at me as he handed me a handkerchief and pointed at the corner of my mouth where I could feel a stream of saliva about to drop to the floor and set off the alarm in this inner sanctum. He pointed over his shoulder and said: “You’ve got to handle this, bud. You’re the one with patience and tact.” I stood up and moved around him to see what was the matter, that is, why all the clatter at the front of the room.

At the front of the room, firmly rooted in one position, his hands seemingly hooked to his hips, his jacket lying over his right wrist, his shoulders pulled back, though thrust forward from time to time to punctuate his points, and his neck crooked so that he looked down at a group of faculty staring up at him, their mouths agape, stood a stranger. His head swept back and forth so that none of his captives escaped his glance for more that a few seconds. “I am so fed up with your inane opinions printed in the Tartan about all sorts of subjects about which you know nothing! You self-righteous, opinionated passel of malcontents. Why don’t you get out of this room and do something valuable and quit sharing your Fernhell and damnation message.”

I made my way to the front and stood directly behind the row of friends he attacked so vociferously. His head rose and his eyes latched on to me like a raptor on its prey. “Who are you?” I heard myself ask. “I’m the recently appointed First Associate Assistant Vice President of Planning, Research, Student Night Life and Financial Affairs in matters costing less than one hundred dollars, presently on loan to the Office of Matricular Affairs, Community Relations and Marginal Students.” I asked a second question: “When were you hired in this time of moratoriums?” He quickly rattled off his reply: “It was a confidential search done very quickly, which was very workable for I already worked here at Radford, the Office of Futile Number Crunching. Didn’t have to have a national search for I came over for the same salary, for a week, until the Board met and increased my salary commensurate with my innovative leadership, my creative thinking, my noticeable diligence, my overwhelming competence, my unfettered vision and my incredible loyalty. The president felt that the whole team was not yet assembled which could lead the university through these difficult times in which we find ourselves. With me, and perhaps a couple of others, maybe ten more, but it could be two dozen, on board, we’re set.”

“How long have you been at Radford?” “Five months,” came the reply.
“Do you know how many years in education , at Radford University, these gentle folk before you have?” I continued. Looking down and assessing their years in relation to mine, I answered my own question. “They’ve a combined one hundred and twenty or so years. Maybe their opinions are not what you want to hear, or to reckon with, for it challenges your view of the Radford U. world, and maybe, they start far afield, but if you truly listen, and enter into genuine discourse, their training and experience leads to some pretty keen observations about this place, observations that deserve more than passing consideration.” I paused and looked deeply into his eyes. I have just one more question for you. “Isn’t your coffee break about over?” He looked down at his watch, then back at me. “How did you know,” were his last words before he turned and hurried toward the door.

