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Saturday, February 21, 2009

Provost Leaps Into Inaction

Below is a very typical exchange of what administrators refer to as "communication," wherein "Thank you for you input" is the theme of this administration, while they fluff off or delay any attempt to talk, while doing exactly what they want, whether it makes sense or not. Regarding this administrative style, a foreign correspondant observes, "From a distance of 10,000 miles, my suggestion is that Jacobs and Haggett could benefit from adult supervision. Alternatively they might like the Chinese administrative style."




From: Hagget, Rosemary

Lawrence - I'm happy to meet with the A&S council executive committee. By copy of this to Karen, I am asking her to find a time for us. I'll warn you it may be a couple of weeks out because of budget prehearings. Perhaps you and I can have a telephone conversation before the meeting so I can better understand the intent of the resolutions. Rosemary

----- Original Message -----
From: Anderson, Lawrence S.
To: Haggett, Rosemary
Cc: Anderson, Lawrence S.; Marchionni, Raymond; Patrick, Brian; Davis, David H.; Creutz, Charles; nina.mclelland@utoledo.edu ; Heberle, Renee J.; Rouillard, Linda

Sent: Thu Feb 19 21:28:05 2009
Subject: meeting request

dear rosemary-
the A&S council executive committee requests a meeting with you to discuss the resolutions posted in my previous mailing and the schedule/procedure for hiring a permanent dean. another important topic is the future of the LA roundtable discussions. we thought it would be best to have a committee meeting at your convenience, followed perhaps by a presentation by you to council at some future date.

thank you,
-lawrence anderson-huang, chair A&S council

4 comments:

horns n' fins said...

Be fair Bloggie, central admin has a lot on its plate. You know, denying sabbatical requests that had gotten unanimous approval all the way up the line, writing questionnaires asking chairs for data that could easily be collected off of existing documents, bloviating at Faculty Senate about how in "difficult times" organizations have a natural tendency to centralize power, etc. It must consume quite a bit of creative energy to come up with this stuff.

Diogenes said...

Painting lipstick on a pig like the Zemsky Report, and then convincing incredulous UT A&S students, faculty, staff and alumni that it is not in fact a pig, are impossible tasks that would likely take the Queen of Mean and Our Interim Dean into May – were it not for the heavy Hammer of Financial Exigency that will by then have rendered as moot the need for any further discussion of Zemsky.

Bloggie said...

A comment on comments.

Bloggie does not post all the comments, although she would prefer to. But some are simply abuse from people who appear to be administrators, one can tell from their level of knowledge, writing under assumed names as if they were students. They tell us that we should all leave if we are unhappy at UT. And that we should not spend work time writing on or reading the blog. We should do what we are told. How dare we have unauthorized conversations about things they do not wish us to discuss! They do not like us. They do not respect us. Imagine that.

if anyone has any suggestions on how to handle this, let us know, but my tendency is to let them use all the considerable resources at the administrators' disposal to convey their newspeak, to not give them yet another forum for this, and to reserve this area for sensible talk.

Dave Tucker said...

What's the possibility that our fair administration has lost a pile of money through inept behavior?