Many students confused about their institutional identity may be at a loss when confronted with the question, ‘What is the Lasallian way of doing things?’
An interesting perspective of the Lasallian way is provided by an opinion column written by CLA Dean Dr. July Teehankee for The LaSallian’s anniversary issue last year, where he wrote that he believed in accentuating the positive, “sustained by unbounded optimism and the primordial belief that all will be well… [opting to] “construct” rather than “deconstruct.” This, he said, was the Lasallian way: to construct rather than deconstruct, to be optimistic and to hope that all will be well, that tomorrow is part of a bright future started at La Salle.
Perhaps this optimism, this bent on constructing rather than deconstructing, and the sustenance on unbounded optimism that things will turn out for the better may run deeper within the community than students would tend to see. Recently, I had been conferring with a current administrator who had formerly been associated with the student press, and whose characterization then would have been of someone so highly impassioned, almost iconoclastic in his critique of social structures and the Establishment of his time.
The years, however, seem to have mellowed him. “I used to be angry at a lot of things,” he told me. “But now I see that perhaps this Lasallian way – the charism of the Brothers – is actually true.”
I was consulting with him about a delicate scenario and some organizational history, on how the University treated so-called faculty members who took advantage of other members of the community. He told me that the University was of course intolerant – very intolerant – of such behavior. But where was this in the press? Where are the internally-circulated newsletters writing against these things?
“Just because the University deals with its problems internally, quietly, immediately it is misconstrued as inaction,” he defends. He added by saying that this was the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of La Salle: to be able to deal with things internally, quietly and for people to deal with each other such that mutual consensus is reached.
We spoke of an erring faculty member who in the past was not granted tenure, and who was let go of by the department he was part of. The faculty member in question was bright, highly intelligent, “very young and full of promise.” But he had, in a phrase, screwed up.
“Who hasn’t screwed up? We all do stupid things when we’re at that age,” he remarked. He said that the department would not recommend that faculty member if he applied in other universities given his track record. Perhaps it was not worth throwing away the young man’s future, though, leading the faculty member’s department to provide the due recommendation if the academic applied in non-academic institutions, consistent with the nature of the errors committed inside the University and following the logic that his faults were dealt with according to their nature. It did not follow any express policy but was crafted with the deftness of a Solomon exploiting the love of two mothers fighting over the motherhood of an infant.
The ex faculty member was supposedly given a graceful exit by the department – no noise, no fuss, no student media insider to report even the barest hint of an incident. But his former students, who knew of the incident, were indignant about the situation, negatively affecting the students’ perception of the faculty member. To paraphrase the more explicit sentiments of a former student, “How do we know he wasn’t teaching us crud?”
But the graceful exit remained the policy. No noise, no fuss. Delicadeza. The fire was doused internally, quietly, despite the distortions of stories about the faculty spreading like the gospel of apostates.
But in describing what transpired, the admin said that it was the Lasallian way to provide a graceful exit, because the faculty member in question was so young, and so full of promise. Lasallians looking after each other this way would from an absolutist standpoint deem the action as wrong, or simply callous, even unjust. When the public cries for blood, what is the Lasallian answer?
Perhaps there is a rhyme and a reason as to why the institution decides to discern in context prior to action from and for respective stakeholders. The supposed flexibility to adapt to the situation or the call of the times is not just the rhetoric of a student socio-political party – it’s an admin one, too. The ‘graceful exit’, the ‘internal, quiet’ resolution of issues and the mechanisms of subtlety enshrined in our handbook and the grievance process highlighting internal resolution and negotiation as necessary before proceeding to formal modes of settlement or the diffusion of adverse situations are all written proofs that the system values the cohesion of its units, and the gift of compromise, consultation and dialogue with one another. There is an unbounded optimism guiding this kind of thinking – that the future is bright, and that the future will inevitably end up with tomorrow being better than today. Is this the Lasallian way?
At the very least I believe that to hope for the best and to subscribe to the natural alignment of all things in the end is not by any means a sinking into futility, or a selling out of principles. But it may be unwise for an institution to always forgive and forget, without keeping a just tally of just how often it may tend to forget, given that the way it decides is not by the setting of laws from unpleasant history set on stone, but by the oral agreement of passing parties and the mutual consensus of interests.
Perceiving the situation as it is would be an idealist’s nightmare. How can people afford to sacrifice the governance of the law in situations, and provide exceptions to stated rules? It is a logic which drives so-called progressives to hound at and strike at the cracks of institutions, full of force and fury, a hurling at walls without any concrete resolution or clear intention. Institutions by their very nature are mechanisms of social cooperation, and where there is cooperation, there is a compromise that prevents the diversity of its members from devolving into a state of total individualism and anarchy. One would have to expect institutions to compromise, and resolve things from within.
But compromise is not absolute. There is still an internal peace – real, if not always harmonious – that supposedly dictates the pulse of the University. This is made possible by the exceptions provided by the Lasallian way – the graceful exits, the second chances, the flexibility to compromise and to consult for thesake of consensus and harmony through the wise discretion of those at the top.
Then again, isn’t pork barrel just as discretionary?
