FIVE DEGREES OF SEPARATION


after one degree of stupefaction.

If you were teaching a class -- as I often have -- on how not to apologize, you could hardly do better than to begin with this sentence:

I am very sorry that my one action in ratifying a dean's decision in a single situation has had a negative impact on the institution.

That's soon-to-be-former West Virginia University Provost Gerald Lang, proving that, even when you're doing the right thing, you can still manage to do about five wrong ones:

1) Apologize, but qualify your apology into oblivion;

2) Fail to take responsibility for your actions (at least he didn't say he was just doing his job or just following orders);

3) Throw someone else under the bus (a deserving victim, of course, but not one who should have been run over alone);

4) Claim you've done harm -- I mean, had a negative impact -- to a nice, impersonal entity, rather than to the human beings who live and work within it;

5) Place your emphasis -- in this case, twice -- on this isolated incident, as if doing a great and terrible thing once is almost indistinguishable from not having done it at all (You know, as in: I am very sorry that my one action in fulfilling my friend's single request to murder his wife just that one time has had a negative impact on her life.)

Now that Mr. Lang has resigned, the question that every last member of the West Virginia University community should be asking is: How did this guy -- to whom ethics are a joke and personal responsibility a punch line -- ever get the job in the first place?

Posted: Mon - April 28, 2008 at 04:32 PM          

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