We have often noticed, as we stroll down the hallways of academic buildings, how the doors of the faculty beckon to us -- with whispers and insinuations, exhortations and declamations, jeers and jests -- via a motley collection of decorations: cartoons, articles, quotations, posters, advertisements, photographs, and artwork.
What motivates such postings by that increasingly threatened species, the North American professor? How do those office doors reflect upon the professors or the disciplines in which they study and teach? To whom are the collections of postings addressed?
Encouraged by the enthusiastic response from readers to our earlier column on the office-hour habits of the North American professor, we have undertaken to answer these questions with further research into the ways in which faculty offices and office behavior can help us classify the various members of this elusive species.
We will focus in this installment on the office door, a singular and often flamboyant feature of the North American professor's nesting grounds. Much of our research on this topic has been conducted on the campus of a small liberal-arts college. As in our last study, we invite the contributions of additional field notes from readers. Only a thorough analysis of this area will move us a step closer toward a unifying theory that will collate every element of the academic habitat with a distinct species type.
We began our new study with the hypothesis that office-door decorations would reflect the occupant's discipline: Education professors would offer study tips to students; philosophers would select thought-provoking quotes from Plato or Aristotle; art historians would showcase posters from local exhibits.
We found some initial confirmation of that hypothesis in the wing of a building that houses faculty members in the business school. A specialist in international business, for example, had photographs and postcards from nations around the globe, along with a photograph of Campbell's soup cans labeled in different languages.
A colleague of hers, who no doubt focuses his teaching and research on time management and negotiating skills, posted this announcement to all comers: "Mandatory Reading: Top Ten Reasons to Get Thrown Out of Prof. D's Office." The list included such verboten activities as "Ask if the exams are corrected yet" and "Ask to be signed into one of his closed courses."
But while this hypothesis held true in the business wing, it was not well-supported by our observations in other departments. Surely, the art and music departments -- known for their creative expression -- would feature the most varied, creative, and interesting doors.
Not so. With one minor exception, the doors of the art and music faculty members were bare.
"Too much pressure," one member of the species commented, in response to my confusion about this. "Whatever they put on their doors, people will think they're showcasing it as great art. If it's not an original Picasso, they're not hanging it."
Despite the plausible explanation, we decided not to hang onto that hypothesis in the face of patchy evidence. We shifted instead to the more mundane possibility that office doors simply reflect the personalities of the faculty members.
That theory took us slightly further.
A professor in the English department who came to academic consciousness in the '60s, and who teaches courses in the literature of social responsibility and peace studies, used her door to promote those causes. Postcards with rainbows and flowers, overarched by the word "Peace"; a sticker for Amnesty International; a sticker proclaiming her office a "Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Safe Zone"; and various quotes from religious and peace activists like Gandhi blossomed across her door in varied and colorful patterns.
A theologian who wears a pious and serious demeanor around campus, but who will occasionally allow colleagues glimpses of a wicked sense of humor, features just two items on his door: a postcard memorializing the martyrs of his religious order, and a cartoon in which a man is ordering dinner for himself and his dining companion, a large fly, in a French restaurant. After he places an elaborate order of gourmet cuisine for himself, the man in the cartoon finishes with: "and bring some shit for my fly."
A senior philosophy professor who once purchased advertising space in the campus newspaper to publish abstruse musings on the nature of being, and who encourages his students to pursue such abstruse musings, decorates his door with newspaper articles on ... well, abstruse musings. "New Ideas on the Mystery of How Anesthetics Work," announced a headline on his door from a 1994 New York Times article, one sure to perplex any student who finds himself stuck with nothing to read while he awaits his appointed conference time.
The linguist down the hall plasters a wide array of cartoons, articles, and sayings about the nature of language on every inch of his door. Our favorite: "I just can't shake the feeling," says a parrot to his owner in a Bizarro cartoon by Dan Pisaro, "that I don't really understand language as an abstract concept, but am merely imitating syllables as a trained response."
