Tunes Lighten Faculty Meeting

Portraits of notable former University administrators grace the robin egg blue walls of the Faculty Room, and busts of the particularly eminent stand atop pillars.

But to the knowing eye, one guest was conspicuously absent from the arrangement of busts: former University President Abbott Lawrence Lowell, Class of 1877.

Though portraits are animated only in the world of Harry Potter, this apparent disappearing act was the second of its kind this year. In September, the portrait of former University President Charles W. Eliot, Class of 1853, was missing—an absence pointedly observed by faculty meeting attendee and former Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68.

So in his opening remarks at yesterday’s Faculty Meeting, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. Smith was prepared to explain where President Lowell had been taken: the bust and its pedestal, like the portrait of President Eliot, had been sent for maintenance.

But “we still have a portrait of President Lowell hanging,” Smith said. “We are very pleased to have him here and”—eliciting a wave of laughter from the meeting attendees—“look forward to having his bust back.”

It was an airy beginning to what became a tempestuous gathering.

CELL PHONE

As the meeting moved into the question-and-answer phase, a series of irate professors stepped up to the microphone to contest Smith’s newest budgeting strategy—“first-dollar principle”—as it applies to various FAS centers. Professors said they were worried that the new strategy puts too much budgeting power in the hands of administrators.

After each of the five professors spoke, Smith stood to defend the plan, explaning that such issues were largely ones of miscommunication.

But in the middle of one such response, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Professor David J. Mooney’s cell phone began to provide an unplanned accompanying tune.

Mooney first grabbed at his pocket to silence the jingle, but his subtle grasp did not turn off the noise.

After a few moments and to the chuckles of some faculty members, Mooney stood and shook out his coat jacket for the offending phone.

Meanwhile, Smith continued to answer questions, and after a few more pocket-grabs, Mooney succeeded in quieting his phone. No one in the room full of professors chided the flustered culprit.

But when Mooney himself took center stage at the close of the meeting to move to establish a undergraduate concentration in Biomedical Engineering, nearly an hour after his phone made its debut, he apologized for the disturbance.

On the Faculty Meeting agenda, Mooney’s motion on a Biomedical Engineering concentration was listed as the second order of business.

“I had thought that the second agenda item would come up soon,” Mooney jokingly told the faculty present, who had been seated for nearly two hours.

Mooney had been teaching before yesterday’s meeting and thought he would need a reminder.

“I set the alarm to make sure that I made it,” he said. “Upon arriving at the meeting he forgot to turn off the alarm, and it tolled.

—Staff writer Noah S. Rayman can be reached at nrayman@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Elyssa A.L. Spitzer can be reached at spitzer@fas.harvard.edu.