“Have you ever voted against someone’s tenure because you didn’t think that person was a good teacher?”

One of my former graduate students, now an associate professor at another university, asked me this question recently. Let’s call him Rick — not his name — and say he teaches at Wombat State College. He’s been at Wombat for nine years and is fairly happy, despite the fact that he originally considered Wombat a “first job” sort of place and expected to have moved on by now. But he found a partner in another department and they bought a house together and have a child. Getting tenure right on time, so far Rick has published one book and three strong articles, is head of the Honors Program, and teaches a three-quarter load.

He’s considered a good guy by most of his 18 colleagues; the six untenured members of his department regard him as supportive and encouraging.

But there’s one woman Rick can’t abide. It’s nothing about her personally — it’s just that he observed her teaching last year and thought it was dreadful. He’s heard bad reports from students who’ve been in her courses. Almost without exception, they say she’s sloppy, disorganized, insecure, and poorly prepared. Writing a few vague comments on their papers, she hands her students work back both late and in batches, meaning that handfuls of them will receive their papers while others will have to wait until another class meeting to learn how they did on the same assignment.

She skips office hours regularly and cancels at least two classes every semester, “as if she’s working retail and cashing in on sick days,” according to Rick.

I ask if she publishes and if she contributes in other ways to the life of the college. After all, there are other ways to make a difference, right? “She’s edited a collection, has a manuscript under contract, and she’s got work in circulation. She goes to a lot of conferences, although fewer now since our travel budgets have been cut. And she organizes lectures on campus but usually by inviting people she knows from grad school.”

That doesn’t sound too bad, I say; it’s nothing stellar, but at least active-ish.

“But can I offer this woman a full-time teaching position for the rest of her life when she can’t teach? When I was observing her class, I felt nothing but pity for her students. She had only 11 people in the class — the limit was 30 but there were only 18 enrolled and only 11 showed up — and she couldn’t get any of them to speak. There wasn’t one hand raised. Nobody offered to add to the discussion. When she went to call on them because of the deadly silence and long pauses, it was clear she didn’t know their names. This was seven weeks into the semester. That 50-minute period took about nine hours.”

How did he handle the letter he submitted to the department about the class? Did he acknowledge his deep reservations?

Now it was Rick’s turn to offer a long silence.

“No. I didn’t have the guts. I tried to convey my distaste for her style by making the letter generic, writing chicken crap like ‘She attempts to connect with even the most reluctant student’ although I did force myself to say something like ‘Perhaps she might consider taking the “Improve Your Classroom Skills” workshop offered by Human Resources.’ My chair wanted to take that line out because she thought it might hurt the candidate but the committee voted to keep it in.”

I told him that I thought he did the right thing by at least mentioning his concerns about the class, but I also winced when I thought about his colleague reading that line about her teaching.

“How about her student evaluations?” I asked. “How did the students themselves rate her?”

“They put her in the lower-middle. She fell in the 5-6 range — not a disaster, but far below the department’s standard of 8 or so out of 10. But these aren’t usually factored in too seriously. I mean, there are too many variables in their responses, right?”

“So,” Rick asked me, “Have you ever voted against someone’s tenure because you didn’t think that person was a good teacher?”

“Yes,” I told him, “Yes, I have. But this is the first time I’ve admitted that out loud. And, to be honest, I’m not sure why. I’ve voted against people because of their lack of scholarship and not felt guilty. Why are we even having this conversation, Rick? Why is a dirty secret that some people just can’t teach?”