A Portrait of College Bureaucracy

By Kevin Parkman | Friday, March 11, 2005

Talk of the growing College bureaucracy is nothing new. The increasing numbers of College employees and new offices has, indeed, been going on since the day the College was founded in 1769. Growth, after all, is usually a positive thing. However, when growth thwarts efficiency, those in charge ought to sit back and review the state of affairs.

What exactly do certain employees actually do? What exactly do whole offices actually do? How many people are employed simply to move papers from one side of a desk to another? Are meetings being held solely to plan the next meeting? I'm not sure. A committee should probably be formed to discuss it. Furthermore, there should probably be another committee formed to decide the composition and selection of that committee's members. Perhaps there already is.

I bring all this up in response to a recent experience I had trying to pass through the seemingly-endless hassle and red tape that has become the inner workings of Dartmouth College—I wanted to setup a conference call.

As the head of an organization, which shall remain nameless, I was putting together a meeting of the undergraduate officers and some of the active alumni members to discuss current issues of the group. Due to the alumni element of this meeting, a conference call seemed most logical given the logistics of flying in alums from across the country for a sixty-minute discussion. Looking back, making the travel arrangements may have been easier than working with College employees to schedule a conference call.

We scheduled the time of the call for 5 P.M. on a Thursday evening. When I got out of class that Thursday at noon, I began the process of making arrangements for our conference call. I had done this before, and it had never taken me more than a few minutes. This time, it took more than two hours.

Trying to avoid the hassle of formally reserving a conference room, we had previously rented the specialized speakerphone from Telephone Services located in the offices on Rope Ferry Road. In the past, I would pick up the phone and bring it back to my residence, where the other officers would congregate for the meeting. This time, upon arrival at Telephone Services, I was told that they no longer handle the phone rentals. Instead, I had to speak with representatives of Computer Sales and Services, located in Berry Library. So, I went to Berry, where two gentlemen informed me that renting the phone for one hour would cost fifty dollars, a grossly-inflated price for roughly an hour of use, and, besides, one my organization simply could not afford. In fairness, I could keep the phone all night for that price, but one can imagine that I had no need for it once the call was over.

The gentlemen at the computer desk suggested a walk down Tuck Drive. Supposedly, the Tuck School had conference rooms with phones already set up. This was indeed the case. However, after being bounced around between three women in three different offices on two different floors, I was finally told that the Tuck School could not allow an undergraduate group to use their facilities, despite their availability.

The ladies at Tuck directed me to talk to the Conferences and Events Office in the Blunt Alumni Center. So, I trekked back up Tuck Mall. A receptionist told me that it would be no problem to set up a conference room with the special speakerphone. She asked me when the call was; I informed her it scheduled for 5 (it was now slightly past 1). She then told me that it would be "impossible" to reserve a room at that time. Frustrated that every room at the College was being used, I asked when was the soonest time that a room would be available. To my surprise, she responded, "Well, plenty of rooms are available, but we need more time to take care of the necessary logistics." I later found out that they would have had to place a call to Technology Services in order to have a phone delivered to the room, a process that normally required "at least twenty-four hours' notice." I then asked to speak with whomever was in charge.

A friendly gentleman emerged. After telling him my entire story, he recalled a room in the Jones Media Center (in Berry Library), that has a phone already installed. Unfortunately, his office was not in charge of making reservations for this room. So, he made a phone call to Jones Media Center where we were told that all reservations need to be made online. A phone call would not suffice. Following their instruction, I e-mailed Jones Media with a return receipt request. I waited thirty minutes with no response from Jones. So, I walked to the media center itself. Here, I requested that they check for my e-mail and the availability of the room. Luckily, the room was still available for a 5 P.M. meeting.

After more than two hours wasted walking around campus, I finally had a room with a speakerphone for my organization to use, free of charge. I guess I know for next time... or do I? One never knows.

A Portrait of College Bureaucracy

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