The Cheating University

This post is the third post in a series of stories that, taken together, might help explain why I decided to take early retirement from UCI. My point in posting these stories is to say "This happened. It shouldn't have. Can you learn something from it, so you can prevent such things from happening where you are (or at least not be complicit)?"

The Cheating University

When I arrived at UCI, I was told to attend an orientation meeting for instructors who hadn't taught here before.

At the meeting, I was surprised when the person in charge of teaching told us, "As you know, UCI has a reputation of being `the cheating university'."

No, I didn't know that! I wish I'd been told before I accepted the job offer.

Over time, I learned more and more about how misleading UCI could be to faculty it's trying to hire. 

When I was hired, I was experienced enough to make sure that everything that was important to me was put in writing in my offer letter. Nevertheless, I've had to fight to try to get UCI to keep its promises. In some cases the battle lasted many years and didn't have a satisfactory ending.

My highest priorities were quality of life issues, such as having an office with a nice view, so I bargained harder for the nice view than for salary (and I later had to fight to get the promised office).

At that time, almost all regular faculty were hired with an "off-scale" salary, i.e., a salary higher than the salary listed for their "rank" and "step" on the published salary scale. I secured a promise in writing from the Dean (approved by the Chancellor) that the amount by which my salary was "off-scale" would never go down.

The university broke that promise just a few years after I was hired, but I didn't realize it until later. For a "merit review", I was asked to sign a form that stated my new salary; I looked up the salary scale and learned that I was shortchanged by thousands of dollars a year, and it had been going on for several years.

This took me into a years-long stressful Kafkaesque nightmare through UCI bureaucracy that ended up setting some powerful administrators against me. Had I known that would happen, I never would have accepted UCI's job offer. I would have gone elsewhere.

I argued my case, mostly in emails that were sent up the line as in the telephone game, to I-didn't-know-whom, who never seemed to completely understand what was admittedly a complicated situation due to mysterious and confusing changes in the salary scale that included my campus instituting a "shadow scale" above the official one.

For each merit review, I was pressured to sign off on a salary that violated the promise, and I refused.

I pay for insurance, offered by the university, for legal advice, but it turns out they won't advise you on any issue involving the university.

When I was diagnosed with cancer, I had more important things to worry about than trying to find a lawyer to fight my university.

Years later someone told me that the longtime manager of the Dean's Office, who was the bottleneck, was "rigid"; once she got it in her head that I was wrong, she would never change her mind. No progress was made until I went around her.

None of the administrators cared enough to sit down with me to go over the numbers and discuss a reasonable solution.

I was eventually offered a salary bump to partially make up for the shortfall in back pay. The "Mad Hatter" Dean advised me to take the offer since (according to him) there was a real chance the Vice Provost would simply withdraw that offer if I didn't accept it. While I was unhappy with the offer, which wouldn't come close to making up for the years of lost salary, I felt I had no choice. A few years later that (now former) Vice Provost told me he was all for giving me what I wanted to make the problem go away, and it was the Dean who was very much against both it and me.

Honoring written offers is an important principle. A university's reputation gets around. If faculty feel they're treated unfairly, that can make it hard to hire good new faculty.

"Tattletales"

This post is the second post in a series of stories that, taken together, might help explain why I decided to take early retirement from UCI. My point in posting these stories is to say "This happened. It shouldn't have. Can you learn something from it, so you can prevent such things from happening where you are (or at least not be complicit)?"

"Tattletales"

I went to my department Chair with a request that I thought was routine, since department Chairs had approved similar requests when they were made by others. So I was surprised when he told me I had to go and talk to the Dean about it. (A later Dean than the one in my previous story.)

When I stopped by the Dean's office to make an appointment, the receptionist sent me straight in to see him. I introduced myself and made my case.

The Dean was annoyed that I brought my request to him. He wanted the Chair to make decisions, and didn't want to be bothered with it. I was taken aback by his hostility towards me, since my trip to the Dean's office hadn't been my idea.

The Dean didn't seem concerned with treating me fairly compared to colleagues with similar requests, or with doing the right thing. He was fine with the faculty breaking rules, as long as there were no complaints about it that he had to deal with. When I made rational arguments, he responded with illogical reasoning and got angry when I didn't accept his faulty logic. I tried to bring him back to what was fair and right, but that wasn't a place he wanted to go. I felt as if I were at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party.

The Dean told me that the Math Department is full of "tattletales". About a quarter of his time was spent dealing with the Math Department. He never heard from people in the other three departments, but about a third of the Math Department had come to see him, "not all by invitation".