Chapter 4: The New Hope

D. Spencer Rednick sat frozen in his chair and let his eyes shift to a polite glaze as I began: “A long, long time ago, in a place far, far away . . . .” He cut in and moaned. “Why are you quoting from Star Wars?” I stared him down and replied: “Look, “D” for Dude, that’s the language of myth and I promised you a myth. If you’ll suspend a little of your disbelief half as long as I have to every day when I read memos from Mt. Martinhall, I’ll get on with the story.” But he didn’t suspend anything except his pants, for he spoke again. “Are you talking about the Greek period in this story, so around the sixth or seventh century B.C.” I exploded: “You mean B.J.C.? Before Jiminy Christmas? Goodness, man, this is a myth not history; this is rooted in imagination not information. Myth concerns the patterns which radiate through human life so that to know the myths, as many as possible, means you witness the possibilities, both benevolent and malevolent, of living. Once again, this is not a history lesson or a sociological study; this is a myth. Myths are best when told and I am going to continue right now.” I stopped and waited for his implicit permission which he granted with a grunt, a stomp of his heel, and a shrug of his shoulders.
“We’re long ago and far away when we encounter this small group engaged in a heated discussion. Lo and behold it’s a mixed group, some farmers, some merchants, some politicos, and some vagabonds. There’s even a couple of women, one fresh from the field and the other on her way to market. In the center is a man who kneads the air with his thick hands as though he is trying to grasp something, something which cannot be held. The woman on her way to market has put down her basket as the man speaks and when he finishes, she kicks a rock, glares at him, and claims that the idea of a rock is an idea, but a rock is a rock is a rock.” I couldn’t resist, though D. Spencer was intently listening, and added: “And she pulled out a small lump of bread from her pocket and threw it down next to the rock. She looked into the man’s eyes and said: “Rock and Roll!”” D. Spencer’s eyes narrowed and he looked away. Before he could speak, I began again.
“These folks met frequently to consider the mundane and the magnificent for they saw a grand connection. They agreed and they disagreed; they forged alliances during arguments but the alliances shifted as the arguments ran on. These were people of great creativity, immense wit, overwhelming passion, impressive intellect, and majestic compassion. Each of them defied the conventions of the day though they all fit within the framework of the society as contributing citizens. One, a farmer, spoke about the movements of the stars by means of poetry. Another, wife and mother to a large family, developed a system of disputation where consistent, reasonable thought could be clearly separated from specious, prejudicial justifications. Their meeting times and the number present varied, but they generated a fair amount of delineated knowledge and subtle wisdom.”
“Soon, young folks, we would label them adolescents, joined on the outside of this lively encounter and listened. Though, as I have said, there was variation in the central group, the youths were always there. Some eventually spoke up and a few became full participants in the confabulation. What an idyllic time! Hard work, the matters of daily life, and continuous engaged dialectic.”
D. Spencer rolled his head. “Get the dude some Coke!” Immediately the room echoed with “we don’t have Coke, Peepsi, no Coke, Peepsi” and other voices chimed in “cheeseburger, cheeps, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeps, Peepsi!”
I waved my arms until the noise abated and continued: “That’s when the first two threats occurred, one seemingly benign, that they should find a place where they could meet regularly, and the other a frontal assault, that is, some wanted to summarize and codify their personal perspectives.” D. Spencer sat up and leaned forward as if ready to receive a secret password. I tilted toward him and whispered, “it was the beginning of sophistry.” (to be continued)


THE CLOSER WE ARE TO HOME THE FARTHER AWAY WE ARE

“Sophistry? I believe you’ve lost me there,” D. Spencer said as he straightened and shined his name tag. “It seems to have something to do with summarizing their views which seems to me to be a perfectly acceptable, in fact a perfectly reasonable activity.” “And I quite agree,” I added quickly, “but it has to do with what you do with that summary, how you treat it. Let’s just say that one of these teachers, when he considered the length and breadth of his knowledge,what he had gleaned on his own and what he had developed during discussions with his students, he formed a neat package of ideas. He, of course, was not the only one, all the others scrutinized from time to time where they stood, but none, except this one, felt that they had finished the task of learning; they realized their conclusions were one step along the way toward a truth which would ever elude them. Yet this one truly believed that he had finished his journey for his knowledge, to him, was so final, so comprehensive, so sophisticated, thus the name “sophist” given to him by the other teachers first in jest until he became quite offended by their suggestion that his knowledge remained incomplete. Later, the term became the description of those lost to knowledge for they taught themselves and not truth. The sophist soon tired of the others and struck off on his own. He became quite wealthy selling his brand of orthognosis, or correct knowledge, to sons of the wealthy who wanted certainty and status.”
“But you said there was another threat. What was that? Something to do with finding a place?” “Exacto knife, D. Spencer! They had always worked their various professions and wandered about, when they could, so that learning was woven into their lives. They begin to realize with the number of people who now sought them out, they could devote all their time to teaching for the students expressed their willingness to pay for their attention. And, as one said, since we have temples in which you find the gods attended by priests and we have shrines where you can receive an oracle from the prophet, we should have a sanctorium which houses the quest for the truth and its application. Such a triumphant moment!
Who would have considered the consequences, that learning would become something almost set apart and separated from life or experience. To add insult to injury, when they built the simple structure, they included on one corner a tower to symbolize the eternal search for what lies beyond and used ivory to inscribe their motto at the very top. In later years, detractors, those that viewed what they taught as so much wasted breath, called their school, an “ivory tower” and claimed it had little to do with the real world.”
D. Spencer raised his hand like a schoolboy and closed his fist except for his index finger. “You’re excused. Will you be coming back,” I inquired.
“Oh I’ll be back at the ivory tower as soon as I visit the porcelain throne,” was his reply and he scurried out the door. (to be continued)


