Category: Life at SXU

The Fixations of February 2

February 2, 2023

Was it Bill P. who said that every important life lesson could be taught from The Godfather? Bill, now long retired, is still with us, still sharp as a tack. I’m thinking of Bill as I picture the convalescent Don Corleone, rehearsing over and over again the details of the operation ahead of them—or was it the Barzini matter? Obsessively, Don Corleone would repeat the steps, with self-awareness of his preoccupation. He was talking to Michael, who had matters in hand (kinda).

I think of the Don, and Bill, as I contemplate my plans and prospects. I keep going over the numbers, the possibilities for retirement, as the idea has loomed up as a salvation of sorts. It still feels too early. Is my main motive that of escape? I know I need a change. I know I’m paralyzed with depression. But yet I function on. There’s a comfort in rehearsing the Barzini … er, retirement, business.

The woes of SXU: I keep thinking that all these vanities will pass. But they still seem so important. Here I am in a class, with all these young people, and their futures are so important, so full of promise. I need to be the adult and to lead them. But under the weight of my depression, I can’t move well.

Bill P. always brought a smile—he was always on, always performing. His schtick didn’t play well with everyone. My UIC classmate, Mary Kay, was thrown off by Bill’s irreverent demeanor during her interview in 1996, a day or two before my own interview. Maybe something about that interaction got me the job? I too was thrown off by Bill—but his voluble, comic, and I would eventually learn, Italian, nature made it easier for me to roll with him. Bill wasn’t, of course, the decision maker in the hiring for the position that I won—but he captured or represented some kind of favor that fell on me then in that life-changing accomplishment of becoming the English Education Coordinator as an Assistant Professor of English at Saint Xavier University. I still can’t believe it, and I still look on that moment as … what … a blessing? Curse? Miracle?

It was lucky in so many ways—to get the local job in a disciplinary area that was my first choice. To have gotten it when I did—with the family I had when I did. To have been able to send three children here—so proudly—when the institution was so worthy, though it did not ever know it, or appreciate it fully enough. 

Through the twists and turns of the late nineties and early aughts—before tenure, there was such energy, hope, vitality. I could name conferences that were transformational—in Arizona (the Grand Canyon being a big part of that) and Florida (on vacation with the family in Orlando, and my catapult into technology with Nicenet and Web Course in a Box). When Angelo became a student in 2004, everything changed, and the promise he pointed towards—intelligent, moral, carefree, free-spirited and free-wheeling engagement in the world—became an incarnation of what it was all about—the life of the academic, the purpose of education, the purpose of raising a family—the promise of it all.

It wasn’t necessarily his greatness (though he was great)—he was just the first of the kids to make that transition into adulthood. And he did it in a time when, despite being in the near aftermath of 9-11, was still a time of hope and promise … and even innocence.

I’m thinking of retirement … only because life has gotten so unbearable at SXU. I take that word “unbearable” from my colleague Amanda—who, young as she is, didn’t retire, but moved out of state and into a different teaching career in high school. Such were/are the conditions of worklife at SXU. Our best and brightest—our future—our most dedicated are made to feel the unbearable, and they leave in search of a better way to work and serve. Her farewell letter was polite and upbeat—no shots fired—and her use of the word “unbearable” was uttered in a more or less matter-of-fact way, but the word now rattles in my mind.

Part of my problem was just how good I had it. When we’re living the dream it’s hard to be aware that it is just a dream, that it all can vanish in the face of oncoming realities. There is some truth to the privilege of being a white guy, an older white guy, a tenured professor white guy. So many of the challenges now swirling about in contemporary society have spotlighted, if not outright critiqued, the accrued benefits of each of those adjectives and nouns—and it’s all justified. But those justifications don’t necessarily rehabilitate the motives or effects of the dismantling of academic mission that our university has suffered since 2015. The victims have been people of all kinds—varied in race, age, and gender. We have all lost—first the faculty, then the students. Our bloated, over-paid, over-self-congratulating administration seems to be the only winner, as we collectively descend into whatever version of us is to settle into place.  

