CHAPARRAL

Roots of Unity
by Mike Allen, Guild President

On Dissent

In this, my last column, I turn to a topic that I have learned much about during my time as Guild president.  After a lifetime in which expressing dissent was second nature to me, I have in these three years been on the receiving end of dissent more than ever before.  I say this because, while people constantly disagree with one another on any number of questions, it seems to me that one must disagree with something that has some measure of authority before it can be called dissent.

     Often, this "authority" consists of nothing more than the fact that a majority of some group sees things one way, while the dissenter sees them another.  So I have certainly had enough authority in that sense to be dissented against before, but never have I had as much authority and responsibility as I have had as Guild president.  And increasing my experience of dissent even higher, one of the major responsibilities of this job has been to be an official conduit for critical views, especially to those whose job it is to run this college.

     We are all encouraged (and I think this is one of the great things about the U.S. of A.) to be ourselves and stick by our guns and not give in to peer pressure.  Of course some, maybe even most, only give lip service to these ideals and are just as conformist as people in countries where individuals hate to be out of sync with the crowd.  But while I have always shared this basic orientation that dissent is important and should not be squelched, it has sometimes been painful as Guild president to walk the talk, as they say.

     For example, there is the constant tension over how much authority has been delegated by the membership of our local to its leadership.  If every decision related to the Guild were to be made at an open membership meeting, we would have to several of these per week, and it probably still wouldn't be enough.  For example, situations constantly arise in meetings where I am the only Guild representative and there is a desire to know what the Guild's perspective on some issue would be.  Having been in Guild leadership for many years, and attended membership meetings for nearly two decades, I usually feel comfortable stating what I think that perspective would be.  In the cases where I'm not comfortable doing so, I will often seek guidance from the Executive Committee or the broader membership, but in some cases there isn't time for that.

     This leaves me open to criticism from those who feel I gave the wrong perspective and demand to know why they weren't consulted (people love to delegate responsibility, not authority).  Similarly, our negotiating team will sometimes get called on the carpet for doing something significant they hadn't previously cleared with the membership or Executive committee.  Unfortunately, the very act of delegating authority to take action creates distance between what is called the "principal" and the "agent" in the economics literature.  And distance is the perfect breeding ground for suspicion, whether it is warranted or not.  Agents can try to minimize the distance from the principal through frequent updates on their actions, but it is never enough for those principals who are the most demanding.

     I'm not attacking anyone here.  As I wrote earlier, as Guild president I am just as often the demanding principal (when dealing with the college's administration, say) as I am the imperfect agent.  Being the demanding principal leads some college leaders to brand the Guild as an organization which dissents too often.  I don't think we do—we certainly could choose to take on more battles than we have—but some days I can sympathize with these leaders.  A steady diet of dissent can come to sound like whining, even when some of the dissenting viewpoints have merit.

     One way to manage campus dissent is through our governance system.  It is an official channel for those seeking to change the way things are done at the college, and its recommendations can be ignored only with justifications that are stated in public.  When its recommendations are not followed, there is bound to be dissent, but even when they are followed there will sometimes be dissenters who feel that the committee(s) involved got it wrong.  Perhaps an overwhelming frequency of dissent leads some campus leaders to say that dissenters should "forever hold their peace" if the governance system has considered their view and rejected it.  But, telling dissenters to shut up like this is inappropriate, especially when the chair of the governance committee doing so feels that "governance has been done" if an administration initiative has been so much as mentioned in passing, and no voting member of the committee strenuously interjects to demand a discussion and vote.

     This "freedom of discussion, unity of action" democratic centralism is a Leninist principle that we should all shun.  By demanding that everyone "toe the party line" once it is established, we close off the possibility of renewal and change of position.  The alternative is no doubt messier, and more painful to endure if you are the one trying to keep things flowing smoothly, but it's just one price you pay for being a leader of an organization with decentralized power.

     An even worse way of dealing with dissent is when leadership engages in ad hominem attack on the character of dissenters.  We must always remember that the dissenter is sometimes right and the majority wrong, and that it often takes guts to speak up in the face of powerful opposition.  The least we can do to respect dissenters is to focus on their public arguments, even if we privately suspect they are acting out of impure motives.  Any leader who does less than that is throwing away potentially useful input, and decreasing the likelihood that future input will be received from the individuals in question.

     I hope we will all continue to expect our leaders not to stifle dissent, but somehow find a way to balance that with sympathy for what they experience in their jobs from day to day.

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