THE GREAT DIVORCE APPROACHES

D. Spencer settled back into his chair and then abruptly stood up. “I want to go to the couch and get comfy if you’re going to continue your story.” So all of us who remained in the Fernhill Room followed him and waited while he fluffed up the pillows and made a a nest. “May I continue now?” He nodded and I rehashed. “The teachers, if you remember, have shifted teaching from their avocation to their vocation as they have refined their knowledge and settled down at an academy, as they called it. Some of them, though, have become arrogant in their knowledge, sophisticated beyond their colleagues they would maintain, and moved away where the money is. Most, though, have stayed behind.” “I remember all that,” D. Spencer chimed in.
“Well, it would seem that change comes in two’s, because two alterations soon affected the school, that is, besides the increasing number of students who came to study. In fact, the burgeoning of the student body, led to the first change. In the past,they allowed the students to select any teacher and any subject that they desired so that some of the faculty (as they were called because they seemed to consider issues with all their critical faculties--thoughts, feeling, intuition, bodily sensations) began to teach huge numbers and others oversaw much fewer students. As the various teachers conversed in their daily convocation, they decided to limit the number of students in any gathering or class because they knew learning became deeper as the involvement of the student increased. Besides, smaller groups of people could practice the method of pedagogy championed by their foremost teacher, Grandios the Lesser, and his perpetual student, Cratic the Unperturbed. If you strolled down the hallway, more times than not you would hear Cratic the Unperturbed defending his position. The eventual response by Grandios the Lesser would be: “So, Cratic, what would the benefit be of such a perspective, “ or “So, Cratic, what would be the next step in the creation of such a government?” D. Spencer cut in excitedly. “Is this the origin of the Socratic method?” “Bingo, D. Spencer, I think you’ve got it, by George, yes, you got it! To honor those legendary exchanges, that give and take became the preferred method of instruction as they spread the students evenly among the teachers and the classes.
“And the second change, though I don’t mean to rush you, “ D. Spencer offered apologetically. I immediately replied: “Do you know the story of Durer’s ‘Praying Hands’ engraving?” D. Spencer seemed transported to another place and time. “Wait, wait, I know this; my mother told me the story, believe it or not. I think Durer came to study at some art school or colony and he roomed with an older man. Durer’s roommate realized that one of them needed to work so that the other could study full-time. He volunteered to work first and study later. Several years rolled by and when Durer finished, he told his roommate he was prepared to take his turn. The roommate lifted his hands and showed what the years of hard labor had done to his hands, made them rough and stiff. Then he told Durer that his chance to engrave had passed but even so he was happy; his roommate, Durer, had matured into a great artist. Well, that night, when Durer saw his friend praying, he thought he had never seen more beautiful hands. One of his most famous engravings features those hands.” D. Spencer looked into each person’s face and added: “And I bet all of you have seen, if you know the print made from that engraving, the beauty of those hands and overlooked the scarred fingers and broken fingernails.” Then D. Spencer abruptly stopped. “What in the dickens does Durer have to do with that school?” I laughed. “Well, or should I say voila’? A similar complementary relation sprang up for the good of the school or academy, it was maintained, a shift that would eventually change the school fundamentally.” (to be continued)


THE TURTLE SHELL SAYS: “LET ME WAG MY TAIL IN THE MUD!”

