LOCAL ANGLES: TAKE A SEAT: TWO-LEGGED CHAIRS TAKING OVER

Southeast Missouri State University has more chairs than a furniture store.

I'm not talking about the four-legged, still-life kind -- but rather the two-legged, talking variety.

At Southeast, committees have been elevated to almost an art form. There's a committee for virtually everything.

In the parlance of the university and today's neuter society, committees and even departments are headed by chairs. In some cases, a committee may have two chairs.

I've always had a problem with that. To me, chairs are pieces of furniture. They're something you sit on, not something you hold a conversation with.

Not long ago I received a press release from the university in which one of the institution's learned employees was quoted as saying: "I've never been a chair before." But what about an end table?

Personally, being sat on is not my idea of a career opportunity. I have no desire to dwell in a furniture store or even a university president's office.

Webster's Dictionary allows that a chair can refer to the chairman of a meeting. But the first definition treats it as furniture.

When you look up "chair" in the World Book Encyclopedia, it refers you to "furniture." If this were a Southeast publication, it would have sent the reader to "committee."

The World Book says: "Furniture consists of chairs, tables, beds and other pieces that provide comfort and convenience in our daily lives."

That seems to me to clearly exclude anyone serving on a committee. Committees can generate a lot of discussion, reports and coffee breaks, but comfort and convenience are not on the agenda.

I've always thought chairman was a perfectly good word for the head of a committee. Society used to think so too.

But as more women moved into leadership roles, there was concern that chairman was an inappropriate term. That led to chairmen and chairwomen, and eventually the gender-neutral chairperson as distinguished from the chair thing (the still-life kind). But now that's all been shortened to chair.

At Southeast, people are always talking to chairs or reporting to chairs or listening to chairs.

With all this emphasis on chairs as people, surely there's an opportunity here for some "chair" slang.

For instance, an individual who heads a committee or board -- but never gets off his chair (the furniture kind) -- might be called a La-Z-Boy.

Those chair humans who have a leisurely, relaxed demeanor could suitably be called "lounge chairs."

Those who have no backbone when it comes to standing up to administrators could be called "folding chairs."

It has to be confusing with all these chairs running around. A faculty member who says he needs a chair in the classroom could well end up with the department head rather than the sit-down kind.

It used to be that getting enough chairs for a breakfast meeting was a matter for the custodians. Now the whole administration's involved. After all, it takes a lot of planning to get those human chairs rounded up.

It seems to me there's discrimination at work here. Why should the chairs get to head all the committees. When will tables get their turn?

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.