This post is the seventh 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)?"
"Why didn't you report it?"
(or: Why I'm posting my stories, Part 1)
I should elaborate on the digressions in my first, somewhat adversarial, meeting with UCI's Provost and Vice Provost.
Early in the meeting the Provost said he was glad I was talking to him, especially since I'm in such a "difficult department". I asked, "difficult in what sense?" He told me what he considered to be the problems in the math department. His information seemed to come from the problematic Dean and the members of my department who went over the Chair's and Dean's heads to talk to the Provost directly.
Based on what he told me, I didn't feel that the Provost had an accurate view of the department. Mindful that a colleague had scolded me never to take anything outside the department, and that the Dean had raged about my "going across campus", I said that I wasn't prepared to talk about my department, and that I was concerned that the Dean wouldn't like it if he believed I was going over his head to talk with them about it.
Somehow, they drew me into a conversation about the Dean, and I wasn't adept enough to avoid it. While I tried to say as little as possible about the Dean and department, I did mention that the Dean said that the math department consisted of "tattletales", and he didn't want math faculty coming to him with complaints.
The Provost said angrily, "Why didn't you report it?"
I was speechless.
First, because I was startled by his anger.
Second, because the Provost hadn't asked me if I had reported it, he just assumed I hadn't.
Third, it didn't strike me as a reportable offense. Calling faculty tattletales seemed to me to be less worthy of report than unfairly yelling at me "why didn't you report it?" (But I wisely didn't ask the Provost if I should report him for saying that.)
And fourth, after a pattern of behavior by the Dean that eventually reached a level where I felt it was reportable, I did indeed report it to the Ombudsman. Nothing good came of it, and things got worse.
Then there was the unfairness of claiming I'm someone who doesn't report things. After all my years of dutifully reporting problems and trying to get them fixed, and putting up with hostility, threats, and retaliation for doing so, the Provost's angry retort seemed so unfair.
And lastly, reporting it was exactly what I was doing, right then and there. The Provost was the Dean's boss, and he was the only one it made sense to report this to. Here I was, reporting it, only to be met with anger.
While I sat there in shocked silence, the Vice Provost came to my rescue. She said something like "because of the fear of retaliation." She said that as a member of a "minority group in the department" (I assume she meant women) I'm more vulnerable that others so there would be risks to me.
The Provost explained that it makes him angry when people don't report things.
I was being put on the defensive. This is probably when the meeting took a turn that should have been a red flag to me, but I was too surprised to realize it.
I said "What should I have done?"
The Provost talked about something else, so I asked again.
He said I should have taken it to the Equity Advisor. I pointed out that there was a time period when the School didn't have an Equity Advisor, and the incident was probably then, and then there was a period when the Dean didn't know who the Equity Advisor was and gave me incorrect information about it.
I pointed out that it wasn't clearly a gender or discrimination thing.
He said that he tells faculty, "You're a tenured full professor. When you see things like that, you need to speak up." He wanted people to speak up at faculty meetings when things go wrong. He said he doesn't understand why they don't. I said that as someone who does speak up, I can tell him why people don't. I gave some examples of bad things that happened to me at UCI when I tried to do the right thing.
I said that the usual advice at UCI, and my experience here, is that things get worse rather than better when one reports problems.
The Provost said that the alternative is to suffer miserably.
I said yes, there are two bad choices.
As I mentioned in the last story, I was rushed off before I could present the points I came to make.
As I left the office, I said I hoped that today's meeting would be a case where things got better rather than worse. The Provost and Vice Provost said it would, and I replied, "I'm counting on you."
Two days later, I posted "The Meritocracy", the first of my Alice in Numberland stories (many of which are about what happens to good little girls who dutifully report things), as if to say to the Provost, "See! I report things! Not that it helps!"