April 24, 2007

Sylvia Spears and Hiring at Dartmouth

Joe Malchow posted an intriguing (if also slightly self-important) report on the hiring of Sylvia Spears as the next head of the Office of Pluralism and Leadership yesterday.

Or rather, I should say the prospective hiring—Joe emphasizes that Dartmouth hasn't officially announced Spears as the new OPAL dean, rendering her status somewhat mysterious, or at least Joe thinks it does. I find Joe's speculations duplicitous—that Dartmouth is "squelch[ing]" reportage of her appointment because it a) is "embarrassed to have played into the hand of petition Trustee candidiate [sic] Stephen F. Smith, who has vigorously criticized the administration for allowing a swelling bureaucracy to grow arterial lines when it ought to be hiring more professors"; b) is "listening to its current employees, who are raising questions about the advisability of the new hire"; or c) is "holding the announcement in abeyance until the next instance of racial or cultural strife, to be released as a quick remedy." I think Joe has watched "Wag the Dog" a few too many times; the idea that the PR office is eagerly awaiting some racialized situation to announce a hiring is, well, the type of paranoid fantasy I've come to expect from Joe.

But I find the post duplicitous because, like most of Joe's writing about Dartmouth issues, it's pretty clear what Joe wants to say in his post, but he puts on a show of being the serious reporter and just delivering the facts, unsettling as they may be. What Joe really intends is that you come to the conclusion that Ms. Spears is unqualified for a superfluous position. I suppose he doesn't say so directly because innuendo is more effective in this type of thing than direct statement, but I don't feel as if the point is likely to be missed.

As I've said before, when conservatives start talking about there being too many deans, they mean, "why do we have diversity personnel?" But the interesting thing about this is that if you tend to believe that diversity deans are not worth much to the College, then someone whose credentials actually qualify them for the position are therefore unqualified for being hired. That is, Ms. Spears's career seems to have qualified her very well for a position like the OPAL dean, but that actually disqualifies her, in their eyes, from joining the Dartmouth administration.

Likewise, the fact that Ms. Spears is Native American is part of Joe's effort to discredit her—"the plain connection between her hire and last year’s unpleasantness, prompted by campus American Indians feeling unsupported by the administration and loudly communicating that view to the press and the ether around Dartmouth Hall. The message? Complaints bring about new employees." Again, what might be a qualification if you believe in the necessity of addressing minority issues—in this case, Native American issues—is turned into a reason why Ms. Spears doesn't deserve a job at Dartmouth. If you think the Native Americans' claims are illegitimate, then any person who might be qualified or well-positioned to address those claims is also made illegitimate. If you think this way, Ms. Spears's race is a good reason why she shouldn't be hired.

So it comes to this—if you think continuing to staff positions related to or in support of diversity on campus is a good idea, Joe has just given a few good reasons why Ms. Spears is a great hire. If, like most readers of Dartblog, you think diversity deans are superfluous and perhaps even evil, you'll understand that Ms. Spears should never be hired.

I don't like this type of argument—playing to one's readers' presuppositions and prejudices while pretending to argue to a different point or not to argue at all. But Joe goes beyond this dissembling bit of preterition; he also actively misleads.

Although the title of the post is "The New Woon," Joe repeatedly phrases things so it seems as if the College is adding a position to accommodate Ms. Spears and therefore is adding salary. "Complaints bring about new employees" suggests that the search that ended in offering Ms. Spears a job was brought about because of last fall's events. That's untrue. Tommy Lee Woon resigned, so someone needed to be hired to replace him. Joe also claims that, by hiring Spears, "Dartmouth has added $80,000 or more to its payroll when it could have added far less on the margin by simply promoting." I would be very surprised if Ms. Spears is being paid $80k more than Dartmouth was paying Woon. And as for promoting from within, unless Joe thinks that the promotee would be getting paid the same amount as she did in a lower position and not be replaced, I'm not sure how much money Dartmouth would really save by internal promotion. I could be wrong there, though—I'm not an econ major. Joe also refers to Dartmouth "grow[ing] arterial lines when it ought to be hiring more professors." Hiring someone to replace Woon is not administrative growth. Joe's efforts to associate Ms. Spears with administrative growth is misleading and disingenuous.

17 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:14 AM

    of course hiring spears adds 80k; think about this: tommy woon's salary was 80k. with him gone, that's 80k that's not going out the door. had dartmouth promoted internally someone who's already making 50k, they have only added another 30k to their salary. now, however, we have the same guy making 50k, and a new person making an additional 80k.

    on a related noted, how come malchow always knows about dartmouth news before it breaks, and you seem like you get most of your news (and content) from malchow's site?

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  2. Anonymous10:33 AM

    "had dartmouth promoted internally someone who's already making 50k, they have only added another 30k to their salary."

