Hell Holds Regular Faculty Meetings

I have previously written about faculty meetings, but the events of the last week have convinced me that I did not do the subject justice.  At one point in my life I was afraid that the structured university life might smother teachers.  Now, I am afraid it doesn't smother enough of them.

For the last several days, I worked on a lengthy blog wherein I compared the average faculty meeting to a screaming pack of howler monkeys. What I wrote was vicious, cruel, and utterly true. I have decided not to use it for fear of slighting the monkeys.

I have to admit, I do resemble this picture a little.  The beard is getting a little gray.

In some ways, faculty meetings remind me a little of flying; long periods of boredom punctuated by short periods of terror. Well, perhaps the better word is horror.  If our students ever found out what we do in these meetings, they would not take our courses unless they were paid.  Why are these meetings among supposedly educated people so acrimonious?  Imagine a convention of Tourette's sufferers.  

My colleagues are gifted, intelligent people.  These are, for the most part, kind and good-hearted people who evidently have forgotten the definiton of civility.  I'm not exactly sure what it means, either, but to paraphrase Mark Twain:  Civility means concealing how little we think of our colleagues while simultaneously conealing how much we think of ourselves.

Henry Kissinger once proposed a theory, "University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small." While Henry is undoubtedly correct, I think there is more to the problem; I think university professors suffer from positive feedback.

Most machinery operates with negative feedback. Imagine you are designing a robotic hand to pick up an egg. As the mechanical fingers grip the egg, sensors in the fingers would send a signal back to the motors to apply less force until at a critical point the motors would stop.  Your mechanical hand would delicately hold an unbroken egg.

Now imagine that we reverse the wiring so that the harder the fingers grip the egg, the more force would be applied. The egg would be almost immediately crushed in the tightly clenched fingers of the mechanical hand. Machinery controlled by positive feedback oscillates wildly out of control.

Now consider the students in a classroom. They trust the professor, they believe in him, and they have paid a lot of money to listen to a wise teacher. The paying part is very important, ask any carney; the marks won't believe unless you make them pay. Most of the time, the students should trust the professor, but sooner or later he is going to say something outrageous, something incredibly stupid... and the students will either believe him or in an incredible act of kindness, not point out how the professor has lost touch with reality.  

And not correcting the professor is the equivalent of positive feedback. The professor will feel free to be even more outrageous in a future class. Over time, his opinions and his beliefs will inevitably suffer some drift. You don't have to teach very long before you believe that you, and you alone, are brilliant. While I personally am immune from this disease, many of my colleagues are sick, sick puppies. I know.

A meeting room full of people each determined to prove his brillance is not exactly a happy place.

Still, outside of the occasionally interesting, if not very logical, arguments faculty meetings are boring. So, in self defense, I have found a way to pass the time. I have devised the Official Faculty Meeting Bingo Card. If, poor devil, you ever have to attend such a meeting, just print out this card and listen carefully for someone to say any of the following educational buzzwords.

If your meeting lasts more than about 30 minutes, perhaps you should refrain from yelling Bingo! until you black out the entire card.