The other day, I downloaded UB's 2011 Directory, a complete listing of every department at the university. Most entries have one person listed as the head of the department, with contact information for that person.
After carefully scouring the document, I found a whopping 54 departments and sub-departments…
…before I got to the letter ‘B.'
You read that correctly. I was going to write this column after doing a full analysis of the entire directory, but I stopped after the letter ‘A' for two reasons:
First, it would have taken me eight hours to get through the entire thing (not exaggerating); and second, the fact that there are 54 departments and sub-departments under one letter of the alphabet proves my point better than an analysis of the whole directory ever could. And you wonder why we're in a budget crisis.
Keep in mind that in my count, I didn't include headings in the directory that are cross-listed – in other words, departments known by more than one name that are also listed somewhere else in the 28-page PDF file.
What's even more stunning is the vast array of titles that are given to the heads of the departments. Bear with me over the next six paragraphs. (Remember, these numbers are still only through the letter ‘A' in the directory.)
I found 14 permutations of the honorable title of Dean. Among them are three Assistant Deans (two of which also possessed other titles not worth mentioning here), a Senior Associate Dean, eight variously titled Associate Deans, and two regular old Deans. None of them are Dean Martin.
There are 19 forms of the highly estimable position of Director. One is a Co-Director, four are Interim Directors, one also happens to be a Principal Investigator, the one Senior Associate Director seems to be slightly better than the one Associate Director, there is a Director of Advisement, and nine pitiable souls are just plain, unremarkable Directors.
Four different people are some sort of Vice President, but none of them are simply "Vice President" alone, and none of them have the same title. There is also an Assistant Vice Provost. Oddly enough, there are no Presidents and no Provosts, so somebody has obviously fooled these people.
There is a Chairman, four Chairs, and zero Tables.
I found an Editor-in-Chief and an Editor, and neither of them was Andrew Wiktor, Luke Hammill, or anyone else from The Spectrum. And I don't think I remember seeing those names when I picked up Generation for 30 seconds that one time.
There are an additional 10 people who are called other things, but I'm running out of space.
I know I've said this already, but these are only the heads of the departments that are listed under the letter ‘A.'
Each of the people described above (presumably) is the supervisor of a whole bunch of other people, who all probably have crazy titles of their own – for all I know, the guy that sweeps the floor in Capen is called the "Senior Associate Library Sanitation Technician and Anti-Pathogen Specialist."
So what do all these titles mean about their respective employees when you look at them together with all of the other titles?
Nothing.
E-mail: luke.hammill@ubspectrum.com
This article was written as a piece of satire and should be taken as such.