Some faculty members use their doors for more overtly political reasons -- the very same professors, it will come as no surprise, who take an active role in political debates on campus.
During the height of the recent battles with Iraq, a junior historian posted a new body count on his door every day, listing the total number of Americans and Iraqis killed. His colleague two floors up, an arch-conservative junior theologian, still has posted on his door a full-page, color newspaper picture of workers hoisting an American flag in the rubble of the World Trade Center. "Remember," intones the headline. Above that image, an article proclaims: "Bush to lead National Day of Prayer."
Still, in the end, we discovered that personality type was also not a reliable predictor of office-door types. The most gregarious member of our department, who can buttonhole colleagues for 40-minute conversations on the way to the photocopier, has nothing on her door but her name, classes, and schedule of office hours.
Our final hypothesis suggested that what determines the nature of office-door decorations is the faculty member's conception of audience: How they decorate their door, in other words, depends upon the reader or viewer to whom they believe their office doors are addressed: students, colleagues, administrators, the promotion and tenure committee, and/or visitors.
Most faculty members seem to use their doors to send messages to their students: The philosopher wants them to reflect on philosophical questions. The linguist wants them to see how wordplay and humor can be enriched by the study of linguistics. The theologian and the historian -- at opposite ends of the political spectrum -- are hoping to raise the consciousness of their students about current issues, and persuade them to think politically in a certain way.
Many faculty members use their doors to promote coming events for students, such as conferences or off-campus trips and activities. A corollary decoration, in this category, consists of the photographs of the faculty member with students on such off-campus trips, inspiring student-observers to wonder and dream whether they, too, might one day earn a spot in an office-door photograph.
But while this loose conception of the student as audience can catch the majority of door-decoration styles -- and hence may be too imprecise to be useful -- it does not account for them all. Some professors, for example, clearly use their doors to send messages to their colleagues or to the administration about their productivity.
Witness, in this vein, the political scientist whose three postings all concern events at which he served as one of the keynote speakers. Or consider one of the decorations on the door of this very researcher, who has a postcard of his most recent book tucked just above the handle.
Other faculty members seem to address their doors to more specific audiences, such as their departmental colleagues.
Two years ago, this researcher's department suffered through an acrimonious debate over the selection of a new department head, a debate that was instigated via e-mail by a colleague who was abroad at the time, and who was appalled that no one else had stood up to object to what he saw as an unfair succession.
When he returned from abroad, he posted a long quote from Dante's Inferno on his door, one in which Dante describes the part of Hell reserved for those who refuse to take a stand when the chips are down. A little while after, he added this quote: "Expect poison from standing water," a line from the poet William Blake.
It didn't take much skill in literary interpretation to identify the audience for those postings.
In the end, while the audience hypothesis seems the most potentially fruitful of the ones we have considered, the categories remain too broad. Further research and study might indicate specific types of students, for example, that professors imagine their doors to address.
Does the theologian see his door as announcing to war supporters his allegiance with them? Or does he imagine that he tweaks the guilty conscience of dissenters with his reminder of September 11? Does the linguist post his wordplays and cartoons for the initiated, who chuckle knowingly at them, or to hook the stray student whom he hopes to entice into next semester's seminar?
One final door we encountered will prove challenging to the most astute researcher in this field, and to any hypothesis that proposes the audience as a category. In addition to the photographs of students, the Far Side cartoons, the quotes from great literary works, the promotion of local literary events and course offerings, the conference sign-up sheet, and the list of his class times and office hours, this peculiar specimen had taped, just above his name plate, a dog biscuit.
"Come in," this door seemed to proclaim joyously to all passersby, both human and canine: "I have something for everyone in here!"
Hence although none of our hypotheses has been able to account fully for the door-decorating strategies of the North American professor, we have laid some basic groundwork for future research, and welcome the contributions of other readers in the field.
Stay tuned, in a future installment in this series, for our terrifying descent into the darkened interiors of the offices themselves, which will no doubt prove our most daunting analytic challenge yet.
