OPINION: Stop saying “It has been decided that…”
When management puts forward decisions in a way that obscures who made said decision, it prevents dialogue between the decision-maker and those affected by it, writes Søren Schrøder Richel, a theology student and member of the Board of Studies for Theology. But even worse is the fact that it prevents students and teaching staff from having any influence on degree programmes.
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This is an opinion piece; the views expressed in the column are the writer’s own.
After nearly four years on the Board of Studies for Theology – and especially following the development of new Bachelor’s academic regulations – I have observed a phenomenon I have dubbed ‘passivum bureaucraticum’, the bureaucratic passive.
Let’s start with the concept: When theology students translate, let's say, the New Testament from Greek, we sometimes come across a verb in the passive voice where the agent – the person performing the action – is omitted. From the context, even the least perceptive theology student can work out that God is often the logical subject, that is, the agent. In such cases, we are dealing with a passivum divinum, a divine passive. Let me give an example from the Gospel of Luke 4,6: “And the Devil said to him, ‘I will give you power over all this and their glory, for it has been handed over to me (…).’”. But who is it that has granted the Devil his power? The agent is not specified in the sentence, so it is reasonable to conclude that this is a divine passive.
“It has been decided that …”
The bureaucratic passive is therefore a construction in which the logical subject is missing. Let me give you a more recent example: “It has been decided that students cannot sit exams in a 10-ECTS course in March, but only after they have submitted their bachelor’s thesis, as the administrative burden is too great.” The grammatical subject it has the passive form has been identified as the verb, but hang on—who actually decided that? We’re indeed missing the logical subject! Have you seen it?
“It is not my decision...”
The use of the bureaucratic passive makes it difficult to identify who is responsible for a decision. Was the decision made by the Ministry, the Rector’s Office, the Dean’s Office or the department? The crux of the problem is that the decision-maker has distanced themselves from the people affected by the decision – namely, students and teaching staff. The passive voice emphasises this distance, as it creates a sense of detachment between the listener and the speaker.
This is particularly evident in the work of the study boards regarding academic regulations, because decisions have already been made by the time they reach our table; so when student representatives, quite reasonably, launch a critique at the apparent decision-maker, the response is: “I agree with you, but it’s not my decision.” But whose decision is it, then?
The bureaucratic passive enables the shirking of responsibility, as the responsible body evades accountability by remaining anonymous, and because the responsible body – if one were to manage to identify it – also evades accountability through the use of the bureaucratic passive, and so on ad infinitum. That is why bureaucratic passivity stands in the way of student democracy in particular, because its alienating nature prevents dialogue; after all, you cannot engage in dialogue with a subject that is not there.
“The figures have been crunched…”
The bureaucratic passive is often accompanied by the much-criticised ‘passivum oeconomicum’, the economic passive: “The figures have been crunched, and we cannot afford any more teaching staff.” Taken together, the bureaucratic and economic passive pose as the divine passive. They – and by ‘they’ I mean the Ministry, and the university administration and management, who to a certain extent accept the current structure – claim to be expressing an objective truth. But I would rather say that they express an objective cynicism – a resignation to the destruction of education and personal development – which is concerned solely with how they can sustain themselves. This is evident from the fact that rules are blindly enforced, despite knowledge that it goes against the wishes of students and teaching staff. And it is particularly evident in the work of academic regulations, where the Dean’s Office sets out rules in advance regarding the number of examination formats within a degree programme, or when the university imposes restrictions on the use of the exam hall, limiting its use to specific examination periods, thereby requiring Bachelor’s students to sit exams in a subject other than their Bachelor’s subject after submitting their Bachelor’s thesis.
Passivum diabolicum
These decisions, whose origin is difficult to trace, have turned the development of academic regulations into a losing battle for all involved: it is no longer the wishes of students and teaching staff that matter most, but rather the continued existence of a broken system. This is not a divine passive, but a passivum diabolicum, a diabolical passive. It is diabolical precisely because it hinders free education by imposing financial and legal restrictions, and it is not divine precisely because it does not allow students and teachers to seek the truth freely.
The question is simply whether we will be the ones to speak out against this objective, cynical passivity, or whether we will drink from its bitter cup and let them go unchallenged?
Søren Schrøder Rischel is bach.- et stud.theol. and vice-chair of the Board of Studies for Theology, as well as former chair of the Conservative Students at Aarhus University.
This text is machine translated and post-edited by Mie Skov Jeppesen.