Third Hand

On effbee, one of my colleagues posted a link to a student blog where a student at NWU says she was sexually harassed by a male prof at NWU, a prof who teaches in her major; she says she reported it a trusted professor who reported it to the department chair, who had a chat with said prof.  And said prof made it about his sad situation.

So this is, at best, third hand information.  What does one do?

Not my department?  Not my monkeys, not my circus?

Or is there still some responsibility?

I emailed the campus Title IX officer/legal eagle with the link and asked.  They've contacted me and are aware of the situation and reaching out to the student.  The fact that they're reaching out now makes me think they heard it from either effbee or someone who saw it on effbee or me...  and it seems like one of the campus publicity and marketing folks contacted them;   I'm guessing one of the people who's responsible for monitoring those web search things that aggregate anything and everything that mentions specific words you target.  Good on them!

And now the student has filed a more official report.  Good for her!

***

I think what I find frustrating at this point, separate from being pissed off at that stupid professor hanging out at a student bar bugging young women (bugging any women is inappropriate), is that the female faculty who are responding feel ineffectual and seem to actually BE ineffectual.

It reminds me of the sexual harasser who was grad program chair in my graduate department; reportedly, numerous women talked to a female professor (untenured), who supposedly told them that they needed to talk to the department chair.  But everyone was too afraid.  (Including me.)  It felt like it would be the end of any graduate funding, any support from any of the male faculty (who we all felt had to already be aware of the grad director's behavior, since he did it at every gathering where there were faculty and grad students).

And so, nothing happened.  For years.

The woman whose post I originally saw asked in general if other colleges have policies, seemingly unaware of ours.  Then someone posted ours (which I went and read), which covers the situation reasonably well.  Then someone posted more about the current policy, and how it didn't seem to actually work, given what had happened.

But none of them said, hey, I'm reaching out to our Title IX person.  (And I didn't post on the threads at all, just reached out to the Title IX person.)  And they all KNOW the Title IX person.

Straw Men

I'm tired of being set up as a straw man.

No, I've been here for 15+ years, and I don't think I've ever known anyone who thought grammar drills and worksheets were great ways to teach writing (here or anywhere else).  In fact, shortly after I got here, the department voted to discontinue a grammar test that we were all supposed to give as part of the final for whatever writing course we were teaching.  When we discussed it, no one could even remember how we'd come to have it as a requirement; it had just been left there so long.  And, of course, no one taught to it, so far as I ever heard.  And most of us made it count minimally for the final grade because we didn't think it mattered. 

No, I've never met a Shakespearean scholar who didn't think about staging issues and recognize that Shakespeare wrote plays to be enacted in a theatrical space.  That's not to say we don't find other aspects of the plays interesting, but I've never seen the denial the theater folks attribute to us lit folks.  (Of course, actors and other theater focused folks have lots to teach all of us about acting and Shakespeare.  It's just that I don't know any Shakespeareans who think that isn't true.)


Maybe it's just the time of the semester, but dang...

So busy, and so many things happening that require attention.  I feel like I'm juggling very fragile glassware, and it's going to start crashing up there and falling as very sharp shards all over my upturned face and my desperately moving arms and hands.

I'm so tired of the crappy rumors people spread when they're really clueless.  But you can't answer the rumors because the actual issue is confidential (and you're hearing them third or fourth hand).

That Went Fast

The past week just blew by.

I got and graded a big stack of papers, and some small stacks (journals, rewrites).

I've been to endless meetings (well, it feels like they're endless, even if they're good meetings).  And student conferences; I've met with every student in my writing class at least once since 8am on Thursday.

I spent most of the weekend in grading jail.  Except I went to a concert that my violin teacher was playing in.  Way good!

Today, I don't teach, so I slept in, and am about to practice, and then start to grade a big stack of papers.  Then, around noon, I'll go to campus for a meeting and then conferences with students.

The stack of papers I turned back in my Shakespeare class have led to some worried students wanting conferences.  And my writing students are working on a paper which they'll do peer revision work on tomorrow in class.  This is a hard assignment, and I think most of them are on track (since I've talked to them all in conference, I have a pretty good idea where they were).  But several want more feedback before peer revision.

