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.

Here’s what I just posted to the vote of no confidence blog:

By a vote of 45 to 15 (with 4 abstentions) APSCUF-KU Representative Council has authorized a vote of no confidence in President Cevallos.

Over the next two weeks APSCUF-KU will hold several faculty meetings to discuss the bill of particulars in even more detail. Links to the bill of particulars and other supporting documents can be found on the right-hand sidebar and the APSCUF-KU web site.

Further details about the voting dates and upcoming meetings will be posted here as soon as they become available.

45 to 15. It’s interesting. You never quite know how these things are going to break. I want to note as well that a member of the Music Department brought a “no confidence in APSCUF-KU Exec” motion to the floor as well. I seconded the motion. I thought it was important to have that vote too since some faculty have made a case that they are “greatly disappointed” in APSCUF-KU leadership and have inferred that that is also the feeling of “lots of other faculty as well.” However, when it comes down to it, numbers speak.

The vote of no confidence in our leadership was defeated. 7 representatives voted no confidence, 49 voted confidence in our leadership. I say our here because, of course, I am a member of APSCUF-KU Exec.

I seconded that motion because I thought it was an important discussion and vote to have. I for one have worked hard over the past 5 years to turn our APSCUF-KU local into a strong, fighting union. A union that actually served it’s members and worked to bring more membership involvement. When I first came to KU our union was deemed largely ineffective by most faculty. My early involvement seemed to confirm that. Don’t get me wrong, there were many people in the union who were working incredibly hard. But it was not, for the most part, an activist union.

Now that we are much more proactive and strong, we are getting resistance in the other direction…Are we pushing too hard? Are we doing too much? Are the faculty content with the way things are? Do they want to return to the days when the union was not so active? For that reason, I thought we–at the very least I–needed to hear if Rep Council had confidence in our leadership or not. 49 Reps said they did have confidence. 40 Reps said, we want to continue as an active, fighting union.

To all those Reps who showed confidence in our leadership…I thank you. You may well be the reason I stay at KU.

Well, it’s just about 11:30 on Valentine’s Day. I taught this morning–saw the second part of the Frontline Documentary The Persuaders–and I will teach again at noon and 1:30. After that is the Rep Council meeting that everyone has been waiting for. We will be considering a vote of no confidence in Kutztown University President, Javier Cevallos. All the discussion that has taken place across campus, in our department meetings, on-line, on the blog, and in the media now is a backdrop for a decision today. The decision? Whether or not APSCUF-KU should proceed with a vote of no confidence.

Yes my friends…these are heady times. What has been interesting throughout this discussion is that there has been virtually no discussion on the specifics of APSCUF-KU’s bill of particulars–that is, of our actual reasons for introducing a discussion of a vote of no confidence. What’s also interesting is to watch the dynamics of how faculty members (in particular) relate to the issue of a no confidence vote. I don’t mean whether specific faculty members do or do not have confidence in President Cevallos. No, what I am thinking about has to do with how faculty responses show particular understandings of democratic literacies–that is, the everyday practice of democracy.

I recall in Habermas’s study of the “bourgeois public sphere,” a discussion of the interconnection between that public sphere and particular bourgeois values (and I don’t mean to position “bourgeois values” here in a derogatory sense like they’re “bougie.” I am thinking of these values in their historical sense). I am thinking about this because much of the discussion around the vote had to do with the way the discussion was introduced and how and through what media the discussion was introduced. Put another way, the tenor of the public discussion (at least in terms of the faculty discussion) seems to point to some kind of Emily Post guide to the ettiquette of public discourse, or institutional behavior. Something like that.

More to come on this for sure…I’ve gotta go teach.

The other night I had trouble sleeping…too much going though my head. Instead of letting my restlessness go to waste, I decided to pay Dio a visit just to run some stuff by him. When I told him what was keeping me up all night, he laughed and laughed and laughed. “All I can think about is making sausage,” I tell him. No matter how hard I tried, I could not let my thoughts settle into sleep.You see, I like sausage. I like those sausage biscuits with egg at Wawa, I like summer sausage, I like turkey sausage, Italian sausage, chorizo sausage, even tofu sausage. Don’t get me wrong, I am not claiming to be some kind of sausage “aficionado.” I just like the stuff and think that the world is a better place for having sausage in it.

But here’s my conundrum: when I start thinking about what goes into making sausage, I get a little queezy. It’s rather disconcerting. I mean, it’s one thing when the image I have in my head is of the family farmer bringing her or his pigs to the local butcher. You know, the kind of images conjured up by Bob Evans commercials. It’s another thing entirely when you have the image of factory farms and the mass production of meat that we are introduced to in Fast Food Nation, for example. You see, I want to imagine the sausage I eat through the Bob Evans lens. But, I confessed, that’s difficult to do. Yeah, I know, I could go to Dietrich’s Meats or Allentown’s Farmer’s Market and then I would have a better idea how my sausage is made. So, maybe I’m just being lazy.