I pointed out that if the department's problems were solved in good and fair ways, the Math Department would take less of his time.

He said they have brainstorming sessions about it in his office all the time.

I said I'd be happy to help in any way. But the Dean didn't seem open to getting information or advice from me.

His hostility was so strong that I left on the verge of tears.

In his later encounters with me, that Dean often came across as angry or sarcastic. I didn't know why. When he made snide remarks about the department I would reply, "If you would like help or advice, I'm always happy to give it," but he didn't take me up on it.

In the years that followed, some of us noticed that the Dean seemed hostile toward senior female faculty, but responded well to pretty young women who flattered him. The Dean told the Starbucks group that his yoga teacher is a young girl, and when a young girl tells you to do something, you feel all good about it and you do it. The others (all older men), teased the Dean about pulling in his stomach to impress her. The more they and the Dean laughed about it, the more it came across as locker room banter that wasn't meant to include me.

As for tattletales, the Dean praised applied math colleagues for going over a department Chair's head to talk to the Dean directly, but got angry at pure math faculty (like me) who wanted to talk with him.

After the Dean's relationship with me got significantly worse (stories to come!), I asked a colleague who knew the Dean for his perspective on the Dean's hostility. He agreed that the Dean might have problems with senior professional women. Then he speculated that perhaps my reputation preceeds me. A bit shaken by the idea that I might have somehow caused the problem, I asked what my reputation was. He said I'm very intelligent, I tell it like it is, and I call people on their bullshit. He added that mathematicians often have this problem, and it's not well received by people who don't think logically and don't like their fuzzy thinking and sloppy logic pointed out to them. 

"Never take anything outside the department"

This post is the first of a series of stories that, taken together, might help explain why I decided to take early retirement from UCI. These narratives are based on emails and other contemporaneous documentation. My point in posting these stories is to say "This happened. It shouldn't have. Can you learn something from it, so you can prevent such things from happening where you are (or at least not be complicit)?"

"Never take anything outside the department"

I was put on the Graduate Admissions Committee during my first year on the faculty at UCI. At the meeting to decide who gets into the PhD program, a committee member (who was himself originally from China) suggested that we not admit one of the applicants since the female Chinese applicants just want to come to the U.S. to find a husband and get married. I protested, but no one on the committee backed me up.

Later in the meeting, the committee chair referred to a grad school applicant as a "girl". When I quietly said "woman", he rolled his eyes and gave another committee member a look as if to say "isn't she nuts?"

At that time, UCI's School of Physical Sciences had a wonderful Equity Advisor, under the auspices of UCI's ADVANCE grant. ADVANCE was a National Science Foundation program for gender equity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. One of the Equity Advisor's roles was to inform hiring committees about best practices, so I thought she might have some helpful ideas.

Without naming names, I emailed her my concerns about what was said at the meeting, and asked if there was anything UCI's ADVANCE program could do to inform the Physical Sciences faculty about good practices for graduate admissions and hiring.

Cc'ing her reply to the two "ADVANCE Chairs", she suggested that the four of us brainstorm about what could be sent out that might be helpful.

The ADVANCE Chair in math, whom I'll call G, turned out to be a good friend of the chair of the Graduate Admissions Committee. G was incensed that I had criticized her friend (albeit without giving his name).

Some of the faculty routinely got together for lunch at outdoor tables. One day after lunch, G asked me and the Dean to stay behind. G told the Dean that I was out of line for involving the Equity Advisor. She said that she talked to her friend, the committee chair, and he "is not sexist". And our colleague's remark about marriage (which she hadn't witnessed) "was a joke". She said such issues shouldn't be taken outside the department. She told us that she had asked the Equity Advisor not to send any advice to the admissions committees or department chairs.

I was mortified at being angrily berated in front of my Dean.

The Dean was confused because the Equity Advisor had only discussed the issue with him in general terms, and hadn't named names or even told him it had anything to do with the math department. It wasn't from me or the Equity Advisor, but from G at that moment, that the Dean learned what department it was, and the names of the Admissions Committee chair and member.

The Dean told us that people can say whatever they want. You can't fire tenured faculty, so there's no leverage. There aren't enough resources to have lawyers tell us what we can and can't do; lawyers are expensive and charge by the hour. What was said wasn't illegal, and he couldn't do anything about it. 

He gave as an example that he could tell G he was going to kill her; that's not illegal, but killing her would be illegal. I told him I thought that death threats are illegal, but he disagreed.

Postscript:

I continued to join the outdoor lunches, until G told me I wasn't welcome since people didn't like it when I disagreed with them. One colleague explained to me later that I violate the hierarchy by not agreeing with older colleagues. Interestingly, those older colleagues praised and admired certain much more junior colleagues (their eventual successors in the department's power dynamic) when they disagreed in harsher ways than I ever did.

