I solicited "friendly letters" from two of my Colby colleagues. I was
told that these letters are pretty meaningless, because everybody expects them
to be, well, friendly. However, it was pointed out to me after my denial that
it may have looked bad for me only to have two such letters. This seems
likely since the P&T members turned out to be intent on finding
anything negative they could about my case. I did not realize at the time of
my dossier preparation that this would be their approach, but it is an
important lesson for future tenure candidates. You simply cannot give them
anything negative to sink their teeth into, and they will agressively
interpret "small amounts of positive" as "negative". So make sure that you
have a sufficient number of "friendly letters" in your dossier.
I also submitted the names of a number of external (to Colby)
colleagues to provide "friendly letters" for my dossier. The departmental
review committee contacts these people to write the letters. These are scans
of the redacted copies of the letters that I received from the Dean of Faculty
after my tenure denial.