Violin is especially fun right now.  I'm about to work on "The Two Grenadiers," a song by Schumann in D-minor and D-major.  So I'm working on the D-minor scale, and since you can shift a string and do basically the same thing in a different key, the G-minor scale.  I find scales weirdly satisfying, I think because I can practice them and achieve a basic level of doing them fairly quickly.  (That doesn't happen with most pieces I'm learning.)

I seem to have an especially heavy committee load right now, and can I say, when you work with someone on a committee, you get a different sense of them.  I'm on one committee with an administrator, and while I respected her before, my respect has redoubled.  She's fantastic at facilitating discussion and progress. 

And I'm on a committee with a young faculty colleague, and I'm astounded by how set in stone she thinks things must be.  For example, we came up with issue X, and she said that she's heard that at some schools, issues X is always handled in Y way.  And more experienced committee members said, yes, that's true at some schools, but we don't, because handling issue X in Y way may mislead people and thus be hurtful.  And she insisted that at some schools, issue X is handled in Y way, and she wanted to make sure we knew that.  And once again, other folks said, yes, we know, but we don't because doing that is problematic.  She came back to the Y practice two or three more times, as if she couldn't quite believe that we'd rejected Y practice for reasons we believe are good.

And it was like that for several issues.  Color me unimpressed.

Yesterday, I went to a recital by a university string student my teacher teaches.   (If you want to learn an instrument, one helpful thing is to pay attention to other people who play.  At the least, you get a bit more familiar with some repertoire.)  The student did a really good job.  Really good. 

And once again, I was so impressed by how poised our music students are, at least the ones who give recitals.  (I'm sure there are some music students who aren't so good, etc.)  But the ones at this recital, the pianist, a chamber group, they're so good at looking confident and comfortable on stage.  It's not that they don't make mistakes, but they're poised. 

And watching the chamber group, it's so cool to see how closely they attend to each other, looking, listening.  Way cool!

Minor Irritations

I serve on an interdisciplinary program committee; in fact, for the past year or so, I've been chair.  I offered to become chair when I did because the person who's primary service responsibility in this program and committee, the person who had been chair, irritated the heck out of me when they were chair because they wouldn't prepare an agenda (until I told them they needed to, and then the night before) and thus would introduce something half-assedly into a meeting and expect us to all be ready to go along with their idea without having a chance to think about it or whatever.  In other words, we'd have X business to do, and an agenda would come out the night before saying we had X business to do, and then in the meeting, they'd want to start with Y.  (Let's call this person the Slacker.)

It's not that I'm a super stickler for agendas or something, it's that when I get an agenda for a meeting, I look at the materials ahead of time, try to find answers to questions I have, make notes, and am prepared to discuss the issue.  So if there's an emergency or something really urgent, by all means, let's introduce it and see what we can do.  But if it's just bad planning, then let's talk about what we've prepared to talk about.

The corollary, of course, is that the Slacker never bothers to prepare for meetings.


There's the background.

This semester, the Slacker has backed away (probably legitimately) from other service, and so is only serving this interdisciplinary program on a couple of committees.

I, on the other hand, am chairing a search for my department, serving on several other committees, and the usual.  (I'm not doing anything extraordinary, but keeping busy.  I thus have a legitimate reason to say I'm not going to chair the interdisciplinary program committee this year.  Everyone would nod in agreement about it being someone else's turn.  And there's one person who might step in (but who's at their limit already in service in a BIG way), and would do a stellar job just because this person always does a stellar job.

But, my guess is that the committee would turn to the Slacker, who's service is all in the interdisciplinary program.  I don't know if they'd refuse or not.

I have to decide, because I can do 2-3 times the work as chair, or I can be possibly irritated for the rest of the year by this Slacker's learned incompetence.  (I think the Slacker could be totally competent; they are super competent about their own stuff.  But in service, not.  All big talk, no actual work.)


I have to decide, because if I offer, the program leader would be much happier, and everyone else on the committee would be happier, and I may actually be less stressed than if the Slacker chairs.


