A non-tenured, new faculty member is asked to become chair in the History Department of a small college. The new faculty member needs to keep the teaching job very much, and is highly flattered by the promotion. The new chair is not told of the rivalry, prejudice, envy, lying, cheating and all sorts of harassment that exist in the department. It is so bad that, unknown to the new chair, the administration had demanded from each faculty member of the department a signed promise to try to work together for a year and give the chair a one year chance.

In time, after having taken over the chairship, through whisper campaigns and disagreements with the faculty where usually none are expected the chair becomes aware of the problems. He/she also finds out that the present administration has great misgivings about the tenured faculty of the department.

The power of the tenured faculty is strong, because all university life is regulated by a faculty union contract. Especially peer evaluations and recommendations for tenure and promotion (the latter tied to salary) are used by the politically strong faculty members to keep the politically weaker and non-tenured members in line. The ring leaders are very clever in warping the rights provided by the union contract wholly to their advantage. At the same time the union contract does not provide for a grievance procedure for harassment between peers.

Within this framework arises the following problem at scheduling time for the next semester:

One of the tenured professors submits a teaching schedule which does not follow department guidelines, and which uses the same televised programming for a large part of several courses. Since the classes are on different levels it seems unlikely that the same program series is equally pedagogically effective. The faculty member acts insulted when questioned, and states that he has always done his teaching this way. He threatens to go to the union unless his schedule is approved.

The faculty union contract stipulates as the chair's obligation to see to it that faculty fulfill their contractual obligations which include that classes be held on the regular schedule. To schedule class meetings at irregular times is only permissible for compelling reasons.

Question:

What should the chair do?