There’s always hope that a new order, a new approach to justice can, yet again, put us on a path to a new prosperity, a structure of things that sidesteps some of the old injustices and deficiencies—and builds on new principles of inclusiveness, youthful vigor, and academic promise. But the grief over the things lost will still be there. Today is Groundhog Day—a “holiday” that invites a hope for sunnier days sooner rather than later. It’s a day also that has come to mean being trapped in a deficient—but improvable—environment, and one complete with all the resources needed for escape and future happiness. In the mixture of hope and imprisonment endemic to Groundhog Day, I struggle with my depression, and I smile at thoughts of Bill P. and Mary Kay, and I shed a tear for all that is unbearable. I hope to wake up to a better tomorrow; I long for February 3rd, and what might lie beyond.

Reflection on Friday’s Faculty Meeting (January 27, 2023)

February 1, 2023

Many faculty and staff colleagues believe that SXU has lost its way. 

But even in its meanderings, we see signs of the old possibilities. At last Friday’s faculty meeting, there was principled discussion of varied topics. ChatGPT was on the agenda, and many colleagues shared their early experiments with and assessments of, or threat analyses of, the system. Many commented on pedagogical principles that might be developed around AI; about how assignments might be structured to avoid pitfalls or capitalize on new opportunities; about how to approach the teaching of writing; about how there was nothing new—or there was something new—in the tool; and so on. Also at this meeting, there was discussion of the student request to adjust our holiday schedule to be more inclusive of Muslim religious holidays. Other topics were raised—some in new business—about the state of SXU in terms of finances, programs, and structure of colleges/programs. Through it all, the discourse was civil and multifaceted. Time was monitored for each topic; comments ranged, and the overall experience seemed “normal”—an airing of viewpoints, casual politeness in presentation and reception, and a “move on to the next thing” progression in the handling of business.

But the ordinariness of the meeting made me uneasy.

I suppose it’s my impression that we are in the midst of an existential threat—that we are living through an identity crisis—that prompts me to think there was something insidious and dangerous about the “business as usual” feel of things. But this dynamic has been going on for some time, and Friday’s meeting was merely the latest of many others like it the past several months and years. I worry that we are in danger of normalizing a kind of blindness to some essential questions and needed discussions; we’ve lost our sense of priorities and urgent needs.

So many of the people who have built SXU, and have drawn on and extended its traditions have left the university. In silence, tenure is disappearing. Institutional memory is sketchy. And so, when there is talk about restructuring, the advocates for the old programs in the humanities in particular are not present. The larger community lacks awareness, and so the supporters of Administration—often those who have been favored with resources or positions—are free to make claims and push agendas.

Since the arrival of the current president, there has been a steady push to shrink general education—in terms of requirements, in terms of majors and programs, in terms of emphasis and value. The push to develop—or rather promote (since precious little goes beyond lip service)—professional programs as our “brand” has created a false dichotomy or tension between professional formation and the liberal arts. 

There’s an irony here. In promoting, for instance, a program in nursing as its flagship program—all the while whittling down disciplines that serve general education—the University is neglecting some compelling economic realities. The programs and courses in general education are among the university’s most efficient and cost effective, while those in nursing are most costly. Deemphasizing the humanities, if only in the reduction of general education offerings and requirements, not only weakens the education of students (including nursing students whose programs traditionally have required a fuller formation in the liberal arts)—but it also weakens the university’s bottom line financially.

We find ourselves on a march in pursuit of an agenda, not explicitly stated, to allow for smoother adoption of not only restructuring but also all the changes needed to facilitate the agenda. The march is without check: it brazenly defies governance structures; it employs the disciplining of “troublesome” faculty according to criteria and practices proscribed by the bylaws and AAUP; it shows refusal to meet faculty halfway on responsible requests (and thus promotes attrition through the loss of faculty who choose to retire or leave the institution); it weaponizes Human Resources to reprimand or intimidate faculty who are perceived as problematic for whatever reason.

On top of all this there is the creation of new committees where faculty representation is limited, or diluted, or pro forma (as many initiatives are fait accompli upon introduction); there is union busting; and there is direct disregard of Faculty Senate in the closing of programs, and the changing of bylaws.

All of this context leads to a restructuring plan that eliminates department chairs and shrinks the College of Arts and Sciences in ways that are defended as data driven, even though the data are structured in questionable ways, with many factors of what led to current data sets left unaccounted for (e.g., the starving/closing/misrepresentation of programs).

The bottom line is that the vision of the administration needs to be discussed in ways it hasn’t been discussed. Is it the right vision? Is it a pragmatic vision? Is it a vision that advances our mission? More to the point, we must discuss, and provide remedies for, the breaches in trust we’ve experienced the past six years. These breaches run the gamut—from questions of governance; to an unwillingness to engage in open dialogue (through established structures like the Faculty Affairs Committee and the Senate); to unnamed policies for resource allocation; to silence about the institution’s disinvestment in the academic product; and, of course, to revived, faulty approaches taken to program closures and restructuring.

