Conflicting Interests, Good Salesmanship, Or Just Being A Cynic?

Last night I attended graduation for my campus. It is always terrific to see students that struggled with the learning process and succeeded despite many obstacles graduate. The look of pride on the faces of the graduates and the support of family members that are in the audience are rewarding.

Despite it being the student's night, our campus leadership screwed the pooch in several ways. First, each student is allowed to bring up to five guests. We had 150 graduates in attendance last night. A quick calculation and we can arrive at a simple number of chairs required. If we have 150 graduates, plus up to 5 guests per student, plus 50 faculty and staff, we can anticipate needing approximately 1000 seats. If we account for attrition because some graduates do not show up, we can still estimate a number of chairs needed to exceed 500. Such a number would have required an extra partition of the banquet hall and cost more money. When our fearless leaders set up the banquet hall at a local hotel, they only set up 300 chairs. Most of the guests and all faculty members had to stand along the walls. The whole event lasted from 6:30 PM until 8:30 PM, causing two hours of suffering directly related to poor planning and penny pinching.

Second, despite the fact that every time we have used this particular facility we have experienced problems with the audio components, the bar, the attentiveness of the hotel staff, etc., our leadership chose to use the facility again. Part of the reasoning for using the facility is, I am told, that our executive director failed to actively participate in the planning process (a common occurrence) and the decision to use the facility was because the other, more elegant and better supported, facility was no longer available. I tend to think that there is a more political matter behind the process. Our executive director likes the mayor of the city where our campus is located to be a main speaker at every other graduation ceremony. This year the mayor of the city just happened to be the grandfather of one of our graduates. Perhaps my suspicions of political influences and ulterior motives is a bit cynical… NOT!

Third, we had two guest speakers that were representatives of staffing agencies that have provided our career services department with assistance with job fairs and career days. While one of these representatives happened to be a graduate of our campus--and there may have been some legitimacy in inviting her--there seemed to be a lot of advertising associated with the speeches. Some of the legitimacy in having our former graduate as a guest speaker flew out the window when it was realized that she graduated from our Medical Administrative Assistant program and is working as a staffing agency sales representative. It seems that getting her a job, regardless of whether or not it was in her chosen field of training, was more important than fulfilling her career choice. The fact that our career services personnel get a bonus and statistical boost when one of our graduates gets a job (and keeps it) may smack a bit of conflicting interests. Then, too, the fact that the other staffing representative is a reported drinking buddy of our executive director might also raise a little cynicism.

Now, I am going to raise these issues upon arriving back at work on Monday. Anyone want to lay odds that I get myself into conflict with my bosses?