At the last General Faculty meeting, President Nancy Dye and Professor Norman Care engaged in an unprecedented dialogue on the future of faculty governance:
I.
Our idea to have this dialogue in public came to us several weeks ago over lunch in the Rat. Norm and I were talking about Oberlin's governance and, as you would expect, we had -- and still have -- points of agreement and disagreement. We decided then and there that a collegial public discussion of our ideas might be a good way to begin a larger faculty conversation on academic governance in general and on Oberlin governance in particular. Both of us think that such discourse is essential at this moment in our history--a conviction strengthened by our participation in the last College faculty meeting. We believe that such conversation must be prepared and informed, and envision a series of discussions structured around specific governance issues and questions for which all of us prepare by reading and study.
But this afternoon, Norm and I aren't here to put forth any particular agenda. We have no legislative aims. No motions, benign or otherwise, are up our collective sleeve. We hope, though, that this brief 45 minute conversation between us and among all of us will serve to set the stage for a far larger effort to come to terms with the needs of Oberlin's governance today and in the future.
II.
Even before I stepped foot on Oberlin's campus as its president, I heard about Oberlin's governance. "Don't go to Oberlin," some friends warned me. "They make mincemeat of presidents there." As you might expect, I hear a fair amount about our governance from trustees and alumni. Much of what they have to say concerns how slowly we do things here. This hasn't surprised me: most people who don't spend their lives in the academy are astounded by the seemingly glacial pace of academic decision making. I tell them, with some seriousness, that our slow and deliberate ways explain why we have been around longer than any other institution in western civilization except the Church.
Rather more surprising and new to me has been the amount of talk among Oberlin faculty about governance. That talk is more complicated, and sometimes contradictory. Over the past four years I have heard many faculty talk with great pride about the strength and uniqueness of Oberlin's traditions of faculty governance, and about the necessity to preserve and strengthen those traditions. I have also heard from many faculty who are frustrated by what they find to be opaque and difficult governance mechanisms. I have heard a lot of concern about declining participation, particularly among younger faculty members--a concern I share. I have heard a lot of complaining that governance at Oberlin too often involves procedure and too seldom involves substance. I have heard the complaint that too few important issues are put before the faculty as a whole. And I have heard from many faculty members of various ages and genders and disciplines and political persuasions that they do not feel empowered by Oberlin's governance.
I believe that there is a common theme underlying all of these disparate concerns. In a nutshell, I think that Oberlin lacks much in the way of a theory of governance. This deficit in theory manifests itself in many ways. One good example is the recent disagreement within the College faculty about the role and authority of the divisional councils vis a vis the faculty as a whole. Our lack of theory manifests itself in the long committee discussions all of us have been party to about whether or not this particular committee has any authority to be deliberating upon the matter before it. Then, too, we don't have a whole lot of clarity when it comes to articulating the role of the trustees or the president or the deans.
Now I realize that some of you are saying that we have a remarkable theory of governance at Oberlin--that body of ideas, decisions, and actions that we call the Finney Compact. The Finney Compact is a remarkable doctrine. It is a very early (perhaps the earliest) and still important articulation of the fundamental importance of academic freedom as the sine qua non of a great institution of higher learning. As Jeff Blodgett reminded us in his recent letter, the Finney Compact cannot be understood simply by reading Charles Finney's 1835 letter to the board of trustees accepting the Professorship of Theology here on the condition that the faculty had authority to run the internal affairs of the college. It is only through situating Finney's letter in its larger context--the context of the commotion at Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, where President Lyman Beecher and the trustees forbade Finney, Asa Mahan, John Morgan and other faculty and students to speak and act as abolitionists; the context of the Oberlin trustees' narrow and rancorous decision to admit black students; and the context of nineteenth- century academic life generally, in which the principles of faculty autonomy and academic freedom were not generally recognized or smiled upon--it is only within this context that we can appreciate just how powerful and important a statement Finney and the other "Lane Rebels" were making about the role of faculty in governing a college and about the full humanity of African Americans. The Finney Compact always has been and will be central to defining the distinctive ethos of Oberlin College--that Oberlin is an institution that encourages individual autonomy, free expression, and dissent and that it makes central to its mission faculty and student engagement in the issues that animate and define American society can be traced directly to the Finney Compact.
But I must also admit that I don't find the Finney Compact, even in its most developed manifestations, a sufficient guide to governing a complex and multifaceted institution of higher learning. Here is why: it does not illuminate in full or very useful ways the governance question that most persistently vexes Oberlinians. That question is, simply, "who gets to decide what?"
This question is at the heart of the current dispute within the College faculty: what, properly, can the Council decide? What can't it decide? What can the dean decide? It was this question that raised its head throughout the long- range planning process last year: Will the faculty vote on this? Do the focus groups have legitimacy? Do the planning teams have any authority? All of these questions are variations on the theme of "Who decides?" The long discussions in committee meetings about the committee's proper authority are because we can't decide who decides. These are all entirely legitimate issues, but because we lack good theory on the matter, we often devote a great deal of time and energy to deciding who gets to decide.
