The bold braved the bandwidth challenge and downloaded the 2.8MB of tables, tables, tables (no chairs) and text and scrabbled with febrile impatience for the bottom line: has the institutional prozac kicked in yet, or are we as miserable as ever? And indeed, despite the Jim Jonesoid adulation of Khuluma, the report resonated with lived experience: UCT was not a happy place.
But the report was not all To Be Expected reporting: instead, there was something eerily disquieting. It took a while for it to sink in, and then it hit: the relative absence of spin. Simply findings, presented as such.
Rather than being told that we had the most beautiful mountain offices of any Western Cape-based university to compensate, we were told that we thought our pay sucked. And that non-academics thought it sucked wet dogs. Instead of being told that we were so liberal in allowing a diversity of genders, ethnicities, sexual orientations and religious persuasions to access our university, we were told that many of us felt discriminated against, or reported experience of harassment, based on our diversity. And where we could have been sold a vision of freedom of expression and opinion, we were told that some of us feared, or had experienced, victimisation or discrimination as a result of dissenting or divergent views.
We were told, too, that the poster campaign (including the infamous "PASS = Sheltered Employment" posters) had created anger rather than simply awareness, and may have impacted directly on the disappointing response rates.
But, perhaps most tellingly, we were told that - interventions notwithstanding - the overall picture was gloomier than that presented by the 2003 findings.
The passage whisperers were non-plussed. Had someone forgotten to programme in the spin-cycle? Were the results so depressing that even the most adept spinners were at a loss? Was there Another Agenda to present as gloomy a picture possible on the eve of the changing of the guard? The head shakers agreed that something was afoot... but they were not sure quite what.
If either of those who do manage to slip off down to the colloquium during a "tea break" manage to arrive in time for one of the 15 minute discussion sessions, perhaps they could report back to enlighten us what the oxymoronic "non-Faculty academics" are, since that group consistently reported the least alienated, most optimistic views. Clearly, this group has prefential access to the hidden stash of happy pills, and those of us in the trenches would like the opportunity to persuade them to share... just a few?