Happy ending for CAS

Join me. It is approaching the end of a long, hot day. We observe two strangers near the summit of a steep hiking trail in Arizona. They are standing on a treacherous lip over the Grand Canyon, facing to the West, toward the sinking sun. Exhausted and silent, they gaze off into the rugged abyss and down to where the Colorado River is wending its way through the crags and crevasses, here and there bathed scarlet in a scattering of sunshine.

Both hikers are transfixed and held spellbound by the panoramic play of light on the pillars of detritus -- the debris within that vast crevasse all carved out of stone by the ancient, tireless river at work. Eventually one of them breathes, "Wow!" and the other responds, "You said it!"

"It is a red ribbon chasing after the sun!" claims the hiker we shall call "The Poet."

"No. It is the outcome of an inexorable erosion process gradually moving sediments to the sea!" asserts the hiker we shall call "The Scientist."

What happens next? To find out you must now take Professor Xtreme's first quiz of the season:

Please Choose the Best Response:

a) Overwhelmed by the magic of the moment and in their ecstatic enthusiasm, the two strangers suddenly embrace and leap into the abyss.

b) The Poet shoves the Scientist into the abyss with a victorious shout of, "So THERE!"

c) The Scientist performs an eye roll of disgust and abruptly heads further up the trail. Having taken twenty paces, The Scientist turns dramatically about and shouts, "You LUNATIC!"

d) They agree to meet back at the lodge. Once there they retreat to the Poet's room and have sex in the shower.

e) They politely take leave of each other, return to their cars in the parking lot, slip their keys into their ignitions and drive off in different directions.

f) None of the above is a better choice than any other.

g) a, b, c, d, and e are all absurd, I hate this quiz and I hate this column.

Thank you for taking my quiz.

Rather than overanalyze the choices let us just agree that "d" – the happiest ending -- is the best response, so we can move on.

Most people would applaud a happy ending to every human drama. For example, the story of the venerable University of Toledo College of Arts & Sciences should end "… and so they lived happily ever after" [applause!] because it has accomplished so much good work while performing its academic mission as a state public institution of higher education during its first ninety-six years.

Everything seemed indeed copasetic with the College's masterly performance until 2006 when the Jacobs Administration arrived on the scene and proclaimed, to everyone's surprise, that the College was "broken" and irrelevant to the intellectual trends of the New Millennium.

Then, without articulating clearly what was broken or irrelevant, a highway-to-transformation of the College was swiftly paved by a sequence of five notorious documents prepared by administration-appointed, -coached and -controlled teams of authors that recommend, justify and thus enable the systematic dismantling of the College and its constituent departments [cat-calls and boos!].

On September 24th, President Jacobs will decide whether or not to implement the recommended restructuring plan, all or in part.

Meanwhile, public meetings have been and will be held by the administration's Strategic Plan Committee and Implementation Committee on Strategic Organization to describe and explain the progress of the planned transformation. Most of their work, however, occurred over the summer break when students and faculty were absent and had no opportunity to directly participate, to contribute or offer critiques.

Internet rumors began circulating among members of the campus community excluded from the planning process about the possible impacts of the planned transformations, if implemented, and there was wild speculation about a top-level administrator conspiracy against the College. Anxiety levels rose rapidly. Incivilities ensued over this issue of top-down A&S College transformation and restructuring that appeared to circumvent both the spirit and the letter of shared governance.

On August 24th there was a "Strategic Plan Committee of the Whole Meeting" and a PowerPoint© presentation that addressed and condemned the circulating rumors. The presenter representing the university's structural reorganization team proclaimed there was "absolutely no evidence" that the following still-circulating rumors are true.

1. Structural reorganization will increase tuition.

2. Structural reorganization will result in increased bureaucracy.

3. Structural reorganization will devalue student degrees.

4. Structural reorganization is a way to sell degrees.

5. Structural reorganization will lower the quality of education.

To claim that there is "absolutely no evidence" that these rumors are true is a preposterous statement! In the first place the word "absolutely" invites skepticism about the claim of there being no evidence. Beyond that are general characteristics of rumors themselves that serve to explain why they exist and proliferate.

The best way to spread a rumor is to assert it is untrue. Also, rumors have legs and it proves near impossible to knock the legs out from under a rumor on the run. Finally, a rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way.

I forgive anyone for thinking that these particular rumors must have some truth content since the administration has its underwear in a big knot over them and asserts too loudly that they are untrue. Moreover, since the specific negative impacts of the implementation of the recommended restructuring described in the rumors will take place in the future, the administration can hardly claim there is "absolutely no evidence" of their validation in the present.