Duke University is home to hundreds of prestigious professors who have published on thousands of pertinent subjects. As a Duke student, I have the unique opportunity to read their work and then present myself in person to discuss it with them.
So which of our venerated faculty am I currently availing myself of?
Larry Moneta, Ed.D; Vice President for Student Affairs and Adjunct Associate Professor of Public Policy Studies.
Shortly after his arrival at Duke, Moneta co-authored "Strategies for Effective Outsourcing" with William Dillon, a vice president in the Campus Services Division at ARAMARK, Corp. The article details ways colleges can hire contractors to take over student services such as housing or dining and what benefits those contractual relationships can bring. Moneta told me last week that he and Dillon thought it would be a "thoughtful thing to have [the university and corporate] perspectives come together."
Without even considering the content of the article, however, it is extraordinarily questionable to have a high-level administrator of a university joining together with a representative of a corporation to advocate courses of action that might involve said university hiring said corporation. The fact that ARAMARK was under contract at Duke when the article was published makes the connection even more significant and, whether Moneta thinks so or not, he erred in writing this piece.
One only has to ponder the political fate of a member of congress were it discovered that he coauthored a book on Native American policy with Jack Abramoff to see why this is important.
And looking at the article itself, there are aspects of it that raise eyebrows. Moneta and Dillon advocate methods of outsourcing that rely heavily on information obtained directly from outsourcing firms-information which may or may not be accurate. Duke has learned the hard way that contractors might not live up to their promises, and Moneta and Dillon do not adequately consider that possibility in their article.
In Moneta and Dillon's vision of outsourcing, students only participate in the process through "written surveys" and via "focus groups, quick intercept surveys and telephone surveys." The actual decision as to whom we will pay to provide us with essential services is left to administrators who may perhaps draw on the expertise of "graduate students or interns, an administrative assistant. or a recently retired staff or faculty member."
Despite these concerns, however, the article does not prove anything. In order to dispel Moneta's impression of me as a "conspiracy theorist," I will readily admit that I believe his assurance that his and Dillon's relationship "has no bearing on administrative decision making."
The biggest reason why the article is not indicative of anything improper, however, is that it says so little. Although it provides some concrete examples from Moneta's experiences at the University of Pennsylvania and examples from other institutions, the bulk of the article explains fairly obvious steps in the decision-making process-just using superfluous and proprietary language to make them sound original.
In making any decision, the natural process is for someone to figure out her options, assess them and choose the best one. What are Moneta and Dillon's main steps in choosing an outsourcing contractor? "(1) gathering data (2) identifying and evaluating alternatives and (3) choosing the best alternative."
Much of the rest of the article is similarly trite, with a few detailed specifics sparsely included for good measure.
The authors also felt the need to remind the reader that, in the context of outsourcing, a "contract defines the legal relationship between the private provider and the institution." In that contract, "the term of service defines the period of time during which the provider will perform assigned services;" "termination clauses. define conditions under which the contractual relationship can be severed."
Well, duh.
Although the innocuous content of this article goes far to assuage any concern over conflicts of interest, it does ascribe a certain insularity to Moneta-a corporate-style optimism based in the notion that if something looks good on paper and seems good in a presentation, then it must in fact be good.
Moneta and Dillon ended their piece: "It cannot be stated any better!" They implied that everything would run smoothly if one follows their seemingly well-thought-out plan.
Well, everything has not been running smoothly, and criticism of ARAMARK-Duke's most well-known outsourcing contratcor-cannot be adequately conveyed through written surveys and focus groups.
Maybe Moneta (and some of our other administrators) should be more careful about who they affiliate themselves with and dig deeper than initial presentations made by prospective contractors.
Elliott Wolf is a Trinity sophomore. His column runs every Tuesday. All italics are the authors'.
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