The Best Laid Plans . . .

Once in a while one comes up with a great idea. 

When I was chairman of the English department, I recognized a problem that I thought needed correction. It happened that every time a faculty member suffered an unfortunate event (e.g., a bereavement or a hospitalization) or experienced a joyous one (e.g., a marriage or a birth) someone immediately took up a collection. At times there might be three or four passings-around of hats going on simultaneously. What confusion.

How about, I thought, if we taxed the faculty at the start of the school year—say, twenty dollars—and built up a pot that could be dipped into as need arose. In satiric homage to Richard Nixon I called it a Slush Fund. Lo and behold, when I submitted my proposal to the department, they jumped at it—only disappointingly choosing wimpily to call the result the Sunshine Fund. 

Then I got what I believed was an even greater idea. 

How about if at the end of each semester, the department selected the most outstanding English major and awarded her a prize? Someone noted that the college’s publicity office could arrange for a photograph to be taken of the presentation and that local newspapers could be given a press release. It was, to my mind, a multiple win-win situation; the college would get some free publicity, the English department would receive some free print, the selected student and her family could swell with pride, and—maybe best of all—the student would have the opportunity to add “English Department Award—Outstanding Major” (or some such title) to her c.v. She could even read the book we would award her (after all, we were a literature department). And, since the department had the money already collected in the Slush Fund, there would be no need to scrounge around to pay for the present.

Brilliant!

What could go wrong?

*

The English department could.

I presented the brainstorm at a department meeting and immediately got hit in the face with questions, objections, elaborations, etc. For example: 

A) How would we select the candidate? (Come on; how simple would it be to poll the faculty?) 

B) What if a rejected student decided to sue us? (Jeez, we’ll put a lawyer on retainer; would that satisfy you?) 

C) It’s a great idea, but why only the English department? All the departments should do it. Let’s bring it up at the College Senate. (At this point I threw up my hands, withdrew the proposal—and decided to do the whole thing myself—creating a Chairman’s Award. No Slush Fund; I’d dig into my own pocket to buy the gift book.)

So for the next two semesters I chose the best English major and handed her the prize. One semester it was a highly-acclaimed new translation of Dante’s Inferno; the next it was The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson. Unfortunately, there was no publicity—no photographs, no newspaper write-ups. What a waste!

One English department member—who was ordinarily a pinchpenny Yankee—offered to chip in to help me defray the cost of the books. I politely turned him down. Although thinking back after all these years, since he had stiffed me on some photographs I had taken of him, I should have taken the money.