I nicked the phrase from In The Loop. It's the practice of stuffing a meeting with extra bodies to make the principals feel valued.
I've had a very bad day. Apart from a swim at 8.30 (a minute slower than usual), I've co-organised a big union meeting and took the minutes (more stuff to type up), and attended another soul-sapping departmental meeting. At least the union meeting brought us some militant joy - motion for holding a ballot to call for the V-C's resignation passed nem con. The departmental meeting was Foucauldian - all these brilliant teachers and scholars forced to spend an hour and a half trying to work out the intentions and mistakes of a management class which has zero interest in students or our own wellbeing. Fatuous, flaky ideas become fact, as we collude in deskilling ourselves and undereducating our students, despite being able to spot the gaping flaws a mile off. Nobody in that room wants to be a bureaucrat, nobody wants to dumb down our courses, yet a management knife is being held at our throats.
However, it's 4.45: time, finally, to get down to some actual academic work, and prepare the Shakespeare lecture. How wonderful it would be to have the time to read widely and prepare well in advance, then circulate it to the support staff with plenty of time. But no - late and rushed is the way the university appears to want it. It's just such as shame that I'm prevented from doing my best - why should the students?
3 comments:
It's a great shame that you cannot find the time to prepare fully for what should be an interesting lecture tomorrow. I too, have the knife at my throat as editor of the University newspaper as I've been informed I cannot launch a campaign to protest against the ailing situation which our institution finds itself in.
God only knows what shall happen in the coming months.
Demented - that's ridiculous. I've edited a union paper before. What reasons were you given, and who told you this? You're the editor - you have the final say on what goes in the paper. Otherwise the job's not worth happening. There's a story in this about free speech. More details!
It was served primarily as a warning and since I have arranged a meeting in the Union with a Mr Reading who I assume will let us discuss various points without actually signalling an attack on the Management in print who of course, do not wish to be put in a bad light by its own students. If I find my position restrained further, I shall of course quit.
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