When It's All Said and Done

Remember the good old days when we used to be reassured that if we knew everything, we'd be outraged about the heinous crimes of the UNCG3?

I've finally had a chance to see the final report on their nefarious activities and I can testify that it contains not one new piece of information, not one twist, variation, shift, or enhanced explanation. It turns out, we did know everything that the Board of Trustees knew.

Well, with the exception of one thing:

The Board of Trustees didn't know that we knew.

I don't mean 'we' in the sense of the royal we, but rather 'we' in the sense of every member of the campus community. All the while that they were pretending they were right, we all knew they were wrong. Some of us chose to believe that the powerful have the right to be wrong...or at least that if we ignore their wrong, they might shower us with benefits.

So now what? The Board gets to have led us down this disastrous road, shepherded us toward the scandal and acted in every possible way to obfuscate the truth and cover up the lies.

Is it really possible that this group of people should be the ones our new chancellor must work with so closely? They clearly have only their own interests at heart (with the exception of Linda Carlisle who couldn't stomach being part of the whole mudslide). If we are hoping for the spring sunshine, the cobwebs still need to be cleared away.

The absolute refusal to be accountable for their actions and failures does not set the tone for the new administration. Their incredible (by which I mean unbelievable in the true sense of that word) belief that they are immune from the requirement to be responsive to the rest of us is not only disgusting but demands address.

These are not gods, but men and women who hold us in contempt. It's time to for a change.

It's not too late for spring cleaning.

Hope is the Thing with Feathers

So, Brady is gone, right? Members of the university community should be linking arms and singing! Birds should be landing on our shoulders! And yet, the best we can see right now is the hope that we can be optimistic. Why is that? I think that Richard Levy has said it brilliantly, and so I share his thoughts with you below:

"Chancellor Brady is gone.  A cancer, nearly universally disliked and disrespected, has been ignominiously removed from the UNCG body.

     Yet one senses little joy as a new Chancellor will soon come on board.  Why?  Four reasons come to mind.

     --No apology has been forthcoming for the actions causing "Firegate".

     --Neither Dr. Brady nor those who chose or defended her have acknowledged what a huge

       mistake her hiring was.

     --There is no provision for rectifying the error when a bad choice is made.

     --Dr. Brady embodied many larger problems in modern university conception and

       management, none of which has been addressed.

     Dr. Brady has continued to defend her lies and inept handling of the firings that brought her down, disrupted several lives, and brought decimated UNCG's reputation.

     Her total lack of introspection is unsurprising.  But the silence of the UNCG Trustee Board and Chapel Hill higher-ups creates the scary impression that they either agree with her or just don't get it.  Either way, the continued input of these people and their future monitoring of the new Chancellor does not engender confidence.

Dr. Brady's unsuitability for the position was clear years ago.  She was temperamentally wrong.  She made no effort even to learn the names of faculty or even major financial contributors.  She ignored input and tried to rule by fiat.  She made poor personnel decisions.  She gutted academics while substantially increasing administrative and, especially, athletic budgets.

     Dr. Brady's style was already well-established.  A reasonable investigation of her time at NC State or the University of Oregon would have uncovered it.  (And perhaps it did.  Perhaps those choosing and monitoring Dr. Brady actually liked her style.). Whatever reasons allowed her to continue are scary; these folks might do it again.

     But people do make poor personnel decisions.  The question is:  How long do you go before you admit the mistake and correct it?  There was a large and growing disenchantment with Dr. Brady almost immediately.  Yet no one at the local or Chapel Hill level took action until her mishandling of "Firegate" forced Chapel Hill to force her retirement.

     These matters are all serious.  But they pale compared to the last item.  UNCG is particularly poorly run (according to a study undertaken by the NC Legislature).  But it is hardly unique.  Indeed, it is typical of public universities and colleges.  Several examples:

     --Administrative budgets, already outrageously high, continue to expand dramatically, until

       they are often equal to the educational budget, which meanwhile stagnates or is even

       reduced.

