When sitting in an executive committee meeting (with, among others, the chancellor, the provost, a UT trustee, and the dean of the business school) and taking minutes, having a guest speaker do the following over the course of 15 minutes is, well, breathtaking:
1) told how he has always thought the faculty senate was an utter waste of time.
2) described how on two separate occasions the information he was to present was brought before a senate committee and never made it to the floor of the senate itself, which disgusted him so much that he walked straight out of the senate meeting.
3) showed us the figures, which essentially prove that pay raises have not kept up with the Consumer Price Index (duh. But this was his big revelation).
4) insulted persons who choose music or english as majors/careers because they don't make as much money.
5) accused the chancellor (to his face) of attempting to stifle dissent.
6) told us we didn't have any business even pretending to work on important stuff if we couldn't immediately provide the $ cost to the university for a 1% pay raise across the board.
7) scrawled vulgarities on a flipchart to punctuate his points
8) told us that he expects to be punished for saying what he said
9) when asked how he would propose to fix the problem--i.e., where the money should come from--continued to point back to the chart and said, "give me my money."
10) baited/mocked the member of the committee who showed outward disgust at what he was doing.
...and this is just what I remember. I try to imagine that most people are trying to do the right thing most of the time, but this--wow. And the person presiding over the meeting just let it go on and apparently didn't see any problem with what had transpired. Not sure what to make of that either.
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