Self-Service, no Support for Faculty — Venting
Faculty are essential workers but facing pay, benefits and support cuts if they are lucky, and outright job cuts if they aren’t as lucky. My rant is a minor one in this grand scheme but it’s so hilarious and symptomatic of how wrong things are that I have to get it off my chest and laugh it off.
Six months ago I ordered myself a tablet stand so I could use my tablet as a second screen as I teach. I figured it would be nice to see my students in the zoom room on one screen even as I project my slides on the laptop I teach from. The false advertising yielded a crappy product that arrived in an unusable state, from an Amazon marketplace seller with a foreign address. It wasn’t worth the bother to try to return it. I was clearly dealing with petty crooks.
Last month, a call for faculty to apply for special tech-grants to get home office equipment was announced with suggestions that such products will now be issued by the college — in addition to the standard laptop. I applied for the grant only because I figured that the college tech-support or purchasing folks will know the right stand to get as other colleagues must have ordered these before. In the grant application, I shared the link to what I had bought earlier to say this is the kind of product I want, but not this brand as it was no good. The grant application was reviewed by a faculty committee and they asked for an exact link to what I wanted ordered. I called the tech suppprt and asked for help and information on what they ordered for others. They said they are not allowed to recommend — citing some conflict of interest and I should just go with online reviews. It didn’t help to share that I had no luck with that since reviews are a commodity bought by advertisers now. 5000 + reviewers can’t be trusted, based on my experience with that crappy unusable stand. They offered sympathy but not a recommendation. I told the committee liaison that I am indifferent to any stand and sent a few links from Amazon, with a request that if anyone on the committee had used any of these and were satisfied, I’d be glad to go with their recommendation. The colleague found no one on the committee had used a tablet stand. She reached out to her network and suggested one might work or was worth trying and I agreed, and everyone approved. The committee could place the purchase order for it finally. The purchasing office sent the purchase request to the budget office to get the account code to bill it to. The budget office told the purchase office to get me to apply for a faculty grant first. A month and several emails later, I had come a full circle. The faculty grants are different from the technology grant I had applied for, as those cover the routine standard issue things. But before filling out yet another google form application, I decided to let the helpful colleague from the tech grant committee know this was where things were. She was as surprised as me, and said this ought not to be the case. Investigations behind the scene got things sorted out to say the purchasing department can get the account number from the budget office without me filling new grant application. It’ll be sorted out, I am assured, and a purchase will be made soon.
The cost of the equipment is far lower than the cost of time spent by all the people getting the necessary approvals. The value of knowledge that any of us might have about the quality of the product is not shared for some alleged legal liability and conflict of interest issues. This is the low level of trust within the so-called campus community and high cost of doing our essential work, with no support but too much oversight. I’m no longer just an expert in what I teach, but also expected to be an expert in all tech platforms, software and hardware issues, and self-service model of relying on anonymous reviewers or YouTube tutorials to figure out how to best set up my own second screen, among other things.
If I am an essential worker, why am I not valued or supported like one? Comedy of being in a machine controlled world with kind humans not allowed to trust those they know but told to rely on anonymous ones from cyberspace instead. Feeling outdated in this new world.
