[A] midday ceremony [on a recent Monday in honor of its victorious basketball team] violated an internal Duke agreement established in 2006 that no such celebrations would be held during precious class time.
The 2006 agreement was spearheaded by Richard Hain, a math professor at Duke since 1991, who waged a four-year campaign to limit those activities to evening hours. Hain sent me an e-mail message about the breach and also formally complained to university officials.
“This is the first time since that agreement was made that Duke’s men’s BB team has been to the Final Four,” Hain wrote. “This year, the agreement was completely ignored.”
In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Provost Peter Lange, who negotiated the original agreement with Hain, said: “There was a planning meeting, and someone at the meeting was assigned to check in with me about whether there was an agreement. That person never got in touch with me.”
Hain asked, “How can somebody schedule a major event that wipes out basically all undergraduate classes the whole afternoon, without talking to the provost?”
Lange added, “That mistake obviously is never going to be made again because, obviously, now everybody’s aware of the mistake.”
The team, flying back from Indianapolis, arrived an hour late, further disrupting students’ schedules…
April 9th, 2010 at 7:00AM
“Hain asked, “How can somebody schedule a major event that wipes out basically all undergraduate classes the whole afternoon, without talking to the provost?”
OK, but at least at Duke someone could seriously ask that question. No one would be surprised here, least of all the provost.
April 9th, 2010 at 7:58AM
Off-topic, but thought you’d enjoy this post on parallels between the ill effects of bureaucracy in the Central Intelligence Agency and the ill effects of bureaucracy in universities (especially Dartmouth)