A joke?

Just got back from a packed room where Ben Lee, the university provost, presented the latest version of the "university-wide academic plan" part of the university's "strategic plan." We've all been hearing rumors about impending "consolidation" of the university's many divisions and myriad programs, so people from all over the university showed up, eager to hear if their divisions or programs would survive into the new plan, whatever it would be, and if so in what form. This presentation was originally scheduled for early October, so the suspense has has a long time to build. (The plan turns out to be vague and politic enough that new things will happen along side old things rather than displacing or reorganizing them, at least right away. Lang's dilution continues.)

It's hard to know how serious any of this is - the provost kept stressing that it was provisional, temporary - or how things will be decided. Provost Lee is rather a hard man to read. When he first came in and found people standing in the back and along the sides and sitting in the aisles, he remarked that he was tempted to call out "fire drill!" Although delivered flatly, this was potentially very funny, but it is an odd thing to say to a bunch of people who are wondering if the perennially New School is a place to try to stay or start planning to leave. So: was it a joke? Or was it a slip - consciously no more than a way of noting that the room was overfull but unconsciously registering awareness of the anxieties of the people assembled? Should we have laughed so generously?