Confessions of a Community College Dean

The Girl tried out for a part in the church Christmas play. The play is based on the nativity scene.

Last week, IHE featured a story about a prominent professor at Texas Tech whose bid for a deanship was denied on the basis of his stated opposition to the tenure system. This week, a court upheld the termination of an HR director for stating her opposition to gay marriage. Although one case is much more sympathetic than the other, they really address the same issue. Should administrators be allowed to raise policy objections in public?

The only thing scarier than higher education with administrators is higher education without them. Last week, Lee Skallerup Bessette and Paul Fain both had thought-provoking pieces in IHE about StraighterLine and the possibility of “freelance” higher education.

We’ve stopped in Sandy Hook any number of times over the last few years, driving between Massachusetts and New Jersey. It’s a cute little town just off route 84, about halfway between Danbury and Waterbury. It has several good lunch places, and a lovely upscale toy store in an old house that couldn’t be any more New England-y if it tried. Behind the toy store there’s a creek with several decks overlooking it, and if I remember right, even a mill wheel. The last couple of times we were there, we spent more time than was strictly necessary, just because we liked it so much.

“Lose the do-rag.” A dozen or so years ago, I actually had to say that to a student who was on his way to a job interview. It simply hadn’t occurred to him that wearing a “do-rag” (a bandana over his hair) would be a problem. (Now, faculty tell me, similar conversations occur with young women who favor bare midriffs.)

Legislators are masters of compartmentalizing. This law addresses this, and that law addresses that. And much of the time, it’s possible to construct a reasonable argument for a particular decision, taken in complete isolation.

This blog doesn’t address car repair, the Twilight series, Hungarian food, or speculation about the next Secretary of State. Its set of topics is relatively defined, as regular readers know. That’s not because I adjudge those other topics unworthy or uninteresting; if any of them strike your fancy, there’s no shortage of other places to read about them. It’s just that there’s a limit to the number of things I can address thoughtfully, and I don’t see much point in covering topics just to cover them. I’ve found a niche, and that’s where I work.

December is a cruel month for academics. More accurately, the stretch from Cyber Monday until Christmas is uniquely difficult.