Small Faculty, Small Journal

With my motto present in spirit if not in words, I began a journal that has at least two distinctions¯first, it depends on input from a very small faculty, and second, each issue focuses on a single topic. The name of the publication is Forethought, and as editor I select a potentially important issue and then cajole a number of the faculty to provide something on the subject that I can print. Three aspects of the work seem worth mentioning¯the political realities, the means of getting faculty participation, and some of the mechanics of creating a journal.

The first problem is distinctly political: one needs at least the tacit approval of the college administration to succeed, and the administration may not see the advantage of approving such a journal. Of course it is true that faculty have academic freedom and are protected by the First Amendment. But unless the editor wants to prepare each issue on a home computer, run off copies at Kinko’s, and distribute the journal through the post office, that person will need a little cooperation from the administration. This is not to say that there are no circumstances under which an underground publication wouldn’t be a good idea or perhaps a necessity, but I would have to get awfully worked up before I would try it. The cooperation of the administration is definitely an asset. The best way to get cooperation is to provide some indication that the goal of the journal is to bring to light the entire diversity of faculty thinking, and not to pursue some radical agenda (though it’s possible some might see more collegiality as radical). In this regard the reputation of the editor¯or maybe the lack of reputation¯is critical.

The administration at Rappahannock may still be uncertain whether I am sufficiently responsible, or whether I’m just looking for an opportunity to heave a brick through the window. I got the concept for the journal approved when the administration was in a bit of disarray, and without quite realizing it, I took advantage of that situation. I developed a proposal; the dean of instruction asked that I get the endorsement of the Faculty Senate. I did one issue to show the faculty what I had in mind, and going on from there was easy.

Since then, administrative support for the journal has been satisfactory¯for the most part neither encouraging nor discouraging, which is probably as it ought to be. When I ask for credit on my evaluation, the campus director nods and smiles. In Forethought I do not set out to step over any lines, though I freely admit that I am naturally inclined to stagger. I did receive some gentle counseling regarding an ironic summary I made of the VCCS procedures for selecting a new president. (The topic for the first issue was what RCC faculty wanted in the way of a new president.) The process seems to me rather grueling for the candidates, and it does not guarantee any significant faculty input. In the summary, I compared the selection process to a death march, and I was asked if I were cynical. Probably I hedged at the time, but I would say now that at least a component of cynicism is essential for the job, at least as I see it. We see a considerable number of ìin houseî publications which focus more than enough attention on the positive while generally neglecting the controversial. I suppose I understand the principle; one wishes to in-courage the troops, to be up-beat and forward looking, to avoid providing information and comfort to the enemy. Meanwhile, however, the undercurrents that are always present in a sizable organization rise or recede in obscure turmoil though they may carry the most essential academic questions. If a journal is to be meaningful, it is vital that the administration not give prior approval to its subject or its content. Retaining control over the life or death of the publication should be sufficient. I appreciate the tolerant attitude of the RCC administration toward Forethought, but I would also say there is a certain duty on the part of any administration to permit controversial academic issues to flow into the light.

At the same time it is the faculty, not the administration, who are the ones responsible for raising serious academic questions. Relative to the issues of the day, their duty is really different from that of administration. I do not think it is being too cynical to say that administration is primarily concerned with working together as a team¯one that can show a winning score. Administration sees the goal, and everyone’s duty seems obvious to them, but ¯ here is some faculty member who wishes to quibble ¯ Is this really in the best interest of the students? Maybe it is difficult to tell whether the faculty is presenting a serious educational concern or is simply trying to protect its own comfortable position. Whether the one or the other, it is between the faculty and the student that orders from the captain encounter reality. Faculty may be sharp or dull, conservative or liberal, experienced or inexperienced, loose cannons or toadies, but it is through their immediate actions that the official mission of the college is carried out. It is through their daily encounters with one student after another that the greatest concentration of educational wisdom is distilled. We have student opinion from below, and we have transcendent theory from above, but the faculty ¯ collectively ¯ know what is what. Our colleges have various prescribed ways of accessing faculty experience ¯ committees, senates, peer-group conferences ¯ and these things are excellent, especially when they carry some weight. Nevertheless at RCC and probably at many other colleges, there is a wide gulf between faculty experience and faculty collegiality, between personal understanding and common ground. A journal like Forethought has a place in filling that gulf.

