This is what happens to me when I get some down-time from the craziness of the semester. Yes, it’s recess and here I am geeking out on comp/rhet. From my perspective there’s a difference between just immersing oneself in reading, writing, and thinking about building programs and geeking out on the field. The latter includes decidedly non-academic identity building–a “brand experience” to conjure up Naomi Klein and/or Kevin Roberts (depending on your political persuasion).

And, well, there’s swag–ok, well, not exactly swag but it’s such a great word.

A few months ago I was messing around with cafepress.com to do some mock-ups of some APSCUF-KU designs I was working on. We were considering printing t-shirts and bumper stickers for PR and fundraising. I wanted to show people more than the designs…I wanted people to see what the actual item would look like. Cafepress.com is perfect for this kind of task. Anyway, while I was doing that I came up with a couple of designs for the comp/rhet geek in me. One design stated: “i’ll take my gorgias over your socrates anyday.” Another one said: “rhetorical question: you talkin’ to me?” You get the picture.

Ever since then I’ve been playing around with different ideas. Today I geeked out and (re)built my cafepress store: Comp/Rhet Spot. And, yes, you can actually buy the items in the shop. And, for the record, I will not get rich on this project. All proceeds from Comp/Rhet Spot will go to help fund student scholarships through our faculty union APSCUF-KU. I don’t expect Comp/Rhet Spot will generate huge contributions to the scholarship fund, but it was the only way I could justify actually selling this stuff (if comrade Stu is out there, I am sure his anti-capitalist meter is red-lining) :-).

So, I think I’ll add a page to Cooking with Dionysus as well…so you can always find your favorite site for comp/rhet swag.

I can’t put my finger on it, but it seems like it’s time to build.  Maybe it’s because I’m just worn out.  But I don’t think that’s it. All I know is that I continually find myself looking at other Comp/Rhet program and imagining the possibilities at Kutztown.  It is just coincidence that I stumble across an issue of Composition Studies from last spring dedicated to the emerging trend toward undergraduate majors in writing, writing studies, cultural rhetoric, and the like?  Is it happenstance that I’m reading Rebecca Moore Howard’s article in said journal and hear echoes of my own arguments? Signs.  Swing away, Merill.

As I’m reading about different programs I’m sketching visual representations of curricula.  Overlapping egg shapes circled by satellites of course clusters.  I need to see things visually if I have any hope of holding onto my thoughts.  A few months ago the possibility of building courses and curricula seemed like wishful thinking.  Or, at least, hardly worth the effort.  Something has shifted.

Best I can tell, it’s linked to the work I’ve done with the union these past several years.  I’m thinking that because of a comment I made to a colleague last week.  I said to her I wanted to bring what I learned over the past couple of years in the union back home.  I don’t know if it’s stranger that I called our little comp program “home” or that I made the link between my union work and my comp work.   Maybe it’s because our vote of no confidence discussions–which have occupied most of this semester–have begun to bear fruit.  Maybe in this little spring break pause has been enough for me to reflect a bit.

I mean I look back at how far we’ve come as a union over the past 4 years and I am amazed.   Most of our new leadership were untenured and/or temporary faculty when we were elected to our Executive Committee.  While some people warned us to “keep our heads down” until we got tenure, or reminded us that “things are not done that way at Kutztown,” we worked.  We worked for the kind of union we thought we should have.  We didn’t settle for “good enough” or “no other choice.”  I look back now and am pleasantly surprised to see the synergy between my writing and my union work.  I guess it’s time for that kind of work to come “home.”

I also said to that same colleague that my preferred approach to leading our program is to create spaces for discussion and conversation.  But now, I said, I think it’s time to begin to assert our program a little more.  Time to work for what we would like to see, not only what is “good enough” or safe.  I’m looking forward to that.

Given some of the discussions we’ve all been having on our campus about class size, the Academic Forum, and the purpose of education and my interest in multimodal activism, I thought I’d post this little ditty for your enjoyment…I (re) found it on my old pal Byron’s blog.

One of my colleagues forwarded an article to the faculty listserv today that talks about the creeping of management discourse into discussions of education. The BBC article, “Lesson One: No Orwellian Language,” references a new report, “Issues Paper 6: Aims and Values,” published by the British Nuffield Review of 14-19 Education and Training. Quite interesting in terms of drawing attention to the connection between language and practice.

