Gary Mort

While I haven't read "Privilege, Power and Difference," I attended Dr. Johnson's keynote at Spring In-service and enjoyed it. As I listened two things in particular struck me. First with respect to being a member of a privileged group that it is difficult to see or experience the privilege that accrues to you – at some level it's the old question of "what does a fish really know about water?" Second I drew some amusement from the idea, that at least from my perspective, each of Dr Johnson's statements about white privilege could, at LCC,  be replaced by administrative privilege with little loss of meaning or accuracy.

Barbara Breaden

As to workload,  referring to Donna's [Koechig] and Stan's [Taylor] comments [at the Governance session of the Spring Conference] about the workload problem being systemic, that we could not solve a particular problem without changing the overall workload structure (the entire system). . . everyone is overworked, yadda, yadda, yadda.  To me, saying that we have to fix the system first is a way to put off change and to delay addressing wrongs.

My point was that I was not talking about a general sense of people being overworked, I was talking about workload inequity.  If an inequity exists it must be dealt with expeditiously regardless of the system.  For example, I had a blind student in my Listening class who could not complete a diagnostic test or much of our visual-centered workbook program.  Does this mean, then, that he could not take the class because the system didn't work that way?  Patty and I had to devise a way to make the listening program work for students with this particular disability.  We did not overhaul the system, but we adapted our usual way of functioning in this case to eliminate the inequity, as faculty all over campus do every day.

This may appear to be individualistic thinking, from Johnson's point of view, but I think a fault with our system in this case is its resistance (blindness) to the particular in favor of a sort of global detachment from real "oppression."  The path of least resistance?

I also expressed the claim that the workload issue is certainly an issue of privilege.  Those who have a "privileged" workload (you can insert the example of your choice here) do not want to see our workload altered because it would suggest that theirs is no longer privileged.  Part of their satisfaction with the status quo is in seeing a group with a disadvantaged workload.  When we talk about bringing ours into line, we are moving in on their privileged territory, disrupting the pleasurable experience of their privilege (Johnson's "comfort zone"). 

I could go on and on: that those outside the situation see our workload as not that big a deal (deny & minimize), that speech faculty just like to complain (blame the victim), that they (particular "outsiders") sympathize but can't do anything about it (I'm one of the good ones) and so on.

Mary Binford

My frustration with managers new to the college is that they do not get training in the