implosion II

I fucked up and published the first part of this before I was finished.

The university where I teach is coming unraveled. It started as a experiment, not all that long ago, but it is an experiment within a not-too-experimental system. The campus has dealt with this situation basically by closing its eyes and hoping it would go away.

It hasn't. In fact things are worse now because the central adminsitration is making some very specific demands and (if things were'nt bad enough) the deadline for making some substantial changes is looming. Faculty are either running around like chickens with their heads cut off (metaphorically speaking) or they're hunkering down to resist any change whatsoever. The other sign of the place falling apart is that many of the curricular experiments that made the place different look to be the first things tossed overboard right now. That's telling I think.

For all our rhetoric, it seems as though the glue that held the place together wasn't very strong after all. What seemed like a comprehensive commitment to a particular mission seems to have been individual commitments to individual ambitions. The qualities that make a community happen never came together and now the rifts are growing more and more visible. The people who wanted a traditional education in the first place look at this vindication. Those who wanted something more innovative are building up ramparts of denial and bargaining. Those who just wanted a job are waiting to see what happens next. Sadly, not many want to think about this very deeply or do anything. But there simply isn't time for the usual dithering.

I am torn. Part of me just wants to wait out the time I have left, but another part feels the call to do something. To try to salvage something from what seemed like such a wonderful dream.