Yesterday I came out of a very productive, encouraging, and even therapeutic five-hour meeting to find myself among people walking around stunned and bleeding.
Not literally bleeding, of course. No lives have shed in the making of these decisions, but our ongoing budget crisis has resulted in yet another round of cuts that will leave every department feeling battered, bruised, and hopeless.
It's a little disorienting to spend five hours with a select group of faculty and staff members imagining ways to improve campus conditions only to come out and find that we're once again being cut off at the knees, metaphorically speaking. In theory, we can do great things! In practice, people who are accustomed to doing great things will have to pick up new tasks to cover for the people whose jobs are being cut so they'll barely have time to do the things they didn't sign up for, much less the great things they could otherwise do. If that makes any sense.
Frankly, none of this makes much sense, but not making sense seems to be our modus operandi these days. Because of the grant I'm administering, I will continue to devote long hours to helping faculty and staff develop grandiose plans toward improving a sense of communal purpose, even while decisions are being made that will devastate our community and hamper our ability to achieve those purposes. My work right now feels like an immense waste of time, but I have to act as if it will make a difference. In other words, I've been issued a one-way ticket on the Crazy Train and I can only hope it doesn't end in a crash.
So, um, let's enjoy the wild ride while we can? Nah, I've got nothing.
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