Saint Xavier has lost its way, and in northern, cold waters. Let’s not normalize our waywardness with more meetings and conversations that gloss over our crises in accents of “business as usual.” If that is indeed an iceberg up ahead, let’s not concern ourselves so assiduously with rearranging the deck chairs….

HLC’s Critique of Shared Governance at SXU

[NOTE: For an explanation of my commitment to “bearing witness,” please see this post.]

April 12, 2022

Saint Xavier University, once again, finds itself at a crossroads. After a Higher Learning Commission (HLC) accreditation review that resulted in reaccreditation (but only after the raising of concerns, some of which involved sharp critique), our institution must plan a return visit before January 31, 2024, and we must show progress in the interim.

The critiques centered on issues of trust. The HLC report writers commented on how several people they interviewed from both sides of the divide, faculty and administrators, made the point that “they individually had never personally encountered such an antagonistic work environment fueled by diametrically divergent perspectives and professional objectives.” The HLC reviewers’ critique was directed at members of both the faculty and administration. The words, “toxic,” “dysfunctional,” “bullying,” “badgering,” “dismissive,” “contemptuous,” “disrespectful,” “unprofessional,” “sexist,” and “dismissive” were used, pretty much in equal balance, though ascribed to one or the other group.

As could be expected, the reviewers made reference to the May 28, 2020 decision by the university to discontinue Collective Bargaining with the faculty union and the Faculty Affairs Committee. I was involved in that crisis, pretty much at the center, as I was Chair of the Faculty Affairs Committee (FAC), and it was I, along with Associate Chair, Jackie Battalora, and our attorney, Robert Bloch, who was on the phone when the Board of Trustees Chair, Trish Morris announced the university’s decision.

The interim monitoring called for by HLC includes several steps aimed at rectifying what the reviewers saw in their site visit, our documents, and our apparent institutional culture. SXU must, as an entire community at every level, including the Board of Trustees, engage in professional development in the area of shared governance. We must engage in an assessment of shared governance. We must work to strengthen our culture and reduce distrust. Guiding the initiatives in this regard should be the work of an independent third-party consultant who will report out to the entire community.

I hope that, as part of the process our community engages in, we can produce a full report on just what led up to the May 28 phone call, and what has transpired since. I understand that several colleagues from both sides of our divisions would prefer not to rehash old wounds, and instead would rather move on—either out of pragmatism, or hopelessness, or annoyance, or frustration at the impracticality and inadvisability of litigating old grievances. I don’t want to revisit arcana from collective bargaining dynamics that produced conflict and impasses. But if we’re talking about building trust, all parties need to feel listened to and respected. Before and since May 28, I have been criticized in ways that have been equally hurtful as they are misinformed or distorted from the facts of what transpired. 

Bearing Witness as a Starting Point

I will say it again: I don’t wish to summarize the “he-said, she-said” episodes of negotiations and email wars and accusations and power moves made during the period of breakdown.

What I want to do is to bear witness to my experience as a Saint Xavier faculty member and as a human being and as a scholar of rhetoric and literature. I’ll begin with the last: Our Western literary tradition from the Bible to Dante to Jane Austen to Disney teaches us that “Pride goes before the fall” (Proverbs 16:18). Pride is the ur-sin, the sin from which all others derive. So, I ask: was I too proud in my approach to problem solving during the troubled negotiations? 

Of course I was. All of us were, on both sides, in my opinion. We all approached negotiations as “power players,” perhaps, understandably, out of a perception of necessity for a good end. I think both sides viewed power as the best tool or means to an end, rather than as an exercise of a personal need or ego gratification. But the exercise of power was, and perhaps still is, favored by most over genuine problem solving through respectful compromise. Let’s look at the power dynamics of both sides.

FAC’s Power: On our side, FAC was able to operate in a more demanding way than other committees at SXU. The administration was legally obligated to share information, negotiate, and work with us as a more or less equal partner—all in the context of tenured faculty exercising free speech. The Faculty Affairs Committee had some tremendous assets at its disposal: a long tradition of successful negotiations that brought faculty strong benefits (and staff too, through a long-respected tradition of matching staff provisions to those afforded through collective bargaining with the faculty). We had highly experienced negotiators. We had, I believe, a balanced and compromising attitude; we had earned credibility from the other side (at least in prior administrations) through our support of opening the contract in times of need. We had strong data; we had informed and beneficial opinions undergirding our attitudes.

