9

Today I witnessed , and participated in, one of the most powerful, democratic, and egalitarian activities I've ever been a part of. It was the first day of our strategic planning retreat. t was not an epiphany. It as not earth-shattering. It was not a revolution. But it was effective, and it could lead to a reinvention, a revolution, a reformation.

Strategic planing is typically painful, ruminative, awkward, clumsy. It is terribly time consuming, often so full of contradiction and compromises and power sruggles that no one walks away happy except those endowed with the loudest voices or those who can outlast the others. Constructing neat, lean, and poetic statements, and captring ideas in effectve language becomes almost impossible because too much scaffolding gets erected to support too many precious ideas. The trick is to trust the wealth of ideas that the community can bring together, and that you will honor those ideas. That you will not later become parsimonious or philistines.

So there was a chorus of voices today.

Not all of the voices we heard were familiar voices. The voices that we are used to hearing.

The voices that we heard were not those that have been typically privileged by power or argument or intellect.

They were the voices of the community, faculty and staff, students and Board. We heard from everybody, meaning no one voice dominated, and no one person or group held sway. We gathered around ideas and goals.

Many of the ideas that were raised were familiar, some were not. Some of the ideas and impreratives that I would have like to have seen gain some purchase--especially those concerning curricular change and comprehensive evaluation--did not gain friction. I would have liked to have seen more interest in administrative restructuring. But I believe that those ideas will still come along. Transformation is in the air. We will not be the same.