When bureaucracy actively prevents competence.

I am organizing a panel discussion event related to "Doubt," to take place in October in a room on campus. Because this event is free to the public, co-sponsored by a student group, and also involves off-campus organizations, it requires going through non-academic scheduling. Because the room holds more than 90 people, it requires the completion of a twelve-page form to reserve the room for two hours.

Stick with me here.

In the past week, I have had to seek and receive approval from the Police, the Fire Department, Parking Services, Facilities Management, Risk Management, and Environmental Health and Safety. (For a five-person panel discussion, led by a priest and moderated by a university staff person.)

Each of them sent me an electronic signature on a separate document, which then had to be printed and collated into a single paper document to be submitted for final approval back to the main office. I have been warned it can take up to three weeks for such approval.

Full disclosure: I may decide to use a sound system so that our speakers can use microphones, but doing that would require an additional three signatures, so I'm tempted just to seat our hard-of-hearing patrons in the front instead and maybe borrow a megaphone from the band room.

Not as an employee, not as an outreach coordinator, but as a taxpayer, I find this process absolutely outrageous. The number of person-hours wasted on this crap is growing exponentially, and the staff people are paid out of salary pools that likely come from taxpayer monies in many cases. I don't believe it's saving wear and tear on the facilities. It's simply putting big old roadblocks in front of public access to university buildings. I'm all for giving contact info, or even putting down a room deposit to make a reservation--I understand the need for accountability if something goes wrong--but this is beyond ridiculous. It's a waste of my time, all the departments' time, and the public's money.

Now I'm going to go walk over my precious electronic-signature-laden document to SPECTRE and collude with the dark side.