The (very) Long Good-bye; or, I'll never eat lunch in this town again!
I know I haven’t blogged for quite a while, so I don’t know if anyone is still tuning in to see if any new entries have appeared. I do apologize for having slacked off. My only explanation is that as the semester wore on and the budget discussions got more intense, I began to worry about revealing too much information about those discussions [although I tend to believe that sharing more info is a better philosophy, I wasn’t in charge of the process and had to respect the wishes of those who were]. More importantly, I found myself getting more and more frustrated and I got worried about saying something intemperate. Those of you who have known me for all or a significant part of my years here might be surprised by that, but the weird thing about blogging is how, despite the fact you are just rambling about your thoughts and feelings, it still is a form of writing and it's one that is accessible to the world beyond our campus. And, even though I disagree, sometimes vehemently, with things that are being done here, I have no desire to hurt the campus (or the people who work here) in such a public way.
In fact, at the beginning of my tenure as AS Chair, I told the president that I would consider the year a success if we could have all our fights on campus and if I was never quoted in the paper. Well, I was quoted – once – but they identified me as the CFA president, so I’m putting that one in the victory column anyway. I also want to point out that I never once uttered the phrase ‘the dark side’ in talking about the administration. OK, I did toy with the idea of substituting ‘death-eaters’ or ‘dementors’, but though sorely tempted to do so, I never did. I’m proud of that. Besides, did you ever notice how it’s almost always administrators who use (lovingly and with great relish) the term ‘the dark side’. It’s a stupid, supposedly self-deprecating way of rubbing their ‘power’ (sorry, I'm not awed), their pay raises (ok, here I’m jealous) and their embarrassment (they ought to be) at having become paper-pushing bureaucrats – no more, no less and I won’t use it because I think they ought to ‘own’ their new identities.
THE GOOD
I am also very proud of a lot of what we did this year. (For those of you who were at the last Senate meeting, some of this will be repetitive, but not, I hope, all). In no particular order: we passed a humane and workable book adoption policy to serve the needs of students with visual impairments. It’s a policy that focuses on educating faculty and working with them to move towards early adoption of print materials for their classes to help students with visual impairments – rather than punishing faculty (or threatening to punish them). AS sent a representative to every single ASI meeting – this is a first and in consequence we learned more and built better relations with our students. I doubt if it will increase the numbers of students who serve on faculty committees – there are too many barriers to that which we have no control over – but it was a good start. We started the process of rethinking how and when lecturer and other part-time faculty need to be included more fully in the life of the institution. Part of this process saw the recognition of lecturer/pt faculty with a new President’s Award. Many of the committees wrestled with difficult issues that sparked lively and lengthy debate at Senate.
In particular, I want to acknowledge the work of the Program Assessment Committee who labored on trying to develop a new Program Review Policy this year. Since things always pass our Senate, I’m sure PAC sees the defeat of the new policy as disappointing. Now, I’ve never been known for my Pollyanna-ish tendencies, but I think the defeat of the policy was a good thing – and an opportunity – on several grounds. I thought it was positive that few people, if any, objected to the policy because they objected either to doing program review or the accompanying assessment. I think it was also positive that faculty have started to push back against the piling on of tasks coming not only from the administration but also from ourselves, especially in the absence of any recognition, resources or reward for doing so. Maybe it is time to have a discussion about what indeed constitutes service and why faculty are somehow expected to do it, but not to ‘count’ it when it gets to a certain point as part of their workload. I hope the defeat of the Program Review Policy will initiate a more intensive dialogue about expectations for faculty and about the place of assessment in program review.
Some of the pushback against the Program Review policy revealed a more serious problem, I think. Our programs are small for the most part and many have shrunk in size (as least as regards tenure track faculty) since 2004, despite the fact that our enrollments have skyrocketed ---- remember we started the year proclaiming how ‘hot’ we were.
THE BAD
Which brings us to the budget and the budget process. I think another of the Senate’s successes this year was how well the Senate reps on the University Budget Committee worked together. Although you never heard it at the Provost’s Town Hall on the AA budget, we did convince UBC to mitigate some of the cuts of to AA. Not many and not enough, but at least we achieved something. Instead of a 7.5% reduction in sections, we are now talking more like 4-5%.
