BY KEVIN HOWLEY

For G. K.

Professors are anxious and burned out. They’ve been pivoting. They’ve been juggling work and child care. They’ve been worried—about Covid-19, the economy, social justice, the nation’s divisive political climate.
—The Chronicle of Higher Education

In all of my time as a campus administrator—granted it’s only been three weeks since I pivoted from kinesiology to my new appointment as provisional executive assistant in the Office of Information Management and Control—I have never had more respect and admiration for the faculty, staff, and students of this revered institution.

Of course, the beloved Patriots’ dramatic come-from-behind victory over our archrival Colonials in the annual Tar and Feather Bowl had me close to tears. But pound for pound, the grit, determination, and grace you demonstrated last spring, as the pandemic brought the semester to a screeching halt, was an inspiration. Within a matter of days, we canceled classes, locked down the campus, and pivoted to online learning.

We’ve been pivoting ever since.

If I learned anything from attending “That Was Then, This Is Now: COVID-19 and The Future of Higher Education,” a sixteen-hour webinar sponsored by Austerity Today, it is this: You can always pivot. Always. Event organizer David van den Berg, professor emeritus of dissembling at Euphoria State, put it best, “There’s no end of pivoting these days.”

Needless to say, this hasn’t always been the case. Academic institutions are notoriously resistant to change, and governance procedures are designed to ensure careful deliberation before amendments can be made to university policies and bylaws. But as our new consultants like to say, the pandemic may have upended teaching and research, but when it comes to pivoting, it’s the goose that laid the golden egg.

Which brings me to our first announcement. It gives me great pleasure . . .  Oh, I see we have a comment in the chat. Dr. Natasha Gotcha from the Department of Sociology writes: “New consultants. What happened to the old consultants?”

Good question, Professor Gotcha! Ordinarily, we’d have someone from HR respond. But our new consultants had other plans.

As I was saying, it gives me great pleasure to announce that the office formerly known as human resources is pivoting from its traditional role in recruitment, employee compensation and, last but not least, regulatory compliance. Effective immediately, the entire HR staff is pivoting to outreach and fundraising with alumni relations or, as our new consultants have rechristened it, The Epstein Center for Creative Financing and Strategic Giving.

In keeping with the board of trustees’ five-year restructuring plan, this pivot away from human resources to capital campaigns has enormous consequences for the university’s sustainability objectives. Not to mention the Department of Classics, which, as we all know, has been hanging on by a thread for years.

According to our new consultants—or rather, partners, as they prefer to be known—the university’s fiscal realignment will ensure classics remains enshrined in our curriculum for the foreseeable future. Give or take inevitable market fluctuations, persistent enrollment declines, prolonged global health emergencies and the odd financial exigency or two.

Our new partners at Inside Job, the higher-education consultancy firm founded just last year by our own Peevish Floss, former chairman of classics—nice pivoting, Peevish!—are eager to assist faculty and staff with all their pivot needs.

Missed an important deadline? Pivot to another committee. One that doesn’t take deadlines quite so seriously. Alienated students and alumni by selling the campus radio station to a right-wing militia? Pivot to selling MAGA swag in bulk.

Please! Please! This is neither the time nor the place to inundate me with self-righteous questions about standing by our principles. Looking at you, Professor Serling! . . . Grow up already. Indignant little [inaudible].

Having just returned from the university cabinet meeting I can say without fear of contradiction that the board of trustees firmly believes that pivoting is not just the new normal. It is the very future of higher education.

Without further ado, I’m pleased to announce the publication of The Pivot Playbook: A Survival Guide to the Precarious and Uncertain Future of the Residential Liberal Arts College. Available in electronic format only since printing services has pivoted to Campus Tours Unlimited, a tactical unit of the admissions office specializing in experiential recruitment spectacles.

Let’s face it. Open houses are so “the before time.” The admissions office is pivoting to produce augmented reality environments that have the look and feel of a residential campus in a bucolic setting, but with all of the modern amenities the discerning high school graduate is looking for in the modern, which is to say, pivoted, liberal arts school. Or as one trustee recently put it: “a $75K per year job placement program. Cha-ching!”

Whoa! Watch your language in the chat, Dennis. There are children in the breakout room. Besides, I’m just repeating what I overheard at last week’s virtual happy hour. And if you say any different, I’ll have you pivoting from career services to parking enforcement so fast it’ll make your head spin.

Where was I?

Following its recommendation to the president’s COVID Contingency Task Force, the Promotions Advisory Committee will pivot to Campus Safety, where they will run a new unit: COUNIONPRO, or the Counter Unionization Program. There’s no telling when our graduate assistants will start organizing and we better prepare for an uprising that’ll make the Capitol Hill insurrection look like a research brown bag.

Make no mistake about it; we have only begun to pivot. Next fall, University Health Services is pivoting to the Campus Hospitality and Self-Care Center—a pivot made possible by a generous gift from one of our distinguished alumni who prefers to keep his relationship with a departed financier under wraps if you know what I mean.

Combining the elegance of a five-star hotel with the pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality that made America great again, this state-of-the-art facility offers students, faculty, and staff unlimited access to virtual assistants who are eager to help them get their damn heads on straight in time for the next pivot.

Guest blogger Kevin Howley is professor of media studies at DePauw University. His work has appeared in the Journal of Radio Studies, Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, Social Movement Studies and the Journal for Discourse Studies. He is author of Community Media: People, Places, and Communication Technologies (2005), and editor of Understanding Community Media (2010) and Media Interventions (2013). His latest book is Drones: Media Discourse & The Public Imagination (2018).