Response to Old Timer

Date: Apr 29, 2004

Response to Old Timer

Date: Apr 29, 2004

Sorry! Just one more question for Old Timer:

If SFT believed he had appropriate reasons to have the two professors dismissed, why did he not go through the normal chain of command?

Thanks again (in advance) for responding.

Date: Apr 29, 2004

I'm hoping Old Timer will see this and respond, so I'm bumping it up.

Fire Shelby · Status: Offline

quote:
Originally posted by: USM Sympathizer
"I'm hoping Old Timer will see this and respond, so I'm bumping it up."

I hate to disappoint you, but probably not. Most of the Dome Clones are one-post-wonders on this message board. They throw the trash out there, and then run and hide. Maybe Old Timer will return. (Wonder if me asking if he was kenbot had anything to do with him not responding. You know, Shelby doesn't like employees taking care of personal business on company computers and time.)

Date: Apr 29, 2004

Thanks, FS! At least Old Timer had something of greater substance to say than such eloquent SFT supporters as "Eatme" and the other person whose name was even worse!

Date: Apr 29, 2004

Sorry for the delay USMS, but I too have been gone for the day. Here are my answers to your questions:

1. I do think the faculty was unjustified in its vote of no confidence. They took that vote with NO facts whatsoever. Yes, I understand that it was based in part on other issues, but you must agree that it was primarily based upon the termination issue. It showed that they were pre-judgmental.

2. The faculty senate and graduate council are two separate issues. First, regarding the graduate council... That action was hypocritical. It was the graduate council that asked Dvorak to become a member last fall to teach grantsmanship. You must agree that she has excelled in promoting our faculty and increasing external dollars. Nothing has changed. As for the Faculty Senate, they are pursuing a false agenda. They claim their concern is her sitting on T&P issues, although she has no vote on those matters. However, she offered to give them her C.V. and meet with them to discuss it. They declined. She offered to recuse herself from T&P input if they would end this whole thing. But the FS leadership refused to present this offer to its membership and instead passed a resolution demanding that she remove herself from T&P input. That speaks volumes about their intentions.

3. G&S attracted so much support because those people did not practice what they preach--to think critically and skeptically. We are all guilty at times of following our emotions instead of reason.

4. I do think it was a mistake to remove G&S from the classroom, but I think SF's other actions were proper. The actions of G&S cannot be condoned under any circumstances.

5. This remains to be seen. I, for one, would love to see a joint faculty/administration task force that would develop a long and short range plan for raising faculty salaries to the SRBE average. Imagine what could be accomplished if all the energy that has been spent fighting each other is channeled into something to benefit everyone!

As to your last question, SFT did follow the right procedure. The President has the authority to initiate termination procedures.

Now, a question for you. Do you honestly and sincerely believe that G&S acted properly in: 1) Using AD's SS # 2) Misrepresenting themselves to people in Kentucky, and 3) Telling the world that they were acting upon an anonymous packet when, in fact, the "investigation" had been going on for months? You seem to be a reasonable person, so I have my doubts that you believe they were above board in this whole matter.

I appreciate your being professional and civil, unlike most of the others here, who can respond to a logical argument with nothing but childish name-calling.

Date: Apr 29, 2004

Don't be offended if I don't respond to you quickly. I have to take my Geritol and go to bed!

Fire Shelby · Status: Offline

quote:
Originally posted by: Old Timer
"Don't be offended if I don't respond to you quickly. I have to take my Geritol and go to bed!"

Oh, we're not easily offended here. However, it would behoove you to read the rules before you post. Your post in the Rachel Q. thread was a personal attack against another poster on this board. Unlike in the dome, you will follow rules here.

Date: Apr 29, 2004

quote:
Originally posted by: Old Timer
"Now, a question for you. Do you honestly and sincerely believe that G&S acted properly in: 1) Using AD's SS # 2) Misrepresenting themselves to people in Kentucky, and 3) Telling the world that they were acting upon an anonymous packet when, in fact, the "investigation" had been going on for months? You seem to be a reasonable person, so I have my doubts that you believe they were above board in this whole matter. I appreciate your being professional and civil, unlike most of the others here, who can respond to a logical argument with nothing but childish name-calling."

Old Timer, turnabout is fair play, so I will try to answer your questions. Others on the board, though, are far more familiar with all the intricacies of the issues, so I invite them to supplement my answers.

(1) As I understand it, the SS# was widely available through documents released to the public by USM. I do believe G&S had a right to investigate claims made on a curriculum vitae; indeed, I always assumed that the whole purpose of a curriculum vitae was to make public claims about one's credentials and thereby invite anyone to check the credibility of the claims.