Of course, not everyone agreed with FAC, even among faculty colleagues, and during the time of SXU’s financial crisis, several critics from both sides were quick to wave their hand, so as to indict all past administrators and faculty groups like FAC as being equally responsible for the troubled state of affairs.

But in any case, I wish to bear witness to my pride in thinking that FAC would prevail; I truly believed the Administration would not try to abolish the union! I truly believed we had a win-win dynamic, where the welfare of the entire institution was best ensured through a balanced agreement, with strong provisions for all who might merit them. Surely, (I thought) we will all come to our senses and find a suitable consensus. Others were more clear-eyed about the imminent danger to FAC’s future, and of course those individuals were correct. With one exception, perhaps, we all on FAC were somewhat prideful in our engagements with the Administration. We were, in polite but firm and intellectually aggressive ways, poised for combat and victory, even if the means were through respectful, but always challenging argumentation. An exception among our members who was not noticeably prideful (in my opinion) would be Arunas Dagys, the paragon of pragmatism, who, if he could just follow his instincts unchecked by the necessarily collaborative give and take required by committee work, would have found a way to “make it work”—find an agreement that might have forestalled an event like May 28.

Administration’s Power: Afflicted as I and others on the committee were by the incentives of “power moves,” we were up against an administration that knew, it would seem, only power moves. Some of their moves were obvious and ineffective, but many did work, and of course, the faculty union has been crushed. The hiring of an anti-union lawyer sealed the deal at the onset, closing off safe and collaborative dialogue before it could get started. The refusal to discuss negotiation matters outside of a formal setting involving lawyers prevented the thawing of tensions. The setting of ultimatums (e.g., a deadline to accept the Rollover proposal in summer so as to make genuine discussion among the faculty unlikely or impossible); the slow-walking of communications and proposal-sharing; the harshness of critique—up to the point of slandering of the committee—in characterizing the slow rate of progress: all these tactics and more prevented any kind of transcendence out of a pure power dynamic as our only way forward.

But now, as I stated at the onset, we are at a crossroads again. I hope the institution might respond to HLC’s interim monitoring in a truly constructive and less power-oriented way. I hope there can be a genuine assessment of shared governance, aside from the question of how this process might be engineered to result in more control or more effective implementation of an agenda. I hope there might be some genuine attempts to bridge the divisions that pull perilously at the fabric of our community. 

As we step back, I hope, from pure power moves, we might wish to consider shifting our terminology. “Governance,” possibly inescapably, puts us on the slope of power moves. I wonder if “stewardship” might be a better term, as it is more oriented to service and welfare. Is not shared governance, at its most elemental, about good stewardship? As an activity, stewardship stretches back into the past and helps us preserve what may still be of service. And, as a vocation, it helps us reach across into an unknown future. If stewardship is what we all shared, might we have a better chance to acquire the tools and build the team that will be needed for our continued efficacy?

Launching “True Saint Xavier”

This Thanksgiving, when the upheavals of our recent years still sting us and bring sadness, I find myself being thankful for an old colleague, gone now for several years. His spirit is needed. He harkens back to (what now seems to be) a make-believe time of hope and camaraderie.

A group of us is launching a new website, “truesaintxavier.org,” as yet another effort to fight the good fight for the welfare of our students, our programs, our heritage, and our legacy. We think Saint Xavier has lost its way, (or has been hijacked), and we hold out hope that we still have time to right the balance, adjust our waywardness, and step into a more secure future.

In looking through my files for material to include at the new site, I came across an email from Richard Fritz from 2010. He shared his message with the “Faculty Only” listserv. It’s a response to the crisis of 2010, which led to the University’s reduction of its retirement match by 50%. SXU had had a rather generous match—10% (or was it 11%?)—but as a result of the financial crisis of the Dwyer-Piros administration, the University asked faculty to sacrifice—temporarily, as understood by many—so as to tide over the institution in a difficult time.

Richard died in 2017 after a devastating illness that gave him some time to prepare, but not enough, and not the right kind, and not with the right kind of leave taking. As if there could be such a thing.

