To Long Prevail

Sometime in 1987, only a few years after the beginning of her presidency at Stockton, Vera King Farris produced a confidential report for the Board of Trustees. The report appears to have had two objectives, to record what the President had been accomplishing in her work, and, secondly, to respond to a number of problems arising from an investigation then underway into some financial dealings of the college.

These two halves of the document are very different indeed, and may have been intended originally to be two entirely separate documents. The first, called “Accomplishments at Stockton State College since April 7, 1986,” was probably meant to be an annual report to the Board. It is comprised of quite an impressive list of the array of initiatives then under way, many prompted, I would imagine, by the President herself. Taken in isolation this document would suggest a college moving forward in some quite impressive ways.

But, there is that parenthetical subtitle to this section: “(Initiation of Prosecutor’s Investigation)”, which certainly leaves a disquieting impression. Further, this section of the report ends:

It would be naïve to conclude that the prosecutor’s investigation had no effect on our college, yet it would be wrong to conclude that it impeded or weakened the college and its ability to move forward, to plan, grow and prosper. In fact, the investigation proved to be an effective acid test of the college’s management, strength and vitality. Tested by it, I believe we have stood up quite well, professionally and personally, and will continue to do so.

This seems a somewhat odd statement to me. The acid test metaphor is perhaps understandable given Farris’s science background, but it seems very reductive, in the degree to which it reduces the college’s functions to the response made to the investigation. One would imagine that in actuality the first part of the report, detailing all the accomplishments, would have been a much better test of the vitality of the college.

So this document seems to me to have a tragic feel to it. It seems to be very revealing of Vera King Farris and her presidency. She accomplished many great things and she was in many ways an asset to the college, but her insecurities about her position as President and the degree to which she believed that there were underhanded opponents among the faculty who were out to get her, created a climate of distrust that in the end led in exactly the opposite direction of the one she intended.

The college’s “management, strength and vitality” became connected to the strength of her position, and the more she seemed to want to build management, the more she invited opposition to grow. In the end, the very opposition that she believed was lurking in the wings did seem to materialize. Faculty members who may have opposed different policies of hers, but who might have supported others, ended up being implacably opposed to her. Distrust of the administration grew to unfortunate levels, and some of the residual effects of this are still to be found at the college, though to a diminishing degree.

The second part of the document, then, entitled “Suggestions for Handling the Prosecutor’s Report,” has an entirely different flavor to it than the first. This was the document that produced the firestorm when it was leaked to the faculty. In some ways it was understandable that she should have produced a document communicating what she felt the Board should be doing in response to the investigation, but it was the nature of this response that was a little disturbing.

I don’t want to rehash the document except to say that it outlined four different responses that the administration could make to the prosecutor’s report. The odd aspect to this, as Ken Tompkins outlined at the time in his own reading of the document, was that she believed the response to the report needed to revolve, not around dealing with the problems arising from the investigation – things like falsified invoices, misuse of the President’s discretionary fund, and reimbursement for travel by private organizations – which from this distance at least don’t seem of earth-shattering magnitude – instead, they needed to revolve around difficulties at the college with certain oppositional faculty members.

Why a problem of administration needed to be solved by an approach to handling faculty is a mystery, except that President Farris may have believed that the information that reached the press and which led to the investigation may have been leaked by a faculty member; this seems unlikely, as Ken pointed out at the time, and it was probably the case that it was leaked by someone within the administration and only then led to demands among faculty that it be investigated. As such, she may have wanted to avoid a recurrence of such demands, but a more appropriate method of assuring this might have been to clean up the accounting practices in Administration and Finance – which she, no doubt, was already doing.

President Farris outlined four such approaches for the administration in response to the report: essentially carry on as if nothing was occurring, which she rejects out of hand; “search and destroy” the mischief makers, which she rather less quickly dismisses as inappropriate; compromise with the adversarial group, which she also believes would be unproductive; and, finally, “develop a long-term strategy and plan for the health and vitality of the college,” which she supports.

On the face of it, this would be fine, but for the fact that the long-term strategy is not framed in terms of the initiatives and other accomplishments outlined in the first part of the document, but is rather focused on management of disgruntled faculty. As Ken pointed out, it was a question of divide and rule, classifying faculty into groups and trying to isolate those who were ill-disposed towards the administration, while rewarding those who were supportive. This was clearly problematic at many levels (again, as Ken shows very well), and the manner in which it was dependent upon a rather severe classificatory system is particularly disconcerting.

The President divided the faculty into those who were always rabidly and irrationally opposed to her, those who supported her, and those who were “skeptical” or ambivalent (though still somewhat suspicious about administration in general). As Ken noted in his reading, “[The President was] seeing each of us [the faculty] as simple, rather single-minded individuals…. But,” he continued, “clearly, each of us is a complex of opinions and visions. On some issues, I can easily – even eagerly – support the administration. On other issues, I adamantly disagree. On still others, I couldn’t care less. Simplification, like the President’s, is not only incorrect, it is evident of a serious flaw.”

This seems like an important lesson for any administrator to take note of; one perhaps that can be matched by the corresponding realization (that faculty sometimes miss) that not all members of an administration speak with one voice, even in authoritarian regimes.

The unfortunate consequence of this classificatory system was that it tended to become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Those who were considered opponents were treated in a different fashion to those who were considered supportive, and so their opposition to the President did indeed become increasingly intransigent over the years. The result of this was that it did seem to be the case that the faculty was left speaking with one voice, with those who may have supported other mediating courses less willing to speak up, while the administration also was left taking its lead from the very top.

This was very unfortunate in the grand scheme of things, both for Vera King Farris’s Presidency, which, as I mentioned, did witness many considerable achievements, and for the college, as a climate of distrust grew throughout these years.

Ken ended his own analysis with a very powerful paragraph, one that, it seems to me at least, was both very accurate, and, in one aspect at least, wrong. It reads:

It is distressing to read the President’s words in this document. It is even more troublesome to comprehend that she believes them. It is, finally, tragic that she does not understand that her strength lies in her ability to accept genuine differences from all parts of the college. Without that strength she cannot fight off our mutual enemy – ignorance – and without the eager acceptance of those differences she cannot long prevail.

One is left saying, with Ken, if only she had been able to accept those differences; what a college she might then have helped create! But, the real tragedy may be, contra Ken, that where a climate of distrust is created one may still be able to prevail for a significant amount of time. After all, 1987, when this document was created, was only four years after the beginning of her Presidency. She would be the longest serving President, thus far anyway, remaining in office till 2003.