In times like these, WWJD?

I went outside because my hands were so cold it hurt to type and I felt ridiculous wearing gloves and huddling under a blanket in my office when it's 80 degrees outside, but as I searched for a place in the sun where my black sweater could serve as a solar cell, I happened upon the bench near the library with the plaque that honors a colleague who died 15 years ago, so I decided to sit there and warm myself inside and out by pondering the question What Would Jackie Do?

Jackie taught Political Science, and in an election year she would get her students involved in political campaigns so they could see up close how the sausage gets made. She would encourage them to apply their critical thinking skills to everything, to ask questions about motivations and rhetorical devices and unintended consequences. She was a no-nonsense straight-talker but she never steamrolled anyone, instead empowering students to learn for themselves.

In times of campus controversy she would challenge assumptions, demand clarification, and expose sloppy thinking. She carried enough institutional memory to help the rest of us understand the historical issues underlying current problems. It was fun to sit next to her at faculty meetings, where her whispered comments provided an eye-opening education to the newbies amongst us.

She taught here through some difficult times, but I don't know how she would react to the petty wrangling we're enduring on a regular basis today. If the administration took away her support staff and demanded that she master procedures that changed every other week and then chastised her when she made a mistake, what would Jackie do? 

She probably wouldn't curl up in a fetal position and whimper, which is what I wanted to do this morning when I saw the email indicating that I'd once again messed up one of our ever-changing procedures and I was going to have to go through a tangle of multiplying emails just to get the vendor paid for an expense that is fully funded by my grant and that has already been approved at the highest level. And Jackie definitely wouldn't threaten to retire immediately after being encouraged to seek further assistance from a person whose e-mail autoreply says "Off campus--unavailable for appointments."

Jackie was just getting ready to retire in the spring of 2009 when she was suddenly felled by complications of cancer treatment. If she were here today, she wouldn't take any rash steps but would probably step outside, find a warm place to sit, and think deeply about the situation. Then she might just share some choice words with the person responsible for the current problem, and I would be happy to follow her example if I could only figure out who that person is.