Though Richard and I were colleagues for two decades, I really didn’t get to know him until his final years at SXU when we served together on the Faculty Affairs Committee. Richard had always intimidated me somewhat. He was tall, with a piercing intellect and passionate commitments, a good beard and sports coat, a born academic. He was one of those persons who seemed to stand for so much more than a single faculty colleague could stand for, and he was prone to lecturing (if I could say such a thing in a positive sense).

I thought I might break through in my intimidation after I found out he was close friends with one of my close friends from college days, Anne Marie. They were neighbors, and to hear Anne Marie speak of him as a friend and neighbor was disconcerting to me, and even when I worked with him on FAC, I only rarely mustered the courage to have one-on-ones with him. But we did have those conversations, and I grew to love him—both for himself, and for the way he epitomized for me the “long-term associate professor” who made it his mission to care for his students, above all else, as his “love language,” or more, his raison d’etre for being an academic. 

There was something stentorian about Richard—but often with a quaver in his voice in public speaking. Whatever it was, when he spoke, it was important. At faculty meetings, there would occasionally be a Richard speech. In elegant sentences, with rising emotion, he put the focus on students. No one could gainsay he was an excellent teacher. I had a little more—or different—insight to his teaching than most others at SXU, since my daughter Genevieve was a sociology major, and she had discovered that Dr. Fritz was “that professor” who was to be the influence, the guide for her academic journey, a mentor she could respect and appreciate her whole life. 

She had more Richard stories than I. And she had that kind of context that encapsulates, I would argue, the “true Saint Xavier.” When she would begin a sentence with “Dr. Fritz says…” we knew some insight … and a lot of heart would be shared. Richard always spoke highly of nurses and teachers, and so he scored points with both my wife (a nurse) and me in these moments when he was quoted back to us during family dinners, debates, and just being together.

So, as we launch “True Saint Xavier,” I want to invoke Richard’s spirit. But I have another layer to add on first. That additional layer is an email message I wrote and sent to a group of colleagues about 18 months ago, just after the SXU administration withdrew their recognition of the faculty union. That was when I first rediscovered Richard’s email of January 5, 2010:

From: Angelo Bonadonna <abonadon@sbcglobal.net>
Subject: A Voice and a Message, Both Lost
Date: July 24, 2020 at 11:46:48 AM CDT
To: ***
 
Dear Colleagues—Yesterday, when searching my records for the year of the retirement match reduction (it was 10 years ago(!)—in 2010), I came across this email from Richard Fritz. It’s Richard at his best, and in telling the story of past sacrifice, he captured a bit of the soul of the SXU faculty, administration, and community—all in a way that seems so other-worldly these days.
 
I’m not sure what can be done with a message like this one. It’s more than just nostalgia that prompts me to share it now and ask you to consider what might be done with it, as we move forward to mobilize our colleagues. Richard’s is one of the voices that has been silenced—not directly by this administration, of course. But I worked closely with Richard in his last years at SXU, and it was clear to me that the institution was breaking his heart. Much, I’m sure, can be said about current conditions and leadership approaches—how they make the attitude and rhetoric that came so readily and naturally to Richard ten years ago impossible to conceive today.
 
The video documentary that Genevieve will be distributing in draft form in a few days has, as one of its themes, “the silencing of faculty voice.” I’d like to ask Gen (who revered Dr. Fritz) to consider dedicating the video “to the memory and mission of Richard Fritz, and all the lost voices of SXU…”
 
In the meantime, this Friday afternoon, take a moment to be with Richard a bit!  —Angelo
From: Fritz, Richard B.
Sent: Tue 1/5/2010 3:42 PM
To: Appel, Florence A.; Faculty-Only List
Subject: Dire Circumstances Redux
 
Dear Colleagues:
 
In the early 1990s (I believe it was 1993), the university found itself with an unexpected debt.  We were between two to three million dollars short of the amount required to pay our bills.  The situation was serious.  Several staff members were laid off and the administration scrambled to find ways to fill the gap.  There was talk of the university folding.  They were very unsettled times.  Scary and disheartening.
 
Several faculty meetings were convened; all were very well attended.  Numerous faculty members spoke up to discuss our role in solving the problem.  Dozens and dozens of ideas were proposed, every single one of which involved financial sacrifices on our part.  It was clear that the faculty understood the gravity of the situation.  It was also apparent that each and every one of us loved the university and were willing to go to great lengths to save it.
 