“Look,” Dio said, “you’re coming at this all wrong. I hate getting serious on you, but you’ve thought yourself into the classic consumerist corner.” He explained his surprisingly complex theory of that consumerist corner. I’m still thinking about it.

Let’s see if I can reconstruct it a bit here. My problem was that I was caught (even more than I had realized) by a rather sophisticated pattern of argument. First, there’s the obvious issue of the real conditions of production–that is, the “way” that sausage is made. It’s true that mass production of sausage on the factory model leads in pretty disturbing directions. Sausage, after all, is mostly made up of scrap pieces of meat–and not all of the those pieces of meat are, shall we say, “meat.” There’s all sorts of stories of rats, feces, and pieces of human flesh making it into mass produced sausage. After all, with everything ground up, it’s not easy to distinguish scrap ham from scrap rat. Because of these (very real) stories, we hear the cliches “you don’t want to know how sausage or legislation is made.” The force of that piece of conventional wisdom is to encourage you to ignore the process of sausage-making. Ignorance, after all, is bliss. It’s an odd, but powerful, sort of move. If we accept this notion, then we are encouraged to associate the ability to enjoy or desire sausage on the condition that we “forget” it’s process.

I have to admit that at this point Dio almost lost me. I mean, usually he’s kind of jolly…but here he was taking me for a winding intellectual journey. I was really just trying to put the whole sausage thing out of my mind.

Anyway, Dio stopped his discussion–perhaps recognizing my fading attention–to make sure I noticed the point he was about to make. “Notice that ‘forgetting’ is put back on the individual.” Huh? He pointed out that there was a conceptual shift in the argument from the actual process of sausage-making to the individual’s ability to enjoy sausage. The individual’s ability to enjoy sausage depends upon her or his willingness to forget about the process of sausage making. He insisted that that was an important point.

He explained that once the focus is shifted onto the individual, three things can happen. First, and most obviously, attention can be taken away from the process of production, insulating those making sausage from scrutiny. Second, the more abject the process of sausage-making is made, the greater the gap becomes between the everyday and the process of sausage-making. That is, if sausage-making is marked as “gross” or “horrific” then in the everyday we will turn away from it, thus decreasing our familiarity and comfort with the process. Finally, if someone calls attention to the process of sausage-making and the specific problems located in the sausage factory, others can now discipline that person on the grounds that she or he is interfering with her or his enjoyment or desire.

“Are we seriously talking about sausage alienation?,” I asked with a tinge of sarcasm.

“In way, yes. But remember, it’s never just about sausage…especially when we have a nice piece of conventional wisdom that uses sausage as a point of comparison,” I was told.

That reminded me of one of the books we are reading for my Advanced Composition class: George Lakoff’s, Don’t Think of an Elephant. Lakoff’s book deals with framing–specifically how progressive and conservative discourse is framed by different concepts of the family. He argues that “framing is about getting language that fits your worldview. It is not just language. The ideas are primary–and the language carries those ideas, evokes those ideas” (4). So, if we look at the conventional wisdom as a set of ideas (a commonplace argument, perhaps???), we’re talking about the ideas that are conveyed by the conventional wisdom about sausage-making. Given the grin that was extending across his bearded face, I could see that I was finally catching on.

“You are always talking about how rhetoric and democracy arose at the same time,” noted Dio. “So maybe it will help to do one of those flashback sequences for you. By 600-500BC, sausage-making was a pretty common practice. Common enough that folks in China, Greece, and Rome were mentioning it in their daily conversations and even in some of their notes,” he explained. “It was common enough, that is, that the concept of sausage was available for use as a metaphor. Don’t forget that there were a whole lot of people that hated the rise of democracy…and the idea of grinding up a bunch of different meats and packaging it in an intestine offers just too easy of a metaphor for those who hated democracy.”

I began to follow…surprisingly. I gave it a whirl.

So, basically, the sausage-making metaphor does work in a culture. If we move away from the particular issue of sausage-making and look for those “ideas” that are connected to the language, we could argue that:

