Sunday, November 12, 2017

Holding academia to account, Bingo version

You know those bingo cards that appear every so often on Twitter or Facebook? The one I usually see is for department meetings.

I wonder if we could have a scorecard with Bingo squares or points for the times we hear and see things like the following, either stated or implied:
  1. "He should still get the award, because his personal life has no bearing on the tremendous contribution he has made to scholarship. Aesthetics and the life of the mind is important; what happened to that grad student was beside the point. Besides, that incident was years ago."
  2. Woman faculty member is interrupted and talked over.
  3.  Woman makes a point,  and it's ignored; man makes the same point two minutes later, and it's brilliant.
  4. "It wasn't such a big deal. She should get over it." 
  5. Faculty of color asked to be on a zillion committees or outreach projects and then criticized for producing less scholarship.
  6. "He's going to retire soon, anyway. There's no point in pursuing it."
  7. "That's just how he acts; the bullying and yelling isn't about you personally. Stay out of his way and you'll be fine."
  8. "This whole process will be a lot easier if we just give Professor Y what he wants in terms of this time slot/this course assignment/this committee assignment/this candidate for admission. Otherwise, he'll pitch a fit and make our lives miserable. Professor X won't complain about teaching at 8 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. MWF, so let's give that schedule to her."
  9. "If he leaves the department, he'll take that big grant/that journal/that prestigious reputation to another university. He brings prestige, so we can't make waves."
  10. "[Women faculty] should be in their offices more, in case students need to talk to them; they need the emotional support.  As for me, I'm not going to the meeting. I have writing to do." 
 Any more for our scorecard?