Blogging on the road: The final chapter.

I am now President of my society. (Pause modestly for applause.) This is not as impressive as it sounds. Members of the society are elected to the Executive Board for six years, two new board members every two years. The presidency is handed off to the board members who have been on the longest. Becoming society President is like being the last roll of toilet paper under the sink.

Nonetheless, being on the Executive Board and the Editorial Board of our journal means that I have to go to a lot of meetings while at the conference. Committees are formed, reports are made, budgets are examined. It's way more fun than hanging out in the hotel bar with the friends who were the real reason that I came to the conference in the first place.

Which brings me to my story. We have a relatively new member of the society; let's call him Dr. Bane. Is it possible for one person out of 150 to make us all so miserable that we are ready to disincorporate the entire society just to make him go away? I am here today to testify that yes, such noxious personalities exist, and yes, Dr. Bane is just such a person.

The society was incorporated about 40 years ago, and many of the original founders still regularly attend (and present). Dr. Bane, unknown to all of us, even our founders, arrived three years ago and has never introduced himself to anyone. I presume he believes that introductions are unnecessary for luminaries such as himself. Secure in the knowledge that we all know who he is, he asks us who we are, repeatedly. I have given my name three times. One of my colleagues has introduced himself to him five times. After my presidency was announced at the banquet, he greeted me with a jeering, "Hi, [not my first name]."

I didn't bother to correct him. I do not like Dr. Bane. I won't go into all the things Dr. Bane has said and done over the past three years. Suffice it to say he is offensive both in appearance and opinion, and his research is uninteresting. Topics of conversations with him are usually oriented around his own intelligence. He seems to be delusional: He regularly tells undergraduate and graduate students that he and he alone founded not only our society but our discipline itself. He "invented it," he says.

Since his first appearance three years ago, I've been complaining to the other members of the Executive Board about Dr. Bane. Our officers are, for the most part, absent-minded professors of the meek and mild variety. They dismissed my complaints as the rantings of a premenstrual woman. But everything changed this year: Dr. Bane crashed the board meetings.

Our board meetings are conducted over lunch. Dr. Bane has never seen food that he didn't eat, and when he saw the buffet table past the open door, he came right on in and sat down next to me. I told him that the seat was taken, by the journal Editor no less, but he sat there anyway. He filled a plate with food. The Editor tried to explain that this was the Editorial Board meeting. Dr. Bane started eating. We were helpless.

The meeting commenced, beginning with a report of number of manuscripts submitted, rejected, accepted, etc. The Editor had to stand, as there weren't enough seats. Dr. Bane mumbled, "Oh, I guess I shouldn't be here." Then he picked up the journal report documents (with "Confidential" printed across the page) and perused them carefully. We worked our way through the report. When Dr. Bane didn't understand something, he pressed for information. He offered his opinions. He had new business. He filled his plate with food three times.

The other officers of the society suddenly realized that Dr. Bane was a problem. The Executive Board meeting was over lunch on the following day, but in a different room. Even knowing that he hadn't been welcome at the Editorial Board meeting, he attempted to attend the Executive Board meeting as well. After turning him away once, we posted a hotel guard at the door. Despite successfully repelling him, by the time we held the General Business meeting later that afternoon (to which all society members are invited), he somehow had knowledge of the items on our agenda.

I suppose it is pure coincidence that last week I wrote a short piece on territoriality, and the ways that people can infringe on other people's territory: invasion, violation, or contamination.^* We've been invaded. Dr. Bane has entered our space for the purpose of controlling it. At least now I'm not the only one who knows it.

^*My research has nothing to do with territoriality.