LOS ANGELES (RPT) - Universities around the country have begun cancelling unnecessary committee meetings and faculty meetings in an effort to reduce transmission of COVID19, causing alarm among professors who rely on these meetings for a sense of normalcy. “Unnecessary meetings are the bread and butter of my academic existence,” one professor told RPT, “without them I feel completely unmoored.”
Several professors have also expressed concern that the canceling of unnecessary meetings is an indicator that there might actually be a problem happening in the world that they should pay attention to. “I’ve been so busy writing unnecessarily critical reviews of papers for mid-tier journals and berating my graduate students for mistakes that were really my fault that I didn’t even notice there was something going on in the real world until these unnecessary meetings started getting cancelled,” one faculty member commented. Other professors are concerned that not having these meetings will seriously impact communication among the faculty. “I rely on unnecessary meetings for doing my email. So do all my colleagues,” one professor told RPT, “I know this for a fact because they email me back while we’re both sitting there.”
University administrators are defending their decision, despite mixed feelings. One Department Chair told RPT, “I know a lot of professors are upset that we’re canceling meetings that would otherwise be a complete waste of everyone’s time. I myself am particularly disappointed that I can no longer call meetings for the sole purpose of listening to myself talk. And now that I can’t force faculty to attend meaningless meetings, I don’t know how I’m going to nail down everyone’s schedules for the next unnecessary meeting.” The Chair added, “I am also concerned about the economic fallout for the subpar, low-budget caterers we use.”