    Only if they eliminated that person's former position, which is unlikely. Someday, you'll have a job, and you'll understand how employment works.

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  3. Anonymous10:38 AM

    There is a certain "bootstrapping" quality to Malchow's arguments, but I don't think Malchow pretends that he's doing anything other than preaching to the choir. He's sort of like Rush Limbaugh... reasonably smart and hardworking, but not persuasive to anyone who doesn't already agree with him.

    There is something to Smith's complaints of administrative growth that goes beyond the diversity deans, though. His complaints about the rate of growth of the administration are broader than just OPAL.
    http://www.stephensmithtrustee.com/where-i-stand/curbing-bureaucratic-bloat/

    He criticizes growth in the aggregate, though, without saying where the excess actually lies. John Wolf tries to call him on this, but the growth about which Smith complains isn't explainable just by new dorms, the Berry library and the Zamboni driver.

    http://thedartmouth.com/2007/04/10/opinion/lets/


    I don't think that Smith is using "administrative bloat" as code for "diversity deans." It could be, though, that he hasn't bothered to ask what the explanation is for the numbers he quotes and that he's uncritically parroted the numbers because they're helpful to his contention that the administration needs to be "challenged" and "reformed" by an "outsider."

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  4. Administrative bloat is almost always code for diversity deans, although it popped up a bit with the appointment of the sustainability director as well. It's possible the Smith is so oblivious to Dartmouth he doesn't specifically mean OPAL, but these are the areas that seem to irritate conservatives looking at any campus.

    But, to take a sort of apolitical (and admittedly superficial, sort of managerial) stance, I'm not sure it matters that much if you believe the Native students had legitimate grievances in the whole Solidarity Against Hate episode. (Personally, I do. I think the whole episode indicated deeper problems, esentially none of which were actually articulated).
    If there is a massive show of anger and tension in the college community, it is worthwhile to resolve that tension. Hiring someone to deal with it recognizes that it is preferable to not have that tension, it does not indicate ideological alignment with the aggrieved minority group. Whether an OPAL dean is the solution is a different question, but short of creating a new administrative position, its the most logical place to look.

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  5. Anonymous12:22 PM

    Administrative bloat is almost always code for diversity deans, although it popped up a bit with the appointment of the sustainability director as well. It's possible the Smith is so oblivious to Dartmouth he doesn't specifically mean OPAL, but these are the areas that seem to irritate conservatives looking at any campus.

    In the link I posted, Smith's complaint is as follows:

    Over that period, the College added “111 new positions” to the College administration ranks for a “net gain of 86 full-time equivalents.” The number of administrative jobs added . . . was literally double the number of faculty positions added in Arts and Sciences . . . .

    I'm not sure what a "net gain of 86 full-time equivalents" means (perhaps it means that the college created 111 new positions while scrapping 25), but unless the College has added 86 diversity deans in the past 5 years, I don't think the "code" applies here.

    The point I was trying to make was that although Smith doesn't explain what the 86 positions are and where the waste lies, Wolf's counterargument doesn't satisfactorily explain the growth of the administration either.

    This is separate from whether the correlation between Spears's heritage and the recent incidents did or should play any part in her hiring. I don't really care one way or the other. Seal correctly points out that filling a position that has been vacant for almost a year isn't really a new decision to spend money.

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  6. Anonymous @ 12:22 -- I agree that Smith's concern about administrative bloat is not limited to OPAL and IDE, but I think, as far as the argument goes, there's a distinction that is tacitly understood between general bloat and waste. Diversity deans are considered waste. Other offices have bloat. You can't have bloat in an office you don't think has a real purpose.

    By fusing the two terms—bloat (administrative growth) and waste (diversity deans)—he gets to pretend he's really just talking generally. Malchow does a good job of this too. He pretends Spears is part of a general administrative bloat, but the real point is that Spears's position is a waste of Dartmouth resources because it is unimportant, a political concession to interest groups.

    By presenting the arguments about waste and bloat together repeatedly, the conservatives don't have to touch the actual issue of whether OPAL and IDE are useful offices, but they nevertheless advance the argument that they aren't by tying them to the more nebulous "bloat." I call that a coded message.

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  7. Anonymous1:19 PM

    Seal: find your own news/opinions.

    It seems the constituency of your comments section of late has turned from adolescent sympathizers to intelligent discourse. This however is usually not due to your own opinions, but the space left by the open-endedness and unsubstantiated claims you make.

    If you didnt have a comments section, and were forced to garner readership based upon the cogency of your thoughts alone, I doubt this blog would reach further than the undergraduate left - and probably only the naive underclassmen portion of that. Anyone who has been on campus in the last few tears realizes that the "diversity dean" issue has been beat to death. Talk about preaching to the choir...

