As clear as water--polluted water

Well her grace appeared at the A & S meeting last week. Those who attended expecting any real information were real disappointed. The Provost said nothing. Actually she talked quite a while, but really said little. There was (and still is I believe) no comprehensive list of the knights and ladies who are members of the roundtable. There is also a benchmarking study that goes along with all of this, but exactly what is being benchmarked was not revealed. The Provost was asked but claimed not to know exactly what variables were going to be compared. Given that one member said that the benchmarking data used for the salary equity study had to be "cleaned up" after it was received from Institutional Research makes one question the quality of this section of the study. After all, if our data has to be revised, what makes us believe that any of the other institutions data are any better. (Just as an aside, Dr. Tinkle applauds the work of the salary equity folks.) So there you have it--a group of unknown membership and a benchmarking study with unknown variables. Yep, that appearance was quite the song and dance routine. Maybe she's taking lessons from our new interim dean.