Department Chaos

Last Wednesday morning, our dean announced by email an unscheduled department meeting at 3 p.m. "Unscheduled" is not Connie's typical style; the red envelope icon attached to the message inspired most people to stick around despite the late hour. No fishing expedition to the department office could discover what prompted the need for us to gather.

At the meeting, Connie explained that she had accepted a vice-president position at the downtown center—it used to be a "campus" but they no longer pollute the building with faculty or students. Her news stunned everyone in the room, as she would be gone by July 1. Most of us knew that she was upwardly mobile as an administrator, but to leave in the middle of the semester with various projects halfway completed came as a big surprise.

I am saddened to see her leave, but we did expect her eventual move up. Although I have enjoyed her as my boss, I can work without her presence, as I am low maintenance and have the security of tenure. Unfortunately, not all of my colleagues could function effectively after the news.

On the way to my car, I bumped into Libby. Tears were dripping past the frames of her gigantic sunglasses. Connie had hired her, so Libby was losing her mentor. I could empathize. When my first dean retired, I bawled my eyes out after the big party, convinced that my life at the college couldn't continue without his presence. I have always been a real asset around here, though, something soon obvious to the new dean who replaced him. And life did in fact continue, as I tried to convince Libby it would.

I wondered if Libby's tears were an expression of loss or evidence of her anxiety about an uncertain future. She is full-time temporary, her contract renewed each semester. With Connie, the renewal wasn't in question; with an unknown interim, who knows? I'm sure that concerns about paying the mortgage also influenced the flood of emotion. The impression she makes on the interim dean—and on the permanent leader the college will eventually hire—will have way more importance than the impression any of us tenured folk make.

I remember the anxieties of pre-tenured life all too well, so Libby's behavior was understandable. Other people did not have such good excuses for their poor reactions. One tenured colleague was hysterical with grief, threatening to quit if some moron replaced Connie. Quit? A tenured position in this grim academic market? Good grief, girl, get a grip! What are you going to do, waitress as you did during graduate school? The reality is that the deans on our campus are quite good, that the deans for our department in particular—in the 21 years of my experience—have been above average at least, and usually brilliant. Our provost isn't going to saddle us with a moron when ours is the one department with agreed-upon assessment protocols already in place, the one department that teaches classes every degree-seeking student must take.

Another tenured colleague approached me the day after the meeting. She had convinced herself that she alone was the reason Connie accepted the new position. "If I hadn't ..." launched her detailed explanation. Incredulous, I asked, "Do you really think Connie thinks about you enough to base career decisions on your actions alone?" Apparently, this narcissist did think so.

Unlike regime changes in the past, Connie has not lined up a temporary successor. Instead, she asked us what we thought she should do. Oh, the temptation of power and how to get it! At the meeting, one relative newbie nominated an inappropriate choice, whom no one seconded [whether the nominee was relieved or disappointed or both, I don't know]. Almost everyone believes that it's time to be chief, not a little Indian any longer, with qualifications: "I'd make a great dean but don't have the high boredom threshold to attend all of those meetings," "I could do the job but don't want to put in the long hours on campus," or "I have the experience but don't want to listen to all of those student complaints."

A senior colleague's flunky wrote a petition announcing our unanimous support of the senior colleague, but no one would sign it. Some of us emailed a potential candidate on another campus, tempting the poor guy with flattery to give up his great, relatively easy life as a teacher to enter the tedium of management [because none of us were willing to do it], but he intelligently declined.

Everyone is reacting as if a parent has died and left us to starve as orphans, not as if we are rational adult human beings. I keep saying to people, "It doesn't matter who sits in that office because you already have tenure. We need someone who will protect the 4-monthers like Libby," but my advice falls on deaf ears. I have imagined my worst nightmare getting the job. I don't think he'd give up one year early his cushy, quasi-administrative, token faculty post downtown where he can star-worship the college president, but even if he did, I realized that I—and everyone else in the department—would survive. It will be interesting to see what happens next.