Over the past few months, I’ve been writing about higher-education administration as if it were some sort of Manichean duality: authoritarians versus libertarians, control freaks versus true leaders, power-mongers versus those who exercise authority properly.
The reality, of course, is that administrators don’t always fall at one end of the “good-bad” spectrum or the other. There is a broad middle area, and I’ve known plenty of “leaders” during my 27-year career who have taken up permanent residence there.
Please note that when I say “middle area,” I don’t mean that in a positive sense. I’m not saying that these people are moderates or that they’ve somehow arrived at the perfect balance between authoritarianism and libertarianism. Rather, I’m suggesting that they’re neither hot nor cold but tepid. I refer to them as “Lumps,” because they’re mostly just there.
Simply put, The Lump doesn’t really do much of anything, whether out of sheer laziness or apathy or a desire not to upset the applecart or just an overdeveloped sense of self-preservation. The Lump is the administrator who never answers your e-mails. The one you rarely see except at meetings. The one who attends all the meetings but doesn’t say much. The one who, when asked a direct question, will hem and haw, dissemble and deflect.
Some Lumps are simply spineless, deathly afraid of making a decision. They’ve long since determined that the best policy is just to lay low and pass the buck. Some are jaded and cynical. They’ve been there and done that, and nothing much impresses them anymore. They don’t see any need to act decisively, or maybe they just don’t see the point: It wouldn’t do any good, anyway. Some, nearing retirement, are motivated purely by reluctance to lose their high salaries and accompanying pensions.
But some Lumps are much more calculating. Lacking genuine ability and creativity, they’ve determined that their surest and safest route to the top is simply to go along to get along--to spout the party line, support whatever the higher-ups are doing, and otherwise not do much of anything lest they risk doing the wrong thing.
In any form, Lumps are incredibly harmful to an organization. They’re responsible for most of the negative attributes that people (including students) rightly associate with bureaucracy: interminable waiting, “red tape,” buck passing, narrow and rigid interpretation of policy, stubborn intransigence.
They’re also a drain on group morale. Although perhaps not as actively vindictive as authoritarian power-mongers,most Lumps will throw their colleagues under the bus in a heartbeat in order to preserve or advance their own careers. It’s not that they don’t like you. They just don’t care about you.
Moreover, while Lumps can’t necessarily be expected to do the wrong thing, they certainly can’t be trusted to do the right thing, because in the end they’re most likely to do nothing at all. St. John the Beloved described this type of person perfectly when he wrote in the Book of Revelation, “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot; I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth.”
Would that those of us who have to deal with Lumps could do the same.
[Creative Commons-licensed photo by Flickr user mike@bensalem.]
