Looking for a Life Raft: Citizen Voice and Votes of No Confidence

The nonprofit world of the university has long segregated the approved public voices of the administrative class from the underground voices that carried a narrative about pathologies in the workings of power, an underground not suited to enter the realm of something public and serious. The no confidence vote has partially filled the gap in the management of approved internal voice, but certain traditions of secrecy have resisted exposure through unmanaged group challenge. Recent scandals at major universities have helped energize an examination of administrative practices designed to insulate the university from meanings revealed by persons subjected to the abuse of power. The #MeToo movement has recently burst forth into the university setting, powered by journalists and students bringing university secrets into public view. #MeToo reveals to the public accountability pathologies in nonprofit institutions that have been periodically, but only partially, addressed by votes of no confidence brought by faculty or other professionals. #MeToo has a primary goal that meshes with the purposes of the no confidence tradition of self-help, deployed by groups to expel bad leaders supported by an institutional hierarchy. Relief from an abusive or failed leader is the short-term goal in a vote of no confidence, but the uncovering and dissemination of social knowledge that has been successfully suppressed is an epistemological enterprise as well. The effect is to rescue private shared knowledge from dismissal by administrators and others possessing a voice deemed serious and public. The methods by which #MeToo and other disclosures about pathologies within the academic setting can be exposed are little analyzed or compared. This Article is a preliminary examination and evaluation of the techniques by which groups composed of faculty members, and to a lesser extent, students work to bring private knowledge into a public forum for immediate response and long-term reform. #MeToo presents an opportunity to compare methods for any group facing a problematic leader or other person the hierarchy will neither correct nor dismiss. The comparison addresses the comparative efficacy of expert group voice, student self-help, litigation, and investigative journalism in forcing leader exit as well as producing a long-term enhancement of social knowledge of the patterns of organizational dysfunction and abuse.