Chuck Rybak posted “UW Struggle: Scrap the Tenure File Edition” yesterday on his blog. It’s worth reading, especially since what is happening in Wisconsin could easily happen elsewhere–and probably will, soon. He writes:

Tenure no longer exists in Wisconsin. We have entered the era of pretendure. The only moral thing to do, right now, is abolish the tenure file. If the reward for compiling the file no longer exists, then the file should no longer exist.  As someone who has compiled two tenure cases for the UW, both of them required and successful, I can say without hesitation that I spent hundreds of hours collecting, organizing, and writing these materials. During my 3rd year in the UW Colleges, I missed my sister’s wedding ceremony IN FRANCE because of a January deadline for submitting an onerous retention file that resulted in me producing hundreds of unread dossier pages.

And for what? Nothing.

Toward the end, he says this:

We need to be better to each other. I will speak the truth about something I would not normally share: my mental health has suffered because of our poor treatment and bullying by the state, and also from the refusal for our central leadership to be a prominent voice for people who were hurting and desperately needed that voice. I do not say that for sympathy. I don’t want or require sympathy. I want relief for me and for people who are asked to carry so much now for the promise of so little. Self-satisfaction, the knowledge that you truly are making a difference, can carry one only so far down our path.

Click on the link above and read the rest. It’s worth it.