Side story: this committee does some work that goes to a college committee for their decision; some of that work is assigned by the college.  Paperwork A takes about an hour of a committee member's time, and then the committee looks at it, and takes maybe 10-15 minutes max, approves, and passes it forward.  We split up this work so that everyone on the committee does one or two iterations of Paperwork A.  (There's also Paperwork B, C, and D, which are way more onerous.)

Okay, last year, the slacker was assigned Paperwork A for X issue.  Everyone else on the committee did their Paperwork A issue.  Near the end of last academic year, we had a Paperwork B issue for X, and someone else on the committee did that, and it got sent forward to the college committee.

This week, the Deanling who runs the college committee emailed me to thank me for the Paperwork B we'd done for several issues, and then said that she'd done Paperwork A for X issue as well, because it had to be done before Paperwork B could go through, and she'd used the information for Paperwork B to fill out the Paperwork A form.

So the slacker put off Paperwork A for the year, and now never has to do it.  How's that for a reward!

(The Paperwork A stuff is 90% bullputty, and 10% meaningful, and normally, I'd be all over someone avoiding the bullputty part.  But I'm already irritated at the Slacker, so I'm more irritated now.)

(This is my last year on this committee, which I think is good.)

Program X

Our contract period started, and lots of friends have already started teaching.

My to-do list is a bit overwhelming.  Holy cow!

Meetings, endless meetings, scheduled for the next couple of weeks. 

There's a program here, let's call it Program X, which provides a degree, and is the only such degree for about 80 miles around, and far more in some directions.  The problem is that Program X requires a good amount of resources but has very few students.  And we don't have all the resources we should for Program X, though we like to pretend we do, so the few students we have don't really get a strong Program X degree.

Every few years, we have a meeting and someone has a big plan to "save" Program X.  Some of these solutions are about getting more students, others about cutting down resources.

Early on, Program X's director wanted to cut one of the required courses because students didn't like it, and most faculty didn't like it.  But it was one of those "how to research in this field" courses, so not having it made the program a bit weaker.  A part of the material was added to another required course.  (There were, when I started, three required courses, an intro, a research methods, and a theory course.)

One year Program X added a new sub-program which, we were assured, would bring in lots of students.  It brings in a few, but mostly, people who were in the old program switch over.  But the new sub-program takes resources from the old, so the old program was cut down, making it even weaker.

Then Program X's director said that with the new sub-program, we really couldn't ask students to do the theory course, and they didn't like it, and if they got rid of it, they could take more new sub-program courses.  So that change happened.  A little theory was going into the intro course, they promised.

More recently, Program X's director came up with the idea that students in another major could sort of do a double with Program X, and that would bring in lots of students.  Of course, in order to do this, the other major would be weakened.

Now, Program X has a new director, and unlike the other directors, this one very much wants to get into administration.  Since they've been here, they've been taking on or trying to take on increasingly administrative roles all over.  In some ways, they're good at this.  But holy cow, every time I'm in a meeting, this person has to talk, and my brain just shuts down on them.  This may be me being a jerk, or it may be a response to the administrivial jargon they tend to use for everything.

It sounds like the new director is making a big push for assessment (quite natural, given the climate), and re-asserting the other changes in hopes of attracting all those students to do the extra program.

(On one level, this person is pushed into administrative stuffs by those above, but they're "missing" one quality the upper administrators love, and so I think that's held them back.  I don't think they'd be a great administrator, but I don't think that's the quality that's holding them back, since other folks who are crap get pulled up into administration fairly often.  The quality this new director is "missing"?  Whiteness.  Yeah, that's a problem around here.  And so I both root for and dread the new Program X director's desire to get into administration.)

A Conversation with a Friend

I was chatting with a friend about a mutual acquaintance, and had a bit of insight.  The mutual acquaintance, let's call him Flute (it's a Shakespeare name, right!), was on the university senate while I was on it.  I didn't know him socially at the time, and the senate's pretty big.


Imagine, issue X would come up, and there was a practical option, which wasn't actually ideal in terms of students or adjuncts or something, but was practical in terms of cheapness and actual workability.  So, maybe it's class size for intro basketweaving, which would ideally be 15, but in practice runs at 20.  We can't afford 15, and 20 is pushing it in terms of the budget.