     --Athletic budgets proliferate, even as they lose more-and-more money, and at schools like

       schools like UNCG have no chance of becoming profitable and provide few measurable

       benefits.

     --A race to build silly amenities increases student fees substantially, even for those students

       who can scarcely afford it and who will seldom or never use the new facilities.  Little attempt

       is made to find out if the students even want them.

     --State universities are vastly overbuilt, under-utilized, and poorly maintained.  Most schools

       have no idea what their building utilization even is.  (Hint:  at most it is below 25 per cent if

       You count 8 AM-10PM Monday through Friday, plus summers.)

     --Universities are being re-defined so only research or majors with short-term practical

       payoffs really count.  The very real benefits of other academic disciplines are ignored.

     --Professors are asked to spend substantial amounts of time evaluating rather than teaching.

     In other words, public universities are being poorly run and dumbed down (even while their

heads claim they are being run the way a private company would operate, which is very unfunny joke).  But not a word from Chapel Hill or individual trustee boards suggests that these truly important questions are even being thought about, much less acted upon.

     That, more than anything else, explains why university communities are dispirited, and why Dr. Brady's eclipse, welcome though it is, does not lead to a re-set of confidence and optimism."

Hope may have feathers, but it will take much more to grow the wings we need to use them.

Dear Chancellor Gilliam

We have high hopes for you.

That's what I'm hearing from people all over campus. Remember what we have been through, remember to be one of us, remember to listen and to speak frankly, remember to seek wise counsel and heartfelt advice, and remember that disagreement doesn't equal enmity.

We are ready for a new era, but we still haven't put the past behind us and that will be your very first task. We can't just let it drop into the depths of our memories to fester; truth and reconciliation can move us all forward. It's the best way for you to understand where we have been and where we would like to go.

Brady was only one person, part of a structure, and that structure needs to be removed, cleared out and redesigned. We are not afraid of hard work, of careful study, of deep communication. I hope that you can be brave, courageous enough to lead us through this because the other side is a better place.

We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.

The Excitement is Palpable

If you liked that cliche, get ready for many more because in about thirty minutes, the long awaited announcement of the identity of the new chancellor will be revealed. I am hoping it involves a smoke machine and laser lights at the very least.

Obviously, this will all be done via the typical democratic process of deciding in secret and then unveiling their identity in another city.

I may or may not be at the reception this afternoon, but I will be tweeting the livestream announcement of our fearless leader's unmasking...because if it can't be summed up in 140 characters, it's still at least more in depth coverage than that provided in the peppering of 'no comments' we get from Joe Gallehugh.

I'm @uncgcleanhouse on twitter if you want to follow me during this epic event of the century. If you can't I'll post the transcripts here later.

Just be prepared: mixed metaphors and sports analogies will be thick on the ground.

A Direction for Employee Satisfaction

If we’re going corporate…

We might be well served to look at those that have symbiotic relationships with their highly satisfied, engaged, and empowered employees.

Look at all the bad press MacDonald’s has gotten and remember that learning that the burgers only have 15% meat or that the nuggets are filled with ground chicken faces (I’ll let you figure out if that’s a typo) wasn’t what made it happen. Instead, a lot of it can be attributed to their poor treatment of their employees. Let’s not model ourselves after a dying (and irresponsible) fast food chain.

But, we’re in a time of budget crisis, how can we possible do this?!?

Having a good work environment isn’t all about ping pong tables in the break room and new iPads. It turns out, and here’s the shocker…money can’t buy you happiness.

