Dean of the Dead

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The wind howls outside the arts building, drowning out the sound of the approaching deans. We don’t know exactly where they are. The Porcupine and I stand guard by the west entrance. None of us uses our real names anymore.

We are forty strong, the last holdfast of humanity against the gathering administrative flood. Forty full-timers and adjuncts combined, music professors, theater professors, dance professors, game development, web development, graphic design, studio arts, interior architecture and design, and art history. What do we know about fighting deans? What are we going to do? Fend them off with all-combinatorial hexachords? Teach them about Etruscan ceremonial urns? What did the Etruscans know about deans?

We are each armed with makeshift weapons according to our trades: sharpened screwdrivers, welding torches from the sculpture lab, a barre from the dance studio, and baskets and baskets of ceramic pieces. The Mongoose and the Cobra argued about which pieces would be most effective to hurl at the deans—the good student art or the bad student art. The Cobra felt that the bad art would naturally be more lethal, because it’s painful to look at. The Mongoose, conversely, felt good art would work best, just as crucifixes stop vampires. Or at least used to, before the deans ate the vampires.

Now, all we have is a Dean of Vampires, who makes us fill out assessment rubrics for every clove of garlic in the faculty lounge. There were also two Assistant Deans of Vampires, but they have been laterally promoted. They are now, respectively, the Assistant Dean of Trained Silverfish and the Assistant Dean of Carolina Panther Fans.

Anyway, we know they are coming, a slavering horde of deans. Creeping, shambling, oozing like slime mold up the hill towards the faculty’s last stronghold, the run-down, isolated building the deans forgot, until they had “administrated” everything else.

It won’t be long now.

It wasn’t always like this. Once, there were fewer than twenty deans, barely one for every 250 students. But one day, a fluorescent bulb in the office of the Dean of Student Excellence Outcomes Rubrics needed replacing. When Gustavo from facilities went up to the third floor to replace it, the dean asked him if he had filled out the Bulb Replacement Outcome Assessment Rubric form. After a brief exchange centering on the issue of why Gustavo should have to fill out a form when it was the Dean requesting the service, Gustavo told the Dean, “Bite me.” So she did.

Bitten by a dean, Gustavo turned into one. It was horrible. And when his supervisor came looking for him, he didn’t hesitate to spread the joy around. Now there were twenty-two deans.

A student who went to the Dean of Entitlement to complain about a professor who had dared to give him a B after he swore he had done almost 20 percent of the assigned homework and missed only the final was the next one to succumb. Soon, Deanism was rampant among the student body, and then it quickly spread to the faculty. You can guess how. The English Department fell first. The Faculty Federation called a joint meeting of the adjunct and full-time unions to discuss how to handle the situation. When the meeting was over, there were 378 more deans. But they did succeed in passing a resolution condemning the use of pulse possession as a criterion in the administrative hiring process.

In two days, Surveyor Hall fell. Then, in short order, Kovalyov Hall, Bartleby Hall, the science building, the gym, and the workforce building. Only after the main campus was administrated, and the six thousand deans of the Provost’s Undead Committee gathered for their bi-hourly meeting, a groaning, gurgling chorus of deep dives, deliverables, and thinking outside the grave, did someone point out they had forgotten that there was an Arts Department. Twelve thousand vacant eye sockets turned their unseeing gaze simultaneously up the hill.

We hear their howling on the wind. “Circle back!” “Make sure you loop us in!”

The Porcupine is the most feared Dean Hunter in all the Performing Arts. We look into each other’s eyes.

“See you on the other side,” she says.

I think of the rousing words of our chair, the Betta Fish; it seems like years ago. “Colleagues! The arts are the last hope. If this is to be our last day, let it be our greatest. Let’s fuck those bastards up, ’till we’ve given the last fuck we’ve got.”

And then they are upon us, wave upon wave of deans. It’s all a blur. For a while, we hold our own: I lull them into a false sense of security with the rules of species counterpoint while the Porcupine lays waste to them with a sharpened mic stand in one hand and a burning copy of the Alfred Piano Method in the other.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see her slam the lid of the Kawai G5-X on the head of the Dean of Student Regularity, who shits himself and collapses. But there’s no time to take it all in; I, operating on reflex alone, brain one with a copy of Taruskin’s Oxford History of Music. I’m no Hercules, but Taruskin always kills.

And then, for a moment, it’s quiet. The floor is littered with shattered tablets, broken laptops, and the well-dressed undead.

But then comes the next wave of administrative onslaught.

I take a deep breath, turn to the Porcupine and say, “Not bad, colleague.”

She looks at me blankly with teeth fully bared, and bellows, “I think we need to take a deep dive into fill rates!”

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