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The Didactron
A Tale of Educators' Lives in a High-Tech Teaching-Learning Space ©

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18. Untenured

Like a primitive hunter reading the signs and knowing something was amiss in the forest, Russ knew there was something extra going on on campus. He could not point to anything. Some would claim he had a sixth sense but there were only scraps of evidence. Always pondering, he was concerned about part-time paranoia, for maybe he was picking up the wrong bits and pieces or putting them together in some way that always depicted: they're after you. If they were, he couldn't risk giving in to the foolishness of paranoia. He must react or run.

After his lecture on how the educational process might be improved, the environment changed. In that lecture he had raised the prospect of students suing the university, Alternative 16, for failure to perform, misrepresentation of deliverables, or consumer fraud.

Students did not know whether he was serious. He overheard conversations as he walked across the campus.There was talk here and there about the idea. Students saw him as usually serious and scholarly so they were sure he would not play the role of their scoutmaster and take them safely along the dark paths of the legal forest. They would have to do it by themselves and that presented an increasing list of uncertainties -- who, what groups, costs and source of funds, operating space, advisors… and time. Could anyone among them spare the time, risk the low grades, and face not getting a job or getting only a low-paying one because of the low grades which would be sure to follow over-allocation of time to the suit?

People around tables in the cafeteria would glance his way, then quickly resume talk about such a suit.

Two faculty came to his office to visit, a rare event. Coffee cups in hand suggested it was strictly social and informal. They talked, mostly with each other. Russ listened, nodded at the right places, enjoyed their being there, but the unusualness of the visit was the message for him, not the words.

Suits look bad, they agreed. You can rarely if ever get from under the cloud that one casts. They are expensive; the real issues are often bypassed to get to a favorable point of the law; the payoff would unlikely accrue to the students who invest; the quality of education would slip because of staff involvement; and the attitude of community would be lost, replaced by an adversarial relationship.

Russ had a hard time bringing into focus a place of community. He had known several in his graduate work in seminars. He remembered an intensive Russian language summer course in which community almost existed. Other than that and a few one-to-one student-teacher relationships, he could think of none. He sensed that an adversarial relationship already existed, for there was the continual chipping at evaluations. Education had become passing tests, building a credential, not learning. Perhaps correlated, the questions from students were always about points and not principles, always about grade distributions. The grade curve interested them the most, not prospects for going over sections in which most students did poorly. The issue was "getting out " of class, not "getting" the material. Community indeed! __ Russ was tenured and had been so for 12 years. Tenure was an honored status with long tradition. It was a condition intended to protect one who professes from being fired by any pressure group or person with pressure who views the world differently than the professor. It is a unique social status, one that claims that truth, no matter how harmful or painful to some, must be heard. Fear of losing a job can suppress truth. Thus tenure was created. That was the concept. The practice had not met the principle, but revision, not abolition, seemed to Russ a modest solution. Tenure is a notion whose historical root has been lost and it persists as if it were a union invention and identical to seniority or "job security.'

Tenure these days is awarded to academics who have proven themselves over some period of several years and who have also suggested that their behaviors such as teaching well, doing research, and being an acceptable local citizen, etc. are likely to continue unabated until they retire. Outspokenness in a young teacher, for which it was designed, is rarely rewarded with tenure. Tenure should be a position of strength, a veritable launching pad or defended outpost from which attacks on the weaknesses and limitations of current society are launched. It should be the arsenal of challenges. It is now populated by people who have been 'bought' by agency and corporation grants and contracts. Heresy presented in a class gets to parents faster than to a test paper and telephone calls to administrators, then quickly get back to teachers. Most teachers are, on one hand, pleased that they have "done something." However, they know full well that the list of calls and the attitude within the university will be swayed in real ways including promotions, assignments, and most importantly, on the family through the salary.

