A Tale of Two Universities: A Case of Two Contrasting Everyday Forms of University Politics

In the Philippines, there is tendency for a shorter-term modality for appointing University administrators but with unlimited reappointment to also co-exist with the corporate modality of choosing administrators, thereby further entrenching a very top-down and centralized mode of university governance. On the other hand, a longer but fixed-term modality with limited reappointment has been also associated with universities that have more constituency-driven types of selecting their administrators, thereby further enabling a more participatory and decentralized mode of governance. The first ensures predictability and control by limiting spaces for constituency representation and articulations while the latter privileges voices or representation but also open the floodgates to more open contestations. This is not to say that there are no contestations in the first mode, but such are not expressed more openly, and usually take the form of faceless subversions and behind the back maneuvers in which people anonymously attack colleagues to whom they are actually otherwise cordial in face to face encounters. While open conflicts and contentious narratives may predominate a university with more participatory modes of governance, and thereby give the impression of an overt and visibly destructive politics, everyday forms of resistance—from preponderance of gossips and rumors, a high prevalence of anonymous poison letters, and latent undermining of people—tend to be more pervasive in a university that has more centralized forms of control. This effectively transforms the university into one that possesses a silent yet just differently but may be equally disenabling form of everyday politics. Universities that tend to have more manifest conflict have also provided more spaces for contesting authority and asserting organized and individual resistance. While politics here is less predictable, its architecture of power enable hierarchies to be more responsive since they are easily engaged and confronted by an academic politics that is more openly expressed. On the other hand, those who tend to be more controlled also tend to have more latent conflict, have less spaces for contestations, are more regimented and predictable, even as its everyday forms of academic politics are more insidious and invisible, effectively hiding in the niceness of their façade and the relative regularity of their rituals.

Concrete examples abound to show this. In one university that is noted for its liberal and participatory academic culture, faculty voices are very much openly expressed not only in the selection of administrators, but also in taking them to task and holding them up accountable for their actions. In this culture, open confrontation and direct engagement of concerned parties, whether among colleagues or with superiors, are more frequent, and aggrieved parties are less constrained to personally confront their antagonists and are willing to author or sign their names in a formal complaint or petition. Here, collegial decision making bodies exist at the university and college levels composed of faculty members that enable direct faculty representation not only on academic matters such as curriculum and student graduation, but also in organizational matters. This relatively open space for contestations is enabled by an academic culture that allows the proliferation not only of power centers, but also of individual expression of resistance against such power. This is ensured by a less rigid management regime in which while rules of conduct exist, these are not in fact totally and absolutely enforced, and if so, there is plenty of room for negotiability. Faculty members are allowed greater latitude not only in their academic endeavors, but more importantly in their own personal lives and how they express their own lifestyle preferences. There is less micromanagement of faculty behavior, in terms of strict monitoring of attendance or having dress code requirements. However, the relatively open space for contestations often lead to cases of severe factionalism manifested at all levels, from departments and units, up to the whole university. Some faculty meetings become virtual war zones, with faculty enmity openly expressed. This situation tends to undermine not only the operations of some units, but also even the careers of individual faculty members, some of whom are forced to leave the university for places that do not only offer better working conditions and salary packages, but also less political intramurals.

On the other side is the case of a leading private university in which the academic culture is more corporate, and where faculty representation is more tiered and less open, where the venues by which constituency interests are expressed are enabled only by a cascading hierarchy of Deans and Chairs representing their constituencies in specific bodies at the university and college Levels, This, however, does not fully insure authentic interest representation of the constituents by their Chairs or Deans, considering that the latter are appointed on a one-year term basis, thereby making them vulnerable and prevents them from truly going against top down imperatives. Such role is shifted to the faculty club which operates like a labor union, but takes more an identity of a company union that is still under the control and direction of management. The only direct participation of all faculty members exists at the department level during departmental Meetings. In this university, the constrained space for direct faculty participation is also matched by a relatively regimented academic culture, in which faculty members are monitored not only for their compliance of dress code policies, but also on their classroom attendance.

There is also a controlled atmosphere of contestations, in which dissenting voices tend to be less publicly expressed, thereby giving the impression of a less contentious academic culture. However, this is replaced by a more invisible domain of expressing resistance, seen in what I earlier referred to as the deployment of weapons of the weak, such as gossip and rumor, anonymous attacks, and the presence of informal corridors of power in which influence is exerted by subordinates to bypass their immediate superiors. In this academic culture, faculty members are more predisposed not to directly engage their colleagues with whom they have grievances, but instead go directly to their immediate supervisors, or if the conflict is with their immediate supervisors, they circumvent the line of command and directly go to higher administrative levels, even as they are also not willing to put their names and faces to a formal complaint. There have been many instances in which faculty members, Chairs or Deans are summoned by their immediate supervisors on the strengths of a complaint of an unnamed colleague or subordinate. This modality has the benefit of insulating the faculty ranks from vicious confrontations, but at the same time it also tends to institutionalize a system in which people are bold to talk on others without owning up to the responsibility of standing up for their grievances and accusations. It should be pointed out, however, that there are also faculty members who are much bolder and openly contest and challenge colleagues and superiors. However, one interesting pattern is that the likelihood of this behavior is significantly higher for those faculty members who have experienced teaching in and/or are graduates of the other university cited above.

The architecture of power in a university may also be reinforced by the actual physical spaces within which the campus is designed, particularly its classrooms and faculty offices. There are universities in which the faculty members have the luxury of having their own spaces. On the other hand, there are also those in which limited space only allows faculty cubicles in an otherwise common work space. This spatial configuration may have some implications on everyday politics, as it is easy to associate units with individual offices to a culture that may be prone to a less communitarian atmosphere, in which faculty members have their own private spaces where they can isolate themselves apart from others. In these private spaces, they are relatively insulated from peer gaze, and where, as one faculty member from a university with this type of space allocation pointed out, individual faculty members can easily plot against their colleagues, and where opposing camps can meet secretly to plan how to wage open war with each other.

A more communal working space, on the other hand, may foster a stronger sense of community and civility. Forced to share a workspace with colleagues, faculty members learn to adapt and have a more tolerant attitude towards others, even as the absence of “walls” enable a more shared sense of collective identity. However, common workspaces may also be more restrictive, and may in fact be more disenabling for the exercise of individual freedom, as it is easier to deploy control and regulation and to monitor faculty behavior. This is also seen when classrooms are designed to have glass windows on doors, where it is easier for administrators to monitor the attendance of faculty members. This type of physical architecture where faculty members’ share a common workspace may also foster a false sense of community, in which people are engaged only in superficial forms of camaraderie to maintain an air of civility, but such may not necessarily be sincere and deeply embedded.

In the final analysis, it is a choice between two different architectures of power, one that celebrates the liberating freedom of individuals to engage in an open discourse, or one that offers the security of controlled predictability of a community; a politically contentious and divided place but where you know who your enemies are, or a place with a strong sense of community but where your enemies could easily wear a smile as they plot against you. It is also a choice between a culture wherein contestations are more open but may lead to disenabling conflict that can visibly destabilize the institution, or one in which conflict is pushed to hide below what appears to be a calm institutional façade but may in fact work, like termites, to weaken its foundations. In the end, these are just two different manifestations of everyday university politics.