So there's discussion and going to be a vote.  And Flute would raise his hand, and I'd know he was going to say that there's no way we can vote for 20, and he'd go on to talk about the ethics of the issue and such.  I eventually realized that I pretty much always agreed ethically with Flute, but that I didn't want to hear about that because I felt like the cause was long lost and we were all going to vote for the cheaper or more "practical" option.  That is, in a way, I resented someone speaking for what I knew was right because I'd already given up on what was right.  And Flute isn't the most eloquent speaker; he's rough around the speaking edges, and takes longer than he should sometimes, because he feels so strongly about stuff and is so unwaveringly certain about his stance.


I don't think I was alone if not wanting to hear about what we should do because I don't think I was alone in having already given up.


Now, I think of some of the times in my department when I've felt compelled to speak against an issue because I think it's ethically important, and I could see other people in my department roll their eyes, and I think I've turned into Flute in some ways.  (I try not to take very long or hold things up, but I do feel compelled to speak sometimes.)


There's so many things around here that are ethically shady: big class sizes, use of adjuncts, lowering requirements for majors and such.  But we vote for them because we feel like we're trying to survive.  I think it hurts our morale more than we acknowledge.


And in some cases, I think it's devastating for our students.  I'm thinking of the ways racism works here, the ways that administrators talk around problems with racism and systemically support racism, all while claiming not to.


I went to a training session last week on "bias" which was pretty much what you'd expect: we're all biased and we need to think about biases we aren't so much aware of and consciously work against them. 


But what we should be talking about is racism and systemic racism on campus.  Talking about bias is patting white liberal folks on the head and saying that they don't want to be racist, so if they just work a little more, then we'll make things better.  And that way, we don't have to challenge the systemic racism or even acknowledge it.


(That isn't to say that I as a white person don't need to think about my racism and work towards anti-racism in my own behavior and beliefs.  But that's not enough, and not the big issue.)

A Simple Call

I took on being chair of a special program curriculum committee.  The special program is interdisciplinary, but doesn't have department status, and so depends on the willingness of others to serve on its committees and teach many of its courses.  I'm not a specialist by any means, but I'm interested and willing, so here I am.

In tight budget times, special programs are easy to cut down or ax altogether because there's no one with real power and utter commitment to speak against it, especially if the alternative is "my" department (any of the departments with interested folks).  And so, the special program needs to look seriously at its course array, several of which serve as vital courses in general education, and see if it can condense some things, do some things a bit less without totally making a hash for the students.

And the curriculum committee is an obvious place to start this discussion (which then must go to a wider body).  And in order to start the discussion, we need to have a clear sense of what's been happening.

So I asked for a couple of things.

First, a list of our courses and enrollments for the past several semesters.  What have we taught, and how many students have we taught in those courses.

I asked the program leader if we could get that information, and was told that no, the only way would be to go through the computerized class search and search for each course individually and copy out the numbers.  Hmmm.  But surely, someone knows how many students have been in each course, especially when those courses serve major GE needs, right?

The curriculum committee is also responsible for curricular review; every course on campus is supposed to be reviewed every five years, and a review filed with a college committee. Early last week, so, second, I asked the program leader and last year's curriculum committee chair if they had the information, and the previous chair said she'd send it right away.

That was early last week, with the leader finally emailing me some information (and the no about the other) on Saturday afternoon.

So this morning, I called the office staffer over in the college office, since they get our reviews and tell us what is due for review.  Within ten minutes, she emailed me the information (and also emailed the chair from last year, who almost as quickly sent me an email to tell me that there was special information I needed to know about the late reviews so we need to meet urgently!).  She also told me that while she didn't have the enrollment information, the person to talk to in the enrollment office would. 

So I called the enrollment office, and the person there directed me to an online request form, and by the time I got back from teaching, she'd given me the full information.  And also sent me a not quite snarky email that the program leader already had access to the information.