After I posted here last night, I wandered over to the No Confidence blog to poke around in the comments. I found some interesting comments…most notably this one:

Dr. Mahoney, you ARE a liar. Regardless of your protestations otherwise and the philosophical dribble you use as a smoke screen to your true self, the raw, true facts are that you are a prevericator to the nth degree. You exaggerate, overstate, mistate, and lie. Your perceptions are skewed and it would appear that you have not visited any other institution of higher education (and especially not any other PASSHE campus)in the last ten years to see the state of affairs at those campuses, else you would not whine, yes WHINE to the level that you do. You are out of touch with reality, happily cocooned in your web of deceit and protected by the long outdated concept of “tenure”, which allows you not just “academic freedom”, but freedom to participate in the wanton desruction of the very institution which affords you these priveleges. You and your elitist academic “brothers and sisters” of APSCUF gave up your rights to governance by joining a collective bargaining unit. Governance is the act of shared management of an institution of higher education; by its very definition, a union is not management, thus, how can you claim the right to participate in the management of it? You have no responsiblity or accountability, your union mentality makes you merely destructive parasites with nothing but entitlement as your moniker. One can only hope that if nothing else results from this APSCUF created crisis, that you and your ilk are exposed for what you truly are.

February 18, 2008 9:03 PM

Funny…that was right after I was writing about my lack of funding for conferences. I guess I’m just a whiner after all.

The whole discussion on the No Confidence blog has been interesting for the kind of arguments that are made…overtly and by implication as well. Frankly, I expect these kind of personal attacks…I think anyone with any activist experience learns to expect that when you work for any kind of change, the first line of attack is generally personal. If you are thin-skinned or take offense easily, activism and advocacy will take a heavy toll.

As I may have mentioned before, I am working on writing a class called “Rhetoric, Democracy, Advocacy.” The kind of exchange I am having with “Harry Potter” and “anonymous” may very well make it onto the syllabus. I think these kind of everyday moments are absolutely critical to work on. After all, these are the kind of exchanges that affect activists and advocates on a direct, often personal level. But, even more so, they point to the “micro-negotiations of hegemony” and how specific discursive formations are policed and disciplined. In a very real sense, these exchanges offer a chance to understand how hegemony is maintained.

Here is part of my exchange with “anonymous”:

What you seem to be arguing is that the only people who have any right to work for positive change are those living/working in the most destitute conditions. Only the poorest of the poor, mistreated of the mistreated, have any right to call for change. Everyone else in your argument seems to lose their right to work for a better world. And by “better world” I do not mean utopia. I just mean leaving the world a better place.

We might be able to group “anonymous’s” response more broadly under the category of “love-it-or-leave-it.” But, it becomes important, I think, to make the assumptions of the argument explicit so it is possible to respond to the core of the argument. I think too many times the temptation is to respond to the personal attack with a counter attack. In my mind, that is one of the things the first attack is supposed to do.

Anyway, just a few thoughts before work. That’s right…I still go to work, even when I do not have to teach, despite my whining.

It’s true. About a week ago I laid out my little plan for conferences and publications for the next several months. Next month I am supposed to present my paper, “Save Our School: Multimodal Activism and the Struggle to Save the Early Learning Center at Kutztown University,” at the CCCCs in New Orleans. Alas, it does not look like it’s going to happen.

As much as I want to go to the conference and present that paper, I’ve had to come to terms with one pretty sobering fact: I do not have enough institutional funding to cover my expenses for two conferences this spring. Conferences are not cheap. For example, the registration fee for RSA in May was $210. Just the fee ate up all of my department funding. Given that the conference is in Seattle, my plane fare and hotel will more than eat up my university funding. In other words, I will be paying for a portion of that conference anyway. If I want to go to both conferences, one will have to come entirely out of my pocket. Given that I’ve been busting my butt for the past several years to live within my means, I’ve had to accept the fact that I simply cannot afford to go to both conferences.

That’s not easy to accept. The teaching and service load here has already taken a toll on my research and scholarship. And despite the fact that Kutztown is supposed to be a teaching intensive/focused university, there are increasing expectations to publish. The problem is that the material support for research and scholarship has not risen even close to the rate of expectations. Don’t get me wrong…no one takes a job at a teaching intensive university expecting to keep a full research agenda going. As the saying goes, something’s gotta give.

Anyway, I’m just frustrated. If we were getting strong support for teaching here, I might not be so bitter right now. But the increasing class sizes, a lack of adequate office space, and a finance-driven approach to curriculum by our current administration and State System just wears me down sometimes.

