The Spring Faculty Conference

For the longest time we were led to believe that we were going to escape this semester’s pep-talk-administrative- update meeting known as the semi-annual faculty conference. There had been no announcements before Christmas break, and right up until the beginning of the Spring semester there was not a peep about a possible conference. Most faculty breathed a sigh in relief. Although the administration loves these conferences as an occasion to showcase the wonderful achievements of our university and bring every one together as a “united spirited academic community”, many faculty don’t quite share their sentiments. In spite of understanding the need to communicate pertinent information to all employees, the faculty tend to think of long-winded speeches with endless power point presentations as taking away from time that should have been spent on preparing classes, meeting with students, conducting research, or generally doing what they are being paid to do. So when there was no sign of a spring conference, most people raised their eyebrows, but decided not to bring it up lest they should give someone an idea.

However, the fact that I am sitting in a full auditorium, listening to the Vice President talk about impending budget cuts, proves that our approach was less than successful. Mid-January, the administration decided the current developments on the state level were sufficiently ominous to warrant a university-wide faculty conference. And having listened to some of the recent developments, I can’t blame them. The bad news? We’re facing massive, enormous, positively staggering budget cuts. Every economic bump in the road leads legislators to treat education as the evil stepchild that should have been thrown out years ago, and this time around it’s no different. The state is considering a 10% budget cut, and is debating the possibility of furloughs. There will be no raises for the next two years, and a 100% hiring freeze has been put in place. The good news? Our university considers pink slipping anyone a non-option. For the time being anyway. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that we have a fairly decent amount of alumni donations come in, or maybe it’s because HBCUs like ours were founded on the principles of standing together during times of adversity. I don’t know. But I am very grateful. Not just because I have a mortgage payment to make, and kids to put through college, but also because I can’t imagine my life without teaching. I’ll take a furlough, I’ll even take a paycut if it comes to that, heck, I would take on a second job if need be, but just let me teach.

But the conference isn’t all doom and gloom. Perhaps it would have been had we been in the Netherlands, where even the most progressive universities tend to have a Calvinist-glass-half-empty approach. But we are in the US, at an HBCU, in the south, and so there is plenty of optimism. Our President called it just another glitch on the road to preeminence. Now I’m not entirely sure about us being on the road to anything quite that fancy, but I appreciate the upbeat attitude. The president started off today’s conference with a speech that almost a command to believe in a positive outcome. He phrased it as follows:

“Keep in mind the Jesus who laughed. Keep in mind our ancestors who laughed. Keep in mind our founders who laughed. Keep in mind all the professors who came before you and who lived through Jim Crow, the Great War, the Great Depression, World War Two, segregation, lynchings, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war, another recession, another war, and who laughed all the way through. When I walk by an office or a classroom and I see people laughing, I know we are doing our jobs right. Because when you laugh, you acknowledge that we will make it through this. We are, after all, called the Unsinkable!”

Never mind that we are a public school, that many of the faculty members are not religious, that some of them are not born US citizens, or were born long after many of the above-mentioned events, or the fact that at least 10% of the faculty is not African American, the president had an auditorium filled with critical and at times cynical academics cheering in appreciation.

And even I, your usually somewhat cynical Dutch closet-Calvinist, was cheering and laughing. What else is there to do? You can mope and worry about college funds, bills, and vacation, but that is not going to magically improve our current economic situation. You might as well smile and be merry, and enjoy what you do have while you have it. And I do honestly think we will be okay. Like our university, I think we’re all a little bit unsinkable.