The Tuba-Playing Prof On Presidential Searches.

I look forward to September, for I am one of those foolish hearts who still loves teaching. Yet as I begin my twentieth year, I know that my upcoming academic year will be hellish. For the fourth time in my career, I’ll be at place searching for a president. And my misery will arise from my “colleagues.”

Any search—from assistant dean to president—reminds me utterly that on my campus “shared governance” means that the “bosses” tell the faculty senate to tell the rest of us what they will do. And with a job search they tell us whom they will hire to take us all to the next level, the future, the next stage in our development, etc.

I will take no part in it any part of this madness. I will attend no open forums, will read no online dossiers, will attend no “interview sessions with faculty,” that is, thirty minutes of each candidate avoiding questions by promising us to take us to the next level, the future, etc, or complete a Survey Monkey survey that the board of trustees will most likely dismiss.

But I will not be able to avoid colleagues. For much of the year, department and college meetings, social gatherings, chance run-ins on the way to the library and classes will be particularly annoying: The rumors, the speculation, the gossip, the hard feelings about who’s on the search committees, the pool, the lack of candidates from this or that group, the dramatic reports from my colleagues who have friends working where the final candidates currently are, googled news articles, the distrust of the trustees—okay, I’m okay with that actually—and the general waste of time.

A president search is like a jon boat cruising up a bayou in Louisiana. Its outboard motor stirs up the stillness and frightens the Asian carp to jump out of the water. While the fish may be in the air for a moment, they merely fall back down into the bayou—a huge surge of energy devoted to a big jump into the air that only brings them back to where they started.