I always looked forward, as a graduate student, to attending department meetings as a member of the faculty. I really did. It was something graduate students were not allowed to see, unless you served as special “student representative” as I did one semester. It was such a status differential, I looked forward to the time when I could meet other colleagues face to face, and make decisions about our department, how it is run, what courses we offer, how our students are doing.
At Purdue there would be 20 or so faculty at every meeting, and they were all sociologists or anthropologists. Here, I am one of 2 sociologists, there is no anthropology dept., and we are a group of 8 who represent 4 different disciplines, sociology, psychology, history and political science.
I just came from our last meeting. Everyone is very cordial, at least in the meetings. I am new faculty, and I do not have tenure. I am the only member of our dept. without tenure. (I am the “baby” faculty member.) I am always aware of being the rookie, and also the outsider, coming down from northern climes. Some of the faculty are actually from outside the south, but most are from the south, if not South Carolina. What I find is that I am always aware of being the newbie and an outsider because they always speak of HISTORY that I know nothing about. It sometimes gets irritating.
Everyone speaks without stating plainly what exactly they are refering to.
Today I was asking them about their plagiarism practices. They all gave me various things they do, but it was evident that they each do their own thing. The reason I asked is that I had a blatant and horrible case last semester, with a major required paper of a student. At the time, I decided to give him a -0- for the paper, which still left him with a D in the class, but my colleague suggested giving him an incomplete, with a better grade being possible if he redid the paper. I did not want to give him an “incomplete” as if he had been sick or had surgery, so I said no! Because of that suggestion, however, as well as her added comments about how she doesn’t usually send a report to the Dean, I did not SEND a report to the Dean, AND I told him I would change his grade of D if he redid the paper. Now I wish I hadn’t SAID I would change the grade because he does not deserve it. He is having a terrible time rewriting this paper, and it’s still not done. (He has to re-do it to graduate.)
In any case, I could sense a tension in the room due to my asking. There is this thing called academic freedom. Everyone can basically do their own thing, make their own decisions about grading, tests, and plagiarism. One person looked at me and said, “Just do what you need to do, make your own professional decision.”
Well I understand that but I don’t have tenure. These people have all been around here for 8-10, or in that person’s case, 20-some years! They know the culture. One has to know the culture and the roles expected of you in a place, before you can then make your own informed decision. I just wanted my decision to be informed by their general standard practice.
It comes back to me time and time again how I have landed on the moon. It is culture shock. I am still trying to figure out the language, including body language, and what is never said, as well as what is spoken out loud. One has to first see how it is done “here”, in this place. What I am really doing is trying to decipher symbolic meaning in a place where those meanings are not intuitive for me. To make an informed decision, you have to first know the meaning, the intent, the ramifications of any action you may take. In Georg Simmel’s words, I am “the stranger who comes and stays,” not the stranger who comes and goes. I am here, yet always a stranger. I view this world as an outsider, yet in another sense, I am a part of this world, always here, yet there.
Doctor Grandma 
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