People, I promise this is not a joke. This is literal truth. Prepare yourselves.
My Dean called a meeting tomorrow to discuss how we feel about what we discussed in the previous meeting.
Which took place on Friday.
The gap between meetings and the meetings to talk about the feelings evoked by other meetings is growing ever smaller. I have no idea why we let a whole weekend pass without a meeting. We should have had a meeting 30 minutes after the Friday meeting to catch those feelings early.
Totally. On Friday, he announced they we’ll be cutting down programs and merging departments to save on Chairs’ salaries. Immediately, a new “obligatory reading” anti-racist book was assigned and it was repeated that “resistance to subtractive change is a psychological problem.”
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I really want to learn to laugh at this kind of thing but I’m failing miserably. This strategy of renaming things in order to bamboozle people who are assumed to be utter idiots is getting on my nerves. “This isn’t austerity, budget cuts, layoffs and elimination of programs. It’s subtractive change! And if you don’t like it, that’s only because you are mental!”
It’s maddening.
What, no obligatory group readings of Who Moved My Cheese?
I take it from your comments that more of your department faculty will be subject to “subtractive change” than the Anthropology department. Or that the new department head will be the head of the soon to be defunct Anthro department.
Or is it the other way around?
“I believe this decision was made without paying attention to the cultures of either my department or the anthropology department and is a heedless example of cultural and bureaucratic imperialism. It shows a lack of respect for the academic rigor exhibited by my department and the anthropology department and for the different needs of students taking classes whether for distribution or major requirements.
That said, my emotional processing style is best served outside the workplace and not in 360 reviews or group sessions with coworkers. I need to address my grief process with outside counselors or my EAP. I want to exercise cultural sensitivity and be mindful of my coworkers closer to the center of this radical change. Only then can restorative justice and a more holistic educational approach to language and culture take place in this new department going forward.
Best, Clarissa.”
Is that worse? Would everyone think you’ve had an event? I’m not an academic.
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ETA: This decision is penny wise and pound foolish and will lower the holistic and job market value of the degrees from both departments for current students and alumni. It will not create a positive ratchet for the institution’s budget especially when we rely more and more on students to pay more and more of total cost of education.
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Mostly women, yes?
We are even more herd-like than men. The goal is managed astro-turfed consensus, so the Dean, or more likely the Board to whom he reports can do as they please. The other women will act as enforcers of the “agreed-upon” decision. The pre-menopausal ones may even believe they “shared” in the decision-making process. The p-m ones are often too contrary to swallow that part.
Godspeed. It’s a very unpleasant state to be in without another pole to organise resistance around.
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If anybody is likely to protest, it’s older women. Men are on mute and women under the age of 55 play at being good girls. Except me because I’m from a different culture. Now that my whole department is doomed (we will be merged with Anthropology, which is the kingdom of wokeness), I have no efs left to give, so I’m free to say what I want. But yes, you are right, the only hope is with older women. Unfortunately, most retired in the past few years.
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WTF, why wouldn’t they merge History or maybe even Biology with Anthropology? Am I wrong, do you not teach Spanish Literature? Mind you, maybe nobody wants to be associated with Anthropology. Afterall, the cultural section has been increasingly rotten since the feminasties embraced Margaret Mead’s ridiculous er, horse muffins ;-D
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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