Faculty Meeting? Nah.

The metaphors are endless: the headless horseman, the rudderless ship, the car without a driver. Whatever your fancy, each and every one applies to this faculty during this "interim" year. While Judith Ryan, the Weary professor of Germanic languages and comparative literature, proclaimed on this page last June, "As a faculty, we are committed to finding a new way. We continue to move forward energetically," the lackluster progress made over the last semester has proven otherwise.

Unfortunately, "energetically" has meant an extended vacation for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which canceled—or as the Secretary’s office reports, "omitted"—its January meeting due to "insufficient business." To be fair, the Task Force on General Education’s final report was not scheduled to be prepared for this January meeting, and the Faculty has planned to prioritize a new general education in most of its nine meetings, but there should have been plenty to discuss otherwise.

Yet in this year of supposed commitment, of faculty leadership following the defenestration of former University President Lawrence H. Summers, the "omission" of one of the Faculty’s small number of meetings is disheartening. Last year, the Faculty was able to muster the courage and patience to meet 14 times, including a January meeting. But when meetings were scheduled for this year, the Faculty decided to revert—even with the daunting task of finalizing the curricular review before it—to its normal, nine-meeting schedule.

Of course, people should not meet without reason. But for the Faculty to announce that there is "insufficient business" after years of inaction on overdue reforms suggests a disturbing laziness in identifying "business" that needs to be tended to. The list of topics that the Faculty could have discussed in yesterday’s scheduled 90 minute meeting is plenty long: mandatory course evaluations of professors, calendar reform, pedagogy, or even as the final report of general education is written, a discussion on the implementation of general education, a topic which has been overlooked amid squabbling over particular requirements.

Alas, it is not the lack of a meeting itself that is ultimately disturbing. It is, more appropriately, the underwhelming way in which this Faculty has assumed responsibility amid a crisis of leadership of its own creation. A year which promised renewal and change has given us little, and we hope the future University President and FAS dean take note: While this faculty may buck off your leadership, without it, there’s just "insufficient business."