To the Editor:
At the end of December, my colleague and friend, Mark Collins, leaves Brandeis after 27 years working here. Most recently, he's been the Senior Vice President for Administration. Was he fired? Do we accept at face value words from the University's memo that he has "chosen to take advantage of other professional opportunities"? A more neutral description is evoked by the title of the Boston film, The Departed.

Why would someone who is in their late fifties-an unfathomable age to undergraduates- "choose" this? Someone with college-age children and financial responsibilities, forsaking professional security and salary and retirement in sight? Why would other senior administrators of Mark's generation-Fran Drolette, Rick Sawyer, Suzanne Yates-depart similarly? It's beyond me. Others who work here, of comparable age and seniority, look upon this upheaval with anxiety.

More likely, a new administration has cleaned house, evicting remnants of the old regime, replacing them with new blood pledging loyalty only to the new regime. This contemporary ritual, ubiquitous in corporate and institutional life, complements other practices of primitive societies: the need for scapegoats to be banished, carrying blame for the errors of others, and for rainmakers, to be sacrificed during droughts. We haven't evolved that much.

What is "Brandeis community" supposed to mean when things like this happen? Either do away with the primordial practices, or with the communal fantasy. To maintain both is contradictory.

Holding the administration responsible for this primitive sacrifice of human resources is necessary, but not sufficient. Faculty and administration eye each other warily, but obviously we're all employees, we work together, and across caste and clan divides, we inevitably develop friendships and loyalties. Why wouldn't tenured faculty, with real job security, speak publicly to protect and defend colleagues we have greeted daily, and who have had their livelihoods removed?

At the start of academic year 2012-2013, at the first, most attended faculty meeting, I questioned President Lawrence about the clandestine process leading to the appointment of the current Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Manos. I spoke publicly and unambiguously to support Fran Drolette and Mark Collins, the Senior Vice Presidents for Finance and for Administration, who had been promoted to share the responsibilities of the previous COO, Mr. French. I respect Fran and Mark as decent colleagues who have carried a lot of water for Brandeis over many years.

My message to President Lawrence was simple: please don't force out Fran and Mark. That this was coming next was obvious. The attending, silent faculty was unwilling to use its power of protected speech to endorse or criticize this message, reflecting a collapse of community. President Lawrence expressed-in the redacted minutes-his putative "high regard" for these (now departed) senior colleagues. The news account in the Justice ("Questions aired at faculty meeting," Sept. 11, 2012) described, pejoratively, my invoking "the so-called 'golden rule.' " No, it's simply the Golden Rule. Would the Justice ever write "the so-called 'ten commandments'?" I hope not.

After the announcement that Fran Drolette had "chosen to pursue new professional and educational opportunities," I wrote to the chair of the Faculty Senate, Prof. Chasalow, urging him to take action, and received a response that "we are satisfied that the matter was handled appropriately." Note the first person plural, dissipating responsibility, and the passive voice.

What kind of community is this? Is this family friendly? Or socially just? Social injustice occurs when in making an omelet, eggs are broken. Some benefit, others don't. The former usually have the means to explain that their actions were just, or at least OK: might makes right. That's why it's important to speak truth to power. We acknowledge that importance everywhere, except where we are.

Accepted mores at the confluence of sexuality and politics stress the importance of consensus. But it is commonplace that in politics, if you can screw someone and get away with it, you do. If you can say it was consensual, even better. It's an awful thing to watch.

All this matters at a university. To quote the title of a book by Theodore and Nancy Faust Sizer, the parents of the University's general counsel, "The Students Are Watching". With chapter titles like "Bluffing," "Shoving," "Fearing," they assert that the moral education of students comes from watching the leadership of schools. Their summary is on the mark for this communal failure:

"How we adults live and work together provides a lesson. How a school functions insistently teaches ... Moral education for youth starts with us adults: the lives we lead and thus project; the routines by which we keep our classrooms, schools, and school systems ... The students watch us, all the time. We must honestly ponder what they see, and what we want them to learn from it."

Harry Mairson is a professor of Computer Science at Brandeis.