A solution was found.  In consultation with the administration, the Board of Trustees, and their faculty colleagues, the Faculty Affairs Committee created a voluntary “give back” program in which faculty members could reduce their salary by a certain percentage (I think it was 7%, but I’m not sure) for the remainder of the year (roughly seven or eight months).  Those who accepted the voluntary reduction would have a matching amount added to their pay check the following year.  As I remember, over 70% of the faculty participated.  It is not an exaggeration to say that this simple remedy saved the university.  Everyone, including the administration and Board of Trustees, acknowledged that the salary reduction program was the key factor in returning to economic stability.
 
The beauty of the program was that it did not require opening up the contract.  The program was voluntary, and therefore was not a “collectively bargained” agreement in the formal meaning. It was, in a sense, a collective faculty offer to pitch in.  The program did not impose universal participation.  There was no praise for participating, no stigma for not participating.  In fact, most people didn’t know who participated and who did not.  People gave back because they thought it was necessary and because they thought it would help.
 
Here we are again.  We didn’t ask for this (we didn’t the first time, either).  But we will help.  There is absolutely no doubt of that.  We, the faculty, love Saint Xavier.  It is more than just a job.  It is a place that transforms our students lives and gives meaning to our careers.  You all know what I’m saying, and could probably say it better.  The point is, we will not let the university fail.  We will do our part.
 
But as in the past, we must make our contributions wisely.  We must know what we are doing so that we can ensure that it will  work.  We must know the extent of the problem and the exact nature of the salutary effects of our contribution.  Will it be enough?  Too much?  Will it stabilize the institution?  And what assurances will we have that this problem won’t happen again?
 
Also, anything we do must be done in full concert with the Board of Trustees.  They are responsible for the financial well being of the university. Any contribution we make is virtually meaningless unless it is coordinated with their master plan.
 
In the past, FAC generated a solution that saved the university.  The current Faculty Affairs Committee has members who are both experienced and creative.  One member, Brian McKenna, served as a faculty representative to the Board of Trustees for many, many years.  He knows how they think and how they function.  Others, including Flo Appel, Norm Boyer, Suzanne Kimble, and Peter Hilton were here the last time we went through this.  Their leadership, in collaboration with Interim President Durante and the Board of Trustees, is central to solving this problem. I don’t know what kind of solution will be offered.  Perhaps it will involve reductions in retirement contributions or perhaps salary paybacks.  Whatever they decide, I trust Interim President Durante and our Faculty leaders to guide us to a solution in a collaborative, equitable, and timely fashion.
 
Richard Fritz
Sociology Dept.

SXU and HLC: Who gets the (dis)credit?

November 4, 2021

The recent online discussion among colleagues who assess the current Administration of SXU in opposite ways has led me to reflect, once again, on where we are as an institution. As I prepare my comments for HLC next week, I find myself reflecting on issues like agreements and disagreements and how to navigate them fully and respectfully, “love/hatred of SXU,” sabotage/”disruption” of HLC, and, perhaps most of all, how so many of us feel traumatized and depressed by institutional life at this university in 2021—where the conflicts and destabilizations of our own community are compounded by those prevalent throughout both higher education and our society as a whole .

Suffice to say, the SXU community is divided on how best to plan for, invest in, and pursue its future. Some point to the current administration as being instrumental in turning the university around, making operations leaner, saving money, and investing in programs in new ways so as to focus and strengthen the SXU “brand.” Others point to the administration as weakening longstanding programs, creating end-arounds on faculty ownership of the curriculum, reducing the role of faculty input, damaging established governance structures and processes, and promoting a climate of perpetual crisis and need to anticipate potential crises on the horizon.

Both sides seem motivated by worthy intentions to shape the university into a sustainable and successful institution of education. Their means and ends vary. Divisions abound—among those who have been long-serving and those who are newly hired; among those serving in tenured and those in non-tenured roles; among staff and faculty members; among those in the president’s inner circle and those not; among those who are well-compensated and those who are not; among pragmatists and justice seekers; and more.

Not enough has been done to heal divisions. I have been a vocal critic of the president and of those I’ve considered her enablers, and so, I must accept some responsibility in not always promoting the conditions of unity. I have placed blame at the feet of the president and Board of Trustees for promoting divisions and ignoring pleas for conversations and joint problem solving. I believe that the current administration has embraced a dynamic of “you’re with us or you’re against us.” I believe their actions have been power moves above all else and strategizing for strengthening their base and weakening opposition.

