Whither the Faculty Lounge?

Thanks to Dan and crew for inviting me to guest blog this month. As Dan mentioned, I have just finished my second year of teaching. I spent my first year at Pace and now am at Buffalo. Because of my move, I think I feel like even more of a newbie than most folks do at the end of their second year. I am also relatively new to the blogging world (as a reader and a participant). Given this background, I was a bit hesitant when Dan asked me to guest blog. I wondered what I would talk about. Bridget Crawford has given excellent advice on blogging on Feminist Law Profs, and I found her words helpful. I was also intrigued by Dan’s description: “the kind of thing people would talk about in a faculty lounge (i.e., anything).”

As open ended as Dan’s description was, it actually gave me a moment’s pause. Frankly, no one talks in our faculty lounge. Although an inviting room with comfy chairs and free coffee, our faculty lounge is mostly a place where people pick up their mail. Now, this is not a Buffalo-only phenomenon. I have spoken to other people at other law schools and in other disciplines who say the same thing. No one hangs out in the faculty longue. At Pace, I was impressed that faculty members (usually including the dean) ate lunch together in the lounge. This is, of course, wonderful for new faculty trying to get to know colleagues. At Buffalo, the junior faculty eat lunch together once a week (though admittedly not in the faculty lounge).

My question for you all is “what, if anything, have we lost?” Would vibrant faculty lounges make for a more collegial work environment (or perhaps they would just be distractions from scholarship)? Are other venues replacing the benefits once provided by the vibrant faculty lounge (faculty colloquia, happy hours, blogs)? I’d be interested in hearing what happens at other schools. What activities do you have that foster collegiality? What things do you do to make the faculty lounge an attractive place?

 

Comments

[Jim Milles]

I wonder if at other schools, use or non-use of the faculty lounge correlates in any way with the general level of collegiality and friendliness of the faculty? Or is it a matter of the general accessibility of the faculty and whether or not they spend time in the building other than when they're teaching?

[Eric Muller]

I wonder: was there ever really an era in which lots of people actually sat around and schmoozed in the faculty lounge? Or is this just one of those myths about how much better and more civil the past was?

[Jessica Litman]

In the 1980s and 1990s, I distinctly recall that the faculty lounges at both of the schools where I taught (Michigan from 1984 to 1990 and Wayne State from 1990 on) filled up every morning at around 10:00 am with men who sat around the large table and exchanged informed commentary on recent and upcoming sporting events. So far as I can tell, that's no longer the case at either of those two schools. Of course, many of the particular men in the story have since retired.

[Hanah]

Does it have to do with the rise of the Internet, perhaps? I'm too young to know this, but I have a sense that the faculty lounge used to be the place to go to read the school's copies of newspapers and law reviews. With all of that available online in the comfort of your own office, there's no reason to make a daily or even weekly trip to the faculty lounge.