Last September, our chancellor was unexpectedly diagnosed with brain cancer. Within three weeks of her diagnosis, she collapsed in her office and was pronounced dead a few hours later. It shocked us all that she could go from slight headaches to collapse so quickly. At least she had the fortune to put together her final wishes during those weeks. She said goodbye, and gave away books, and spent time with her family. The campus has had a series of memorials for her but I still catch myself "seeing" her and the moment always affects me strangely.
This sad tale left a vacancy in our academic hierarchy that was just filled days before Christmas. And the wise friend I had, the department colleague promoted from within, has been replaced with someone... different.
He takes great pleasure in email. He sends massive all-campus missives to students and faculty welcoming them to the day or letting us know that he's about to go home. He asks us what our weekends were like. He sends us quotes from Churchill, from Socrates, from Truman. No message, just an uplifting quote. Or a picture of Babe Ruth.
He is giving us homework. How do we work? What is the greatest impediment to our work? What is our greatest asset? Assess the average week. Assess the average student. Assess the average meeting.
I'm not sure how I feel about this man. He was an outside hire. On the one hand, it's nice to have someone so... present. I do honestly feel that I could ask him about anything despite not yet having met in person. Mentally, I imagine a grandfatherly figure who was just introduced to facebook. I recall the time when my father figured out how to attach pictures to family emails. For a small period, we had daily emails from him just so he could send us a pic of John Wayne. It's sweet, in a way.
But it's also preventing me from taking him seriously. He seems to be struggling with some invisible popularity contest. Like he needs us all to approve of him. His "homework" has resulted in enormous online praise for his work, our university, our jobs. So many people answer his questions with artful praise for elements of the job I *know* they hate. The answers are posted publicly but anonymously, and we can then respond to them anonymously. Kissing up has never before included such large numbers of people with extensive degrees and prestigious publication. It's a shocking display of job anxiety.
It's new. But it's getting on my nerves. And I'm not sure if I'm reacting to the compounding results of losing a friend and colleague, or if this behavior is just weird as shit and that anyone would be wondering about this guy's sanity.
So, CM. Help me out. How should I respond to all this fluttering conversation in my inbox? From a Chancellor? From, effectively, my boss?
Send the posts to your SPAM folder!
ReplyDeleteOr just keep deleting them. Skim and delete.
Someone ought to tell him. Monkey, let it be one of your silverbacks, one of the more conscientious, personable ones, if you have any. One who doesn't have much to lose, if your chancellor in person turns out to be like mine, who thinks faculty work 10 to 3, and never on Fridays.
ReplyDeleteThe new guy is trying to run the place in that idiotic "friend boss" style of Steve Carrell's "Michel Scott" character on "The Office"....that crap may fly in Cubicleland, but it's destined for failure in academia. Flamboyantly Flaming's idea follows the path of least resistance, but Froderick's is the one I would follow (being the pissant that I am.) Could also try for the "group letter" and try to get everybody and the janitor to sign it.
ReplyDeleteI think a group letter is a perfectly horrible idea...any administrator getting a group complaint letter is going to feel horrible and disliked by the entire faculty, which, even if it's true, is not something you want an administrator to feel.
ReplyDeleteThen what, Abandoning Eden? Do you know of a better way to tell the guy "stop the smily-faced micromanagement"? If you do, please tell us.
ReplyDeleteSeriously.
I second FF--skim, delete. Alternatively, skim, forward to folder marked "Chancellor."
ReplyDeleteAnd I also think that Froderick has a good idea...someone should tell the Chancellor, but it should come from someone higher up in the food chain. I would also maybe sense the prevailing mood in your department. Does everybody think this practice is horrific? Or is your chair busting out statements in faculty meetings like "Let's discuss Chancellor's email about the joys of corduroy pants"? Because if the latter is the case you may need to suck it up.
Uh...can I also float a horrifying possibility? While I don't give a crap when my Uni president goes home, sometimes the president's questions are interesting and useful to me. So I might keep those, and ditch the rest.
You can respond to the comments and questions anonymously? Let him know what you really think. Once you inject some honesty into the mix, he'll shut it down.
ReplyDeleteMy God, an in-house CM site. Just imagine! It would do wonders for employee morale.
My reaction is somewhat like Beaker Ben's: I'm surprised the comments are so universally favorable (unless the comments are being selected and/or censored -- always a possibility. Maybe it's my paranoia, but if you're going to inject a different note, I'd do it using a connection at the local coffee shop and/or public library -- somewhere off-campus but accessible to many members of the university -- just in case). Maybe people are trying to help him with what they realize is a tough transition?
ReplyDeleteFroderick's solution (and/or some combination of Flamboyantly's and BlackDog's) is almost certainly the sensible one; maybe he'll settle down on his own, but, if not, he might need a bit of guidance. Is there a long-established and trusted administrative or other assistant in the Chancellor's office, perhaps one who carried over from your late friend? That might be another avenue for discreet inquiries/nudges by someone who knows her/him well.
It can be quite difficult to replace a dead guy. A few years ago, some proffie wrote a Chronicle Review article about his department's experience hiring a replacement for a much-loved and very senior proffie who died of cancer. It can take months or years for some people to come around and accept the new person, even if the new guy is perfect. Wish I had a link to that article. Anybody know the one?
ReplyDeleteWell I'm glad I don't seem to be taking his weirdness too seriously. I'm hoping this is his way to try to be "popular" real fast and that it will fade as he grows comfortable.
ReplyDeleteThe anonymous posting is viewable by the Chancellor himself, so the overly favorable assessments are only anonymous to use, the rest of the campus. It's very silly indeed.
"The anonymous posting is viewable by the Chancellor himself, so the overly favorable assessments are only anonymous to use, the rest of the campus. It's very silly indeed."
ReplyDeleteSo he's soliciting brown-nosing comments, the authors of which he can identify, but no one else can? That's pretty disturbing. Wonder if he's read _King Lear_ recently? Fishing for compliments has been known to end badly.