I'll add that I like both G and that Dean. I think they were doing what they thought was right. This story reminds me how important it is to develop a culture with good leadership, in which faculty and administrators are trained about best practices and professional behavior.

Gate Crasher

A flyer in the Science Center announced an upcoming "Celebration of Women at Harvard College", to take place on Saturday, October 4, 1997. It looked like a typical Harvard event that is free and open to the public, and it said you could register online.

The "Celebration" was to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Harvard allowing female students to live in the freshman dorms in Harvard Yard.

I found the phrase "Women at Harvard College" odd. Harvard College did not admit women back in 1972. My Class of 1979 still had separate admissions offices for Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges. While we received degrees from Harvard, primitive computer printouts of class rolls listed all the female students as "Radcliffe", while the men were "Harvard".

My freshman dorm didn't house women until my class entered in 1975, and we were only in the I, J, and K staircases of Wigglesworth Hall. Those entryways were right across from the Harvard Police Station, which at that time was in the basement of Grays Hall. (Wigglesworth was viewed as less safe than other dorms in Harvard Yard since it was on Mass Ave near Harvard Square, a busy place with sketchy people.)

Tickets for the discussion panels that would follow the October 4 ceremony needed to be ordered at least a week in advance. I requested a ticket online for the Science discussion. A reply email, from womenreq@fas.harvard.edu and signed by "The Committee for the Celebration of Women at Harvard College", told me I must pick up my ticket at University Hall by October 2.

I was spending the year at Harvard as a Science Scholar at the Bunting Institute (which was part of Radcliffe College, which was part of Harvard University), but the math department had kindly given me a desk in an office in the Science Center.

I wrote back and asked them to send my ticket via University mail to my math department address. The reply from "The Celebration Committee" said that they would set aside two tickets for me and reiterated that I needed to pick them up at University Hall by October 2.

As I told a friend at the time, "This seems to me to be part of a pattern I've seen where everything `for women' has lots of barriers in the way, while analogous things for men don't. It's as if they don't want people to show up. As a Harvard woman alum, and a Bunting Fellow, I think they should make it easier for me to go to this event".

Ever curious, I wrote back:

Dear The Celebration Committee,

Thank you for your message. Could you please explain why one

needs tickets for this event, why they cannot be sent to me,

and why I have to pick them up in advance of the date? I

do not have time to run down there to pick them up, and

would prefer that they be sent to me or that I pick them

up at the door. Thank you.

Prof. Silverberg

[followed by my Harvard centrex phone number and @math.harvard.edu email address]

I got a very nice reply, this time actually signed with a human's name (with the titles Administrative Assistant to the Dean, and Manager of the Office of the Dean of Harvard College), explaining that students need to pick up their tickets, they replied before they noticed that I'm a faculty member, and he had already instructed one of the assistants to send me my ticket. Tickets were needed because Sever Hall has limited space and they "anticipate that this will be a popular event; tickets would therefore provide means with which to minimize disappointment."

I found it hard to believe that the Science panel would really be such a popular event.

At the "Celebration", the registration people were prepared with pre-made name tags for everyone except me. They were very confused about how I could have a ticket but not a name tag. I learned that they only expected invited people to be there, and while they were OK with students registering online, it never occurred to them that anyone but a student would [be so gauche as to try to] attend without being invited.

I felt as if I were crashing the party.

The band played in the rain, and dignitaries who were kept dry under a tent gave speeches to a small wet audience, just outside the wrought iron fence that surrounds Harvard Yard. They talked about how now Harvard --- students, faculty, etc. --- is fully co-educational.

Radcliffe President Linda Wilson was put in the second row of dignitaries, and wasn't given a speaking role. The word "marginalized" came to mind.

The event included the dedication of a "small gate" with "no official name" that had been erected two years earlier. The dignitaries told us that this gate symbolized that women were at last being let in.

That gate is currently known as the Bradstreet Gate, after Anne Bradstreet, a 17th century poet who migrated to Massachusetts. Later Harvard publications tried to rewrite history to give the impression that the gate was officially named after Bradstreet at the October 1997 celebration.

The gate isn't on a main path, and every time I've gone out of my way to try to go through it, it's been locked.

Almost no one went to the Science panel in Sever Hall. I found it rather sad. Nevertheless, they didn't let anyone in who didn't have a ticket. The audience was mostly retired male (presumably invited) Harvard professors. A tenure-track panelist's viewpoint was that Harvard is wonderful and never discriminates, and she finds it hard to believe people older than her when they tell her the history of women at Harvard.

