Read Online Dear Committee Members: A Novel by Julie Schumacher - Free Book Online
Authors: Julie Schumacher
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style—on a city bus. I told her I admired her bravado and gave her the F.
If Sellebritta Online is in need of an editor/copywriter who refuses to allow the demands of honesty or originality to delay her output, it will have found one in the unflappable Ms. Tara Tappani.
Guilelessly yours, Jay Fitger
Professor-at-Law Creative Writing/English, Payne University
January 14, 2010
Associate Vice Provost Samuel Millhouse Office of the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Lefferts Hall
Dear Associate VP Millhouse,
I write this letter in support of my colleague Karolyi Pazmentalyi in the Department of Slavic Languages, which your office has seen fit to eliminate in its most recent purge. (I am not the only member of the faculty to note that several equally obscure departments, perhaps relieved to have been spared the knife for now, have been gathered together in small ethnic clumps, presumably in preparation for future pogroms.) Pazmentalyi unfortunately chose this difficult moment in the life of the university to publish the brilliant monograph on which he has been laboring, alone, for the better part of a decade, holed up in a corner of the library, his craggy profile visible in the fluorescent glare of the overheads when everyone else was uncorking a beverage at home. At any other time in the university’s history this pathbreaking and exhaustive work of scholarship would immediately elevate its author from the doldrums of associate professordom to the rank of full professor. But now that Slavic Languages is to be summarily flushed down the drainpipe of unprofitable programs and departments (whatdo we in the Midwest care about Russians, Poles, Serbs, Croatians, Bulgarians, and the denizens of other countries we can’t find on a globe or pronounce?), Pazmentalyi is suspended in limbo. He can’t be promoted within a department that’s being cut; therefore (the logic appears to be), why promote him at all? Why feature photos of bearded brontosauri on the university brag sheets when there are younger, more handsome whiz-bang faculty (perhaps … yes! in the Economics Department!) who will attract more financial interest, instead?
Pazmentalyi, it should be noted, has been reluctant to press or appeal his case. He is the sort of old-fashioned, self-effacing scholar accustomed to hours of painstaking archival research—and, lacking a background as a cage fighter, he will probably take your office’s rejection seriously and abide by your suggestion that, forgoing a well-deserved promotion and a minuscule raise, he should lumber off to the newly incorporated “Languages Unit” and soak his head.
But there are other faculty here on campus who are not disposed to see notable scholarship ignored; and let it be known that, in the darkened, blood-strewn caverns of our offices, we are hewing our textbooks and keyboards into spears.
To wit: What would you ask of Pazmentalyi? The reason for denial of his promotion was “narrow scope of research/limited field.” Good lord: he’s a scholar of Slavic languages—fluentin nearly a dozen—do you want him to coach the volleyball team? * Pazmentalyi is not versatile or charming. He doesn’t tell jokes during class. And he won’t fight your refusal of his promotion because—brace yourself—he isn’t suited for any other job, and he knows it. Very few people read his work; fewer comprehend it. Your office’s stated desire for greater “scope” and “accessibility” (would you have Stephen Hawking go back to the nine times table?) will end up turning scholars like Pazmentalyi into TV hosts, forced to incorporate online dating options into seminars previously dedicated to European linguistics.
Faculty acknowledge your need to save money: like most universities, Payne is rapidly pricing itself into oblivion, not by giving modest raises to nationally respected scholars, but by starving some departments while building heated yoga studios and indoor climbing walls in others. To
If Sellebritta Online is in need of an editor/copywriter who refuses to allow the demands of honesty or originality to delay her output, it will have found one in the unflappable Ms. Tara Tappani.
Guilelessly yours, Jay Fitger
Professor-at-Law Creative Writing/English, Payne University
January 14, 2010
Associate Vice Provost Samuel Millhouse Office of the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Lefferts Hall
Dear Associate VP Millhouse,
I write this letter in support of my colleague Karolyi Pazmentalyi in the Department of Slavic Languages, which your office has seen fit to eliminate in its most recent purge. (I am not the only member of the faculty to note that several equally obscure departments, perhaps relieved to have been spared the knife for now, have been gathered together in small ethnic clumps, presumably in preparation for future pogroms.) Pazmentalyi unfortunately chose this difficult moment in the life of the university to publish the brilliant monograph on which he has been laboring, alone, for the better part of a decade, holed up in a corner of the library, his craggy profile visible in the fluorescent glare of the overheads when everyone else was uncorking a beverage at home. At any other time in the university’s history this pathbreaking and exhaustive work of scholarship would immediately elevate its author from the doldrums of associate professordom to the rank of full professor. But now that Slavic Languages is to be summarily flushed down the drainpipe of unprofitable programs and departments (whatdo we in the Midwest care about Russians, Poles, Serbs, Croatians, Bulgarians, and the denizens of other countries we can’t find on a globe or pronounce?), Pazmentalyi is suspended in limbo. He can’t be promoted within a department that’s being cut; therefore (the logic appears to be), why promote him at all? Why feature photos of bearded brontosauri on the university brag sheets when there are younger, more handsome whiz-bang faculty (perhaps … yes! in the Economics Department!) who will attract more financial interest, instead?
Pazmentalyi, it should be noted, has been reluctant to press or appeal his case. He is the sort of old-fashioned, self-effacing scholar accustomed to hours of painstaking archival research—and, lacking a background as a cage fighter, he will probably take your office’s rejection seriously and abide by your suggestion that, forgoing a well-deserved promotion and a minuscule raise, he should lumber off to the newly incorporated “Languages Unit” and soak his head.
But there are other faculty here on campus who are not disposed to see notable scholarship ignored; and let it be known that, in the darkened, blood-strewn caverns of our offices, we are hewing our textbooks and keyboards into spears.
To wit: What would you ask of Pazmentalyi? The reason for denial of his promotion was “narrow scope of research/limited field.” Good lord: he’s a scholar of Slavic languages—fluentin nearly a dozen—do you want him to coach the volleyball team? * Pazmentalyi is not versatile or charming. He doesn’t tell jokes during class. And he won’t fight your refusal of his promotion because—brace yourself—he isn’t suited for any other job, and he knows it. Very few people read his work; fewer comprehend it. Your office’s stated desire for greater “scope” and “accessibility” (would you have Stephen Hawking go back to the nine times table?) will end up turning scholars like Pazmentalyi into TV hosts, forced to incorporate online dating options into seminars previously dedicated to European linguistics.
Faculty acknowledge your need to save money: like most universities, Payne is rapidly pricing itself into oblivion, not by giving modest raises to nationally respected scholars, but by starving some departments while building heated yoga studios and indoor climbing walls in others. To
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