You can not lose tenure except for gross reasons such as conviction of murder or when an entire university program is abolished for alleged monetary reasons. Yet Russ knew you could be untenured. The process started within six weeks after his lecture about proposition 16. He was given two committee assignments. Both were with committees dealing with topics that a high-school-drop-out administrator could handle…and should have… but didn't because of tradition. These were committees, the meetings of which always took 50 minutes (a local class period) no matter what the topic, complexity, or difficulty. Each required some beforehand preparation, usually only done by 20 percent of the members, one reason the meetings all took so long. The total time consumed for nothing on these two assignments, each meeting several times, was 23 hours. He fumed: he was only paid to work 1760 hours. They wasted 13% of his year!

The frustrations were beginning.

Then came the requirements for more documentation for simple transactions. Things once overlooked or passed on were returned for signature or initials or for attachments. The life mud on his shoes increased as he felt himself becoming more and more tired due to aging.

Some of the returns were tolerable, just frustrating. These were gnats. He had learned how to live with them as a boy. They were a part of the forest. If you loved the forest, you tolerated gnats. But others were intolerable like furry biting horse flies. They were insulting, for they cast genuine doubt on the truthfulness of a long loyal faculty member. As if to say "there may be funds available on your grant, and while we really have no basis for questioning your selection of the proper equipment to perform the contractual research, we still want to check."

"Ah, there will be a charlatan or two; maybe a bona fide thief, but is a staff of full-time checkers and authenticators needed to find him or her? Why have their efforts been recently increased?" thought Russ. A request for a new office light bulb for the first time in his stay required a written request. A broken chair needed to be replaced. He had to oppose, in writing, why funds for it should not be subtracted from his research grant.

A change in a student's grade, necessitated by a simple tabulation error in his grade book, resulted in 'grade inflation' being discussed at a faculty meeting. Grade inflation was a new agenda item and the duration with which the comments were leveled in his direction was notable.

A research proposal to a foundation was not signed, effectively vetoing it. The grounds given were that it was too risky and good results may not result. Russ became ill for four days. The stress caused by the sudden loss of this principle of academic freedom and the sacredness of the personal research idea triggered his sickness. The phrase "psycho-somatic illness" so often used in the context of mental illness is usually an expression that a person wills some physical illness on themselves. In this case, Russ could not resolve the conflict quickly, or alone. He certainly did not will the illness. He experienced it. Academic freedom, he discovered, at least as it regards research ideas, is only as broad and deep as the understanding and risk-taking attitudes of the narrowest, lowest administrator in the institution.

He recovered, but he had lost time and production. He could ill-afford an 'academic freedom' fight legally, through the press dullards, or in this situation. His ideas were now always overlaid by "Which ones am I likely to be able to get signed so I might gain support for my studies?"

Then, almost a year later, the expected salary increase was not made. Quoted averages, and "Someone has to get a low salary to balance the high ones to get the required average" not withstanding, the salary change was the clearest evidence. That act influences families, social interactions, and is a device not taken lightly by an administrator. It was their chief working tool and it was being used.

The untenure tools had been uncrated. First, the trash and nonsense committees; then the visits to 'make him see the light;' then the administrative paper ploy 'drown him in paper; re-assign his assistant; and then the small salary increase during inflation. It ought to work.

Next, a department head wheeled out the 'objectives' and the appeals for working together to produce more. More funds for students, more equipment, more grants, more publications, more speeches, more press releases, more public service, more student involvement, more everything. It was a wonderful tactic that worked well when used at point-blank range in the face of a person defenseless and with less time due to committee assignments and administrivia, and growing periods of illness. Used together, they had the desired results… increasing frustration, self-centeredness, hostility, and entropy. All the while the benefits which he used to produce dried up … there was hardly a spare moment away from frustration for a creative thought. Those ideas dried up and the downward spiral was almost visible. He could no longer tolerate the conditions. There was no complaint that could be addressed openly, no student march would help, no sympathetic administrator would recognize a wrong being done. His lectures and especially Alternative16 were never mentioned. He felt deep guilt to his subject field in not extending his knowledge within it; guilt to his students; and guilt in not being effective in causing needed change … society's paid mission for him. Shunning is painful, especially to professors. No fellow faculty would believe the cumulative effects which he could list because they all felt each, separately, in lesser amounts. Very skillfully done! He had to leave. He had never been told to do so; he had simply been untenured.

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Last revision January, 2008.