Ugh.Had to dress in full dean battle dress today. Major local politician and minor local politician came to visit, followed by a gaggle of media.
The press officer has been in a hussy all week, "organizing" the visit. None of my labs got visited, on account of them being on upper floors and journalists don't do stairs well. Lots of important details were not attended to, but at least we had name tags.
We sat around, smiling, while the Prez did his spiel on how great we are. MajorPol actually asked some intelligent questions, and MinorPol really knows her stuff, she was gushing about how we are the best thing since sliced bread. She owes us a few, on account of us saving her bacon a few times.
We trouped through the fancy labs of the other deans with their nice toys. MajorPol shook hands all around, multiple times. Coming through the outdoor tables at the cafeteria MajorPol descended on a group of 4 guys actually studying. The cameras clicked away, I wonder if the group was able to identify the person speaking to them.
Anyway, neither MajorPol nor MinorPol was willing to promise money for anything. And the local TV news managed to get two major details wrong on one 60 second segment. I wonder what the errors were in all the other segments they showed ....
Dear Dean Suzy,
ReplyDeleteThanks SO MUCH for doing this for us. Every time I get interrogated by funding people, I think thankfully of the senior academics who used to take care of this for me when I was a grad student/postdoc/pre-tenure faculty, so I could get on with my research and teaching. You know very well that most academics would quite frankly be scared to talk to politicians; and among the few that weren't, fewer would have anything to say that the politicians would want to hear.
Having been through the wringer when I was department chair, your meeting appeared to have gone rather well, as meetings between academics and politicians go these days. They didn't say anything about budget cuts, nor do you mention any talk of the abolition of tenure or how supposedly profs work only 3-6 hours per week. I know, perhaps my expectations are getting low, but with how things have been going lately, I'm amazed we haven't yet been delivered into corporate serfdom. Be glad also that the TV news was as accurate as they were: makes you wonder how they do with politics and wars, no?
Best,
FFF