I was surprised by some panelists' statements that their departments are wonderful, women are full members, and everything is completely coeducational. So when they asked for questions and no one else raised their hand, I asked how many tenured women there were in those departments. No one but me seemed to notice the disconnect between their answers and what they had said earlier. I asked some follow-up questions to try to get the panelists to address the connection between the low numbers of women in their fields and the long history of discrimination, but they kept talking about women not wanting to go into science.

According to the printed program, after the panels was the reception. I walked over with someone from the Science panel audience. She had helped design the gate, and was annoyed that the people who designed the gate were never thanked.

I was stopped at the door and asked for a ticket. I asked if it was invitation-only, and they said yes.

Nowhere had anything said that any of this was invitation-only. It had all been well-advertised (the PR was good). The program did not say the reception was private, and I felt humiliated to be turned away at the door. (A Harvard Crimson article published two days later states that "The event participants were then invited to a reception in Robinson Hall".)

I resorted to groveling --- I pointed out that I was in the first group of women to live in Wigglesworth Hall, and if they were celebrating 25 years of coresidential living in

Harvard Yard (which they were), then I was one of the pioneers they were honoring. My new friend who walked over with me helped me talk my way in. Again, I felt like a gate crasher.

A young Harvard math professor had arrived at the reception before me and was already eating --- he told me he had walked in a side door, without a ticket.

Dean of the Faculty Jeremy Knowles gave a short speech that I liked, except for when he

talked about Harvard being completely coed, including the faculty. At first I didn't understand why no one at that speech or the gate dedication speeches protested. Then I realized it was because the whole event was a carefully orchestrated invitation-only PR stunt. They presumably didn't invite anyone who might cause trouble (such as the alumnae-initiated Committee for the Equality of Women at Harvard).

I decided that, as long as I'm a gate crasher, I might as well play the role to the fullest. Unfortunately, I realized my duty too late. I expected Harvard President Neil Rudenstine to give the next speech, which I thought would be the most appropriate time to shout "more women on the faculty!", but there were no more speeches.

I overheard Paul Martin (Dean of the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences) telling someone "but Harvard has as endowment of $12 billion dollars; what else are they going to do with it except throw a party?" as he pointed to all the expensive food and wine. I recognized Martin's name as the person whom I had been told was responsible for a new FAS (Faculty of Arts and Sciences) policy restricting who can access the FAS computer system.

I cut in and said that they could use the money to allow visitors at the Bunting Institute to access the campus computer network. I told him that at Bunting we were assured we were full members of the Harvard community, and so far the only point at which I found that to be false was for Internet access.

While I could hook up my laptop to the Internet via an Ethernet cable if I were in my Bunting office, I coudn't connect to the Internet in the (formerly Radcliffe, at-that-time Harvard) dorm room where I was living or in the Science Center, since I had only a Radcliffe appointment, not an FAS one.

I pointed out that the last time that I was an unpaid visitor to the Harvard math department, it would have counted as an FAS appointment, and I would have had these privileges. Now I'm an even higher class of visitor, but I can't easily use the Internet. I added snarkily that female mathematicians had to go to Bunting to be at Harvard, since the Harvard math department didn't have a good record of having women.

He jumped on that and said it was totally false --- the math department has lots of women and I don't know what I'm talking about.

I laughed and asked him about that. He said he knew the names of lots of women. I asked him for some of them. It turned out he was bluffing --- he said he couldn't remember any names and would have to look them up --- he has a list of who has had computer accounts through the Harvard math department, and remembered that women were on it.

He said that the Nieman Fellows are in the same position as Bunting Fellows. Luckily I knew enough to call his bluff, and pointed out that Nieman Fellows did get access.

It was a conversation between two New Yorkers. It started out contentiously but ended amicably. I think he warmed up to me after it became clear that we had many friends in common, and I wasn't just some outsider (or party crasher). Both of us loved Harvard and cared about it. In the end he told me whom in the math department I should tell to sign the form to give me access.

A strange slick brochure was put out for the occasion. Its first page talks about "women students and faculty [having] become full participants in every aspect of the life of the College." Curiously, Harvard didn't officially claim to go coed until two years later, in 1999, when Harvard finally killed off Radcliffe College.

A couple of days later, Harvard Yard was plastered with flyers pointing out problems with the status of women at Harvard (scarcity of women on the faculty, only one tenured African-American woman, etc.), and saying that the Celebration of Women was just a ploy to bring in money. I was glad that I wasn't the only one to notice.