I'm sometimes a bit of a bull in a china shop, if you know what I mean.  But I know the effective office staffers in enough offices that I can call and get help, and voila, I get information.  (This isn't highly classified stuff at all.  This is stuff we should have easily to hand.)

So here's the thing.  This program is pretty low priority for most of us most of the time.  It would help a lot if someone else would do the work.  And that really shows.  You know?  But if the program is to survive, then we actually have to make it a priority.  And if that's not worth doing, then we should let it go. 

That sucks, but that's how things are in tough budget times. 

The previous committee chair complained a lot about how much work she had to do, so I offered to take this on.  I'm pretty sure it's a fair bit of work, but I'm also pretty sure that I'm reasonably efficient about the sort of work involved.  Unfortunately, I can also be a bit of a bull in a china shop, and I need to rein that in to work with this committee as effectively as possible.

The April Time of Year

There's this activity, a poetry related activity, that someone organizes every year.  I've participated in the past, more than once, even.  But I have to confess that I don't find the activity much fun, and it's hours long, which multiplies the unfunness.  (And the way it's organized, if you're participating, you pretty much have to plan on being there from the beginning, and likely staying most/all of the way through.)

My participations in the past have been popular, so popular that the organizers asked me specially to participate again.  (I already had an obligation, however, so I declined.  To be honest, I was relieved to have that other obligation.)

The activity was mentioned recently in a department meeting, and a number of people raved about the wonderfulness of the activity.  (I appeared as interested as I could, but kept my mouth shut.)

The thing is, these people don't participate in the activity.  Nor do they go (and as non-participants, they could go for a little while and leave, or go late, etc.)

The thing that made my participation popular, pretty much anyone could do something similar, but it takes preparation, and a willingness to laugh at yourself and your stuff.


I don't know: does everyone absolutely love this activity, but doesn't participate or go?  Or do they feel as I do, but are way better at making politic noises than I am?


My additional irritation with this activity is that the organizer (who puts in a fair bit of effort, I'm sure) writes this up on their review materials as if it's the second coming of Shakespeare or something.  But as a participant, I get no credit.  It's nothing for me, but my work counts as someone else's success.  And the organizer is someone who doesn't bother to do anything that isn't totally about themselves and their self-interest.  And at the same time, the organizer is someone who makes hugely sympathetic noises.  Now, if this organizer were someone who contributes to other folks' work, then I probably wouldn't resent this activity.  I might even be willing to participate just to be supportive.  (I've been known to do that, and in fact my other obligation is partly that.)


In looking for my post linked above, I went through a bunch of Aprils on the blog, and I realized that I complain a lot in April.  It's a hard time of year, of course, the end of the academic year, with lots of projects and lots of programming to go to, spring teasing us while we get a bit more snow or cold weather, and so on.

Sidetracked

I came into the office to do some work, as one would expect.  I started by writing in my to do book, first the month stuff, and then the day stuff. 

Then I took care of committee stuff, and some teaching stuff.

And then I got distracted and sidetracked.  I need to put together a subcommittee; it's a standing subcommittee, and a whole lot of work.  Except for the chair, people are expected to serve two year terms.  There's some continuity, so that each year, half the members are new, half continuing.  But of the new members, we sometimes have returning members, people who've served on the committee before, even chaired it, and sometimes have brand new people who've never served.  It's important to get a balance, so there's some institutional memory, and building of memory in newer people, and new ideas brought to practices.

Anyway, I started going back to see if I could figure out who should be asked to take on the responsibility as new members next year by figuring out who's served most recently, and so on.

Let me say, things aren't as well recorded as they might be, alas.

The three people who seem in line to put on the committee as new for next term are each smart, but also a bit problematic, not in terms of ethics, but in terms of commitment to the task, shall we say.  What I mean is, there are people who will do this task, and do it well, and get it done.  And then there are people who will try to shift the work to others to the extent they can, or who will try to use the subcommittee for their own issues.  Or at least that's my fear.  And then there's one person who is perennially so much more overworked than everyone else that it's a wonder zie can get up in the morning, if you know what I mean.  Hir life is just that much tougher than everyone else's. 

I need to get back to prepping class.  I think this is done enough for now.

