Meeting Madness

Quick question first: is anyone else having an issue with blogger where you'll hit publish, and it will say it's published, and then you hit view blog and what you thought was published wasn't? So you do it again, and it's still not? And then a couple of tries later, it is?



I'm on this committee I hate. I hate it because it's basically a rubber stamp committee. We're supposed to review stuff, but any time we dare to really question something, the deanling in charge gets defensive and cranky.

Recently, for example, we were reviewing a change for the NWU catalog.

There was the change, and then a short note at the bottom explaining the logic behind the change, and that logic had to do with making the information clearer.

Okay.

Faculty #1: I think it's confusing, it sounds like X, but it's supposed to be Y.

Faculty #2: No, I think it's actually supposed to be X.

Faculty #3: Really? Because I thought Y.

Faculty #1: The note says it's Y. But in the catalog, that note won't be there, so they should change it to clarify.

Deanling: It's not confusing to the people who need the information.

Faculty #1: I think the fact that three faculty members express confusion demonstrates that it's confusing, and I don't think students will be better readers of this information.

Deanling: It's not confusing.

What I wanted to say, but did not: Either listen when we say something needs clarification, or we can just give you the rubber stamp and go back to our offices where we can actually do meaningful work.

Endnote: the deanling did finally agree to suggest to the writer that it wasn't quite clear, and to pass along the committee's recommendation for making it clearer. Basically, I have a feeling this means that the deanling will say that the faculty were fussing about this but that zie doesn't think it's worth changing.