Faculty Independence, Faculty Self-Governance, And Professionalism
By
Leonard Zwelling
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/03/opinion/college-students-adulting.html
In a long essay in The New York Times on September 3, University of North Carolina Associate Professor Rita Koganzon makes a strong case that the current model by which undergraduate campus leadership oversees the governance of the students is highly flawed. She calls it the facilitator model.
“The aim of the facilitator model is to create a safe environment offering students a variety of opportunities and choices for personal growth while foreclosing those choices that might result in permanent damage — initially to the body, but increasingly to mind, reputation and transcript. It is sometimes described as a middle ground between the paternalism of in loco parentis and the neglect of the bystander period, but this assessment makes sense only from the perspective of tort law, which is, not surprisingly, because it is largely lawyers who’ve promoted it. From most any other perspective, the model is only a more insidious form of paternalism.”
In other words, the administration still treats the students like children who are allowed to act badly with few consequences.
“It is tempting to allow yourself to be managed this way because the price of the security and comfort seems so low. It’s not brutal repression, only the loss of self-government.”
I am going to argue that the faculty of MD Anderson enjoys being treated like children, but who can be banished from the kingdom if they act “unprofessionally.” That professionalism is currently defined solely by the administration, an administration that is not only paternalistic, but also autocratic and arbitrary.
This is nonsense.
The faculty are adults and perfectly capable of governing themselves. In the assessment of an incident of research misconduct, it is three members of the faculty who make the judgment as to whether a colleague misbehaved. The same should be used to assess any allegation of unprofessionalism. That the state has given the administration the right to fire anyone that the administration feels has been unprofessional should be resisted at all costs. This is a faculty matter over which the administration may have ultimate authority, but the assessment of unprofessionalism on the part of a faculty member ought to be left to other peers and there is nothing in the law that precludes this.
I do think undergraduate students have been coddled with grade inflation and the expectation that four years of education ought to end with a high-paying job on Wall Street. What ever happened to earning that job and graduating as an adult while behaving like one by attending class and refraining from disruptive demonstrations while keeping the right to peaceful protest?
Similarly, what appears in the eyes of some “professional” administrator to be unprofessional behavior may be business as usual to another physician. Let the doctors decide.
In the overwhelming use of rules to govern faculty behavior conjured up by attorneys, the faculty have been reduced to children governed by an evil parent. This can change. The faculty ought to propose that they and they alone adjudicate any allegation of unprofessional behavior prior to the administration passing sentence.
It works for research misconduct. It can work for unprofessionalism as well.
