THE FALL SEMESTER OF 2018
The first day of classes for newly arrived President Katherine Rowe was August 29, 2018.
The first day of classes for newly arrived President Katherine Rowe was August 29, 2018.
I had settled my lawsuit with the College on April 18, 2018. I was trying to hand off materials and information that the faculty clearly needed if it was going to carry out its role (singular) in university governance.
In late September 2018, I saw that my efforts to reconnect with the faculty were only damaging my standing and hurting my reputation everywhere.
I informed the Flat Hat that I was making no progress and I would be disengaging.
The Flat Hat wrote back almost immediately.
I have always been painfully aware of how positively lame so many of my emails could only have appeared on campus. Observers have assumed all along that if I understood how my emails made me appear, I would not have written them. This is not true.
Every week since that first week of classes in August 2018, I have continued to work on the same issues and projects that I was pursuing as a faculty member who served on the Faculty Assembly from 2012 to 2015 and was handed assignments I did not know how to hand back.
I knew that if I did not carry out these assigned tasks, no one would never complete them.
My work drew upon significant governance experience at the College I had gained starting in the late 1990s when I was first elected to the Arts & Sciences Faculty Affairs Committee dating back to the 1998 1999 academic year.
MY PECULIAR SKILL SET
I wish to stress that I have never thought all that highly of myself. I do not think I have done much during my career at the College that anyone would consider (say) all that great.
I am not a faculty leader like P. Geoffrey Feiss, or Michael Halloran, or Suzanne Raitt, or Sophia Serghi or Cathy Forestell.
I do not have the requisite vision.
My participation in faculty governance—this is going back over 23 years now--has been as a follower, a foot soldier, someone who recognizes good leadership and understands that outstanding leaders need to be followed if there guidance is to do the faculty, students, and the college any good.
I did not understand until these very recent events how my contributions have differed from those of other faculty members to university governance.
That may sound like I am setting myself up for praise, but my point is, my political abilities lie at a lower level of politics than those of other faculty and administrators who I have admired over so many years.
I remember telling Cathy Forestell, when we were first in contact in the fall of 2016, that her role was like that of Pres. Abraham Lincoln, and my role was like that of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman.
OVER THE PAST 220 WEEKS AND 4 DAYS
I have continued to move my work and my projects forward in each week, I have continued to learn about the College, the reform process underway there, and the transformation of American higher education.
For the last 220 weeks and 4 days, I have gathered an enormous amount of information that applies to faculty decision-making, I have worked out policy options for the faculty; I have pushed forward to historical projects concerning the College’s history; I have invented a variant of Ultimate Frisbee called Diverse Ultimate Frisbee, and I have worked out an idea for the president of the College of William and Mary to make a speech in Hanoi, Vietnam, at the site where Ho Chi Minh in 1946 began his first speech to the free Vietnamese people by quoting the Declaration of Independence.
President Rowe, your presentations in the fall semester of 2018, under the rubric “Thinking Forward,” transformed me as a teacher and scholar..
When you unveiled the cook cornerstones of Democracy, Water, Data, and Careers, I sent out a series of emails explaining how data and careers would have been the cornerstones of your work at any American university, but that Democracy and (especially) Water were uniquely William and Mary initiatives.
I have accumulated so much information, ideas, policy options, etc. since August 29, 2018, that I could spend the next 220 weeks and 4 days sending in my reports to interested faculty and administrators at the college.
I have continued to move my work and my projects forward in each week, I have continued to learn about the College, the reform process underway there, and the transformation of American higher education.
For the last 220 weeks and 4 days, I have gathered an enormous amount of information that applies to faculty decision-making, I have worked out policy options for the faculty; I have pushed forward to historical projects concerning the College’s history; I have invented a variant of Ultimate Frisbee called Diverse Ultimate Frisbee, and I have worked out an idea for the president of the College of William and Mary to make a speech in Hanoi, Vietnam, at the site where Ho Chi Minh in 1946 began his first speech to the free Vietnamese people by quoting the Declaration of Independence.
President Rowe, your presentations in the fall semester of 2018, under the rubric “Thinking Forward,” transformed me as a teacher and scholar..
When you unveiled the cook cornerstones of Democracy, Water, Data, and Careers, I sent out a series of emails explaining how data and careers would have been the cornerstones of your work at any American university, but that Democracy and (especially) Water were uniquely William and Mary initiatives.
I have accumulated so much information, ideas, policy options, etc. since August 29, 2018, that I could spend the next 220 weeks and 4 days sending in my reports to interested faculty and administrators at the college.
OVER THE PAST 220 WEEKS AND 4 DAYS
Over precisely the same 220 weeks and 4 days, College faculty have lost knowledge of their past actions. They have forgotten truths they once knew and discussed.
They have failed to respond to clear and present dangers that their own leaders. explained to them.
They have forgotten they ever heard any such presentations or failed to respond to any such requests.
As the years have passed, more and more knowledge the faculty once possessed has ben lost.
Realizing that they lack a meaningful role in faculty governance, but having forgotten their own past, the College's faculty today, blame the College's administration for not involving them.
But of course, their lack of a meaningful governance role today was the predictable effect of failing to confront necessary decisions in the past, then erasing all memory of having done so.
The faculty's current fact was not just predictable. It was predicted by several observers.
Over precisely the same 220 weeks and 4 days, College faculty have lost knowledge of their past actions. They have forgotten truths they once knew and discussed.
They have failed to respond to clear and present dangers that their own leaders. explained to them.
They have forgotten they ever heard any such presentations or failed to respond to any such requests.
As the years have passed, more and more knowledge the faculty once possessed has ben lost.
Realizing that they lack a meaningful role in faculty governance, but having forgotten their own past, the College's faculty today, blame the College's administration for not involving them.
But of course, their lack of a meaningful governance role today was the predictable effect of failing to confront necessary decisions in the past, then erasing all memory of having done so.
The faculty's current fact was not just predictable. It was predicted by several observers.