That being said, I must admit that it is difficult to get material from the faculty. Rappahannock has approximately thirty full-time faculty divided between two campuses. With such a small number, faculty are all burdened with committees and other college business, and none are seeking literary exposure. Some of the wise and experienced faculty are among those unaccustomed to putting words on the page, and so an editor must reassure these timid writers that their work will be shown off to best advantage. Even then the editor may have to be content with one or two somewhat elliptical paragraphs. A few faculty are both experienced as faculty and also willing writers, and one naturally makes the most of their abilities. But obviously a few writers are not an adequate cross section of the college. Balance in a journal is important, if for no other reason than it is the surest justification for a continued existence. Equally important, the best writers will not willingly work up an opinion on every subject that the editor dreams up.

There are several other ways one might get material. First of all, an editor can write his or her own copy. Admittedly it sullies my journalistic integrity when I can’t be sure if I’m the editor or the editee, but I can still live with myself. The interview, of course, is time honored, and in one issue I did an interview variation, taping, then transcribing, faculty responses to questions on the faculty role in college governance. I selected among the best answers and wove the results into a kind of round table discussion, providing necessary transitions myself. Of course I explained to the faculty in advance what I was planning, and none complained that I had distorted their meaning by changing the context. Another issue employed strictly adjunct faculty input. Because adjuncts are so much more vulnerable than regular faculty, I offered to print adjunct work anonymously if the writer wished, though no one did. With only three responses, all favorable to the college, I pulled some vociferous adjunct complaints off an AAUP site on the Internet and used that.

The issues of the journal so far have covered what RCC needed in its next president, the purpose and operation of the Faculty Senate, grade inflation, and the adjunct faculty perspective. The issue on grade inflation included an article called "A Lenten Confession" in which a faculty member confessed guilt and shame for his part in grade inflation and one called "What the Numbers Say" which proved that our students drop from a B average to a C average when they transfer to four-year colleges. The issue included my essay "Everyone Take Cover!" which exposed the sensitive issue of grade distributions on each campus and revealed that they are not as different as had been thought. The subject of an essay called "The Grade Is Not the Point" is self-explanatory, and one called "On Grade Inflation" lamented the need to simplify the contents of a foreign language course to maintain any enrollment at all. At the end was a long essay called "Four Lessons and Forty Years" in which a faculty veteran demonstrated the motivational power of high grades.

For a future issue I hope to distribute some hypothetical/anonymous student profiles/situations and publish a variety of faculty responses. Maybe as a result of this article people will offer me more ideas. While on rare occasions one might be justified in publishing anonymous work, it is important for potential contributors to understand that the journal is intended as a constructive tool, and that one job of the editor is to judge between what is constructive and what is not.

The third task involves the mechanics of producing a journal. Creating an attractive issue on the word processor is an entertaining challenge that takes two or three weeks of spare time. The expense is the total for paper, duplication, and staples. For the first issue, I thought of a name. I tried to keep the layout of the front page simple and dignified, and to make sure the interior pages were broken up with columns, headlines, quotations and even some bits of artwork. The first completed journal became a template for the second, and material on disc that arrived for the second could simply be copied and pasted into place. The worst trouble I had was when I printed out material from the Internet, scanned it into Word Perfect, then copied and pasted it into my document. Talk about mysterious! I never did locate all the hidden codes and get it to look just right. Recently I have been experimenting with Microsoft Publisher, which is fun to use and may be the way I’ll go for the next issue. Perhaps some more ambitious editor will adapt the idea to the Internet.

In designing a document for communication among the faculty, one shouldn’t imagine that the contents are everything and that the appearance is merely incidental. The appearance of the journal should match the aspirations of the editor for the faculty. It should identify who the faculty is, or at least who it might become, whether the faculty yet sees itself that way or not. It should say that we are calm, we are thoughtful, we are exacting; it should say that we are valuable, that we are responsible, that we have a sense of perspective; it should say that we are strong, tasteful, professional¯all of this, before the first word.

Of course the word journal is a misnomer in most respects, suggesting as it does a daily publication. The first year, I produced three issues of Forethought, and in the second I produced only one. After getting my thoughts together for this article, I’m beginning to feel somewhat rejuvenated. Next year I hope to turn out three constructive issues.

Do I have any objective evidence that Forethought has been in any way constructive at RCC? I wish that I could say that I did, but I’m afraid I don’t; it is true that faculty collegiality is currently at a high point, but a lot has been going on. Perhaps Forethought deserves some of the credit, perhaps not. On the other hand, some enterprises appear worthwhile only in retrospect. So maybe time will tell. Until then, practitioners will have to proceed on simple faith ¯ that the value of faculty dialogue is beyond measure.