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Arrested Development?

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By Jill Morstad

Up with a sick child, I was surfing channels quietly in the family room, reluctant to head back to bed until all was quiet. One of the entertainment networks was running a retrospective on cancelled sitcoms and I watched over and over again as the departing actors waved to the studio audience for the last time, then embraced the crew and each other while wiping away real tears. And there, in the semidarkness, it hit me.

The elimination of an academic unit is not unlike the cancellation of a television sitcom, but with one glaring exception: When it's all over, there's no party.

Academe has no accepted public ritual, once a program is cut, for acknowledging and celebrating good work well done, for going out on top, and for saying goodbye.

Think M*A*S*H. Think Seinfield. Think Friends. Now think: Did your university sponsor a party to bid a warm farewell to the faculty and staff members of the teaching and learning center following its elimination in a systemwide budget cut? Was there a much-hyped final episode? Was there a celebratory feature story complete with photographs in The Chronicle of Higher Education, on the local television news, in the student newspaper -- or all three?

It's been two years since my colleague and I were "RIF'd." The acronym stands for "reduction in force," a euphemism that my Midwestern university relied on to expedite the removal of a cross section of academic units and their faculty and staff members. My own program was a writing center within the university's business school. In all, the reduction in force eliminated the jobs of nearly 300 people by the end of the 2002-03 academic year.

Citing budget pressures and decreased support from the state legislature, my RIF letter was very formal and very patronizing, apropos of the genre, and signed (though probably not written) by the dean herself. Thus served, our exit dates were privately communicated via e-mail along with other details, all related in the passive voice, about where to turn in office keys and other university materials.

The implication was that whether or not we had come in like lions, we would surely be leaving like lambs, and that to do otherwise would be to invite public embarrassment -- not for us, but for those of our colleagues who did not wish to be confronted with us, with what we represented as expendable human capital, with their own survivor's guilt.

To be sure, our dismissal was not as hostile, derisive, or undignified as what I've read about corporate downsizing, where offices are cleaned out overnight and boxes left on the doorstep. No dark silhouette of middle management loomed over my cubicle at day's end, instructing me to empty my desk and be gone in an hour -- though I heard that such cowardly displays of administrative authority did take place elsewhere on the campus.

In the months that preceded my departure date, I met my classes and committees, and tried very privately to prepare myself for leaving my job as a teacher and as an administrator of professional and technical-writing programs. As I did so, I tried to imagine new work in some new place, work that would not include daily interaction with Rick, my treasured colleague, friend, and mentor who had also been let go.

Every day, as the date approached, I cleaned out a desk drawer, and in the evenings, sat on the couch and listened to Mary Hart interview the departing cast of Friends.

Like us, Friends was preparing to finish a 10-year run but its end was anything but private. From CNN to Fox News and back again, cast and crew publicly (and repeatedly) praised one other for their talents, their creativity, their relative longevity in a chaotic network environment, and mostly, for the individual value each cast member brought to the ensemble. Apparently, the viewers wanted to know.

I watched, and was jealous of Courteney Cox Arquette, Jennifer Aniston, and Lisa Kudrow, but not because they were rich and beautiful. I was jealous that they got to say out loud that they loved and admired each other as well as Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer. I was jealous that the interviewer wanted to know more about their work, and their plans, and their feelings about having been collaborators for 10 years and what it would be like to just walk away.

I wanted my opportunity to say those things publicly about some of my own colleagues, to affirm in the presence of others that our work had had value, that we had accomplished something, made a difference, set a precedent. I wanted people to want to know, and I wanted to acknowledge what the university couldn't and wouldn't: that our extended and creative collaboration had been fruitful and our results worthwhile; that we were walking away, cognizant that our academic unit had been "cancelled."

Ultimately, I tuned in with lots of others in America to watch the final episode of Friends, and I stayed tuned to mourn, and to learn more about what had gone on behind the scenes to make the program so popular and successful.

But a month or so later when it came my turn to leave, I did so quietly, emptying my office on a Sunday afternoon. No final episode, no waving to the studio audience, no party, no smiling through the tears. I left the key on the empty desk and shut the door, and like pulling one's fist from a bucket of water there was only the smallest ripple.

Much later, a university human-resources director would tell me ruefully that our names were never on any of the official paperwork she had received about who had been RIF'd, or who was eligible for RIF benefits, such as counseling to help cope with a job loss and assistance writing a CV and cover letter. "If you hadn't been to my office with the news," she said, "I'd have never known. It's as if you never worked for the university at all."

Yes, the elimination of an academic unit is not unlike the cancellation of a television sitcom: Semesters, like television seasons, are of specified duration. As "Invertebrate Zoology" ends its run, "Vertebrate Zoology" maneuvers to occupy its time slot. Each semester, new courses are promoted, and pilot programs started. Summer offers re-runs of the old standbys like freshman English and the introductory chemistry course, while curriculum committees convene to talk about next year's programming.

Some would say I've gone too far. I would say that maybe we haven't yet seen how far the metaphor is going to take us. Can we envision, for example, the psychology department assembled for its final episode, its members waving farewell, embracing the staff, laughter mixed in with the tears? Reassembled on Oprah a month later, the department head, the office manager, and a graduate student will tell of new opportunities to grow in their craft, funny stories about auditioning for roles in other departments, and plans to develop spinoffs.

There will be parties and paparazzi and pretty clothes and public affirmations of affection and respect. The journalists and cultural critics will nod knowingly: It was time. The department needed to quit before it "jumped the shark" and descended into a parody of itself. And in the fall a pilot will air, an academic unit with a new name and faces both familiar and unfamiliar. Will it be a hit?

Rick, my friend and former colleague, has taken our programming to a new network called the Ivy League where he has found an enthusiastic producer and a savvier audience. I left both the university and academe, but stayed behind in the Midwest to develop an independent spinoff. Like our sitcom friend in his new series, Joey, it remains to be seen if the audience will accept me in this new and more complex role.

Some years from now, if all goes well, Rick will retire from his job out East and his university will put a story and his picture in the campus newspaper celebrating a job well done. And since I couldn't, I hope the university and his colleagues throw him one hell of a party.