Clarissa's Blog

Today is the first day of the academic year, with me not being department chair. I am strutting into the office feeling ecstatic that I don’t need to care about anything this semester except for my research.

At the same time, I am realizing that I made a big mistake in the six years that I was in this role. I invited lecturers – part-time temporary faculty members – to department meetings. Nobody had done it before I became department chair. I started doing it unthinkingly, and I now know it was a false move. We ended up in a situation where the hierarchical order is broken and lecturers behave in unreasonably demanding and prima donna-ish ways. And it’s all my fault. I allowed this mold to fester and grow.

I, of all people, should have known better. I love hierarchies. I understand why they’re important. I can’t even fully explain what led me into this pig-assed behavior. I most certainly don’t care if people like me, so it wasn’t about that.

The new department chair immediately kicked out everybody who is not tenure-track out of the department meetings. And the craziest thing is that I hadn’t even realized that I’d been making a mistake before I found out that she did that.