The Ultimate Tenure Rejection
By Mitch Berg
It’s been all over the news; three member of the U of Alabama/Huntsville’s biology staff were killed yesterday, allegedly by a woman who’d been denied tenure.
Tenure, of course, is one of those niceties of academic life that promotes basic academic freedoms by making it much harder to arbitrarily and capriciously fire a professor. Call it an “arbitrary termination-free zone”.
In a sense, all of the victims were denied an even more-important tenure – the right to protect themselves and those around them from being arbitrarily and capriciously blown off of this earth. U of Alabama/Huntsville was a “gun-free zone”.
Several pieces of information indicate that students, faculty, and staff are banned from having guns on university property (here and here).
My condolences and prayers to the families of the victims – and the family of the alleged perp.
So how many more humans are to be denied their temporal tenure to placate our anti-gun lords and masters?
February 13th, 2010 at 9:32 am
I have been thinking (a dangerous pastime, I know): do teachers really need both tenure AND union “protection”?
February 13th, 2010 at 11:01 am
As many as it takes, Mitch. We’re gonna convince you that guns are not the answer, even if it kills you.
February 13th, 2010 at 2:19 pm
Troy, professors get tenure, teachers don’t. That’s one reason why teachers generally have unions and professors don’t. And the few professor’s unions are pretty laughable and doctrinaire from my experience.
Mitch, you missed the point that she has been described as a left wing socialist by many of her students. Perhaps the lefties who inhabit this discussion will now use guilt by association to denounce all socialists and leftists? After all, we now can tell that anyone associated with law schools and leftist politics are blood thirsty killers just waiting to go off.
February 13th, 2010 at 3:05 pm
I guess Fort Hood must have been one of those awful gun-free zones, eh?
February 13th, 2010 at 3:10 pm
Yes. It was. Troops on base, except for MPs, are not allowed to carry.
February 13th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Stupid Army. What do they know about weapons? You’re probably right. Better to put a gun in the hands of every underage drunken redneck at the University of Alabama than to leave it to the police to do their job.
February 13th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Setting aside the false choice, angryclown, *points to story* we already see what happens when we “leave it to the police to do their job”.
February 13th, 2010 at 4:27 pm
Thanks nerdbert. I was a bit confused because my wifes school district calls the period after “probation” (which lasts three years) “tenure”. That really doesn’t sound like the same thing as a professors tenure. *shrug*
February 13th, 2010 at 9:48 pm
No problem, Troy. I was an adjunct prof for a long time and got to see the system up close. No thanks, private industry pays better, the politics are tame by comparison, and you don’t have morons from the Department of Humanities complaining about all the money you make compared to them (there was no such thing as privacy as far as salary went, so the infighting and jealousy were terrible). Yes, the security of tenure is worth something, but in practice it just means you can keep doing your job with no pay raise for the indefinite future.
I absolutely loved teaching and if the pay and politics weren’t so bad I’d go into academia full time in a heartbeat, but with young kids still in the house… Adjunct was a way to keep my hand in that area for a long time, but enrollments in things like EE are dropping like a stone these days because of all the outsourcing going on. The kids aren’t dumb: they’re seeing that it’s not worth all the pain and suffering of getting a tech degree when all the jobs are drying up.
February 13th, 2010 at 10:40 pm
Is Angry Clown putting his ignorance on display again?
Sorry I missed it!
No, actually, I’m not.
February 13th, 2010 at 10:49 pm
He and others who knew Ms. Bishop described her as a normal person, perhaps a little quirky but no more so than most scientists.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/us/14alabama.html?pagewanted=2
I don’t think Bishop’s socialism had much to do with her outrage, nerdbert. Corollary rather than cause.
February 14th, 2010 at 4:18 am
How could a left-wing socialist possibly be denied tenure in the ivory towers of academia? I thought they were all automatically given tenure so they could run any conservatives out of the university as soon as possible.
And Nerdbert, if there is a group of left-wing socialists out there advocating the death of biologists (who probably believe in evilution and deserved to die anyway), I would say they might hold some responsibility.
February 14th, 2010 at 9:01 am
Fearmongering only works if you cite scary creatures, AC.
Underage drunken redneck? No, a university professor, as here; or head shrinker, as Fort Hood. Far more dangerous species.
.
February 14th, 2010 at 9:48 am
Good point, Nate. We should restrict gun ownership for anyone with a post graduatye degree. Apparently they can’t be trusted.
February 14th, 2010 at 9:57 am
Some crazy old bat shoots up a faculty meeting. The wingnut solution? Arm everyone on campus.
February 14th, 2010 at 11:18 am
From later reports, while this woman’s job was going to end at this term, there is not an actual indication that her job ending or being denied tenure is the motive for her shooting the victims.
While I tend to be pro-gun, I’m not sure that arming students is consistent with the atmosphere and educational goals of an academic institution.
It would make as much sense to provide better security to prevent violence as to arm students.