I guess I’ll just concentrate on getting that conference paper turned into an article for publication. I’ll miss the intellectual engagement of the CCCCs.

At the very least I guess I should be happy to learn that I’ve been more productive. Funny. I don’t feel more productive. I just feel tired.

I don’t know why I feel the need to re-post posts. “If you were stranded on a desert island, what would you bring.” But this is not a desert island. I could simply put a link to this previous post…but, no. I have to re-post.

I was actually about to begin writing about on of the recent emails circulating on campus. I want to turn my rhetorical lens there and see what happens. I guess I wanted to provide a little context? After spending so much time talking about context with my students, maybe it’s rubbing off too much! Anyway, here’s the set up for the post I may yet write today:

Well it’s 2008 and D. and I have had some time to relax and talk about our cookery and all things rhetorical. In particular, I’ve been thinking a lot about (re)connecting parts that have been alienated or at least estranged for a few years now. The connection between my research, my teaching, service and committee work, and my union/activist work. Or course these areas have never been completely separate, I have found my time at Kutztown has stretched each of these areas in somewhat different, and often competing, directions.

Put another way, in the process leading up to tenure, I agreed to serve on this committee, this committee, and that committee. My goal was to do the work that that committee needed done. I continued to work on my book (just finished! and soon to be published!) that continued questions and concerns that grew out of my time in Washington, DC and my first couple of years here. And I learned the ins and outs of our local union, worked to change our union, and am now a member of our executive committee. I can look through my eight (more?) tenure binders and see all the work I’ve done. And, I could, I guess, be proud of that work. However, there is something consistently troubling about it–I struggle to find the connecting threads. That is, I feel that in my time here I have been trying to negotiating four competing “identities,” so to speak. It seemed as though I was constantly responding to each of these areas separately.

So, I’ve had a break now and have spent time with my good ole pal Dionysus and have been shifting my gaze so to speak. The questions that I am now trying to work with are about reconnecting all aspects of what I do–instead of compartmentalizing and juggling.

What does that mean specifically? Well, with our book done, I will now be turning to the everyday “rhetorical work” I do in the union as one of my areas of research. I want to consider, analyze, and learn from these struggles as part of a rhetoric of advocacy. A new course I am just about ready to present to my department is called “Rhetoric, Democracy, Advocacy”–again, connected. My next two conference papers–on at CCCC’s in New Orleans and another at RSA in Seattle–will analyze the struggles around the ELC and our contract negotiations. I plan on turning both of these into publications.

Why do it this way? Well, it seems to me that the reason I got into this whole thing–academe, that is–was the same reason I’ve been an activist, a unionist, and an agitator. I believe in democracy and the struggle to equality, justice, and what is right. I believe, as Frederick Douglass put it: “power cedes nothing without a demand.” I teach writing because I believe that writing and literacy are key to developing critical democratic citizens and advocates. I work to change the university because I believe colleges and universities are one of the few places left that hold out the promise of critical inquiry, democratic exchange, and citizen education.

So, I hope to use this space, too, as a space to think through things…to, draft my thoughts and to build a written trace of my inquiries.

One of the things that got me to write today was something I’ve been thinking about over the past several days as I drive to and from work. Our union is introducing a discussion about of a vote of no confidence in Kutztown University President Cevallos. And, as you can imagine, this has caused a stir. Once again I am all too aware of patterns of arguments. Arguments that you become quite familiar with if you do any kind of oppositional, activist work. I began thinking of them as “commonplace arguments,” that can be addressed as a “class of argument.” So, I’ll do some of that here. And I particularly like the following way of thinking about “commonplaces” in rhetorical traditions:

Commonplaces:

“Commonplaces are small nuggets of language that carry a lot of weight for a particular group or in society at large, at a given time. They can be slogans, bumper stickers, catch-phrases, or simply pieces of language that we use all of the time, but which are more complicated than we realize, perhaps because they are so very common. Because they can be evoked in the same way as a slogan or an idea, objects such as ‘the flag,’ and documents such as ‘The Constitution’ (especially ‘The First Amendment’ and ‘The Second Amendment’) also function as commonplaces in rhetoric.”

“Commonplaces: An Introduction,”

Professor John Hilgart, English Department, Rhodes College
and Professor Van E. Hillard, First-Year Writing Program, Duke University

Talk to you soon!