The kind of money that helps is money that we have at UNCG. The biggest salaries go the people least likely to stick around, but that doesn’t mean that the lowest salaries are what keep people here. So, step one: everybody earning under $XXk (note the two digits there…don’t come with cap in hand if you earn six figures) gets a raise. I don’t care how you make it appear in accounting, it can be done, so let’s do it. Partly it might come from skimming off the top (for example, do we need a new Vice Chancellor for University Relations if the department has four people? Not sure, but it’s a question worth asking) and part might come from savings I’ll discuss in a moment. Point is, it can, and should be done, as a baseline, a minimum of what employment should be.

It’s much more than that though.

Liz Ryan, contributing author for Forbes explains it well:

“Rather than focusing on new programs to make employees happy, we should be taking away the obstacles that keep people at work disempowered and disconnected from their mission [and that of their place of employment]. Leadership in the knowledge economy has more to do with removing impediments to teamwork, collaboration and new ideas than with installing even more programs and policies than we already have.”

Basically, it will save us money AND increase our devotion (and therefore energy, creativity, contributions, etc.) to do away with the unnecessary structures that degrade the quality of the work environment AND cost us the most money.

I’ll only give one example, for now, but: In University Relations (back when that was what it was), staff such as David Wilson and Chris English were salaried employees. And yet, they had to fill out time sheets. These time sheets were entered into a system developed by department admin Sherri MacCheyne. The system never worked particularly smoothly and had to be fudged and fussed with just to accept information that it turned out was absolutely useless. It didn’t improve the relationship between Sheryl and her co-workers, didn’t ever actually measure the amount of time spent working, and we can see the countless headaches this ridiculous and unnecessary activity has caused.

Remove the bizarre requirement for time sheets and here is what we would have had:

No UNCG3 scandal, a whole host of dedicated employees still working here, none of the legal fees associated with the prosecution of this idiocy, more time for Sherri to devote to work, more time for Chris, David, et al to devote to work, countless hours of work that never would have showed up on the time sheets anyway happily performed by dedicated employees, whatever the hours were that Imogene Cathey, Benita Peace, and Jamie Herring dedicated to this, whatever productivity was lost as people attended forums and tried desperately to understand secondary employment…

I probably don’t need to go on. All of this from one unnecessary structure. How many more are there that could so easily disappear generally improving everybody’s lives AND the financial situation of the university?

I don’t know, but I’d sure like to find out.

How to Reform a Wayward Executive

I’m getting reports that Bryan Terry has been quieter recently. It seems like many on campus are in a holding pattern, just waiting to see the new chancellor.

Our new chancellor has an excellent opportunity to come in and turn this institution around. I’m not talking about massive infusions of funds (although that’s there too), I’m talking about setting an example for the way in which administration, staff, faculty, students, alumni, and community members should be working together. If Brady created (or exaggerated) this culture of bullying, it’s clear that the next person has the chance to create an atmosphere befitting of an academic institution. The fact that people are waiting for the new chancellor before they show their cards again means that the time is ripe for leading them in a new direction.

I wish her/him all the best in this. I think the lessons learned are clear and anybody with half a brain doesn’t have to read my blog in order to have understood them. There are a lot of positions to be filled and the choices made will have a profound impact on UNCG.

In case some people need a little extra assistance, I’ve put together some suggestions for helping transition the folks in upper administration who haven’t been able to ‘move on to better opportunities.’

Bryan Terry’s contract will include mandatory anger management classes as well as a slow and detailed explanation of the difference between a compliment and an insult.

Kim Record’s salary will now be calculated as a percentage of the profit from ticket sales to sporting events. She will be assigned a board of advisors to assist her in all decision-making. This board will be made up entirely of members of the former wrestling team.

Kim Record's Board of Advisors

Bonita Brown will be required to join the Girl Scouts and earn a badge in ‘plays well with others.’

Benita Peace will complete a spiritual journey under the guidance of the Dali Lama until she can find her center by reciting ‘hostile work environment’ in the lotus position.

Jan Zink will serve in the peace corps digging ditches and building water filtration systems until such time as she understand that the word ‘authentic’ can be used in other ways than to distinguish fake and real fur coats. Or until the earth crashes into the sun, whichever comes first.

