Librarian's Padded Tenure File Escapes Notice

Newly tenured librarian Valerie St. Thomas has been admittedly arrogant these past few days. As this LP reporter caught up with the Manuscripts Librarian at Grosspointe State University literally walking out to her car on her way to a “well-deserved” vacation in the South Pacific, her hat at a jaunty angle and sporting a flamboyant print shirt, the question of her tenure file was predictably the center of attention. “In all honesty,” St. Thomas stopped to quip momentarily, beams of smugness filtering through her flinty countenance, “I really put one over on that sponge-headed Tenure Committee, especially that teabagging chair.” She went on to describe the confounding array of nonaccomplishments and empty prose that larded her file, including “supervising the creation of a macro,” “chairing the library’s Social Committee,” and irrelevant training spanning everything from “Class C fire extinguisher handling” and “asbestos abatement awareness” to “forklift operation” and “understanding invoices.”

St. Thomas brazenly continued, explaining how the tenure committee commented favorably on every aspect of her other “contributions” but totally overlooked the absence of anything in her file addressing any actual processing of the library’s manuscript collection, tiny as it is. “I didn’t take this job because I wanted to process an inconsequential goddamn manuscript collection at some Mickey Mouse university,” St. Thomas revealed. “I came here for one reason only: a solid paycheck—augmented by a juicy 15% promotion that came with tenure—and an unfathomably great benefits package for this dump, so two reasons, really.”

Asked whether the committee’s recommendation came at all as a surprise, Judy Llewellyn, St. Thomas’ supervisor and head of the library’s Department of Special Collections, sighed and stated, “Mildly. I was pretty sure the TC (Tenure Committee) would ignore the chain of negative evaluations I had written over the past six years, since Valerie had put on some pretty memorable parties in the library, but I thought Muddy Wetwipes (Director of Library Services) had more sense than to tenure that Camel-smoking boozer.”

As she pulled out of faculty parking lot seven in her newly detailed Trans Am, St. Thomas grinned and slowed long enough to describe how her work days would change as a tenured librarian: “After my vacation in Fiji I’m going to spend most work days sleeping in, shopping for new clothes, taking twice as many cigarette breaks, and blowing library resources on unneeded high-end archival supplies. Ta.”