Growing Up

I was in a meeting the other day, and it really struck me how difficult I find it to say to someone in a meeting situation that I think their idea, however good, won't fly, and that we should do something different.

And then today, I wrote a note to a student to tell hir that I think the project they've been working on doesn't pass muster, and either needs a lot more work, or needs not to happen.

I'm sure I'm not the only person to find these sorts of conversations difficult.  Heck, I'm sure it was worse for the person at the meeting and the student than it was for me.  And I'm sure it would be way worse if I were actually giving life-changingly bad news.

Still, it's something I'm weak about, and I need to think how to do it well and better.


On the other hand, I also realized at that meeting, and writing to the student, that I've gotten a lot better at not feeling personally hurt when certain things just don't happen.  Yes, I still feel invested, but I'm better at realizing that I should worry about the things I can do something about, and worry less about the things I can't do something about.  Or something.

And I can't be more invested in a student's project than the student is.

And I have to recognize that I make choices about what's important and what I put my energy into, and that other people make choices, but that our choices aren't going to be the same.  And I'm mostly better at respecting their choices.  (Though not always, true!)


I think everyone here is feeling beaten down by the long, very cold winter and by the semester and by constant budget cuts and administrative additions to the work.

Of course, from administrators' points of view, the work they want us to do is really important and they want us to be totally invested.  For most of the faculty, though, the work is make-work, and we don't see that it helps us teach or research or advise or anything else.  It merely provides more fodder to hire more administrators, it seems.

The Place of Shakespeare

Some of the responses to the last post got me thinking about how different departments organize curriculum, and how differently we Shakespeare folks teach in response.  And that got me thinking about Shakespeare in the curriculum.

When I was interviewing for this job, one of the interviewers asked me if I thought that Shakespeare should be a required course for English lit majors.  Now there was a time when the vast majority of English phuds would probably have answered with a certain and sure "yes, of course!"  But that time is not now, and that time was not even then.  At least not for me.

I answered that I didn't think it should be a requirement because there were lots of good literatures and texts, and that what we should focus on was helping students learn to really read and analyze texts, and understand them, and that students could learn those skills well with Shakespeare, certainly, but also through lots of other texts and literatures.  I still feel that very strongly.

I can't speak to the situation at very elite schools, but for our situation, we really aren't preparing our majors to be graduate students in English literature.  And we shouldn't be.  What we're preparing them for is a lifetime of being able to read critically, to analyze, to solve problems, and so forth, and hopefully, also, yes, to find joy and pleasure in literature.  Our majors graduate relatively poorly prepared to take on graduate work in earlier British lit.  We just don't have many opportunities for them to take earlier British lit courses; a lit major might, with real care and luck, be able to fit three earlier British lit courses in a curriculum here, but it wouldn't be easy.

Partly, this is a matter of curricular design.  We don't require many specific courses, and those we do are skills and theory focused rather than focused on geography, chronology, or specific authors.


When I got here, I learned that the department had made two hires in Shakespeare/early modern, to replace two retiring faculty members.  Those to faculty members had pretty much divided up Shakespeare (which was required of all lit majors) into two courses based solely on which plays each person like to teach most.  (Evidently they'd gone through the canon together and chosen their "teams" and that was that.)

Among the first votes taken when we got here was a curricular question about whether we should require Shakespeare, and that requirement went away with overwhelming support.  (I sometimes felt, when I'd see one of the retired folks, that they were both very disappointed that we new Shakespeare faculty hadn't fought tooth and nail to keep the requirement.)

We two set about revising the Shakespeare courses, and made one a sophomore level surveyish course, where we agreed to teach across genres, 8 or so texts, and another junior level topics course, where we would teach some topic in Shakespeare.  That was almost 15 years ago now, and I've taught the topics course I think twice, once Roman Shakespeare and once Shakespeare's and history.  (I thought I'd get to teach it more, but things haven't shaken out that way; my colleague has taught it maybe one or two more times, but certainly neither of us teaches it very often.)

At about the same time, the department as a whole worked through a massive curricular change. 

And now we're thinking about some new changes.