My convictions along these lines have prevented me from adopting a more balanced rhetoric.

This semester in my Rhetoric, Writing, and Society class, we have studied some alternatives to the (essentially male) rhetorical tradition that focuses on persuasion and argumentation by proofs to get the audience to accept a pre-established conclusion that the speaker (as a kind of leader) would have the audience accept. In contrast, certain versions of emerging feminist rhetoric place less emphasis on “changing the audience,” or even “adapting the message to the audience,” and instead features “bearing witness” of a speaker, who often attempts to relay the ways in which they have been hurt, but yet who, often with  brutal honesty, confide their own weaknesses, contradictions, and deficiencies—all in an effort to “raise consciousness” and possibly enlist humanizing consubstantiality of other conflicted, complex individuals.

Karlyn Kohrs Campbell presents the outlines of a feminist rhetoric that features personal, concrete, and individual experience—even in addressing exigent circumstances that carry life and death implications—and that would seem to require focused and directed or “led” collective action. In contradiction to a traditionally rhetorical, “persuasive” response, a feminist response could be oriented around consciousness raising as the sine qua non or starting point:

The only effective response to the sensation of being threatened existentially is a rhetorical act that treats the personal, emotional, and concrete directly and explicitly, that is dialogic and participatory, that speaks from personal experience to personal experience.

“The Rhetoric of Women’s Liberation”

And so, what would it look like if those of us on opposite sides of our SXU chasm were to attempt such rhetoric?

Even now as I write with a conscious desire to take a more unifying stance, as I try to bear witness to my experience, rather than call out the misdeeds of others, I find myself rehearsing my grievances, unable to let go of the rationales, defenses, attacks … the list of breakdowns, the threats … that I “know could be remedied, if only”—If we just could come to the table, direct our energies, and start pulling in the same direction. That is, I am trapped by my traditional, argumentative, prove-my-point, male rhetoric that ever propels me to shout, louder and louder, the validity of my thesis.

How do I retrench? My own history has been full of so much emotion and heartache; I should have little trouble being “personal, emotional, and concrete.”

In bearing witness, I have to ask, “How did I become a ‘faculty leader’?” It is not something I sought, and for many reasons: I am not a particularly good public speaker; I am not the best informed on the history of issues; I don’t think well on my feet; I am one who will always shift the focus from specific tasks at hand to some kind of “larger picture”—that, whatever its value, would always seem to subvert timely action. But when I was offered the position to lead—first, through mere representation on the Faculty Affairs Committee, and then to the position of chairperson, I felt that I did possess certain strengths that might be of help—qualities of character, emotional maturity, patience, right-sized ego, courage, right-sized assertiveness, general goodwill, and—yes—love of SXU, where 3 of my children have graduated, where, in 1996, my wife, an Irish Catholic, and I, an Italian Catholic, both alums of Loyola University, felt blessed to be able to plan on setting down roots and becoming members of a campus that reinforced the best aspects of our Catholic identity—both for ourselves and our young children who might someday attend. I felt the integrity of my intentions in accepting a leadership role would compensate for my deficiencies of leadership and organization. The challenges were all-consuming, but the work, ultimately, led to responsible purpose and action.

Much of the difficulty of serving on a faculty committee involves the “herding of cats” problem that ensues when so many independent, intelligent, and often strong-willed people, as faculty are, find themselves trying to organize and serve a collective purpose. There were divisions in FAC, as there were in the general community, and those divisions could be intense and stymieing.

Yet, above FAC’s divisions was a deep consubstantiality of the value of the committee’s work. For years we had had such exemplary leadership from colleagues like Arunas Dagys. I say “colleagues like,” though truth be told, I’ve never seen another like him. He’s larger than life—physically, emotionally, morally. He exudes strength, humility, and pragmatism all in equal doses, all with confidence and intelligence and resilience. I hesitate to call Arunas my mentor, for fear that I, in my failures, might cast some shadow over his excellences. I don’t mean to be sycophantic in my adulation, but I know no proper way to “eulogize” Arunas. Whether or not he was my mentor, he was certainly my inspiration.

