Ms. Mentor

Where Are the Bodies Buried?

Article tools

Printer friendly	E-mail article	Subscribe	Order reprints
	Discuss any Chronicle article in our forums
Latest Headlines Heads Up How Not to Evaluate Your Department Head Go ahead, submit a long, gossipy rant against your chairman, but prepare to be ignored. First Person Reflections on the First Year Three assistant professors find the going tough in their first year on the tenure track. Career News Giving Birth to a Good Policy Here's what to consider in drafting a sound maternity-leave plan for faculty members. The Party Line When Politicians Come Calling If you understand why political leaders visit campuses, it changes how you manage their visits. Resource Salaries: Faculty | Administrative Presidential pay: Private | Public Financial resources: Salary and cost-of-living calculators Career resources: Academic | Nonacademic Library: Previous articles by topic | by date | by column Career Talk, Ms. Mentor, and more... Landing your first job On the tenure track Mid-career and on Administrative careers Nonacademic careers for Ph.D.'s Talk about your career Blogs

Question (from "Cassandra"): I've been at Pretty Good U. for two decades. Because I've paid attention to power politics, I know which colleagues are decent and helpful, and which ones are dishonest, even dangerous. Should I share those stories with more vulnerable, recently arrived colleagues, on the theory that they deserve to know where the bodies are buried? Or is that unprofessional?

Answer: Ah, a question dear to Ms. Mentor's heart. What, indeed, do we owe the new and the naïve? Should we spew what we know and risk being pushy, disloyal, or unsporting? Or do we keep a demure silence, freeing the young to learn about minefields and treachery on their own?

Sad to say, there's no shortage of those experiences. Some new hires are coerced into joining hostile department factions: theory versus practice, tradition versus trendiness. Other newbies have been assured they'll get tenure if their partners are well-liked. Or they've been solemnly informed that their gender, ethnicity, and/or sexual orientation will work for them, or against them, or both: "They're watching who you have lunch with."

Ms. Mentor thinks all that rumor-mongering is bizarre and unfair, for it muddles the minds of new faculty members who need time for teaching and scholarship. They shouldn't be ambushed in their offices by lonely colleagues whose "Got a minute?" can easily stretch into an hour or more -- leaving hapless newcomers scrambling to keep up with their own lives.

Still, generous elders like Cassandra should be warning the newcomers to avoid, politely, certain department types:

The satyrs: Sexual harassers always have a sordid history, and potential victims can be told -- in a friendly way, over lunch or coffee -- that Professor L is something of a Don Juan (and a fiendishly clever one, who's never been caught). "So keep your office door open, be an ostentatious workaholic -- and write down anything he says that doesn't seem quite right."

Newbies should, in fact, be advised to record any untoward remarks, including warnings, in a diary kept at home.

The sadists: Most colleges have a cadre of tenured cynics who hang out in local bars, lambaste their more productive colleagues, and dispense cruel predictions, such as, "You'll get tenure when muskrats get wings." Incumbents should advise new recruits that the barflies are one of many social groups in the department with different views: "We have a colorful variety here."

The satirists: Usually housed in English departments, these learned worthies sometimes compose serious political essays -- but they specialize in wickedly witty and crude lampoons and e-mails.

Rare is the new faculty member who knows how to react to an e-mailed ditty called "Old McDonald Had a Funny Farm," when the dean is named McDonald and the clucking animals are all recognizable colleagues. Ms. Mentor advises Professor Newbie to lock the office door, laugh until he/she cries, forward "the McDonald" to close friends in other parts of the country, and never mention it to anyone until after tenure. And elders should advise the young blandly that "some of us are gifted writers in many genres."

Bland and upbeat is best for senior mentors, and so is straightforwardness about social arrangements. Entrenched faculty members should make a point of telling fledglings who is married to whom, and which pairs or groups may be living together. Novices also need to be told about past relationships if they affect how the department functions (J is unduly hard on K's graduate students, T is still too angry with philandering V to serve on a committee with him).

Past attempted secessions and coups should be revealed if the combatants are still bruised or sulking. Recent embezzlements may explain a lack of travel money, and grade-change scandals may explain the elaborate procedures now used for student records.

But if the passionate and painful events played out 15 or 20 years ago, and many of the bitter enemies are gone, senior professors should resist the urge to recite the story. Such fogey folklore may give the impression that your colleagues will never get along, which could propel the best recruits to begin job hunting again.

For newbies, elders are the models for professional behavior. Graduate school often seems to be an Us (students) versus Them (faculty) battlefield, but the professoriate ideally is not. Respect, tact, and loyalty should be cultivated. Newcomers ought to emulate those good department citizens who teach enthusiastically, pursue scholarship with lively curiosity, and need no prodding to do the ethical thing, as Cassandra is endeavoring to do.

Unmentored, uninformed fledglings may wander astray, and become too enmeshed in others' trivial or spiteful plans. What's needed, and what elders ought to promote, is proportion, for -- to paraphrase a famous quotation -- the fights in academe are so intense because the stakes are so small.

Newcomers can see the intensity, and it's up to such incumbents as Cassandra to explain that most of the stakes are truly small.

Question: If a job interviewer asks who I voted for (an uncouth question that ought to be illegal), may I simply say that I voted for the best candidate?

Answer: Absolutely.

SAGE READERS: This month Ms. Mentor has sequels to report.

"Terrified by Graduate Students" has decided he's much better suited to teaching general-education courses and working-class undergraduates. He's gotten a job doing just that.

Anon, a starving adjunct whose youthful good looks kept others from taking her seriously, has accepted the inevitable. She's replaced her long blonde hair with a short brunette cut -- and she now has a full teaching load as well as summer-school courses.

And "Wilbur," who wanted to gloat and taunt his nemeses before he'd quite gotten tenure, and who was shushed by Ms. Mentor, now does have his tenure. "I can take pride in having taken the high road," he says.

Ms. Mentor cheers all her advisees and, as always, welcomes gossip, queries, and rants, including thoughts about winter in academe. She directs interested scholars to her tome (listed below) or her archive. She reminds readers that she rarely answers letters personally, does not open attachments, and depends on subject headings to keep valuable messages from being eaten as spam.

Ms. Mentor guarantees anonymity, finds mysterious screen names perfectly acceptable, and always changes identifying details. You can be the tall cool blonde you always wanted to be.