I think UBC works well on many levels, not the least of which is that it does encourage collaboration among various units in the university. And I have nothing but praise for and good feelings towards my fellow UBC members. We all tried to understand each others’ points of view and largely succeeded in doing so. We ‘fought’ with each other in support of the interest of those we represented, but never in an ugly way.
The nature of the task we faced, however, made no sense. I know there are some who disagree with the necessity of even entertaining cuts given that the whole CSU-alliance thing asked us to portray any and all cuts as impossible to take. I know others believe the fight should be centered on the overall distribution and allocation of funds to AA. How is it that we keep growing (necessitating, one might assume, more classes and more faculty) but that our programs keep falling behind and don’t get the resources they need to offer rigorous (and in some cases, even viable) curriculum?
While I have sympathy for these points of view, I need to reiterate to you that this was not the task that UBC was asked to engage in. What you need to know is that UBC doesn’t actually deal with the CSUSM ‘budget’. We look at something called the multi-year budget model which projects income (mainly from enrollment increases) and expenses. We see these figures in aggregated sums. In past years, we’ve only ever played around with a very small amount (usually no more than 1.5% of the overall university budget) that represents growth funds not already spoken for. That’s the process you may be familiar with from the last couple years where people advocated for what were essentially ‘projects’ to spend the pitiful amount of money not claimed by ongoing expenses or unfunded mandates. To be fair, AA in these ‘salad days’ was the only division that got funds automatically (presumably to hire faculty but in reality to also do everything else associated with having more students --- so no, we don’t actually hire a new faculty person for every 20 new FTES) as a result of enrollment growth ----- but you get the idea.
This year, however, there was no ‘growth money’ and the challenge was to cut. However the process of doing this was peculiar. As you remember, each division got assigned a pro rata share of the overall permanent cut assigned to this campus by the CO, plus additional cuts to address divisional structural deficits. What came before UBC was a list of cuts that VPs thought they could make to meet that pro rated amount. At some level this makes sense, since presumably the VPs know what cuts they think will be less damaging to their sense of what they want to be doing. I really do understand that. However, where I think this falls down is that the university community as a whole (as represented in UBC) never gets to examine the spending priorities of the university as a whole and make recommendations about the necessity and wisdom of those priorities. I don’t think UBC should do this every year, else we’d be zero-based within an inch of our lives, but we sure ought to do it regularly, however that is defined (maybe, like Program Review, it should happen every 5 years). It’s not just that I’m dying to find out (still) why in the name of the goodness of dogs we pay for so many Blackberries on this campus, but I think it’s important to ask why we spend money on what we spend money on. And, perhaps understandably as a faculty member, I think this discussion can’t just be had by the VPs with the President.
Another thing that was annoying about UBC was that it was never clear what people would stop doing as a result of the cuts. People identified where they would take permanent cuts, but then say, but we might still do this activity, but fund it in some other way. I’m not the most budget savvy person there is, but I never got a complete picture of what will be different as a result of taking so many cuts. As a result, the process seemed tactical ---- where can I find X-million dollars NOW – rather than strategic – given the budget we have to live with, what things must we do and what activities must regrettably and permanently stop?
If the UBC budget process makes no sense, the AA one makes even less. The Senate, through BLP has a constitutional right to participate in the development of the AA budget [see our constitution and by-laws which were accepted and approved by the President]. Sheesh, we don’t even get to look at it and make comments about its priorities. I personally (though CFA and the Senate was in agreement with me about this) think this can’t happen unless the Senate Chair is included among the AA leadership team -- at least some of the time. One thing in particular illustrates this. At one UBC meeting, someone from another division asked about faculty efficiency [in case you didn’t know, no other divisions create similar measures of their productivity and efficiency for their employees – so yes, we’re the only ones ‘measured’ in this way]. At the next UBC meeting, the provost handed out a document comparing our SFR, average WTU, class size, etc.with our sister campuses to UBC. I and my other faculty colleagues on UBC only saw that document for the first time the day before. To my knowledge neither BLP nor FAC were given the document and it goes without saying that they thus never had a chance to talk with the administration about its implications for budget, workload, assignments, etc. In any world where the AS was seen as a real partner in AA, these discussions would have taken place. I hope my successor can make some headway here, but unless the Senate is involved with these sorts of discussions and with the people who talk about this stuff on a regular basis, then ‘shared governance’ is a meaningless idea. I am sure that some will point out that in most of the colleges and library, some faculty were consulted about pending budget plans. That’s great and I hope it continues ----- but that’s different than seeing the ‘whole’ and bringing an elected, representative voice to continuing discussions about planning and priorities at the divisonal level.
