Avoidable Harm: The High Cost of Institutional Intransigence and Betrayal

In this personal narrative, I share my experience with institutional betrayal: stagnancy and intransigence that obstructed long-overdue revision of university policy that harmed a group of majority-women, non-faculty academic employees. Although a policy-encoded “concrete ceiling” had been known to institutional leadership for decades, and other campuses in the same university system had dismantled this barrier to advancement, six years after proposed policy changes were submitted to the campus administration, the harmful policy remained unchanged. The impacts of the institutional betrayal include but extend far beyond pragmatic and psychological harm to individuals; they harm the institution itself. In reflecting on my experience successfully fighting for institutional transformation, I offer recommendations to other change-champions, and to institutional leaders who may be able to spare their people betrayal and trauma, and their organizations avoidable losses.