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Each morning at 9:15am sharp, some of the faculty in my department and a couple of others get together to have coffee and talk about stuff. There are some conservatives, and some liberals, and the conversation can be quite lively. I don't go, largely because I'm not a coffee drinker, and largely because I tend to teach at that time of day. The crowd trends a bit older, as well, and I'm not up on my 1950s football players. Still, it's a cool gathering that people have been doing for as long as anyone can remember (which means, before 1966 when one of the faculty arrived and "coffee" was going on).
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Drinking liberally. Now there's an organization I can get behind.
What's on your mind this fine Friday afternoon?
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AndrewMc on 8/22/2009 6:55 AM:
Re: politics
Actually, at beer most of it consists of bashing university policies. There's little fear of retaliation. I chair the faculty senate as an untenured faculty, and spent the year trying to kill one of the president's pet reform projects as well as several of the Provosts initiatives. I also served on the faculty senate where I was quite open about my opposition to many university practices. I gave regular interviews to the local paper.
I also chair the faculty curriculum committee before I had tenure--a tough committee where you are guaranteed to piss people off.
I never had any fear of retaliation. In fact I went up for tenure a year early.
Ahistoricality on 8/22/2009 12:36 PM:
Curriculum committee: every untenured faculty member who served on it at my last posting had to file an appeal of their tenure/contract renewal denials, some of which were successful. I'm not saying it's the committee service that did it, but yikes.
Institutional cultures vary, though: the pathologies on display back there would make David Lodge or Jane Smiley throw away their satires and start making documentaries.
idiosynchronic on 8/24/2009 4:08 PM:
. . Jane Smiley throw away their satires and start making documentaries.
I thought that's what Moo U was. I can name the faculty person(s) with the persona characters in the novel.
FTR -- Jane's life within itself is a satire novel on two legs. I nice fun one, but she's not a dispassionate and fair observer of others either.
My first teaching position was at a college where the President actually sponsored the Friday afternoon drinks -- with a little portable wet bar in the alumni house -- but my problem with Friday afternoon stuff is that I've often got Shabbat services to go to later in the evening, so my window for chillin' is short, even if I don't have any family obligations.
Then there's the tenured-untenured thing: I'm sorry, but university politics trumps domestic politics. I talk too freely as it is: alcohol would put me in a position where my collegiality could be in jeopardy..... My first posting also had a social/professional group made up entirely of untenured faculty, which was fantasticly freeing.
Anyway, it's our anniversary. And classes start Monday. That's really all I'm thinking about.