In a rather short time, the school succeeded in every way. Students flooded in, additional teachers, preceded by their reputations as challenging instructors, streamed in, and new buildings sprang up to house the ongoing adventure of education. Yet, even with all the success, in fact one could say because of all the success, the whole endeavor began to bog down; the mechanics of running a school began to overload the teachers. At the end of a particularly troublesome week, when students were to shift to another complement of subjects but changeover led to frustration and fisticuffs, all the instructors sat down to reason together.
“Devolution, that’s what we’re experiencing, an example of melodramatic entropic convolution is what I would call it, “ proclaimed Melos of Physiques. “It was good while it lasted but the whole shebangarama is spiraling down.” A voice from the back of the room, a firm, deep, assuring voice boomed: “Now, Melos, don’t be so full of doom. You’re projecting your fears on to a situation which is indeed troubling, for we have seen more and more examples of the works getting fouled up, or should that be ‘examples of which fouled up the works are getting?’ Oh, never mind. Back to the point, aren’t you reading yourself into the situation rather that examining the situation for a possible solution? I’ve been giving this quite a bit of thought and I have a proposal. I think that two or three of us who want to take a brief respite from pedagogy could take charge of the mechanics of the program. We could determine the best way to direct the flow so that the rest of you could get back to what you love and leave the administration of the program to us. We would be invisible, for our task would be to take a burden off your shoulders and to remove untoward stress from your lives.”
D. Spencer seemed to awaken from his trance. “I see, yes, I see where that story about Durer fits in. That gentleman, and he seems a wise, respected person, will be “the old man,” so to speak.” “Very good, D. Spencer, very good,” someone behind him said. I concurred: “Yes, D. Spencer, that’s exactly right. Cleanthes of Pompeii indeed deserved the respect and trust of his colleagues for he had taught since the school began; his expertise was geography. Before that he had been a man of the seas and had amassed a fortune which he donated to the school when it moved to its present site. He enlisted his friend Aristophanes the Wise to assist him. Cleanthes said: “I will recruit students so that the number remains consistent, Aristophanes can direct the scheduling of the courses and the appropriate class space. If anyone else could help, then we could enlist that person’s help to oversee the financial matters.” A recent addition to the academy, a person who had taught only briefly, Dedmoneas from Mars Hill, volunteered. Cleanthes smiled, spread his hands and swept his head back and forth to view his assembled associates. “Now we three will work to make your life easier so you can focus exclusively on your teaching. Whatever you need, tell us; whenever there is a problem, consult with us. Our singular task is to clear the way for you to engage your students and for your students to receive the purest experience possible. We are your servants and the servants of the truth.”
The Fernhill Room was completely silent until someone, hidden in the corner until that very moment sighed, “What a paradise! What a paradise lost!” (to be continued)


The CAD System Settles In

I looked up, surveyed the room and asked: “Who said that the ancient academy became a paradise when the three teachers took over the administration of the school?” Then I waited. Dr. Herbert Burly, raised his hand. “Why did you say that?” He heard the edge in my question so he defended himself. “Well, I just thought that the teachers could focus on their vocation, their gift of imparting knowledge and wisdom if they didn’t have to deal with the nitty-gritty, the mundane, or the commonplace.”
“I think that’s a perennial misunderstanding, that paradise is freedom from the everyday tasks and freedom for the exceptional or the unusual or our “true calling”. Paradise is the marriage of the two and the realization that the two become one, that is, are one. A master is a person who can attend to washing dishes and creating a manufacturing plan or register students, attend to budgetary matters, and instruct students about the significance of imbrication. Although that original separation of duties sounded like a good idea, that, let’s call it a divorce, that divorce actually began the long decline of education. When the same individuals don’t manage and teach, then the sense of the whole endeavor is lost. A necessary balance disappears, a balance between what the task is and how it is accomplished. When the CAD system, so named because of these “pioneers” (Cleanthes, Aristophanes, and Dedmoneas) as they were called by their successors, was put in place, they made decisions that they said didn’t impact the educational process, but they were absolutely wrong. Remember, the medium and the message are linked. Besides, very soon the institutional needs eclipsed the educational needs and when decisions were made as to whether the school should grow or build new quarters or change the curriculum to attract more students so that they could grow even larger and build new and glorious structures, the instructors were overlooked, for what did they know? A class system grew up which favored those who controlled the institution and denigrated the heart and soul of the academy. So eventually the original group who started the academy and for whom the academy was created, the teachers who had attracted the attention of students, found themselves subjugated by a system, the CAD system which refused to allow the critical analysis which constantly fueled the courses in the academy to be focused on their leadership.”
Dr. Burley interrupted: “Couldn’t the teachers just quit and go back to their former occupations or break away and start another school.” “Great point, Herb. Some didn’t do anything because they still trusted these supervisors to finally do the right thing and others loved to whine. But most knew that their well-being, primarily their livelihoods, also rested in the domain of the higher-ups. They had gone from free, self-sufficient workers to teachers to indentured servants. So, Herb, what we finally had, and have, is paradise lost.”
D. Spencer, who had attentively listened for the duration, now checked his watch. “This has been all very interesting, but didn’t you say it was a myth. Well, I don’t take myths very seriously, certainly not as seriously as I consider facts and data.” Dr. Frieda Gerlacker, who had been sitting directly behind D. Spencer watched him stand and head toward the door, then she pointedly said: “See you later, Huck, and make sure you tell Moses hello next time you see him.” All of us simultaneously replied: “Huh?” (to be continued one more time)