There was a big deal last week when LSU administration figures presented the faculty with a fait accompli reorganization plan. Now I don't want to get into the details of the arguments over the content of the plan. From my perspective, there was nothing prima facie irrational about the plan, though I would certainly be happy to listen to people who have specific disagreements.
What I would like to talk about here though is the process. Many faculty members were very unhappy with having been excluded from the process. But why? Here's my take on it.
When we say we’d like to
be included in the decision-making process, this is not a negative position,
seeking to preserve faculty rights, but a positive position: how can LSU benefit
from the enormous resource that is the collective intelligence of the faculty?
But how do we organize this intelligence? I agree that time constraints can make this difficult, but the challenge of the faculty and the LSU administrators should be to
figure out how to use email / internet polls / bulletin boards and so on, in
combination with the existing departmental and Faculty Senate structure, to
solicit faculty input along the way and so take advantage of both our
collective expertise and our desire to help.
Again, this is a positive outlook: we want shared governance in order to help the university become better. We don’t want to be included to protect turf; we want to be included to help the administration protect and advance the institution to which we’re devoting our
careers; and by extension we want to continue to serve the people of the state of Louisiana, whose community project LSU is.
