This has been a troubling, frustrating week, and I feel a professional obligation to write about it. It won’t all be clear, but maybe it will do the job. I’m a graduate student at a prominent school in the DFW area and this week, I learned the lesson of the white elephant. According to Wikipedia, a white elephant is a valuable possession which its owner cannot dispose of and whose cost (particularly cost of upkeep) exceeds its usefulness. This week I learned white elephants are running rampant through higher education causing damage you can’t see until it is almost too late.
Take my inmate education analysis project in another class for example. I am having a hard time just connecting on the phone with people who work on the issue in higher education. Daniel Pink’s conceptual age thinking seems non-existent in this world. The mindset of the people I am dealing with is prehistoric; anachronisms abound in the 21st Century. It is unacceptable to me that people in positions of authority in higher education fail to respond to simple e-mails and phone calls, but it seems clear that the white elephants have run amok on some campuses. I don’t mind parasites, but I do object to the cut-rate ones. I wonder if the inmate education types I’m dealing with have taken on the negative personality traits and social behaviors of their inmate charges. For example, in this day and age of instant communications, two community college coordinators on two different campuses 1500 miles apart spent 10 days dodging my calls and e-mails. This might sound harsh, but in a best case scenario I’m dealing with professional ineptitude. In a worst-case scenario, the inaction and lethargy I am experiencing at the hands of college personnel shows contempt for scholars, scholarship, and all things scholarly. There is a herd of white elephants charging through higher education, but you can’t see them until it’s too late. And they’re carrying bags of disdain for anyone who gets in their way. There is a bag of disdain for faculty. There is a bag of disdain for academia. But most of all there are bags of disdain for students. It is all the more troubling because at the very institutions responsible for developing human capital, values such as teaching, learning and community building are dead on arrival. The white elephants have run amok, and I am afraid they can’t be stopped.
Themes of disdain and contempt dominated my life in higher education this week because I started running into white elephants everywhere. I am still shaking my head about Monday, a day heavy with the weight of an inexplicable demonstration of disdain and contempt for scholarship.
It started when, excited and proud, I attended the doctoral dissertation defense at the invitation of a good friend. It was scheduled well in advance. In the conference room, I tried to imagine how I might feel defending three years or more of difficult scholarship and sacrifice. But my pleasant daydream quickly evaporated. One of the dissertation committee members was absent and couldn’t be found! After an interminable wait without word, the committed decided to proceed. By the time I left the conference room 90 minutes late, I just felt numb. When contempt and disdain collide in your face with honor and joy, you get numb. White elephants always leave me numb.
On my campus, the biggest and most powerful white elephant is the Regents Scholar species. What is a Regents Scholar? A Regents Scholar is a tenured professor who does not show up for a doctoral student’s dissertation defense. Just look for the big empty executive chairs in the dissertation defense conference room and you’ll know where you won’t find the Regents Scholar species of white elephant. One of these powerful pack leaders was recently a no show for a dissertation defense. In my program, there are only one or two defenses a year, maybe every two years. Several urgent phone calls were made but after a 30-40 minute delay without word from the white elephant, the two faculty members on hand decided to proceed. The candidate—who is brilliant—is one of the best students ever to go through this particular program. It wasn’t until the defense was completed that word came from the white elephant. “I profusely apologize for my absence” she trumpeted in a phone message to a committee member. It was a flippant apology delivered too late for inappropriate and unprofessional behavior. It would have been better to call in sick or say nothing. Instead, what we all experienced was a harmful lesson delivered with negative reinforcement. I took it personally. The white elephant’s behavior shows a complete disregard for professional protocol and contempt for everything I hold dear in higher education.
I have since learned white elephants, especially Regents Scholars, are very busy people. They deliver keynote addresses all over the world for customers who pay big bucks. They choose wealthy mates and drive really really big cars. Some ignore phone calls and e-mail. Others string you along but never do anything. What fulfilled and productive people these white elephants must be! With so much going on, I can now understand why even the most powerful white elephants can’t make time for lowly dissertation defenses. I am told this sort of thing goes on all the time and there are no consequences for these people. That should change. White elephants need to be held accountable for their actions. It’s what we demand of our students. There are lots of challenges to overcome on the road to a doctorate. I just never figured I would have to keep looking over my shoulder in order to protect myself from the charge of the white elephants.
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