Bureaucratic Safety
As I’ve mentioned, I still get official sorts of email from my former employer’s bureaucracy, and from all levels of that bureaucracy. The most amusing – or, often, disturbing – come from the high-level bureaucrats, but they all have a particularly stilted way of seeing the world.
A recent example came from a lower level – that of my former department. I got an email from the Dept staff containing a pdf file setting out the agenda of the next dept meeting. (The dept adheres to long-standing tradition of having exactly two department meetings per year. September and May. As a retiree, I no longer attend, but I still get the relevant emails, which I do appreciate.)
Below I have reproduced the first several inches of the pdf file containing that agenda – I have changed the names in it to protect the innocent. This agenda is in the same format and contains the same information as such documents have since I started my job 45 years ago. Back in the day the agenda arrived in your mailbox on paper instead of as an email attachment, but otherwise it is the same. Except, see below. Anyway, here is what it looks like.
DEPARTMENT MEETING
Thursday, May 15, 2025, at 1 pm in SSC 0000
A G E N D A
- Chair’s Welcome Jim Really
- Dean’s Presentation Dick Juno
- Q & A with the Dean
- Minutes of Departmental Meeting – November1, 2024 Jim Really
- Graduate Program John Gradchair
- past cycle of admissions to the program
________
There were more items of business, of course, but they all followed this pattern. A Dept meeting is primarily a forum for reports from people in the Dept on the various aspects of the Econ Dept for which they were responsible. The one unusual item on the agenda is number 2, ‘Dean’s Presentation’. For most of my career, Deans never came to a dept meeting. Such meetings were about dept business, and it was the Dept Chair’s job to report to the dept on anything going on at the level above that his colleagues needed to know about.
I think it happened once or twice during my Chair term that the Dean wanted to come to a meeting, and then after that it started to become more common. I think most deans would prefer to do away with Dept Chairs entirely and have depts run by a member of their own staff. Something like that will almost certainly happen eventually, but that’s not the point of this post.
This is the point……
After getting the above document, but before the meeting happened, I got another email, announcing that a REVISED agenda for the meeting was attached. There was some minor change to the items on it, but that was not noteworthy. What was notable was that the format had changed completely.
Now the actual agenda part of the Agenda looked like this
| Agenda Items | Nature | Presenter | Tim |
| 1. Welcome and Announcements | Jim Really | 5 min | |
| 2.Dean’s Presentation | Q&A with the Dean | Dick Juno | 30 min |
| 3.Minutes of Departmental Meeting – Nov 1, 2024 | Jim Really | ||
| 4. Graduate Program | Cycle of past admissions to the program | John Gradchair | 10 min |
| 5. Undergraduate Program | Summer Research Fellowships | Jane Unchair | 10 min |
So, everything is now in boxed columns, for whatever reason.
Moreover, each ‘Presenter’ – even the Dean – is on the clock. (I left in the Tim typo, which clearly should read Time.) The thing is, my old dept does not like meetings, a fact which makes it rather unusual in the academic world, where a chance to talk in front of others is generally relished. No meeting ever went more than an hour, all in, at which point we would happily adjourn and go for beer at the Grad Bar. Time limits are hardly necessary in my old Dept’s agenda, and I doubt their presence in this new agenda was a Departmental innovation.
Still, the truly remarkable part of this revised agenda is what changed above the actual list of agenda items. It was chock full of boxes also, of varying sizes. Here are the interesting ones….
Apparently people need to be told that the Meeting Leader will be the Dept Chair. Whatever. Then…..
More important info, I guess. Another box noted who would be the Note taker for the meeting, also very important, but my absolute favourite box was this one, at the very top of the document…..
This Dept has been having meetings for more than 50years, but the current crop of bureaucrats has apparently decided, in its wisdom, to impose the inclusion of this at the top of every Dept agenda. Cuz, ya know, if the very saintly folks at the top don’t impose this, there is a great chance that the Members and Attendees at the Dept meeting will break out into – well, I dunno – disrespect, the creation of unsafe spaces.
Of course, there is an easy conspiracy theory regarding where this all came from. The Dean was not at the meeting just by happenstance, it had been well advertised that he was there to talk about – and be questioned about – The Budget.
It is, according to the university administration, in Bad Bad Shape. I am pretty sure they have something in the neighborhood of half a Billion dollars in the bank (yes, that’s Billion and no that is not the endowment, that is separate), but don’t pay any attention to that. Their line is that if something is not done to cut costs, revenues will start to fall short of costs, and We Cannot Have That. And We Cannot Spend any of that Rainy Day Money in the bank. It ain’t raining yet, you see.
So, the Dean was in the Dept, as the lowest man on the Admin totem pole, to explain what is going on with the U budget and to answer questions. I am going to bet that he would not be announcing the laying off of twelve associate vice presidents. That, I suspect, is why that last box is at the top of the revised agenda, and why there is a tim limit on every ‘presenter’. After 30 minutes, no matter how many questions might be left, and no matter how pissed off the Members and Attendees might be, the Dean will be out of there. And don’t you be showing him any disrespect, no matter how ridiculous is what he says, or he will leave….and maybe report you to HR.
Universities are not places for robust disputation, argument, disagreement. That would be….judgemental. Not to mention unsafe.