It was only when I stood waiting for the elevator at the end of the day (July 1) that I realized that the next time I entered the office down the hall it would be as a petitioner and not as the dean.
Tomorrow morning I would begin driving to my summer house in the Western Catskills -- where I sit now, looking out at trees, mountains, and water, and nothing else -- and by the time I returned, several weeks later, someone else (at the beginning of this day I didn't know who) would be meeting the deadlines, listening to the complaints, chairing the meetings, responding to irate parents, dealing with the nightmare of the semester's first week, entreating (or castigating) state legislators, negotiating with faculty members, juggling the budget, receiving the grievances, and (this deserves a column of its own) delivering welcoming remarks.
The reason the day had not struck me as anything unusual was that it was not. It was the quite usual (although infinitely varied and never quite the same) mixture of tasks and surprises accompanied as always by gales of laughter as the protean shape of academic folly displayed its many faces. (At times the only thing that makes the grind of administrative work bearable is a form of graveyard humor; the administrators who laugh together today will be able to come back to work again tomorrow; this is a very serious business, but if you're going to be any good at it, you can't take it too seriously.)
This particular (and final) day began by my falling on my sword.
At our weekly staff meeting a few days earlier, an associate dean had reported that the religious-studies committee was about to fall apart because no one seemed willing to step into the breach created by the departure (for sunnier climes) of a senior faculty member, whose energy and dedication had kept the thing afloat. (A lot of mixed metaphors there.)
Various options had been discussed with a notable lack of enthusiasm for any of them, and the matter was left unresolved. Indeed, most matters discussed at an administrative meeting remain unresolved; resolution may be a consummation devoutly to be wished, but it is rarely achieved; often, the best you can hope for is an understanding of the issues at play and a system of monitoring that will alert you if irreversible disaster is just around the corner.
This time, however, I decided to supply the resolution by volunteering to do the job myself (after making sure that it was a relatively small job that I could largely delegate to an assistant, if I still was allowed one in my newly plebeian state.) I so informed the concerned associate dean, who received what I said with amazement and gratitude (and probably with the suspicion that I was crazier than she had thought). It was a gratifying moment: many points, little hazard. A nice beginning to the day.
But the next item on the docket didn't go that well. It was a conference with a junior faculty member who was holding two very good offers from two very good universities, and the promise of a third, and after that a fourth and no doubt a fifth, ad infinitum.
He had already received what I, and everyone else who had been consulted, took to be a handsome counteroffer. My strategy was to stand firm, resist any additional requests/ demands, and maneuver him into an on-the-spot decision, all in about 15 minutes.
Seventy five minutes later -- maneuvering takes more time than one might think -- I had held firm (more or less) and had completely failed to elicit from him a yea or a nay. He left the meeting with all his options intact and holding more of the cards than I did.
It was obvious, after the fact, that what I had assumed would be the final chapter in a saga already too long by several months was merely an interlude in a drama the conclusion of which was always being pushed into the future. At least it would be a future over which I would not be presiding. As Vince Gill says in his song, "It's a young man's town."
Because this session had gone on so long I had to rush upstairs for my biweekly meeting with the provost.
Accompanied by my senior associate dean, I reported on what had just taken place, reviewed the matters that required immediate attention (a department head had just resigned, key faculty members in one of our best programs were being aggressively recruited, fall enrollment figures looked to be much higher than anything we had planned for) and discussed, for the umpteenth time, the budgetary situation with respect to two pressing issues -- the precipitous decline in the number of our tenure-track faculty members (down by 50 in less than three years) and the question of a raise pool in the context of the state's refusal to provide us with one.
To a certain, almost comic, extent the discussion was truly "academic," for the state had not yet told us what our budget would be, and, accordingly, we could not tell our departments whether or not they would be hiring in the coming year.
As for the raise pool, that would have to be "self-funded" -- that is, carved out of money that would otherwise have been earmarked for new programs and replacement lines. The provost had already given us guidelines for the distribution of the salary money we really didn't have, and it was to be the work of that very afternoon to allocate raises to the 700 or so faculty and staff members on the college's roster.
Meanwhile, however, I asked the associate dean to withdraw so that I could explain to the provost (as I had done twice before) why he should cushion my return to the faculty by allowing me to retain more of the perks and emoluments of the deanship than a strict construction of the rules would allow.
At that moment I had moved to the side of the table occupied earlier by the young faculty member I had failed to pin down. I failed again -- being outmaneuvered was to be the day's signature experience -- and left the 28th floor with assurances of good will but with no firm sense of the conditions of my employment come August 16, the first day of the rest of my life.
The main business of the day was to be, as I have already said, the allocation of the small raise pool we were mandated to distribute. Three of us -- the senior associate dean, the college's wizard accountant, and I -- were to do the deed, but shortly after we got started the first of these was called up to the provost's office, where, we all suspected, he would be offered the position I would soon be vacating.
We were right, and when he returned, with offer in hand and with the prospect of some weeks of negotiation ahead, there was a subtle shift in the relationships around the table; nothing dramatic, just something in the air.
Nevertheless, we set about our task, which turned out to be surprisingly gratifying and not all that difficult. Department executive officers had already ranked their members (according to internal criteria) and allotted money accordingly.
In a few cases the math did not add up, but the adjustments were small and easily made. Each executive officer had been asked for a list of department members who were (a) egregious victims of salary compression (defined as the condition of being paid less after 30 years of service than the newest assistant professor), and (b) worthy.
We spent most of our time considering, augmenting, and modifying their suggestions, and, after less than three hours, the job was done.
As a side benefit, or rather as a main benefit, we renewed our sense of the departments and units (more than 30) under our administrative care; we learned, once again, which executive officers knew what they were doing, which faculty members were truly productive, which truly expensive (the two categories did not always mesh), which truly burnt out, which questions marks, which a joy forever, and which a perpetual trial of the spirit.
And then it was time to call it a day -- a day pretty much like any other; a little routine, a little drama, a lot left hanging in the air -- and I found myself at the elevator and at the beginning of this column.
By the time you read this I shall be back in harness, but in what harness? Who or what, exactly, shall I be?
A teacher, certainly, but I have been that all the while. More than a month ago I received a letter from the Board of Trustees informing me that I had been given the title dean emeritus. That meant, I surmised, that I could call myself Dean Fish forever if I wanted to.
But did it mean anything else? I didn't know, so I called up the office of the trustees and was lucky enough to find the person who had signed the letter in her office. "You write me that I have been given the title dean emeritus," I said. "Could you tell me what that involves?"
She murmured something about privileges, but it was rather vague, and I decided to forgo circumlocution and cut to the chase. "What, if anything, does it get me?" Oh, she replied, you are able to use the library and attend university events. I don't use the library much and university events were what I hoped now to be able to avoid.
It got worse when someone called the university switchboard looking for me and was told that I was officially emeritus and wasn't really around. How soon they forget, even while the body is still warm and in its usual chair. I guess I have a new question; not "what do you do when you're on the way out?" (the question of a previous column), but "what do you do when you are out and you're still there?"
I'll let you know.