I’m reposting this from my blogger site as well…it is close to how I am thinking lately and is something that I want to work more on. I can see this making it’s way into on of my conference papers this year…

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Email to faculty, 1/23/2008
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</o:p>

The Value of the Word

I have been thinking about some recent concerns about the way the issue of no confidence was raised at the beginning of the semester. In particular, I am thinking about the issue of Rep Council members not having any idea about the possibility of a vote of no confidence—or the public discussion of the possibility of a vote of no confidence. I’ve looked back over my own notes and have found reference to several members who raised the issue. I can also recall several occasions in which the issue of no confidence was raised and discussed. I can’t square the two positions. That does not mean that I think anyone is lying about what they remember. Nor do I think that anyone who has raised questions about this process has ill intentions. I am beginning to think that perhaps the “way things have always been done” has had a deeper impact on our discussions at Rep Council than I expected. I’ll return to that in a moment, but first I want to share what I recall from Rep Council.
<o:p> </o:p>

• Back in April/late March, as part of the announcements portion of a Rep Council meeting, APSCUF-KU President Mike Gambone told the entire Rep Council that he was approached by the Board of Trustees with concerns they had about developments on our campus. In particular, he shared that they asked him to come to a special meeting and provide them with an evaluation of President Cevallos’s job performance. While we were not given copies of the document Gambone gave to the Board of Trustees (in part because he did not want to raise this issue publicly if there was an opportunity for positive change by working through the Trustees). Gambone did say, however, that one of the key things he stated explicitly in the document was that several issues need to be resolved or there would be an increasing push toward a vote of no confidence.
• I do remember, as some of the previous emails on this subject contend, that the issue of no confidence was brought up as part of other discussions during Rep Council.
• During strike preparations (and in our General Membership meeting over the summer) some members raised the issue of no confidence again and Gambone explicitly said that that will be an issue we may have to consider if we do not see progress.
• Over the summer, when the administration failed to call meetings of the ELC Task Force to generate solutions regarding the long-term stability of the ELC, we ran into the same pattern of inaction. Again, the issue of no confidence was raised.
• Finally (and this is by no means a complete list) Rep Council passed (with, if I remember correctly, one “no” vote) on October 11, 2007 a resolution on the ELC that explicitly called for accountability on the part of President Cevallos. You can see the full resolution here.

<o:p></o:p>So, when I say I can’t square the different “rememberings” about whether or not Rep Council members were informed about the question of no confidence in the president, I am not simply playing games. But, nonetheless, I do believe some members of Rep Council when they say do not see the above list as meaning the same thing as I do. So, what does one do with this? Well, again, it would be easy to dismiss different “rememberings” and engage in finger pointing. But, c’mon, who really has any interest in that. So, I want to share what I think may have contributed to these differences.

<o:p></o:p>There was a time when the word did not matter—
or at least, was not of serious consequence

<o:p></o:p>One of the things that I noticed early in my career here is that many faculty did not put a whole lot of stock in the words of APSCUF-KU leadership or the Administration. I remember listening to the protestations of previous members of APSCUF-KU Exec and hearing colleagues say “they always say that and still nothing happens.” Or, the administration would say it was invested in program A or policy B and colleagues would say “I’ll believe it when I see it.” In other words, I heard a lot of distrust or dismissal of people’s words—ironic for an academic institution in which words are supposed to mean. And if people do not believe in what other people say—if they cannot trust their words—then it makes sense that claims, statements, and arguments would be dismissed or not seen as worthy of notice. It’s actually almost a cliché representation of academics and academic discourse—that words have no connection to actual practices, that words are only used for posturing or making idle threats. Have you ever read the book Straight Man, by Richard Russo? A colleague of mine gave it to me my first year here and told me it should be “required reading” for all new faculty members at Kutztown. As each year passes, I am more and more aware of how true that book rings.

