A Confederacy of Dunces

Dr. Barry, who in addition to being closer than a brother, had my unending admiration. He stays at a job of absurdly bad politics, and lower salary than he'd make outside of academics, all to save children's lives, and to teach future pediatricians how to save children's lives. By far the worst part of his job is the never ending meetings. They're meetings with academic docs and administrators, whose egos are monumental. There's an old saying: the fights among university faculty are so vicious because the stakes are so small. Barry sees that daily. I deplore meetings as well, especially formalized kinds. Still, I sit on one: UM's Arts and Sciences Visiting Committee. Four or five deans ago, I was asked to be on it since I was such a devoted alumnus, and because I gave a lot of money. I agreed. The group was actually fun. There were true community leaders, including the retired owner of a modeling agency whose commercials dominated my tv watching in NY when I was a kid. The fellow, who I'll call Richard, since that's his name, took his bundle from the sale of the business and moved to Miami. He was raised strictly Catholic, and had a true revelation: he was an atheist, and found the Catholic church to be the most corrupt, full of crap institution of all time. And, he told me, this was BEFORE all of the scandals with the pedophile priests. So Richard started a humanistic foundation, and he gives big money to bring famous atheists like Richard Dawkins to UM. So he's a cool guy to hang with at our bi ennial meetings... After years of simply attending, and listening to the changing parade of academic bureaucrats tell us how great things were at the College, I decided to really do something. I wrote a proposal to the new Dean, a Greek American physisict, about an idea to start a College wide internship program. Modesty aside, I know a TON of people in Miami, across a broad range of professions, and I figured I could, for example, take the young pre med kid and let him intern for a doctor, to see whether he really was cut out for medicine. Since I know lawyers, artists, musicians, construction managers -- you name it -- I thought this was the sort of program that would really benefit students AND the College. I know I had ZERO idea what being a doctor entailed when I was at UM as a pre med, and only after I interned with my old friend Bob Davidoff, the neurologist, did I know medicine was NOT for me... So I wrote this up, sent it to the Dean, and...nothing. A few months later, I wrote again, and he referred me to one of his flunkies. She was nice enough, and we met in her office in the Ashed Building, but she kept thinking that since I was a lawyer, my idea was only for law students. No, I told her, most law students find their own internships... Fine. We'd meet again. She blew me off for a few months, I wrote her, and still she ignored me. I wrote her boss -- he apoligized and had her contact me, but by this time I was turned off. I did some behind the scenes checking, and learned that the current Dean was the most despised of any in the last 30 years. Surprise. I was going to resign my appointment, but figured I'd just wait until the next Dean came in. Administrators at colleges are like guests at the Grand Hotel: people come, people go -- nothing much ever really happens. Tomorrow is the Fall meeting. I was going to go, but Fate stepped in. D2 decided to come home for the weekend! Alas -- I have to write and tell them that the wheels of academic bureuacracy have to turn without me. So both Ds will be home for the first time since August. Now that's a committee I truly cherish.