February 10, 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How much of my preoccupation with the Woes of Saint Xavier is ego, how much is a need for justice, how much is simply a nagging thought that we\u2019re close to a better way, and, with a little tweaking and compromise, we can find solutions that create a win-win?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I need to be suspicious of the \u201cego\u201d part. I suspect I can be vindictive and passive aggressive. I want satisfaction, and my appreciation of the intrigue of a long-game payback gives me pause. Nursing one\u2019s wounds is necessary for recovery and survival. But watering and tending the garden of one\u2019s grievances is the wrong path. It is self-destructive, at least in life, despite how satisfying it can be in stories and imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This week\u2019s reading in class of Margaret Atwood\u2019s The Testatments<\/em> is relevant here. The novel is a sequel to The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em>, which was written a lifetime ago in the early 1980s. Atwood explains that she had no plans to write a sequel, but then 32 years later, propelled undoubtedly by developments in American politics and social movements, and The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em> TV series, she found herself desirous of creating a sequel. The problem, she explained in \u201cThe Writing of The Testaments<\/em>,\u201d was that she had lost the narrative voice of the original. Always a student\/teacher of creative processes, Atwood explains that there are ways of continuing the story in such a case\u2014for example, by shifting the perspective or by starting in the middle. She uses \u201cLittle Red Riding Hood\u201d as an illustration, which could have started, \u201cIt was dark inside the wolf.\u201d And so, we\u2019re on a different track, with different narrative possibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em>, the wolf was the repressive society of Gilead\u2014and that story does in fact begin in medias res<\/em> in that dark place. The Testaments<\/em>, it turns out, also begins inside the wolf\u2014but here the wolf is Aunt Lydia, one of the founders\/collaborators\/subversives of the repressive Gileadean society. Atwood\u2019s novel takes us into and through the psychology and history of that wolf\u2014and the story provides rich, detailed portraiture of the proverb, \u201cRevenge is a dish best served cold.\u201d My satisfaction and sympathy with Atwood\u2019s depiction of this very cold dish worries me a bit, as I feel stirrings for similar satisfactions in connection with the wrongs that have been done to me and mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Is SXU\u2019s situation a problem of local significance\u2014one employer\u2019s bad behavior\u2014or is it reflective of a larger, world turning moment? Grappling with that question is one of my challenges. As I look on in shock and horror, maybe I just need to take a breath and recognize: sic transit gloria mundi<\/em>, don\u2019t take it personally, \u2018twas always thus, it\u2019s bad all around, two steps forward, one step back, there\u2019s still some hope\u2026. But how much comfort and hope can there be in recognizing the scale of the problem is the whole world<\/em>, rather than just the place where I work?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m trying to grow up a bit about my expectations. Here\u2019s what I\u2019ve recently discovered about how I\u2019ve approached life through my youth and adulthood up until recently: I\u2019ve been waiting for the \u201cend of history\u201d\u2014in the sense that we will have arrived, through progressiveness, reform, and enlightenment, to a time beyond\u2014not all human frailties\u2014but some of the big ones, at least, like (extreme) racism, sexism, and bigotry (or at least the more obvious bigotries). Atwood\u2019s essay cited above (\u201cThe Writing of The Testaments<\/em>\u201d) helped me perceive my bias. She said she was leery of the phrase \u201con the wrong side of history.\u201d The phrase suggests that history pronounces judgment and advances on, in a more or less settled way, and posterity situates itself on the correct side. But in her explanation that \u201chistory is simply human beings doing stuff,\u201d she spotlights how random and impermanent and potentially backsliding history can be. \u201cIt winds around, it reverses, very much depending on the circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Enter Donald Trump. He unveiled to me (and others) just how so many \u201csolved\u201d problems of the past have not at all been solved, but still are there, lurking, seeking out their point of entry into the fray. With Trump, we\u2019ve learned that the term \u201cbacksliding\u201d is too much of an understatement. What would the term be for the dissolution of entities that we had, more or less, reified into existential absolutes<\/em>\u2014democracy as the American form of government, for instance?<\/p>\n\n\n\n At SXU, the reifications that have been dissolved for me are, in a nutshell, the values of higher education: the assumption that higher education is a worthy pursuit in and of itself; the view that higher education improves standards of living and the significance of living. All these things can go away. All these things are<\/em> going away. The process of going away takes with it the hopes I had had in colleagues to stand up for education. Too many of us have been insecure about the value of higher education\u2019s \u201cproduct\u201d in comparison to other products\u2014be they technologies, skills, professional credentials, or new careers churned up by the market, or supposedly so, in programs deemed as \u201cin demand.