There. That’s a good start. 

Tune in tomorrow when I’ll provide some application and interview tips that could help us weed out the a$$holes before they are hired.

It's a Legacy...but Is It a Good One?

The News & Record has run its obligatory whitewash of Brady’s ‘legacy’ at UNCG. I was disappointed to read it, but maybe John Newsome had to write it…and anybody who knows the story at all can understand the lack of effusive praise exactly as it’s meant to read. As a blogger, however, I’m not beholden the politics of the city newspaper.

I think we can all definitely agree that Brady’s legacy has profoundly impacted Lee street. It’s whether or not that legacy requires a positive or a negative qualifier that matters. After all, the mere acknowledgement of an impact should be the very lowest bar to set on any human existence. Basically, Newsome has acknowledged that Brady existed. I don’t disagree.

While it is a tradition to name campus buildings after their leaders, I think Newsome’s suggestion that should the Board of Trustees ever consider such an act (doubtful at best) they would be well served to name something off campus since her ‘legacy’ at UNCG is one that, at best, we will shake off, at worst, has damaged us for years to come.

Some faculty are critical of Newsome’s piece, and I understand why (and will address those points in more detail in another post), however, what comes through loud and clear, through nothing more than a recitation of the facts, is the lackluster quality of Brady’s unfortunate tenure at UNCG. Many things were in the works before she got here, some things were accomplished because of others, and everything that she directly initiated resulted in gridlock at best (fill in your own at worst).

It was also interesting to note that she has clearly not learned anything about communication from any part of her experience at UNCG as her only response to the N&R request was another highly polished ‘no comment’ delivered by Joe ‘tight lips’ Gallehugh. 

Susan Safran, the equally unresponsive – thought uncommunicative – chairperson of the Board of Trustees said (and I am not making this up):

“We wouldn’t be in the shape we are in without Linda Brady.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Uptick in Retirements and Outsourcing Employment

You may or may not have noticed, but there has been a sharp uptick in the number of people electing to retire (in addition to all those ‘disappearing’ for other reasons). I would recommend everyone take cover in June because the stampede of people retiring may be somewhat akin to the buffalo thundering over the Great Plains. 

It’s gotten the point where it would be easier if Campus Weekly just printed a list of people who were still employed by UNCG.

The most recent person, but certainly not the last, that I have heard about is the director of undergraduate admissions. She’ll be leaving in June – seems like Bryan Terry’s aggressive charm may have been too much. Dr. Terry has terrorized his employees so much that even off the record, they are reluctant to talk about it. I can see why they would be less than enthusiastic about the possibility of turning to human resources for assistance…

What kind of impact has his presence had on enrollment? It’s hard to say, I’m sure there are some specifically worded questions that could be cagily answered that would address that. I do know that staff enrollment is declining – maybe we need a vice chancellor for employment enrollment. Oh, wait. Isn’t that what human resources was supposed to be? Fudge.

Here are some suggestions for administration on how to stanch the flow of faculty and staff to other institutions:

1. Tag and release. Implant a microchip in the back of the neck of each person working at UNCG. Then, when they ‘retire’ or ‘move on to better opportunities’ or ‘escape in the night taking all of their belongings with no notice’ we can learn where they are and send game trackers to bring them back to the flock.

2. Dogs. It works with sheep, plus we can have a vice chancellor of canines then.

3. Fencing. No, not the kind with swords, the kind with chain link, about 12’ high. Too bad we already built that tunnel under the tracks, so we’ll have to barricade that now as well. Set up a couple of check points, give the employees passports and make them check in. Of course, we’ll have to confiscate all 13’ ladders.

4. Leash laws. All employees found off leash will be subject to a fine.

5. Incentives. No, never mind, that one’s just crazy.

No matter. We’ll just outsource everything – we’ll become the first ever residential college with a solely online presence.