My higher power certainly wants me to learn something, though I’m still not sure what it is. I thought the atmosphere at work and the situation as assistant chair couldn’t get much worse, but it has. After the department meeting on September 25th, Vicki sent this a toxic reply to my letter and I posted this statement on Facebook post:

“what happens when you speak up? people piss all over you. feel like crawling in a hole for a while.”

This post led to someone from Foreign Language telling Kathy that I posted something inappropriate about the department. When I spoke with her yesterday, she

• told me I’d “lost the trust of the department”
• informed me that “people do not want to serve on the curriculum committee with me”
• called me manipulative for not speaking at the department meeting and submitting a letter of explanation instead
• declared me rude for discussing Jim’s schedule in public
• threatened me about posting on Facebook

Basically, she laid all of the strife at my feet. Because I spoke up and questioned the decision to hire in English Education, I was in the wrong and am to blame for all of the trouble we’ve had since the announcement was made. I refuse to accept responsibility for things beyond my control. This led to my next post on Facebook:

“not supposed to talk about my state-of-mind on FB…someone told my boss that I do stuff like that. need to be quiet. isn’t that what they told women a hundred years ago?”

Okay, I probably shouldn’t have posted that, but I was mad! And you know, if someone tells me I’m not allowed to do something I’m pretty much guaranteed to do it. It produced an email response from Kathy:

“You also need to know that a colleague in FL told me today how surprising it was to read your Facebook message about being warned abut posting items about your job on that site.”

Apparently I was warned and posted anyway. So I resigned and said, among other things,

“I stand by my decision to report to the dean that we did not reach consensus on the hiring priorities for this year. All I ever wanted was a vote by the department. Somehow you have perceived my speaking the truth as something personal. This was an issue about principles. Clearly I’m feeling hamstrung and undermined by “people” who refuse to speak to me face-to-face.”

She’s trying to talk me out of it.