And as a Shakespeare person, I'm thinking about how Shakespeare and earlier British lit might fit into those new changes.  So I'd love to hear from others about how Shakespeare fits in their curriculum.  Is it required?  Do most students take it if not required?  Is it mostly thought of as a general education course or a strictly majors course?

And broadly speaking, how do you think of a literature major?  What's the point of a lit major?  And how does Shakespeare fit that point?

Coolest

Our local arts paper has a back to school section where it lists 9 semesters of classes, with no logical connection I can see, other than that the author thinks they'd be cool classes.

And guess whose Chaucer class is listed in semester five (along with, oddly enough, an intro to college life class).  Still, it's fun to see a Chaucer class listed along with the "coolest, most interesting" classes. 

(I didn't recognize the writer's name, so zie wasn't in the class in the past few years, and no one else has taught it in say five years.  The paper does tend to be heavily staffed by our grads in their first year or two out of school, with a high turnover as people move on.  It's a neat paper for our area, too!)


My chair sent out a strong admonition the other day; zie said that the writing director and the chair had been getting many requests for overloads into our first year comp classes, and said that they'd resisted these requests and hoped we all would resist these requests, too, since they'd put huge work into getting the class sizes for first year comp made sane and reasonable, and didn't want any administrators deciding they could creep class sizes up.

I love my chair.  Zie is not perfect, but zie has ethics and a backbone.

The Usual Suspects

My school didn't pay moving costs when I moved here, and so far as I know, doesn't even now.  (Other schools in the system do, though.  I guess it's a school decision at some level?)  That means that sometimes new department members ask for moving in help.  Usually, someone in the department is in contact and then puts out a call for help on the department mailing list.  And sure enough, someone is coming into town tomorrow, and there's been a request for help.

I emailed back and said I'd help, and then yesterday got an email to a small group, giving us timing details.  So I know who else has offered to help.

It's pretty predictable, pretty much always the same people who come out to help with these things.

And the same people who offer to do practice interviews with adjuncts who are trying to move on, and so forth.

Now, I can totally understand when someone doesn't want to help people move furniture from a uhaul into an apartment or whatever.  There's a point when your back just isn't up to it.  I get that.

And I know we're all busy during the school year, so helping an adjunct with a practice interview isn't convenient.

I also know that I'm not one of the usual suspects who goes to hear the department music group play.  And I'm sure there are other things I just don't do that other people do.

I'm conflicted between being frustrated by the many people who never show up to help, and being happy that those of us who show up are fun to do stuff with.

And no, it's not that different from who's willing to volunteer to take on extra tasks, committee work, and so on.

Plagiarize Much?

Interesting juxtaposition of the Harvard cheating scandal and a plagiarism scandal, one among many, it seems, in Europe.  Debora Weber-Wulff writes in the BBC Viewpoint series about "The Spectre of Plagiarism Haunting Europe."  The piece comes on the heels of the German Minister of Education and Science resigning (or being asked to resign) in the wake of his dissertation being found to include a lot of plagiarism.  Evidently, it's fairly common for European politicians, say up and coming in ministries or departments of this and that, to do doctorates along the way.  Or if not common, at least not shockingly uncommon.

Weber-Wulff points out that

Just looking at the CVs of some of the authors who have been exposed as plagiarists, one wonders how it would be possible for them to do research, hang out at libraries, wait forever for inter-library loans, and get everything written up, as a mere sideline to their already very demanding lives as active politicians.

That is to say, these aren't folks like most PhD candidates, who are working towards a PhD near the beginnings of a hoped for career; they're more mid-career, using the PhD as a sort of stepping stone. 

I have to say, something about this smells fishy.

I have to say, I haven't looked at the dissertations in question, or done the research, but from what Weber-Wulff writes, it sounds like this is far more than just a few missed quotation marks, and more substantial parts of arguments being lifted.

I think about my field, about my dissertation, and I imagine that if I'd try to lift a substantial chunk of someone's published argument without acknowledging it appropriately, my dissertation director and first reader would have seen it easily, and I would have heard about it in no uncertain terms.  (Assuming that it was an early draft, maybe they would have just corrected me and chided me and such, but I can't imagine them not taking it seriously.)  They certainly wouldn't have signed the paper that says that I could have a PhD, too. 

