Dean Papa Bear is under attack

May 15, 2008 in Uncategorized
Tags: congeniality, irony, Papa Bear, power

[Disclaimer]

Since Dean Papa Bear is one of the good guys here, I need to use a code name to protect him from the growing liberal conspiracy here to purge us of all decency. I decided on Papa Bear because it was he who should be credited for providing me the impetus to begin posting online.

But Papa Bear is under attack again on the college faculty email list. Let me first tell you why I say “again”.

The earlier public attack:

Back in October 2006, a faculty member posted a message under the subject “We Hired the Wrong Spam Filter” in which he complained that he had lost contact with one of his collaborators in Germany because our new spam filter had classified those incoming messages as spam. In this message that was sent to all college faculty, he explained how he detected and fixed the problem.

Dean Papa Bear had to respond:

Let’s see: you get a message every morning from IT saying, “[our University] junk mail filter,” and showing you, when you open it, the address of the sender, the subject line of the message, and an option to deliver it, ‘whitelist’ it, or delete it. “Whitelist” means that that author’s messages are automatically delivered. So, for the last several weeks, you’ve been deleting these messages from the spam filter without checking them.

Hmm. Sounds like the spam filter should clearly have been using more intelligence!

Now, I’m no expert on this, but I’m pretty sure this last sentence was meant ironically. Irony, in the right hands, is a friendly way of saying the opposite of what you mean. Or “congenial” to use Litfin’s term.

After this friendly repetition of the “how to use the new spam system” that the original poster had given, Dean Papa Bear was attacked. He sent the following out only half an hour after the friendly post quoted above.

A colleague has advised me gently that I’ve stepped over the boundary from humor to derision, and advises me that “we don’t need to be put down publicly by someone in a position of power.” So, [Original Poster], I apologize for my comments.

I seldom see myself in a position of power, so this was an interesting revelation!

Why do people persecute him so? Someone apparently didn’t see the congeniality of his post.

But what’s worse, people think that Dean Papa Bear has power! Now it is true that Papa Bear is the Dean of Faculty Development and is thus ex officio on every committee related to promotion, tenure, or reappointment. But how can this be seen as a position of power by faculty? Especially the way he handles the position!

For example, Papa Bear frequently posts his opinions into discussions on the college faculty email list. His opinions are always so correct, clear, and definitive that no one sees any need to continue the discussion. That’s how helpful he likes to be when it comes to encouraging discussion on campus. Once he enters the conversation, everyone on the faculty feels that happy satisfaction of being in the truth and goes back to his work! It’s wonderful to have him around.

Even when he doesn’t post his opinion, the knowledge that he is carefully reading everything that is posted there is comforting. The fact that he is dutifully reading my blog makes me feel warm inside. I’m sure he will comment if I say anything that is the slightest bit off from the truth.

But even if he does have some power, he does not see himself in a position of power! This makes him utterly safe. As long as the most powerful people around don’t know that their actions can utterly destroy the people around them, how can they possibly hurt anybody or anything? Those who are blind to the consequences of the use of their power might as well be considered to have no power.

The latest public attack:

The latest public attack on Papa Bear began when a faculty sent a message to the college faculty email list asking what various groups at or related to our University were doing in response to the recent devastating natural disasters around the world. Here was Papa Bear’s response:

I’m curious about what’s meant: do you mean that [our University] as a university
should respond to natural disasters overseas, a terrorist event overseas, or
a natural disaster in our own country? Or that individuals should do so?
Why should [our University] as a university respond in a corporate way? Do you think we
should send money? Do you think we should encourage students to go? In the
last weeks of a semester, I rather feel like our responsibility is helping
students complete their work and send them out!

I don’t think I lack compassion, but I feel like we should focus on the task
at hand!

Before analyzing his response to the initial message, which was not only an attack on Papa Bear but on our University and its founding principles, I have to ask “why?” Why do people attack Papa Bear so? Of course he responds, as he must.

He begins with a series of rhetorical questions, the obvious answer to each of which is “no”. Papa Bear is a big fan of Litfin who clearly states that we Christian Universities are not “a mission agency, or a relief agency, much less a ‘first response’ relief agency.“

But then he states that he doesn’t think that he lacks compassion. Papa Bear is probably the only person for whom that is not a settled question. But in his humility, he brings it up.

So far, so good. Papa Bear gives a clear, well-thought-out response the the faculty member’s question.

But then things got out of control! Usually, Dean Papa Bear’s thoughtful responses are so satisfying that discussion ends. This time it did not. Some of the radical, left-wing members of the staff and faculty also responded to the initial post with examples of things that people at our University are doing to respond to the disasters. In addition, the original poster replied with the excuse that the only thing he had intended from his inquiry about charitable activities was to inquire and that he had not intended it as an attack on our University or Papa Bear’s compassion.

Naturally, this is an additional attack on the powerless Papa Bear. Without further build-up, I will share with you his response to these events:

I’m not upset in the slightest, [Original Poster]. And I think I could imagine worse
possible ways to interpret your inquiry, but that’s just fatigue and
depravity.

I think [Flaming Liberal #1]’s response is very helpful. There are offices on campus through
which we as an institution can organize support–Student Life, Campus
Ministries, for instance, which specialize in organizing student
sentiment–or Academic Affairs, which can, in some instances, serve as a
rallying point for action on the part of faculty. For information about the
denomination, as [Flaming Liberal # 2] mentioned in his posting, or for churches affiliated with
[our University], then our office of Constituent Relations, which [Flaming Liberal # 3]
leads, would be the place to go.

But if we’re looking for “groups at [our University]” that might be at work on this, I
wonder if [The Faculty Email List] is the best place to find this out, rather than inquiring
of the offices mentioned above. If you want to have information to
communicate to others outside the institution, as you mention in your fourth
paragraph below, these offices might be the place to ask. Then, like [Flaming Liberal # 2], you
can post such information up to [The Faculty Email List] for all of us to share with
students.

This response finally did have the effect that Papa Bear’s comments on the email list usually have: a serene, satisfied faculty. There have been no more posts on the topic since then.

The gist of this message is that the college faculty email list is not the appropriate forum for asking questions about what people are doing to help the poor, care for the sick, comfort the oppressed.

It is really unconscionable that faculty would (1) post on such a topic on the faculty email list and (2) not stop posting on the topic once Dean Papa Bear weighed in.

But the irrepressible Dean Papa Bear immediately returned to his important work. An hour and a half after posting this message to the college faculty email list, he posted the following:

Just passing along incase you weren’t aware. Please see below.

Just enter your zip code in the site below,
and it tells you which gas stations have the cheapest prices
(and the highest) on gasoline in your zip code area.
It’s updated every evening.

http://autos.msn.com/everyday/gasstations.aspx?zip=&src=Netx

A second source: [localgasprices web link]

Saving money on gas is what should be occupying the minds of all faculty at a Christian University. Please stop attacking our Dean by discussing compassionate responses to disaster!