In any case, I am beginning to think that the culture of words-without-meaning may have had a part in some members of Rep Council not reading our words as amounting to very much. That is, I can imagine that if I had been at Kutztown for 20 years and I had gotten used to not believing words, on what grounds would I believe Gambone, or me, or APSCUF-KU Exec? It’s not as if the culture of words-without-meaning is gone after all. I remember in the Fall of 2006 when Dean Hanna came to our department meeting and told us all that once the Academic Forum went on-line in the Spring 2007, one of the larger classrooms in Lytle would be taken off line and converted into office space. Now, no one in our department was thrilled with the Academic Forum, but there was hope that at least we would have offices for new faculty. In August 2007, just a couple of weeks before the beginning of the semester, the Forum was on-line, but we did not have any converted office space. Instead, I came to campus to find that our copy room was being dismantled and half of the History department’s seminar room was being taken over in a last ditch effort to provide faculty with offices. And it was faculty and staff members who were doing that work. Again, none of this is new. At the LAS College opening day meeting, I raised this very issue to Hanna. I asked, in effect, “what happened?” He said that it would have been irresponsible for him as a manager to invest money in converting office space when Lytle will be torn down. “When will it be torn down, I asked?” Seven years.

I remember feeling kind of stupid at that point. I asked myself, “why did I actually believe his words in the fall of 2006?” Colleagues chimed in: “it’s par for the course.” In effect, it was a pedagogical moment. That is, I was being taught not to believe words. I was being instructed in the literacy of a culture of words-without-meaning. I can imagine that after a while, I would get worn down. I would accept despair. I would come to the conclusion, “that’s just the way things are.” But that would have significant, additional consequences. I would stop believing what people say. I would have to determine that what other faculty members and administrators said had no significance in real life. That’s a dangerous path—especially for someone like me who teaches writing and how to do things with words.

Having words

Something that I think all of us on the current APSCUF-KU Exec have tried to do is to make good on our words. I can remember in the past, sitting though Rep Council meetings when the former president would report on Meet and Discuss. He would tell us that APSCUF-KU demanded a resolution to X or additional information on Y. The administration would consistently reply “we’ll get back to you.” But they never did. The next Meet and Discuss report was like watching a re-run of the previous report. “We’ll get back to you.” But no one seemed to really expect that we would actually get an answer. And there was no consequence. It was like a ritual dance that the actors performed for the sake of ceremony. When Gambone became president and Ken Ehrensal took over Meet and Discuss, they had to contend with this ritual. Gambone’s answer was to give the administration time lines. Instead of “we’ll get back to you” meeting with a nod, it was met with a deadline: If you do not get back to us by next Meet and Discuss, we will file a policy grievance. Management called what it thought was a bluff. The grievance was filed. In other words, words meant something again. For over a year the pattern repeated, until finally (maybe) it started to become clear that words would continue to mean something in that context. And when words have meaning, we can actually start talking about trust again.

So, to bring this back to the point, I think I can understand why the arguments, information, warnings, suggestions about no confidence that I’ve listed above may not have meant the same thing to some people as they meant to me. I can also understand why Rep Council members would not lend credence to other members call for a no confidence vote. After all, in a context where words were divorced from practice and action, there would be no reason to care or connect the dots between statement A and statement B.

Perhaps we have an opportunity here to reclaim the word. To trust that we say what we mean and mean what we say. And, further, that we will follow up on our words with practice. Frankly, that’s what I saw us doing on APSCUF-KU Exec. But we were cautious as well. We did not recommend to Rep Council that a vote of no confidence be taken. We raised the issue publicly as a point of discussion. Faculty members need ample time to consider this issue. Faculty members need time to consider the supporting documents on our local website http://www.apscuf.org/kutztown and on the blog http://cevallosnoconfidence.blogspot.com. Department Representatives need to have time to talk to members of their department to get their input. When Department Reps come to Rep Council on February 14^th, they will have had the benefit of all this discussion and can represent their departments well. Then Rep Council will decide what to do. Is a vote of no confidence in President Cevallos a possibility? Yes. But that is only one possibility. This discussion has to happen in the open—not just in hallways and closed offices—but openly. We are, after all, thinking through the future of our university.

An Election Year

<o:p></o:p>I also know that there are some faculty members who are not happy with the current APSCUF-KU Exec leadership. I take that as a given. It seems to me that cultural and structural change is not easy. Not everyone will be happy with the direction of change. But I want to remind everyone one of this: APSCUF-KU elections will be held this spring. Up for election are President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer. In addition, three Delegate seats are up for election: my seat, Paul Quinn’s seat, and Kristin Bremer’s seat. If you are not happy with the current leadership, run for a position. Put together a slate of candidates for that matter. I think that would be incredibly healthy for the future of this union. I would further suggest that we could have a public debate leading up to elections. That kind of involvement in our local would be incredible.

When election time comes around, I will make my case. I will respond to any questions people have. I will offer my services to the union and the university once again. Unless something unforeseen happens, I will run again. You have my word.