I’m at least as interested to know how this woman was able to obtain a gun (no info so far that I’ve read indicating if it was legally or illegally obtained), given that she is reported to have killed another person, a family member in that case, previously, as in learning why she did this.
February 14th, 2010 at 12:12 pm
She was simply exercising her 2nd Amendment right to carry an illegal handgun, Dog Bone. It’s what the founding fathers would have wanted.
February 14th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
Angry clown is afraid of guns.
Fear-mongerer.
February 14th, 2010 at 7:06 pm
If the bomb planting accusations are true, maybe she could ghost write Obama ‘s next book.
February 14th, 2010 at 7:06 pm
“Angry clown is afraid of guns.”
Uh, yeah. Maybe you lost it when you got that plate in your head, but it’s called a “survival instinct,” Chachi. Humans tend to avoid things that kill humans. Guns, bombs, poisonous blow-darts: Angryclown afraid. Ghosts, demons, vengeful Jesus, who gives AIDS to homos and hurricanes to New Orleans: not so much.
February 14th, 2010 at 7:22 pm
“Guns, bombs, poisonous blow-darts: Angryclown afraid.” Add to that: Making a coherent argument.
February 14th, 2010 at 8:41 pm
“How could a left-wing socialist possibly be denied tenure in the ivory towers of academia?”
Simple. The diversity quota for left-wing socialists had been met. Now they are only accepting lesbian Wobblies.
February 14th, 2010 at 8:44 pm
You have to remember that AssClown comes from a different perspective than us, Terry….he’s used to being chased by armed, angry parents of the kids that follow his skittle treasure trail back to his clown van.
February 14th, 2010 at 9:14 pm
Angry Clown is afraid of guns! Wow.
I’m not afraid of guns. Crazee people, yes, guns, no.
Takes people like me to save Angry Clown’s ass when the crazees show up.
You’re welcome.
February 14th, 2010 at 9:45 pm
I’m not sure that arming students is consistent with the atmosphere and educational goals of an academic institution.
Atmosphere? Not an issue; nobody knows if a carry permittee is carrying at all.
And can we count the things that are inimical to “educational goals” that academic institutions allow? Cell phones, fraternities, speech codes, social lives, parents, vacation, cars, drinking, intramural sports…
…none of which are either constitutional liberties or scarcely-allowed moral goods.
February 14th, 2010 at 10:35 pm
One further question. Are students over the age of 18 legal adults? If so, do they not have the same rights as everyone else (exept fot alchohol, which is another stupid, hypocritcal flaw in our society)? So why should students NOT be allowed to carry the same as any other law abiding citizen? Because University is hallowed ground?
February 14th, 2010 at 11:02 pm
Of course Swiftea loves guns. How else do you think he could get a woman to have sex with him?
February 15th, 2010 at 9:15 am
AC, you do realize that all of the big genocides of the 20th century were committed after the governments had banned civilian ownership of firearms, right?
And quite frankly, when you talk about drunken, armed, students, you show you need to take a carry permit class, where it is very clearly noted that you aren’t allowed to carry when your BAC is above .04 or so.
Moreover, nobody is talking about arming students. They’re talking about ending the practice of disarming them by rule & statute. Big difference; you’re not putting a gun in the hand of every frat boy who wants one, but rather you’re allowing young people with clean records who have taken a permit class & passed a shooting test to arm themselves. Big difference.
February 15th, 2010 at 9:25 am
You have to remember, Bubba – Clown doesn’t actually care about the issues. Snarking for the Clown is like a pile of christmas wrapping is to a puppy; a place to romp and play and tussle and if he pees, nobody will notice it until later.
February 15th, 2010 at 10:05 am
“If” he pees? That’s pretty much his complete repetoire.
February 15th, 2010 at 3:40 pm
Hey AssClown, we aren’t laughing with you, but we are laughing.
….
“I’m not sure that arming students is consistent with the atmosphere and educational goals of an academic institution.”
WTF? DG, who is demanding students must be armed?
And the fact remains that the police rarely are there to protect you, mostly they show up after the fact to clean up the mess.
It is also a fact that a law abiding citizen carrying a concealed weapon can stop these situations from happening…
DG, how can you make such a claim that using facts and logic is not “consistent with the… institution””
….
“It would make as much sense to provide better security to prevent violence as to arm students.”
No it wouldn’t. Again, DG, you have failed to substantiate your position. Don’t make me take you to task again.
….
The liberal moonbats call for even more campus security to prevent this while saying out of the other side of their mouth that it is a waste to even attempt to slow down illegal aliens entering the US… (hmmmm, maybe they already know that Obama’s gonna ruin this country so much that the illegal aliens won’t want to enter.)
February 15th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
“angryclown Says: Humans tend to avoid things that kill humans.”
True and I agree. However there is evil in the world that sometimes despite the effort cannot be avoided. The BOR guarantees us the opportunity and method to defend ourselves from these evils.