Recommendation 6

That a (Senior) Assistant Registrar (maintenance) be appointed. This is connected with the next recommendation, which provides that the post of Assistant Principal be disestablished and that the remaining responsibilities of that post be reallocated amongst Registry staff. This is beginning to look like a full-scale purge. Now the vicious Dale is getting into poor old George Culliford, who retired from being an academic years ago to worry full time about how far behind schedule our building programme is falling. The expansion of this university will eventually come to an end and we apparently will not need a worrier cum apologist at that point.

The rest of the recommendations in the report deal mainly with less widely interesting matters of administration, but do include some points of interest. Dale wants accounting procedures amongst the larger departments unified, or at least mutually coherent, which is apparently not always the case now. He also has some recommendations concerning personnel administration and particularly, suggests some ways of taking an overall look at non-academic staffing. There were 315 non-academic employees of this university in October 1971, representing an annual wage bill in excess of $1 million.

The Vice-Chancellor's Report on the Report is being circulated along with the Dale Report. Sagely he warns that "the report should not be regarded as a blueprint for overnight change". Heavens above no, Danny, that would mean throwing overboard the old university principle of never sacking anybody, not to mention the old administrative one which you seem to have perfected, of never admitting that you have made a mistake.

Taylor sets the background to the Report which evolves from an extended junket he had over 1969-70. On this tour he looked around at various administrative procedures in American and British universities, and the ways in which they could be changed. Eventually he decided Dale was the man for us. However, Taylor decided (some might have thought Council should decide this) to have the report made to him personally, it was, he claims his "initial intention to circulate it to the Board and Council but, on reflection (or perhaps more accurately after reading what it said) he decided to limit its circulation to the Officers of Council, members of the Committee of Vice-Chancellor and Deans and my immediate assistants" Taylor doesn't say what changed his mind again, though possibly he was so impressed with his own report that he felt it made all else harmless. Salient has decided the report deserves wider publicity still, and feels sure that Dr. Taylor won't object. He does, after all, say in his own effort that the report does not contain "any information which I do not want given general publicity."

Taylor's report is based on his belief that "success is more likely to come from a continuing process of adaption of existing practices to new conditions, rather than 'root and branch 'reforms". No doubt the Professorial Board will agree with him when they consider the report at next months meeting. On the question of his mates' jobs, Taylor pleads for time. On each case he is prepared to agree in some way, but tends to put off the evil moment until "Professor Slater (or Campbell, or Dr. Culliford!) retires from the service of the University." The report raises many points of detail, but already several important queries are arising from the whole episode. Was the Dale Report worth the money? Why couldn't the job have been done cheaper and/or more comprehensively? After all, if you change the central administration to meet the current total situation, what happens if other events demand a new central approach - to the Vice-Chancellor the Dale report seems sweeping, to the present writer it is damned piecemeal.

And the last question. If Dale is really that bloody good that he took a world trip to discover, and a lot of money to put to work, why the bloody hedging over what he reccommends?