I suspect that for vast stretches of our history, this lack of theory was not terribly troublesome. It was not very difficult, really, for the faculty and the president to function as a single decision-making committee of the whole. . Certainly this could not have been hard when Professor Finney penned his letter: the faculty in 1835 numbered seven souls. By 1860, the number of teaching faculty had reached fifteen. By 1900, the faculty had become considerably larger -- 84 members. And by 1920, that number had reached 122 -- bigger by far, but still a relatively small number compared to today. This is not to say that there were not disagreements. Of course there were, and I am sure that they were every bit as acrimonious, if not more so, than they are today. But the world moved more slowly and intruded less upon the affairs of the College, the number of decision makers was smaller, and the faculty considerably more homogeneous than in recent years. I also suspect that because the world intruded less upon the College, that it was far clearer than it is now just what were and were not "internal affairs."
There is much evidence that we are far more restive today about governance structures and mechanisms. We see this restiveness in the absence of robust participation in governance, particularly in the meetings of the general and division faculties. I, like Norm, see this as a serious problem that affects the current and future health of the College as a whole.
I do not think that this lack of enthusiasm is due principally to a greater emphasis on research since the passage of the Tenure Report, or the lessening of commitment to collegiality and citizenship in favor of more commitment to one's discipline, although I do think that we should do much more to educate new faculty in what it means to be a participating citizen in this academic community, and find ways to encourage and facilitate their participation. And I don't think that changes in life styles, particularly the rise in the numbers of two-career couples, explain declining interest in participation, although I do think we would do well to change our meeting time to a more family- friendly hour.
Instead, I think that our lack of theory about "who decides what" engenders feelings of powerlessness among many members of the faculty, the administration, the student body, and even the trustees. Too many of us think that it just too hard to figure out how to move something through the complicated, cumbersome and often ambiguous or unclear processes that we have built up over the years. Many of us also say that the redundancies built into our governance processes tire us out: consider for example how many eyes in how many places must put the stamp of approval on as simple a matter as authorizing the hiring of a part-time instructor to teach a single course. And I fear that our muddled notions of decision-making also encourage inaction and discourage initiative for the same reasons. So our governance processes too often put a damper on change and forward movement. I think that governance should be positive, and that its first purpose is to enable people to make things happen, not to keep them from happening.
So, what should we do? I agree with Norm that we must revitalize this forum, and the forum of the divisional faculty meetings, to discuss and act upon real and important and substantive issues. Our ability to do that will depend in part upon our ability to develop some clarity and mutual understanding about the respective roles and responsibilities of each of the three arms of governance: the faculty, the trustees, and the president. Once we have some clarity and understanding about "who decides," we won't have to devote so much time to the matter.
But it also falls to us, including me, to dedicate ourselves to bringing matters of general importance to the floor. Here are some issues that I think we should discuss and make some general institutional resolutions on: diversity, what we mean by diversity at Oberlin, and how best to set and meet our goals for creating a genuinely diverse academic community; affirmative action; the curriculum in general, and how we can improve and enhance its coherence; interdisciplinary, what it means to us, how we encourage it, or not encourage it, as the case may be; instructional and information technologies, and what they mean for us and our students; athletics; the relationship between the College and the Conservatory; student life--an area for which the faculty has great and overarching responsibility; the relationship between Oberlin, Ohio, and Oberlin College, particularly our relationship with the Oberlin public schools. These are just a few of the general issues facing us that we can and should deliberate upon. Beyond these, there are a myriad of specifically educational and pedagogical issues.
I must say, though, that I am not as great an enthusiast for communitarian governance as Norm, and do not share his faith that this is invariably the best or most democratic form of decision-making. For one thing, deliberations in groups of this size depend heavily upon oratory rather than conversation, and a lot of people end up feeling left out. I find myself thinking that smaller, less formal opportunities for discussion and deliberation often give better opportunities to the many voices that are silent in these assemblies.
Finally, I believe that we need to think less about governance entities competing with one another, and more in terms of how we can collaborate. Our planning process last year was one model for collaborative deliberation, in that it brought together all of the campus constituencies, as well as alumni and trustees. The theory behind that process was that every constituency has voice in governance, and that the three major decision making entities--the faculty, the board, the president (and administration) make better decisions collaboratively rather than competitively. There will always be some aspects of governance that are by law and custom explicitly given over to faculty control--the curriculum, educational policy, and the hiring and promoting of faculty are some important examples. But we are living in the most difficult and complicated of times as far as the fate and future of higher education are concerned, and faculty, trustees and administration- -the three traditional arms of academic governance-need each others' efforts, experience, wisdom, insights, and support if Oberlin is to continue to be in the forefront of American colleges and universities.
-Taken from the General Faculty Meeting, April 21, 1998.
Copyright © 1998, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 126, Number 22, April 24, 1998
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