Committee Work

Among the many pleasures of being a tenure-track college professor, perhaps the best known are low wages, relentless research pressure, and the need to dupe bad students into giving good teaching evaluations. But there is another one, obscure but fundamental, whose basic odiousness beggars description: namely, the pleasure of doing service work.

"Teaching, scholarship, and service are the three pillars on which the case for tenure is built" intones the venerable, ridiculous Provost Pearson to this auditorium of unsmiling junior faculty. Many years of toeing the party line have worn Pearson's soul to a thin strip of rubber. He is a short, stick-figure of a man, with droopy skin, leaden eyes, and a sartorial flair that evokes molting lizards. His mouth is surrealistically large, an Aladdin's Cave stretching black and mysterious into a granite hillside, and from the gaps in the artificially white stone at the entrance escapes hot steam: the breath of a genie who has lost his cork and is going flat. "And let me tell you this" he continues: "service will not get you tenure."

Which is very interesting, Mr. Provost. For it implies, among other things, that service has only negative value: it can prevent me from getting tenure if I don't do it, but though I build outreach programs, revamp the university curriculum, lead a hiring committee, and forge a new vision for future generations, my efforts as far as the university is concerned are wasted. A fact that leads to the following interesting paradox: namely, that even though 'service' is the part of the professorial job-description that aligns most completely with the institutional mission and goals, the cycles of promotion, ranking, and money have conspired to render it totally superfluous. In other words, even within this value-centric, socially conscious mecca of free thought and liberal morals, the value of service is exactly the value it would have in the rawest of freemarket economies : cheap, disposable labor.

Ugly as it sounds, that happens to be the nature of the game I'm playing, so when my colleague asks if I want to join her as an "adviser" to Lambda Sigma, the Duquesne student service group, and tells me that the position is a total sinecure, I agree to do it. And for the most part, her description was apt: this year, we met with the incoming officers once, for five minutes, at the beginning of the semester, and we didn't hear from them again until two weeks ago, they apparently having been off tending to the needs of the poor, the sick, the gimpy, etc. But two weeks ago I get an email "inviting" me to the annual banquet (university policy requires that at least one faculty adviser attend), and three minutes later I get another email from my colleague telling me she'll be out of town that day. Oh God. It's Toews alone in a roomful of 20 year old service zealots.

What I did not know was that Lambda Sigma is not just a group; it's a mixed gender fraternity. The tip-off came in the form of clothing. I, the math guy, come bursting in late, sweaty from my bike ride, my trousers flecked with chain grease and my untied clod-hoppers caked with mud. And as I plow through the swinging double doors, what should greet my wondering eyes but a line of 40 undergraduates decked out in formal evening wear. There are slacks, collars, and ties for the boys, corsages and debutante dresses for the girls, and everyone is nervous, awkward, expectant, as if they were conscious of some sharp eyed and iniquitous authority in constant watch. Most of the girls are struggling to stay within the bounds of their attire, and they wear their heels like high wire artists on vicodin, while the boys talk conspicuously and furtively among themselves. It suddenly dawns on me that the last time I saw this dynamic was at a frat party I crashed with my boorish sociologist friend back in my tomcatting graduate school days. Oh Jesus. One minute down, 119 to go.

The rest was unexceptionally horrible. Lunch is a lump of laboratory chicken set in a petroleum pepper sauce. The girl next to me (Lambda Sigma's official historian) discusses with missionary zeal the mechanism by which members garner their service hours (in contradistinction to, say, serving.) I listen to names being read in a flat voice by a flat woman in steep shoes: Debbie Heaves, Katelyn Porkrind, Michelle Scaley, Michael Ballin. Is it system shock, or did these kid's parents really have a sick sense of humor? And this we know, reads the poetaster laureate, only through striving can we hope to grow. The president discusses recent activities: soup kitchen, craft night with cancer kids, care packages to veterans in Iraq, harmony singing at the nursing home. Jesus, do they never rest? Candles are used to light other candles, yellow cords are placed around sallow necks, there is a quick and schmaltzy slide show providing documentary evidence of how much fun everyone had. I dimly hear some mention of 'leaving footprints on our hearts', though I am too stoned at this point to know if this is was quite as painful as it sounds. The afternoon ends with tepid applause, a slow shuffling, hasty retreats.

Two hours of torture. One line on a CV. Next time I'm going to bring my kid.