I think of my failures when I relive the phone call of May 28, when Board Chair, Patricia Morris, with a quaver in her voice, in the “presence” of me, Associate Chair Jackie Battalora, and our attorney, Robert Bloch (“presence” in quotes because the message was sent via a conference call in those early days of the pandemic) took a stab at faculty governance and severed the university’s longstanding relationship with both the union and the Faculty Affairs Committee. Even then, I, in my arrogance thought “This will not stand.” Or I was, “Okay, okay…our move. We’ve got Robert Bloch. We got a new faculty unity. We have a new approach of exposing in public and with reason and professional calm and direct statement.”

But I was foolhardy to have hope, and that hope has not been helpful, and the damage done by FAC’s arrogance to take on the president rather than retrenching and waiting her out and preserving the union structure is inestimable. Throughout my time as chair, I would rehearse the first principle of the Hippocratic Oath: “First, do no harm.” And here it was: under my watch, the university union was crushed. My ensuing depression centers on this failure. And a vortex of anger and disappointment and licking of wounds has left me confused and despondent, but also scrambling, as I find my resilience, fortunately, has not reached its limit.

For one, I mustn’t elevate my role so as to take on that full responsibility. The truth is that the May 28th action was but the logical endpoint of many prior actions, all set in motion through a decision made years earlier in the hiring by the university of an expensive anti-labor law firm. This action, while regrettable, was not illegal, or perhaps not even immoral. But as Arunas’s voice echoes in my head: it was not pragmatic—not in the “big” sense of pragmatic, the sense that the union and the university could work together to find a sustainable path that protected all with some basic minimums of compensation and working conditions that laid the necessary groundwork for future developments. Arunas’s rhetoric of pragmatism was always so persuasive, since its fruits, always, were so visible in principled decisions over many years that featured the big view of sustainability. “Neither side should be allowed to game the system.” And in listening to the comparisons, analyses, and solutions he would propose in recommending policies, it was clear he had done his homework, a lot of it.

The busting of the union struck me to my core. Beyond the personal disappointment in myself for not knowing how to sidestep this disaster, there was the transformation of SXU, there was the setback to the labor movement in world-historical terms, there was the collective failure—of the FAC group to unify the faculty, but also of the faculty to understand what was happening, to trust the leaders as to implications, to commit to doing whatever was possible to forestall permanent damage, and to honor the tradition that had been built, with such promise and potential, for 40 years.

The PR campaign of the administration to point fingers at FAC for the decision they made also hurt. For the year prior to the action, public communications between Admin and FAC were strained, verging on hostile, while always delivered under some veneer of professionalism. But there was a dishonesty, slander even, in many characterizations of our committee by the Administration. We were accused of distributing “erroneous, flawed, and misleading” data; despite our proofs of the correctness of our information, no retraction of such accusations took place. In one notable public slander made directly by the president, we were blamed for the decision not to record negotiation sessions; and post-May 28, we were accused, without evidence, of behaviors and advocacies on our part that led to the breakdown in negotiations.

The slander, mischaracterizations, and imputing of motives by the Administration were indignities, yes, but most of all they hurt me as a person. To quote another feminist critic, Natanson, the hurt is more than just a passing blow:

When an argument hurts me, cuts me, or cleanses and liberates me it is not because a particular stratum or segment of my world view is shaken up or jarred free but because I am wounded or enlivened—I in my particularity, and that means in my existential immediacy: feelings, pride, love, and sullenness, the world of my actuality as I live it.

“Claims of Immediacy“

The busting of the union was unnecessary, immoral, and unproductive—and the hurt it caused me sent me into a depression that, dark as it was, was primarily a private matter of me adjusting to a new reality. I was thrown, as one colleague put it, “into a fugue state” (or was she talking about herself? Not totally clear…). But what happened the next year went beyond me, and beyond the union.

What happened the next year, in the context of Covid, was a barrage of brazen actions by the Administration to solidify their centralized and unchecked power. The counterpart success of unification by the faculty in response produced a strong Senate voice, who pronounced clear and important decisions on matters of bylaws, faculty voice, and curriculum. I needn’t rehearse here the faculty vote of no confidence, the Board’s doubling down in their knee-jerk affirmation of the president’s leadership, the dismissiveness of the entire administration of 2/3 of the faculty in expressing such dissatisfaction with the direction of the university: What FAC had seen in private for the first three years of the Joyner presidency was now laid bare, obviously and loudly, for all to see and hear.

Where are we now? We are as divided as ever. But I hold out hope that, through some adjustment—I hope on the part of all, including me—we can begin moving forward and shore up our mission and collective resolve to realize it in its strongest aspects.