Fort Hays State University fired a professor and debate coach on Friday, just weeks after video surfaced on YouTube of his dropping his shorts in front of judges at a national tournament. The university also suspended its debate team, one of the best in the country, over concerns that the collegiate-debate circuit had become too uncivilized.
The coach, William Shanahan III, a professor of communication, got into a shouting match with a judge—and at one point briefly dropped his shorts and exposed his underwear—during the national tournament this past spring of the Cross Examination Debate Association.
Officials at Fort Hays State said they did not hear of the incident until video of it was posted on YouTube in early August and people began complaining to the university. The clip, which was replayed by local and national news media and has since been removed from YouTube, shows Mr. Shanahan swearing and gesturing violently with his head and hands before the mooning.
"When someone is representing Fort Hays State University, they have a special duty, and your behavior speaks to your institution as well," said Edward H. Hammond, the university's president, in explaining why the incident had led to the professor's dismissal. "That behavior clearly breached Bill's duty." In a news release issued on Friday, officials said that Mr. Shanahan's actions had violated the university's faculty code of ethics.
The president, who took part in debate competitions while in college, said he had decided to suspend the team for at least a year after watching other video recordings from the tournament, which show students swearing and yelling during the competition.
"Our concern is that debate has evolved into something other than an act that really supports our educational principles and values," said Mr. Hammond. He said that the university would still honor all scholarships given to its debaters but that no students would represent Fort Hays State at the debate association's tournaments this year.
Mr. Shanahan had coached the debate team at the university for 10 years, and he once led it to a national championship.
'I'm Not a Monster'
Reached at his home on Friday, Mr. Shanahan said his biggest concern was the negative effect his "bad behavior" had had on his students and the university.
"I'm not a monster—I'm somebody who is committed to his students and his university," he said. "I'm an ethical person, but I violated that code in the moment." He said he now planned to write.
"I thought I was in a safe house," he added. "I thought I was part of a community that recognized the importance of handling problems internally."
The debate association did quietly start an investigation just after the incident, even before the video appeared online, according to Gordon W. Stables, a vice president for the association and the director of debate at the University of Southern California.
"We believe in the core value of the activity," Mr. Stables said in an interview. He said the organization was working to develop a new code of conduct as a result of the incident.
He also defended the overall educational benefits of debate. "These are 20-year-old students talking about issues like how to restart the peace process in the Middle East," he said. Despite students' letting loose with what he called "the occasional f-bomb" during debates, he said he "wouldn't view the activity as corrupted by the language."
College debate has changed radically in the past 20 years, say its leaders. In fact, Mr. Shanahan had been a pioneer of what he calls a "revolution" in debate. An activity that once focused on policy issues, he said, now also engages philosophy, and has been influenced by postmodernism and other theoretical disciplines.
"The activity has advanced, in my opinion, in a way that it's difficult for nonparticipants to understand," he said. "For many it's difficult to even recognize it as the activity of their youth."
Mr. Hammond, of Fort Hays State, said he hoped to restore the debate team in the future, though he planned to talk first to the debate association about its code of conduct. "If they can assure us that civility and reason and decorum are going to be there, we'll reinstate," he said.
The judge whom Mr. Shanahan had been berating during the filmed argument was Shanara Rose Reid-Brinkley, an assistant professor of communication at the University of Pittsburgh. She is seen in the video clip swearing and gesturing aggressively at Mr. Shanahan. Officials at Pittsburgh said last week that they were investigating the incident as well.
