email

If I were to write a book on academic administration, one main tip I would pass on is what I have learned about email. It is commonplace to say that it is a difficult medium, caught as it is between written and spoken norms, but this is not exactly what I have in mind. My problem is what it does to people's sense of decorum. As chair I have been subjected to more nasty email than I care to recall. This week has seen a particularly bad spate, connected with the whole subject of departmental bylaws. The week was kicked off with an especially bilious tract from one of my senior colleagues which she sent not only to the co-chairs, but also the DGS, DUS, head of comp lit and, for the record, the point person on the executive committee, thus far himself not implicated in the nefarious dealings she accused the rest of us of. In a sense this was nice as the bile was somewhat spread around. I came in for more than my fair fifth of the share, but this is to be expected as said faculty has been spitting with dislike of me ever since the dean appointed me to chair a committee she was on despite my lower faculty rank. So for the advice. I admit to cadging a little from others. One: never read email from known offenders on the weekend or in the evening. Two: skim the email very quickly and then respond with a one liner of the sort: "Thank you for your careful comments." Three: many people say, "hit delete" but I prefer to keep a file. Who knows it might come in handy some day. Four: this from a very upper administrator and reserved for the very recalcitrant: respond saying: "Thank you for your email. Unfortunately only the first line was legible with the rest of the text for some reason garbled." Sometimes this allows the person to come to their senses and not resend.

Another annoying by product of this week's shenanigans was the advice from EC point person that it is my job to ignore the vicious tone and the flagrant allegations of wrong doing and "find what is helpful." I suggested to him that this was akin to allowing the faculty member to take a dump on the floor of my office and then ask me to find the silver dollar she may have swallowed.

thunderbolts

I have recently decided that it is quite likely that I will change careers as soon as I am done being department chair, or perhaps sooner. Perhaps this is a low moment (do 'moments' last for weeks?), but I will say that my faith in human nature is being sorely tried of late. I think god (hello, are you there? it's me, Jane) agrees. Today we had our final faculty meeting of the year. The main item on the agenda was a draft of by-laws for the department. We actually have some -- they date from 1976 and are bound in a folder that looks like faux wood paneling and has a label made with one of those old machines that made raised lettering on strips of sticky colored plastic. When we had to produce them for a legal matter (another long story) and someone above us therefore saw the date (not to mention the binding) of these governing principles, we were told to produce some new ones. Among other things, these need not include how much typing each faculty member can expect from the departmental secretary... So, the executive committee threw something together, circulated it and we met to discuss it today. We got through two items, that is part way down page one of four. At a certain point, a colleague remarked in response to someone else: "That wouldn't change anything" and the lights promptly went out plunging us into almost total darkness. With the dim illumination from the hallway emergency lighting we continued. I personally was grateful because I could no longer see people's facial expressions. I am sure this feeling was shared.