1. One of the ways to divert attention away from the actual process through which something is made–e.g. decisions–and turn it toward the individual’s negotiation of her or his relationship to that process, has the affect of shielding the process from scrutiny. In effect, it takes the actual process of “making decisions,” to continue the example, as a given. As an individual I am asked to choose between discomfort and pleasure. If I agree to accept the process as a given, I am rewarded with enjoyment. Why be upset with something that can’t be changed? Or is the result of a force beyond one’s control?
2. If I assume that the process of making decisions (i.e. sausage) is messy, disturbing, upsetting, etc., then I will be inclined to not inquire into the specific ways in which they are made. The more common it is for me to “look away” from the process of decision-making, the less familiar the process becomes. That is, one becomes alienated from the process of decision-making. We know, however, that decisions still need to be made (someone has to make them) so we turn to a particular caste of people who make decisions. We enter into an uneasy agreement–you make the decisions and we will not ask how those decisions are made.
3. There is a problem with this agreement though. What happens when the products of the process (decisions, sausage, medications) are problematic, unhealthy, or dangerous? In those cases, we are in a bind. We don’t know how the decisions were made, so we can’t tell if there was malice, carelessness, or incompetence. We are not, after all, familiar enough with what goes into the process to evaluate it. If someone does begin to call attention to the process and speak in a language that suggests knowledge of the process of decision-making, we are confronted with the first bargain we made: we agreed to diverting our attention away from the process of production in exchange for pleasure, comfort, status, leisure, whatever. And if we have a sufficient investment in these latter things, we will view the person calling attention to the process as attacking us–we will defend ourselves. Ultimately we have to defend ourselves in a different language, though, since we cannot defend ourselves in the language of process. We call attention to the improper “way” in which the person is raising the question. We would draw attention to how the person is crazy for critiquing something that cannot be changed. We chastise the person for being “uncivil” or “improper.” We call attention to the fact that the person broke a social compact to turn our attention away from the process of making sausage.

“Hmmm,” I concluded.

Dio smiled again, handed me a cup filled with wine, and leaned back into his chair. “Now don’t go and make the same mistake you made last semester.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve got yourself all worked up with your analysis, I see. Just don’t turn your analysis into a rubric. There’s danger in introducing a false opposition that can lead you back to frustration,” he advised.

“Like….?”

“I like the whole thing you did there in your ‘#1? about exchanging pleasure for an agreement to ‘look away’ from the process of making X. However, that does not mean that ‘pleasure’ or ‘joy’ is in opposition to critical reflection. There is joy in decision-making, joy in critical analysis, joy in trying to draw attention to problems in the way things are done. The apparent opposition is also disciplining–it wants you to feel like you have to set aside joy if you are to be critical. How many of your lefty pals have made that mistake historically.” He paused for a moment, perhaps caught by a memory, and took a sip of wine. “Carnivals are important. Even if you are looked upon as improper or crude. If joy is seen as improper or crude, then we learn something about our cultures.”

We sat in quiet for a while until sleep finally closed in. I bid Dio goodnight and headed to bed. “Sausage,” I muttered. He smiled.

Sometimes, on my 30 minute commute to work I replay words and arguments over in my head to try and get a better grasp of their contours and what they seek to do, the affects they have, etc. In my co-authored book with Rachel Riedner, one of our chapters takes a look at the role of despair in neoliberal rhetoric. We describe the role of despair in neoliberal rhetorics as follows:

What we see in the everyday working of despair, is the work of hegemony at the level of habitus—“a system of lasting, transposable dispositions which, integrating past experiences, functions at every moment as a matrix of perceptions, appreciations, and actions” (Bourdieu 82-3). That is, despair is not limited to one specific kind of experience within neoliberalism. Rather, it is a transposable disposition, flexible enough to contain expressions of resistance. As part of a hegemonic discourse, despair sneaks into everyday arguments about current conditions and possible alternatives (79).

This “transposable disposition,” in my mind, is part and parcel of a kind of “neoliberal commonplace”–a persistent pattern of cultural argumentation.

I first started working on questions of despair when I was first getting involved with our local union chapter and teaching an Advanced Composition course called “Global Literacies.” In both my union work and in my class I noticed a recurring pattern of moral outrage followed by some version of the statement: “there is nothing we can do.” On the one hand, this frustrated the hell out of me–especially in the union context–but, the persistence of the argument made me think that I should be thinking about what it means and what it does [see excerpt for a brief intro into how Rachel and I situated this issue].

Anyway, that set me on my current path of taking an interest in the “micronegotiations” of hegemony, so to speak. That is, the everyday arguments made in everyday contexts that rise to the level of “commonplace arguments.” You could say, I am working on a “commonplace book” that focuses on neoliberal rhetoric [if you are interested in what a commonplace book is, check out this power point presentation floating out there on the web].

As you may or may not know, one of the hot conversations on our campus right now is a vote of no confidence in our university president. At this point, the issue is part of a public discussion and we do not know whether or not such a vote will be taken. But the issue has certainly sparked a spirited discussion among faculty and in the community at large. Some of the emails that have made it into my “commonplace book.” More accurately, they have occupied my mind during my drives to campus each morning and evening.

Here’s a brief list of some of the issues I have been thinking about:

• how do individuals identify with institutions, in this case with our university
• what is considered “proper” and how codes of civility and manners overlap in discussions of “process” or “the way” an issue was handled
• public image of an institution. In particular, public images as constructed in images and PR material (reputation) and/or public images based upon actual practices
• shades of progressive–”liberal” ways of seeing
• The role of institutional authority in argumentation (thinking Robin Lakoff’s arguments in The Language War here).

Oooops…look at the time. Gotta run to a meeting!

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…

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