If You're Not Happy and You Show It

Apparently, if you're a sourpuss academic at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, my old stomping grounds, you'll get in trouble with your bosses, as the university has recently introduced a "behavioural capability framework" that requires staff to promote positivity and show passion for the job, all of which will be measured by "external benchmarks of performance excellence", a loaded phrase open to multiple levels of interpretive abuse if ever I heard one. All staff members have to sign off on this code by April 13, three months before they're due to begin negotiating a new collective agreement with the university. And if you don't sign the framework? Hmmm. I can't say for sure, but there's a word that starts with a letter that is also a buzzing insect and ends with what the postman delivers that might be of relevance in this situation.

So how did this come to pass? When did the world become place where some control freaky behavioural bureaucrat could come up with such a ridiculously restrictive idea, get it past a committee of people supposedly possessed of the ability to think critically, and have a university actually demand that their professional thinkers and questioners act like smiley salespeople pushing a mobile phone plan? What happened to the idea of universities fostering brilliance and individuality and eccentricity? And are kids these days really to be denied memories of a certain surly lecturer, someone they can bond over and bitch about for decades until one day the penny drops and they're old enough to realise what the old grump was trying to teach them?

It all sounds a tad Orwellian to me. Let's measure that smile. Let's weigh that passion. Let's plot points on your personal positivity graph to keep a detailed check on how non-negative you've been.

Gah!