U of A follow-up

      Well - the U of A response to the plagiarism issue (see post below) earns a C.  Fairly prompt - the Dean resigns - BUT only as Dean.  He remains in faculty and, after a summer off, will resume teaching duties in the fall.  Financial and other "penalties" seem minimal.  One wonders, for the sake of balance, how many medical / dentistry students were penalized for plagiarism in the past year?  What was the nature of those penalities?  Is this a case of fairly harsh penalties on paper morphing into cautious wrist tapping when applied in individual cases.  Enforcing rules always takes courage (the courage to be seen as "not such a nice guy") but it is enforcement which has the most impact on culture. 
     I worked in a school once where one or two teachers parked in the few stalls designated for visitors, perhaps because they were close to the school entrance.  The response of administration was: general memos read over the PA system "all those parking in the visitors parking spots should refrain from doing so" to increasingly larger signs being posted "Visitor Parking Only".  The culprits kept parking while the innocent resented being berated for something they were not doing.  How much more effective it would have been for the principal to go to Larry and Mo (they were easily identified as the offending parkers) and say "Stop parking in the visitors or your cars will be towed" and then making sure that the next time they parked there - the tow trucks were called immediately.

A Test for the U of A

   Recent accusations of plagiarism against a Dean at the University of Alberta ( http://www.edmontonjournal.com/life/Accusations+cast+pall/4941801/story.html ) raise a number of interesting issues. One of those is the manner in which power corrupts democracy.  In all organizations, power accrues to the administration.  Bureaucratic processes are used to obfuscate the exercise of power by a small inner cadre of administrators.  Stakeholders are fed myths about the "mission, vision, and values" of the organization which, especially in crises situations, are revealed as propaganda and spin.  Thus, when, say, downsizing the organization, individuals will be axed in indirect proportion to their power.
   So, the test for the University of Alberta is whether it will deal with the Dean of Medicine and Dentistry in the same way it would deal with Joe Student from Hairy Hill.  Already, the answer is apparently "No." as the Dean's fake speech issue must be "carefully studied" and all the bureaucratic arsenal of delays, hair splitting, and contextual concerns are deployed to provide time for the issue to blow over and attention be turned to the next cause celebre.
   Why this rankles is that there is a strong urgency for fairness in a culture which is truly democratic.  So called rebels, from Thomas Jefferson, to Wael Ghonim, and Julian Assange - have all been motivated, in large part, by experienced and perceived unfairness in the treatment meted out to the less powerful as compared to the arrogant dismissal of fairness and similar values by those in positions as insiders of the power elites.
   Will the U of A pass the test?  That will depend on its scores on the following rubric: fairness, transparency, accountability, openness, promptness, and courage.  Will "whatsoever may be true" become a reality - or will it be reserved for the next opportunity to inspire students or motivate alumni givers?
  

Great article on Alberta "Health Care" by Kevin Libin

     Today's National Post (p. A8) included an insightful article by Kevin Libin about Alberta's failing "Health Care" system.  While the article gives a lot of attention to the recent revelations about queue-jumping by political insiders, and leans a bit too hard on the "corrupt Alberta P.C.'s" angle; a thoughtful reading confirms some of the basic symptoms of our "Health Care" malaise. It also further justifies my comment years ago, in Vermilion, to then Health Care Minister Gary Mar, that we had a Soviet Style health care system.  Mr. Mar dismissed my comment as a bizarre bleep from an awkward non-entity.  However, Libin's article highlights that, just as in the "egalitarian" Soviet Union, while peasants and workers were queueing for hours to access poor quality, superciliously delivered food staples, Communist party insiders had special access at the GUM department store where they could promptly obtain high quality and exotic items, in special venues reserved for them.  All the while, these same Soviet officials touted the myth that everyone in the Soviet Union was an equal "comrade".      Now, to me, the parallels between this Soviet reality, and the current state of Canadian "Health Care" are striking.  So, the problem is not that somehow we have some corrupt, or arrogant, or incompetent politicians, or bureaucrats.  The problem is that we have politicized health care and removed the patient from any control over the quality or the attitude with which health care is delivered.  We wouldn't put up with the quality of "customer service" in any other aspect of our lives.  We know that many people will play the system to their advantage if they can so it is not just that we have "tory insiders" it is that when you have a politically driven system, it guarantees that insiders will acquire more power and use it to their own advantage.  We need to move to end the state controlled monopoly which enforces long queues and low quality for the masses and invites political insiders to abuse their power.
     Another encouraging comment in Libin's article is that more and more Albertans are becoming aware of the disconnect between the propaganda claims that "we have the world's greatest "Health Care" system [just look at the billions we spend on it]" and the reality of unsustainable costs, continually deteriorating quality, and appalling attitudes of many burned out health care professionals.  One hopes that we do not have to wait for every Canadian to experience first hand the horrors of emergency room waits, unsanitary hospital wards, or bored arrogance from doctors, before we realize that revolutionary changes are needed.  It took a long time in the Soviet Union but eventually the disconnect between the myth spun my Communist party officials compared to the reality experienced by long suffering ordinary "comrades" was just too great to be sustained.  The iron curtain fell.  Hopefully, Canadian "Health Care" will soon follow.