But somehow, the dissertation directors of these politicians did sign those papers.  (Well, I'm assuming they sign papers there, too.)  Did they not notice significant plagiarism?  (Are they not up on the other stuff written about their area of study?  Did they not actually bother reading the dissertations?)  Or did they just not care?


If these are mid-career politicians, then they're people with connections, and not, like most PhD candidates in this country at least (and I think Europe's way different, more on that later), who are pretty much full time working towards their degree (most often with some kind of part time or fellowship sort of work on the side to pay rent and eat and such).

That leads me to wonder about graduate programs accepting these folks.  It's not a big leap for me to imagine that a political functionary, with connections in some party or whatever, deciding to pick up a grad degree would be welcome at a lot of grad programs.  If there's money changing hands, then the political functionary is probably paying rather than being paid; and if there's no money, well then at least there's the potential benefit of having a political functionary with some connection to a school or department.  So I can see where a university might welcome a political functionary, and might easily make that welcome known to its faculty.

What I'm wondering, then, is if in addition to looking carefully at the politicians, someone should be looking at the degree-granting institutions and at the dissertation directors/readers.

What's the payoff for them to have signed off or granted degrees to plagiarists?
 

(My vague understanding is that graduate work in most European countries is much more research based than in the US, that PhD students don't take classes, but start in PhD programs already pretty much focused in and ready to research because their bachelors' degrees are more focused on their subject area and include far less general education and such.)

Same Old, Same Old

Let's put this in non-English terms.

We have a deepwater basketweaving specialty area within our underwater basketweaving department. Deepwater basketweaving has recently (within the past 20 years) become way more developed as a specialty; before that, interested underwater folks used to teach the class. Or maybe deepwater basketweaving used to be a bigger area, but student interest in other areas has led us to drop our faculty coverage down.

At any rate, it's a specialized area, but any basketweaver knows a little about it, so when we can't cover the intro classes with our TT faculty, the chair calls an adjunct at the last minute and says, basically, hey, want an extra course? And the adjunct, happy for the course and usually eager to please, says sure. The chair breathes a sigh of relief and moves on to other explosive problems.

And because the adjunct is eager to please, s/he gets good student evaluations for the course. And the next time, well, the adjunct is experienced in the field, and so teaches it again, and again, and again. Each time, the adjunct puts in a good effort (because adjuncts work their tails off), coming to deepwater basketweaving from his/her specialization in brackish water basketweaving, or reed preparation.

And eventually, maybe we hire a new deepwater specialist. Or maybe the students feed into the open water basketweaving courses. But at any rate, someone begins to notice and then, after a while, to complain sotto voce that the students really aren't getting what they should be getting in that introductory level course. It's not being taught as a true deepwater course.

Or maybe we realize that we need a TT line in deepwater basketweaving, and our beloved adjunct applies.

In whatever way, we come up against the hard fact that an adjunct we really like, one who has worked his/her tail off for us in all sorts of ways, really isn't doing the job with the deepwater class, but expects to teach it again, or to be looked at seriously for the TT position. And the adjunct has pals. Or the adjunct's spouse teaches in the department (or is an administrator). Or the adjunct got his/her BA or MA here and is geographically limited. So there are people who really want to go to bat for the adjunct. (And always, in my experience, the adjunct is a straight, married, white person who's deeply connected to our area, who looks and talks just like our students, makes jokes about having gone to the local high schools.)

We've been depending on this person we shouldn't have depended on in the first place for this course because it was easy at the time. And a lot of people remember when deepwater wasn't even a specialty, and people from all over covered that course.

So we have a conflict between being jerks to the adjunct, who we've been exploiting all along, or doing a disservice to another colleague (who has to deal with inadequately prepared students) and doing a disservice to our students, who don't even realize they're being cheated.

If you're friends with the adjunct but think we need a real deepwater specialist, what do you do? And what if deepwater specialists aren't too common, and we're going to have a hard time recruiting one because we pay poorly and are far from deepwater research opportunities?