Gramsci had had a troubled relationship with Prof Ritalin, and was relieved he was headed in the other direction, decreasing the likelihood of his bursting in and tossing his bag down on the chair on which Gramsci was already seated _again_. Not exactly a Buddhist, was Prof Ritalin.
The nature of Prof Ritalin's meeting, it transpired, was an attempt to salvage one of the few remaining genuinely interdisciplinary collaborations on Campus - miracle of statesmanship, as it involved collaboration not merely across departments, but across faculties. Its survival was now threatened by the intervention of hard materialism - the allocation of FTEs.
Since the rise of the beancounter had subjugated academic criteria to financial ones, and almost everything had been reduced to the crude arithmetic of FTEs and SLEs and ASMs, nice warm fuzzy notions of collegiality or academic collaboration had evaporated in political squabbles for resources. FTEs dictated your SLEs, your ASMs, your GOB and any other TLA that mattered. Old friends had been known to leave their silverware between each others shoulderblades over FTEs. Longstanding marriages had broken down, families rent asunder, world wars started, over FTEs.
And now, Prof Ritalin was about to commit career suicide by placing academic ideals above material gain by seeking a compromise which would allow his collaborators in other departments, and faculties, access to their "rightful" share of FTEs. Prof Ritalin clearly still inhabited a different era.
Carnivorous Cow wondered if she should have warned him of the snipers positioned along University Avenue ready to take him out before he reached his meeting venue, or the suicide bombers whose schedules included the meeting, or even the manhole cover that had been removed along the route. She doubted he'd believe her - he still harboured naive assumptions that his colleagues felt as he did about these matters. His colleagues, who chewed over the harsh realities of The New Dispensation with their Friday drinks-and-valium-after-work felt rather different, but knew they'd be wasting their breath to try to explain.