\u201d Never mind that the criteria for measuring demand are specious, drawing on bad data, bad projections, bad assumptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Undeniably, what is happening at SXU is transpiring on a broader stage. Across the country and world, there are hard questions being asked about the value of a traditional education organized around foundations in the humanities and liberal arts. Mixed in with the elegiac reflections that arise in me are other considerations with their own disturbances\u2014e.g., personal nostalgias that bespeak my privilege and perhaps invite harsher scrutiny. Part of my grief, I confess, involves the loss of ease that comes from a shared recognition of privilege and value\u2014to titles (hearing \u201cDr. Bonadonna\u201d still causes a flutter in my soul), to academic routines, to assumptions of authority and value. Nonetheless, a large part of the grief, undoubtedly, does stem from the ugliness of transformation in this specific institution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve seen friends make peace\u2014through retirement, through job switching, through capitulation. It does seem that the administration\u2019s strategy is to clean house of anyone with a memory or a grievance, the two go hand in hand. I suppose it\u2019s possible that a new entire staff could adapt and progress more productively than aggrieved old timers\u2014and so, maybe the intensity of what I\u2019m feeling is just a case of \u201cmy ox is the one being gored\u201d\u2014and so that\u2019s why I\u2019m in such a state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I walk through the halls, and I have brief and lament-filled conversations with each colleague I encounter. There\u2019s the shaking of the head. I\u2019m thanked for my efforts. We commiserate in our futility. In my office, I get the emails from any of several back-channel faculty groups\u2014planning future actions, or offering new tidbits of offenses, or strategizing about next steps. I write in my blog about the depression that I feel; I hear professions of depression from others. It\u2019s heartbreaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We seem to have gone to a place beyond \u201cmorale.\u201d A few years ago, some of my most respected advisors told me to stop framing SXU\u2019s challenges in terms of a morale problem. All agreed morale was bad, but my advisors preferred a different way of framing our needs and visions. Today, our morale has not improved, and that term continues to fail to describe our reality, but in a new way. Perhaps we are too depleted to have a morale problem. If morale falls in a forest and there\u2019s no one there, does it make a sound? The absence of so many who have left, and the planned absence of so many who have informed us of their plans to leave, creates an emptiness and pain that might better be addressed as a form of grief. The climate is one of hopelessness and loneliness. There\u2019s bitterness and anger and disbelief too. There are twinges of the old fight here and there, but most are putting their head down in whatever salvageable way they can, and trying to move forward, somehow, with a will to survive, or just persist, but in a short-term manner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through it all, the pragmatist in me maintains there\u2019s another way, a middle ground. Maybe. I want to reach out to my adversaries and try rapprochement\u2014if only for mutually self-serving goals and ends. But dialogue has failed in formal and informal ways, and the power of the adversaries has been consolidated. I and many others have become hardened in our perspective of the other side\u2019s autocratic, power-oriented stance and modus operandi<\/em>. I have trouble letting go of foregone conclusions and despair\u2014though I\u2019m not convinced I can\u2019t, however dark it is inside this wolf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The stories of some of the victims\u2014faculty and staff who have been pushed out or mistreated through punitive and harsh economic measures\u2014fill me with sadness. I think of a staff colleague, described recently on Facebook as \u201cone in a million,\u201d and I see the impacts and the heartlessness of this institution in simply stepping over her and ignoring her in the face of mistreatment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am in agony over the consequences of the inexorable march upon which SXU, in a kind of Menippean satire, has embarked. I can give to students, but only so much. Ultimately, it\u2019s they who are mistreated, as it always comes down to the student experience. The deprivations of resources and care inevitably lead to disengagement and failure and loss\u2014of them, and all of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" February 10, 2023 How much of my preoccupation with the Woes of Saint Xavier is ego, how much is a need for justice, how much is simply a nagging thought that we\u2019re close to a better way, and, with a little tweaking and compromise, we can find solutions that create a win-win?\u00a0 I need to … Continue reading It Is Dark Inside the Wolf<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-at-sxu","category-reform-in-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":772,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions\/772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}