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  8. yes, i too am convinced that this blog enjoys what surely must be an astronomically large readership because of the commenters, who are obviously the real stars of the show. where else can you go to read Jacob Baron and that guy who called me a fag? what about that other guy who so astutely pointed out that Andrew is short and gay? you almost wish bloglines had a feature whereby you could just read their comments and nothing else.

    seriously though, does anybody read this beyond the Undergraduate Left? really?

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  9. Anonymous7:48 PM

    I think Malchow et al. use "bloat" and "waste" as interchangeable pejoratives to describe undesirable administrative expansion. "Good" expansion isn't "bloat." The problems are:

    (1) that Malchow cites the diversity deans as an example of a larger problem without showing that the larger problem exists. Not every floating piece of ice is the tip of a much larger iceberg.

    (2) that Smith has put an issue on the table and neither side has explained it.

    Smith criticizes the administration for expanding by 86 positions over the past 5 years. He doesn't say that all 86 positions are wasteful or unnecessary, just that either (1) some of it must be unnecessary, or (2) the fact that the administration has expanded faster than the faculty means that the College has bad priorities. I see this as laziness or a cop-out, rather than a coded message, but maybe I'm too trusting. Contention(1) is just begging for further explanation. Contention (2) is an apples & oranges comparison, without further explanation. Smith is using a "this number is much bigger than that number" dodge to score points, and he should really explain himself further.

    On the other side, though, we just have Wolf who accuses Smith of wanting to fire the zamboni driver and tear down dorms in the name of efficiency, which is really weak.

    The question Smith's put on the table is this: Dartmouth's administration has grown by 86 positions over the past 5 years. Is this justified or wasteful?

    As I've tried to explain, he hasn't given a complete answer, and neither has anyone else.

    I suppose you can criticize Malchow for tying the diversity deans to a larger issue of administrative waste/bloat without proving that the larger problem actually exists, but Smith's numbers do raise questions, and I haven't seen any good answers from his opponents.

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  10. if you're going to go so far as to designate yourself the "10:38/12:22 anonymous," can't you at least make up a cute handle for yourself? it feels like Andy and I are having arguments with a bunch of black cats in a dark room and it's just not there.

    DUPLICATE??!?!? DUPLICATE??!?!!

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  11. Anonymous11:51 PM

    Is there any way the title of this blog could be changed to "Daily Angry response to the Dartblog".

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  12. Sure, if Joe will also title his blog appropriately. I suggest "Half-Truths and Verbosity as Compensation for Various Insecurities."

    I don't know, I'm really getting sick of Malchow. I don't think a shark exists that he hasn't jumped.

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  13. in fairness to joe, his blog is at least way better looking than ours. we gotta redo our shit so we don't have that weird tiled image at the top. and that "trustee coverage all on one page" thing is hideous.

    O reader, I beseech thy pardon whilst we re-up

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  14. Anonymous9:56 AM

    Waste?
    http://thedartmouth.com/2007/04/25/opinion/uga/

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  15. Anonymous11:42 AM

    Why do so many of you here continue to tie those concerned with waste and bureacracy to conservatives? And on what real data do you justify the claim that concern over bloat is a "code" for eliminating support for minority groups. There are many examples of administrative excess that have nothing to do with OPAL.

    Why does it seem all the personal attacks going on are against Mssrs. Smith and Malchow? The other trustee candidates go out of their way to attack Smith directly. The College itself has done so indirectly. Meanwhile Smith has provided some balanced comments that both criticize and praise differing aspects of the Administration, but he has not "attacked" other candidates. (The closest he has come is noting his concern that a friendship with our President might create a conflict of priorities.)

    An independent observer is left with the impression many of you posting here have predjudices (pre-judgements) that make you incapable of true thoughtfulness.

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  16. It's not that I think only conservatives care about bloat; it's that I think the issue is not just about bloat—it's about gaining control over how the money gets spent. Not just input, but control. I don't think control of the College's spending habits should lie in the hands of a rightist cabal that has no practical experience governing a college and is wholly uninformed both of the state of the College and of higher education in general.

    As for the personal attacks, my comments about Smith have been personal only in the sense that I find certain aspects of his person—his attitude toward science, his record of service to the College—make him a bad candidate for this position. And as for Joe, I'm sick of his dissembling and his pomposity.

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  17. Anonymous12:16 PM

    Andrew Seal writes a nothing. A lengthy comment on Malchows column does nothing other than call into question Mr. Seals intelligence. It is obvious that he has no information or facts to submit which leaves nothing but blather. As far as blather goes it is in need of remedial blather control. In other words Mr. Seal should shut up until he has something to say.

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