Mission Statement Impossible
Is it satire? You decide.
By Lawrence Douglas and Alexander George
Mission statements are “in” these days. Even our local dry cleaner has one. So it was only a matter of time before our own institution was called upon to define itself. What could be easier? The people charged to draft the statement, the faculty, were simply being asked to describe their own doings.
The original draft seemed quite plausible:
Date Mundo
(Latin for “Give to the World!”)
Committed to a faculty that excels in research and teaching, we seek a diverse and talented student body to educate and to prepare for the world’s intellectual and moral challenges.
Although this appeared to cover all the bases simply yet accurately, we soon discovered that not everyone was of like mind. First to rise at a critical faculty meeting was Professor Trampolini (names have been changed to protect against lawsuits) of Romance languages, who questioned whether “research and teaching” suggested a skewed sense of priority: “If I had to describe what I do,” he said, “it would be teach and research.” A member of the dance department argued that the very term “research” excluded less traditional forms of inquiry, passionately describing how a well-executed pas de bourrée couru was a way of knowing about the physical world. (At that, a professor from physics was heard to snort loudly and the meeting was quickly adjourned.)
The minutes of a second faculty meeting record a diverse range of opinions about inclusion of the term “diverse”:
Professor X wished to understand the role that height plays in our admissions process.…Should we be seeking, Professor Y asked, a diverse body of students or rather a body of diverse students?…We must move away from this metaphor of the “body of students,” Professor Z insisted: “If the students form a body,” she said, “we shall be embarrassed to say which group composes its head and which its hindquarters.”
Talk of “the world’s intellectual and moral challenges” fared no better. The entire athletics department signed a letter complaining, “This formulation wholly ignores the role we play in preparing students to face the ludic aspects of life.” The chair of cultural studies, on the other hand, sent an open letter to the president excoriating the thought that the world presents moral dilemmas. “The world presents us with rocks and earthquakes,” the letter read, “but we present ethical problems to one another.”
The motto stimulated further debate. Professor Salvatore insisted on knowing whether “this institution is turning its back on service to the nonmaterial world.” Later, Professor Downing railed against the “imperial colonizing tongue of Latin” and urged us “to listen to the people, to the voices from our own ’hood.”
That was two years ago. The committee has since weathered three resignations, five retirements, two deaths, and one indictment. In that time, it has brought seven additional drafts before the faculty, all of which were rejected by large, though strangely fluid, majorities. A subcommittee was also formed to draft a statement concerning the importance of drafting a mission statement.
Now, however, the committee has produced a draft that promises success:
Donu
(Esperanto for “Give!”)
We teach you. You try. We try. Be happy.
Clearly, we’re almost there. In addition to doing what we do, very soon we’ll be able to say what that is.
Lawrence Douglas teaches in the Department of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought at Amherst College; his most recent book is The Catastrophist, a novel. Alexander George teaches in the Department of Philosophy at Amherst College; he has recently published What Would Socrates Say?
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