July 16, 2012

The Ten Recommended Administrative Measures

1. “Focus on the situation, issue, or behaviour, not the person.”

2. Replace quasi-judicial campus tribunals with administrative decision-making.

3. Unless evidence compels them, avoid forensic words like allegations and charges.

4. Keep the rules clear, fair, and simple; keep policy and procedure manuals short.

5. In the face of demands that a professor be punished, entertain not just the null hypothesis but the mobbing hypothesis.

6. Seek proximate, specific, depersonalized explanations for why some professor is on the outs, as opposed to distant, general, personal explanations.

7. Encourage mindfulness of all the bases on which academic mobbings occur.

8. Defend free expression and encourage dialogic outlets for it on campus.

9. Keep administration open and loose.

10. Answer internal mail.

From: http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/~kwesthue/waterloostrategy.htm#one

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pierre-Joseph thank you for trying to come up with some support if that was your intention and to me the 'Ten Recommended Administrative Measures' look complex i have a simpler solution...if I may...I had done doctorate thesis on bullying:
1) Make bullying illegal
2)Complaints related to bullying should be investigated by external 'experts' who have proficient knowledge of bullying definition, experience of working with victims of bullying (must have knowledge of PTSD and treatment)
3)Have good conflict resolution skills and will be able to make proposals to organisations how the bullying should be resolved so both victim and bully are supported
4) Must engage in follow up meeting to check that agreed 'mediation' plan is being followed and respected
5)This blog is helpful and what would be more helpful if we all set up a petition and lobbied a government/European Eunion, personally i had done research on this on doctorate level and people feel unsupported (still despite the vast research we have), highly stressed, suicidal, and suffering from PTSD! ! I signed a petition myself to make bullying illegal - full stop!

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon said...

Sadly, there are no easy answers and there are those in the anti-bullying camp who are against making bullying illegal. Remember that often the bully will accuse the victim of bullying! We require a cultural shift, a cultural change that affects multiple factors including institutional reluctance to investigate objectively.

Anonymous said...

It seems that European Union and Theresa May (british home secretary) seem to take bullying seriously. I have relevant documents to show that. . . from my thesis project 'The Home Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities, Teresa May (HM, Government, 2010) outlined in The Equality Strategy that the Government is dedicated to addressing bullying from a young age and in schools'

Anonymous said...

At the place I used to teach at, the degree to which bullying and intimidation was tolerated depended on who the administrators were.

My former department head wanted badly to be rid of me. One day, I looked through my personnel file and found material was not only placed in it without my knowledge (thereby denying me my right to respond to it, in accordance with the institution's regulations) but much of it was either an outright fabrication or a distortion of the truth.

I responded to that with a blistering memo to the dean and sent a copy to one of the institution's vice-presidents. One day, my department head came back to the office and gave me a withering look, leading me to believe that the VP had given him a dressing-down.

I took 2 years academic leave and that VP retired soon after that. He was replaced by someone who was, apparently, quite casual in her approach to such matters, which explains why my department head quickly resumed his attacks after I returned and became bolder with each incident. He knew he could get away with what he was doing, plus it didn't help that the president of our staff association was a complete milquetoast.

I quit nearly 2 years after I returned. It was one fight that I wasn't going to win easily, if at all. I decided to cut my losses and get out while the going was good.