By Peter Onear

The vast majority of people who work and study in academe do not often interact with their institution's government-relations office. However, those of us who work in that office encourage such interaction, especially when someone needs to contact a public official for some reason concerning the campus.

We prefer that the contact go through us, or at least that we know about it. In fact, we go out of our way to establish contacts with county commissioners, city-council members, mayors, state legislators, governors, members of Congress, and U.S. senators. We know politicians' schedulers by their first names, and we have on file all the right forms to submit in order to schedule visits or be visited. We know whom to call in Washington when a faculty member has immigration problems. We know all the state legislators who sit on the appropriations committees. We know the state officials who dole out economic-development money.

That is what we're good at.

What we're not good at is running conferences.

Nevertheless, because we know how to get to public officials, we often get stuck with planning, managing, and staffing university conferences. We arrange publicity. We alert the campus police force that important people will be attending. We get signs printed. We arrange for audiovisual equipment and even prepare PowerPoint presentations. We approve news releases. We call up the caterers. Sometimes we even have to use our budgets to pay for stuff. Name tags, anyone?

Why? Where does it say "conference planner" in my job description? Or in the job descriptions of anyone on my government-relations staff?

It usually starts with a phone call or an e-mail message. Invariably the first words are, "Can you get us President Obama, please?" It is true that I have in my office a framed photo of me shaking hands with the president. But at the time it was taken, he was a senator visiting our campus, and not yet even the Democratic Party nominee. Despite the warm and fuzzy photo, the president and I are not close personal friends. "He never calls, he never writes," as one of my government-relations colleagues is fond of saying about politicians in general.

When I politely inform the caller/e-mailer that in my professional estimation it would be difficult for me to obtain President Obama as keynote speaker at a conference on "Microbes That Attack Ferrets," the caller/e-mailer replies, "Oh, then could you get the governor or one of our senators?" At that moment the responsibility for the success or failure of the conference suddenly falls upon the shoulders of the government-relations office. If we can't deliver an important keynoter, it's our fault if the conference fails. If we do deliver, it's the conference organizer's success.

Suddenly, for some reason, everything else about the conference also becomes the responsibility of my office. For example, if the governor might speak, what other public officials should be invited? (Surprisingly, I don't have a mailing list of politicians who support ferret research.) Shouldn't there be a news release about the governor and ferret research? If politicians are attending, isn't it the responsibility of government-relations office to pay for the conference? And, of course, "Where do we get name tags on campus?"

By this time, government relations is caught in a Catch-22 situation; actually, a number of them. If we want to be the conduit for all things political on the campus, why shouldn't we help to get public officials at the ferret conference? And if politicians actually show up, we certainly don't want the campus to look bad. (Wild ferrets on the loose.) Do we want our campus police ticketing public officials for illegally parking? Do we want public officials to go without that second cup of morning coffee?

So we dutifully go through the motions. We manage the conference as best we can, and we note in our monthly report to the university president that city-council member Smith (the only politician whom we were able to badger into coming) attended the national ferret conference and participated in a panel on "Ferret Infestation in Municipal Housing." No, Mr. Obama couldn't make it. He was reforming health care. No, the governor couldn't make it. He was trying to balance the state budget. No, the mayor couldn't make it. He was fishing. The county commissioners didn't even return our phone calls.

Nevertheless, our faculty ferret expert called after the conference and had the good sense to thank me profusely. "There'll probably be a second ferret conference next year," he exclaimed. "Can you get us President Obama? Please."

"Sure," I answered. In the meantime, I'll order more name tags.

Peter Onear is the pseudonym of a vice president for government relations at a university in the Midwest. His previous column is "I'm From Government Relations and I'm Here to Help Me."