slavery, the oppression of women and LGBTQ people and greased the skids for colonial exploitation for millions around the world. They were in turn dismissed as “hopelessly PC.” Adelaide brushed that aside as so much nonsense and kept on questioning. Grimes was sure truth was objective and he had the lock on it. I’d seen the reading list for his introductory class on Ethics. No women, minorities or “third world” authors need apply. And certainly no Queer theory ever crossed his mind.
Adelaide looked impassively at Grimes, but I noticed her hands on the table were clenching and unclenching, a sure sign of agitation in her. Grimes noticed too, but he plowed on.
“Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if this self-study enabled us to enlarge our department, given the kinds of substantive classes we teach.”
“Who?” Adelaide’s sharp voice cut through the room. The one syllable stopped Grimes like somebody had attached a chain to his axle.
“Who? What do you mean who?” he blustered.
“Look. Harold. If it’s not a raid then it will be a plant. And what gets foisted on to us depends wholly on who writes this self-study and who ultimately will determine the content. That’s what this discussion is about, isn’t it? You have somebody in mind to add to our department. Maybe you and the Dean together have somebody you’d like to add to this department and this self-study is the fig-leaf that will cover that maneuver.”
Whoa. Made sense to me, but also made me want to crawl under the table. When mastodons clash, the calves run for cover.
But I hadn’t reckoned with Donald Willie, Professor of Psychology and Religion. Donald verbally stepped between them.
“I think both of you are making good points.”
Maybe we should get a sign for the conference room door that said “Counseling Session in Progress.”
“I think we should do a self-assessment and I do think the whole department should have input. Can we turn this to a discussion of what sub-committees we would need here and who would be available for what? That way we can break through this impasse and move the discussion along.”
Donald’s voice came reasonably and softly from between his mustache and beard. He referred to himself as a “Jungian,” and as far as I could tell that meant he spent a lot of time on dreams and on the unconscious. Well, since this meeting was alternately traumatizing me and threatening to render me unconscious from boredom, I thought he was our best bet for cutting through to some kind of conclusion so we could get out of here sometime this week.
Grimes looked at Donald for nearly a full minute and everybody, including Adelaide, kept quiet. Grimes started patting his pockets, eventually finding pipe, tobacco, damper and the other impedimenta of the pipe smoker. I couldn’t help myself. I looked at the prominent “No Smoking” sign on the wall. Grimes didn’t seem to notice, however, and the fiddling didn’t result in a pipe to smoke. It resulted in a pipe with which to gesture at Willie.
“I’m sure that’s a very productive suggestion Donald and thank you for making it.”
With that the unlit pipe and the other equipment went back into his pockets and Donald was effectively dismissed.
“I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. What’s really needed as we begin this process is a survey of the students who take courses in our department as part of their overall humanities distribution requirement, which classes have been and continue to be the best subscribed, which group of classes produce the most majors and so forth.”
Grimes tapped a stack of papers in front of him.
“This is a set of guidelines on conducting the self-study; the guidelines are also on your faculty page on the website. Self-study, we believe, means nothing less than that we study ourselves.”
Adelaide snorted, but let Grimes continue.
A slight flush on Grimes’ cheek betrayed he’d heard the snort, but he didn’t glance in her direction.
“Let’s take this back, say, at least ten years.”
Grimes looked around the table expectantly, still standing, legs akimbo in his ‘captain of the ship’ stance. Nobody saluted the captain and nobody took him up on his suggestion, which obviously involved the most tedious kind of scut work, comparing years of online registrations and cross-referencing it with students who became majors and their cumulative class schedules.
“Can’t the secretary get us that kind of information? Why do you need to put faculty on it?”
Donald was not through being helpful.
Grimes adopted a pensive look for about five seconds and then shot Willie down again.
“As you know, Professor Willie, Mrs. Frost is our one remaining secretary for the whole department. She has her hands full now—I can scarcely add to her workload.”
Actually, Frost did nothing but work for Grimes, and much of the rest of the time she seemed to sit at her desk doing online crossword puzzles. She worshipped Grimes, of course, since he let her do what she wanted and gave her regular doses of his charm that he seemed to be able to turn on and off at will. I’d made the mistake of asking her to find me some pens and legal pads when I’d first joined the department and she had not even looked up from her screen. I’d had to ask Henry and he’d told me where the faculty supply closet was. The key hung on a hook by Frost’s desk. I didn’t ask her again; I just went in to her office and took the key off the hook without a word. Her thin shoulders, hunched over the keyboard, tensed when I did it, but she didn’t look up.
“I think,” Grimes continued smoothly, “that this initial research would be an excellent introduction to the workings of an academic department in relationship to the curricular needs of the university—I’m going to suggest that our two newest colleagues take this on and use it as a way to orient themselves to the whole ecology of the humanities division.”
Grimes gazed at Henry and then at me, not bothering to hide his smirk.
Henry looked as stunned as I felt.
Neither of us had finished our dissertations when we had been hired, and we had received many assurances from the Dean and from Grimes himself that the university was “committed to protecting the time of junior faculty so they could complete their dissertations.” Finishing what was effectively a book length research project along with coming up with six classes per year, never having taught before, was already daunting enough along with the committee work we’d already been assigned.
Basically, we made up our classes as we went along, and we often asked each other how far ahead of the students we were in the material for a course. Sometimes it was a matter of hours.
I’d managed to get off a couple of unwanted committees as a rookie cop by suggesting we spend money. Police departments always had hidden pockets of money to spend, and actually so do humanities departments. Worth a try.
“While I think that’s a possibility, Dr. Grimes, I might suggest that we re-direct slightly and assign one of our graduate students to this project? We do have a budget for graduate student stipends.”
I looked at Grimes with what I hoped was my most academically neutral face. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Henry looking at me gratefully. Henry moonlighted at a convenience store in the suburbs four nights a week
