Exciting Experiences

[I know, I know, I promised a post on academic fraud. It’s coming, but it’s messy and it’s been a busy week in the non-blog part of Al’s universe.]

I offer in the meantime another observation on the behaviour and thinking of bureaucrats. Those of you who have worked in a bureaucratic org may not find this informative or all that interesting, I suspect, but I do. The disconnect between how bureaucrats write about things and how normal people outside the bureaucracy see them is fascinating to me. I understand that it is possible that bureaucrats think about things in the same way as those outside, but are forced by the culture of their organization to write and speak in ways that are silly and artificial. I kinda doubt that, but there is no way to know. Thinking cannot be observed, only writing and saying can.

Anyway, I had forwarded to me, in my role as an old fart professor, an email that had this as the Subject:

               Exciting Update: Name Change for International Student Services

Right off, I think: a name change is exciting? To who?

The body of the email itself has the appearance of a press release, and its heading is:

            Important Update: Name Change for International Student Services

So ‘exciting’ has been replaced now by ‘Important’, but I remain dubious that a name change can be either.

Then we get into the body of the press rel….er, email, and the first three sentences are as follows:

I’m excited to share an important update with you. Western International is streamlining our services under one unified brand, and as part of this transition, the International and Exchange Student Centre (IESC) name has been retired as of March 17, 2025.

Going forward, this key pillar of Western International will be known as International Student Services (ISS)—a name that better reflects our mission and enhances the experience for students and the campus community.

Now we have an actual someone who wants us to know that they are excited, and that along with the name change we have some streamlining….why the term ‘brand’ is being used at a university I cannot imagine. Food companies have ‘brands’, not universities. McDonald’s has a ‘brand’, Starbucks and Tim Horton’s have ‘brands’, I suppose Motel 8 has a brand.

Importantly, we now see what the old name was and what it has been changed to, along with the reason for the change – ‘a name that better reflects our mission and enhances the experience for students and the campus community’.

First, if this new name does better reflect their mission, and given the use of the term ‘streamlining’, if I were an exchange student I would have to infer that I should no longer expect anything from this new ‘brand’. I would see this as telling me that my kind have been streamlined right out of their name and therefore out of their consideration, and man, they are excited about it.

Second, how does a name enhance anything? It’s a bloody name, for god sakes. And it is impossible not to notice how ubiquitous the term ‘experience’ has become at this university. What does that word refer to? The Faculty of Social Science now has an Assistant Dean for Student Experience. What does that person do?

My theory – academic bureaucrats love that word because of its passivity. An ‘experience’ is something that happens to you. You have an experience, whereas you acquire an education. If someone says they acquired something, it is possible for others to check on that, to see if indeed anything was acquired. But an experience, well those can happen at Disney World or on a drug or at the seashore, and they happen if you say they happened. Easier for university bureaucrats to say we provide a great ‘experience’ here than to say you can acquire a great education here. Better to have the world ask of your grads ‘how was it?’ than to ask ‘what did you learn?’

But here’s my favourite part of the press release, in bullet point form, cuz bureaucrats do love bullet points:

What’s Changing

• Website & Branding: The IESC website and materials have been updated to reflect the new name. The new URL is now live, and we kindly ask you to update any references on your website accordingly.
• Email Address Update: The IESC email (iesc@uwo.ca) has changed to iss@uwo.ca.

So, two bullet points worth of changes, but they get it up to two only because they made the email address update a separate bullet point. Having exactly one bullet point would be a bit embarrassing, even to a bureaucrat.

You can be sure that a committee was struck somewhere in the university to hold meetings to consider this important and exciting name change. People with six-figure salaries sat in those meetings and had earnest discussions about all this. Whether or not exchange students were discussed we will never know.