The Fiction of Process

I started last time with poems that called attention to what was already breaking, the language, habits, and quiet trade-offs that set us up for later damage. This new section needed to move in the direction of what ultimately comes, but there were so many ways to describe the journey.

For now, I decided to forego poems that capture the chaos or impulsiveness.  Instead, I chose poems that focus on the opposite:  the meetings, emails, committees, and town halls, where process is invoked. This is not the existing process, but a new one, promised to correct all the problems and right all the wrongs that came before. It arrives with outcomes already decided and responsibility softened or delayed.  

These poems are about how process becomes a fiction - how fairness is renamed efficiency, how silence is framed as consensus, how harm is carried out politely and then explained away as necessary, inevitable, and firmly beyond anyone’s control. Nothing here is accidental. Nothing happens all at once.

This section is not about a single dramatic decision. It is about how decisions are managed, justified, and laundered through procedure until those in charge are both officially unaccountable and somehow absolved. Here is where the phrase “we followed the process” becomes the final defense.

A Die Slowly Cast

President hired as the white knight

Under cover of dark night,

She was the weight brought in to rush the wait

For redemption  and recovery.

But she lacks delivery

As short as institutional memory

She lays off at every opportunity

Opening every cut with “this is hard.”

The provost too weak

Even in that first week.

She came for resurrection

For connection – not reflection

On the band that left her banned

Or the truth she couldn’t stand:

Leadership takes honesty, takes integrity

Especially when faculty aren’t fans.

The board was too bored

When here to hear.

They came here for vanity,

Not to listen to the reality.

Of student experience

Nowhere near the ease remembered,

Of golden days their memories rendered.

So they took the easy road,

And quietly surrendered.

So to lessen their costs,

The lessons were lost.

Giving each their comfort and cover,

Passing the weight to any other,

To the school that couldn’t survive them.

 No failure sudden, no closure fast

Just cold neglect –

A die slowly cast.

Don’t Do Us Any Favors

Thanks for the email explaining how

Our Process doesn’t matter now.

Your process is the better one

As it ensures that everyone

Is equally demeaned.

It’s far more convenient

To sacrifice fair for serene.

Thanks for the town hall that never

Explained that we would sever

The folks who were ordained

To make sure Process was maintained

And spread the workload evenly.

Fast and blind have appeal

Though “savings” were meant to mislead.

Thanks for the one who preaches strategy

As an exercise staged as tragedy.

With secrets and outcomes known

To the committee, all alone

So no other voice could enter.

Call silence compliance.

No trust. And no defiance.

Thanks for the leaders who did not

Value or learn the lessons taught

Of Leadership simple and plain.

Authentic, people-centric,

Collaborative in the main.

Professional standards – not heresy.

Shared governance was deemed unnecessary.

We Didn’t Fire Anyone

When staff were laid off at Meredith

We did it without a plan

No thought to shift the workload

No thanks for all they’d done.

Some had served for decades

Some had served for years

We kicked them out, sent them home

With no regard for the tears.

We frog-marched to the Chapel

Turned them out without a doubt.

And left them filled with shrapnel

From the way it all played out.

When deans got fired at the College

We brought them in one day

We said, “you’re not being fired,

We just took your jobs away.”

We swore they’d done no wrong at all,

Then whispered “personnel issues.”

A hundred years of service gone.

Whatever.  Grab some tissues.

We kicked them out of offices

We said we needed space (A lie.)

We had no plan, no ideas

But that’s fine. Get out. Goodbye.

And now we face this backlash

From doing what “had to be done.”

The campus claims it has whiplash.

We act as though we’d won.

It’s so unfair to be left out

By those who persevere.

We long to be beloved, you know.

Yet somehow summon fear.

We keep saying we’re transparent -

Consistent, open, clear.

And, yet woman after woman

Quietly disappears.

For those who took the shrapnel.