Lots of other weird things about the whole UBC process. Like why is there a committee anyway if all the VPs (not all of whom are on the committee) show up for and participate in the deliberations? Why is there so much overlap and redundancy between UBC and the President’s Executive Council? Why do we only meet once a month – though I guess if all you’re doing is doling out the uncommitted ‘growth’ money that may be all you need?
THE UGLY
One of the things I said at Senate on May 7 was that I am concerned that we have more management than leadership and way more process than we have vision. I didn’t want to denigrate either good management or the importance of process --- both are vital and necessary things. But I do feel we work really hard at both those things and not hard enough on vision and leadership. Instead, we have strategic goals so broad that you don’t even need a shoe horn to make them fit whatever you or anyone else might be doing and despite having so many processes for so many things, the place still feels quasi-feudal in the way decisions are made, the way things get done or the way people get rewarded and the way funds are allocated.
I want to end with some reflections on the whole concept of having a ‘university-first’ perspective. First, I want to applaud the good that this idea has done for the university. No one wants to go back to the days of internecine conflict among the divisions and their VPs. Indeed, one of the good things (as I said above) about sitting on UBC this year was the cooperative, collegial and empathetic atmosphere in the room. The notion that we are all a part of something bigger than ourselves, that putting on this ‘show’ we call a university requires effort from many segments and that we have a responsibility to help our colleagues all over the university do their jobs in support of a community that educates students is a good thing.
But. One of things I’m working on in my research is an examination of post-WWII notions of cosmopolitanism. I’m interested in how this thing we now call ‘international or global civil society’ got created and it’s pretty clear that cosmopolitan ideas (and ideals) are central to some it. And yet . . . . Cosmopolitanism, our sense of connectedness to and responsibility for all the world’s inhabitants, our notion that every person, no matter where she or he lives, deserves to live a life of dignity and significance is a lot easier as an ideal than as a basis for actual policy or action in the real world. One need only read the current discussion of how the UN doctrine on the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) might apply to the situation in Burma to see how complicated it is to actually act in ways consistent with cosmopolitan ideals.
In essence, the notion of an ‘all university’ perspective is a version of institutional cosmopolitanism. It sounds good, it is good --- but unless it can appreciate and deal with the fact that most people’s loyalties, commitments and relationships are local ones, it can’t work. Thus, what sometimes feels like the constant weighing of peoples' success and performance by how much of a ‘university perspective’ they have always seems a bit soviet to me. Fail university perspective and it’s off to re-education camp for you!!! Not willing to shut up about the things you and your unit need to do your jobs? Stop being so whiny and so parochial!!
Except . . . . People live and work ‘locally’. They might understand that this year isn’t the year that they get everything they need to do their jobs, address their crises, etc. – that the powers-that-be have other pressing needs that need addressing. And most of us accept that. But what if your needs or my needs are NEVER pressing enough to be addressed or recognized by those same powers-that-be? How is that consistent with an ‘all-university’ perspective? It’s all well and good to recognize the equivalency of other missions and other needs but what if one begins to expect and believe (as I think we are now in danger of some people and units coming to expect and believe) that ‘all university’ merely means what a small group of people say it means at any point in time to justify what they want to do and to shut other people up.
I believe in cosmopolitanism and I believe in seeing the success of our students as the sum of many contributions – I think I do have an all-university perspective (at least most of the time). But I do live and work ‘locally’ in the division of Academic Affairs, in the College of Arts and Sciences, in the Dept of History and in the subfields of European and International History as well as in Global Studies. Each of those more local ‘identities’ are ones to which I am also loyal and about which I care deeply. Each one of us here has similarly multiple identities and loyalties to them. Unless those identities are fed, nurtured, appreciated and championed (by someone), it becomes impossible to maintain any robust all-university identity. And that’s the part of all-university we need to get better at appreciating and talking about. Soon.
So, I wish we could stop using the notion as a cudgel or as a meaningless catch phrase that makes people roll their eyes with cynicism and instead find a way to really use 'all university' as a set of ideals that informs all our identities --- and vice versa.
