Why She Wept

Imagine a working group of 100 tenured faculty flanked by 200 academic staff and 150 support personnel carrying Civil Service protection. No one gets fired. Few move on. Most see the same faces and hear the same gossip all their lives. Memories last decades. Envies flourish. Careers are checked, sometimes destroyed. Frustrated ambitions transform into depression. Resentments run deep and are satisfied with viscous gossip…or violence. Promotions are denied. Fellowships are blocked. Salary is frustrating. Mix and match romances flourish among all employees. Students are seduced. Professors undermine colleagues. Marriages dissolve and re-form. People die. Life gets messy.

Of all university ranks, none is targeted more than a Dean. Sallie Drake, the new leader of the College of AL&, welcomes critics’ arrows and draws her own bow. She sets goals, pushes votes, and demands outcomes. She lives her life as suits her, carving new boundaries that keep many old-timers remembering a different sort of behavior “back in their day”. She envisions a university presidency and knows how to get it. Reallocate personnel. Redistribute assets. Manage curriculum change. Massage salary requests into winners and losers. Move on.

Amidst the meetings and the menace, faculty Chairs do their dance…evading commitments, searching out gossip, finessing demands, protecting departments, ensuring no Dean is ever happy.

Detective Chester Devlin asks the question, “Why should faculty get so stirred up? No one loses their job.”

Still, people die.