who is john galt?

Right now, I'm waiting for the results of an online questionnaire I built earlier last week for an appointment to a key position in our part of the college. Each of the candidates for this position have given elaborate presentations, been scrutinizingly interviewed, and each over the course of several days and weeks. This position is incredibly important and will impact our college immensely.
The results of the questionnaire, due in about an hour, will help determine which of four candidates will take this position. The employees making this decision have received countless emails, memos, reminders in meetings, etc. that this questionnaire would be coming, that they would have 24 hours to complete it, and that the decision would be made Monday morning. The questionnaire  went out as scheduled, even a little bit early, and at two hours to go, we'd only received results for less than 30% of those who received the questionnaire.

My boss walked in at that point and asked me about the results we had so far. Astonished is not nearly a strong enough word to describe his reaction.

Boss: "This is rank complacency!"
Me: "It is. We have two hours left."
Boss: "What do we do about it?"
Me: "What do you ever do about complacency?"
Boss: "You use a pitchfork!"

So we started to walk around the building, rallying support as we went. My boss knocked on office doors, intending to inquire as to whether or not its occupants had completed the survey. Most doors were locked and empty. As we started up the stairs to the next floor, he was composing a list of possible advocates of this questionnaire, and he blurted, "Jane! Jane is a pitchfork!"

I started laughing. I clarified with her last name, and he realized maybe he shouldn't have worded it quite like that. "Don't repeat that. I mean to say she's good at motivating people."

I told him I wouldn't. Don't worry, her name isn't Jane.

We eventually found people in positions to send reminders, people who had come in today for no other purpose than to fill out this questionnaire.

After talking to those people, my boss sent me to inquire after a specific department. I said okay and started down the hall when he stopped me. "Be a pitchfork."

This whole process has been incredibly sad to me, recognizing the reality of almost destructive complacency. I made some off-handed comment, paralleling the presidential election with this position: "People will complain when they shouldn't- they don't make any attempt to make a change but complain when things don't happen their way. But people will always complain." But I really thought this questionnaire would be important  enough to the employees of this college and responses would come quickly. Earlier in the week, we were troubleshooting the questionnaire to see possible ways respondents could cheat the system and fill out the questionnaires multiple times, and then defending ourselves from that kind of mess.

Apparently, we should have put our priorities elsewhere.