(2) I believe G&S both denied that they misrepresented themselves.

(3) As I understand it, the inquiries were unofficial (and no findings were acted upon) in the summer of 2003 (as I understand it, they were prompted by GS's puzzlement about denial of tenure to a colleague); as I understand it, the inquiries became an "official" AAUP matter after the packet appeared.

Here is how Robert Campbell summarizes the events relevant to point 3 on his Liberty and Power blog:

"It emerged that Stringer began to be concerned about Dvorak's credentials in May 2003, when a colleague in the English Department was turned down for tenure because of Dvorak's negative evaluation (on the grounds that he was not doing enough to promote "economic development"). There was some curiosity at that point about Dvorak's having been an Associate Professor of English (as she claimed) at the University of Kentucky. Over the next few months, Stringer made some inquiries, and in December 2003, he notified the USM chapter of the American Association of University Professors about his concerns; he also notified Thames (in a letter that Thames never responded to or acknowledged) that he thought Dvorak had misrepresented her credentials. Until the AAUP chapter became involved, Glamser had no involvement in investigating Dvorak at all--but he had come to Thames' attention in Fall 2003 when he questioned USM's published enrollment figures, which turned out to have been deliberately inflated to make it appear to be larger than its 3 competitors at the top level of the Mississippi state system."

http://hnn.us/blogs/4.html

(By the way, Robert Campbell's summary of the testimony is one of the clearest I have seen; if you have any particular challenges to his account, I would sincerely appreciate hearing them.)

Again, I invite others to add to (or clarify) any of the points I have made above. I apologize in advance if I have misstated any facts.

I guess my basic problem, Old Timer, is with the extreme way President Thames seems to have handled this whole situation. Instead of sitting down with the professors and raising the kinds of concerns you have expressed, and perhaps even trying to disciplinine them in less extreme ways if he saw fit, he seems to have reacted precipitously and to have jumped to an extreme form of punishment: dismissal.

Since I take it that you are someone with a long familiarity with USM, wouldn't you agree with me that both of these professors have contributed enormously to the national and international prestige of the university and thus deserve to have been treated with more consideration? Should these two men really have been fired, even if in your opinion they made serious errors? Shouldn't they at least have been given stern warnings and a second chance? Couldn't there have been some less destructive, more charitable way of dealing with them?

I honestly hate to see what is happening at USM, although I have only driven through Hattiesburg on two occasions and have never stopped at USM. Surely you, Old Timer, cannot feel good about the enormous distrust and and demoralization that seems to exist among the USM faculty at present? And surely you cannot believe that this distrust and demoralization are entirely the result of a mass delusion?

I can only express my suspicion that raising faculty salaries will not begin to solve the problem. It is hard for me to imagine how, if I were a faculty member at USM, I could even begin to feel good about my job and work environment at the moment, no matter how large my salary might be.

Thanks again for trying to engage in a real dialogue.

Date: Apr 30, 2004

Just thought I'd kick this back up so Old Timer would have a chance to see it and respond. I will be gone for most of the day and may not have time to reply to any response for a day or two, maybe more. In the meantime, I want to send the two profs and their admirers my very warmest wishes; I am keeping my fingers crossed about today's announcement and am hoping the IHL will have the wisdom to begin correcting the problems at USM.

Date: Apr 30, 2004

quote:
Originally posted by: Old Timer
"... 5. This remains to be seen. I, for one, would love to see a joint faculty/administration task force that would develop a long and short range plan for raising faculty salaries to the SRBE average. Imagine what could be accomplished if all the energy that has been spent fighting each other is channeled into something to benefit everyone! ..."

Folks, I almost didn't see this as it was buried in a long e-mail posted by someone who had already been dismissed as a spoiler, if not a troll.

Don't be deceived. This is a clear administrative attempt to divide and conquer and to hold out the combined carrot and stick of reward and punishment for not making waves. The administration has been attempting to get the message out to faculty - don't make waves during the budget time or it will have a serious effect on your compensation and resources.

For too long, this administration has been cutting shady, backroom deals with individuals. Those of you who have been here a long time, you know that it is true...maybe even participated in the past. You also know that it is not right. What's the old economics term? I think it's the "fallacy of composition" - what is right for the individual is not necessarily right for the whole. Like the 40 senate members and the 430 faculty members, PLEASE continue to think about what is right for this university as a whole. Don't be seduced and don't be bribed. They're good at it; they've been successful in the past with this technique. Don't let them get away with it this time.