The University of Missouri system now requires new faculty members to undergo criminal-background checks, the Associated Press reports.
The expanded policy went into effect Monday at the system’s four campuses, in Columbia, Kansas City, Rolla, and St. Louis.
Employees — part-time and temporary workers included — who are up for promotions and transfers will also be subject to background checks. Student workers are exempt.
Of course, the Missouri system has conducted background checks on all employees except faculty members for the last decade. But that’s of little comfort to some professors who fear the checks may adversely affect civil rights and academic freedom.
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5 Responses to U. of Missouri to Require Background Checks
Adam DeConinck - November 4, 2011 at 12:49 pm
I have also found this extremely annoying. I use BibTeX instead of EndNote, but building the proper style for any given publication is still a pain.
mbelvadi - November 5, 2011 at 5:03 pm
I like the answer by another commenter to another recent article about citation styles – that it’s the academic version of a hazing ritual. I really can’t come up with a better explanation. Whatever you do, please don’t pass on the ritual to your undergrad students in the form of taking off points for such minor errors in whatever style you require them to use.
kwrigley - November 7, 2011 at 10:32 am
At least the medical community has made a strong showing with the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html
I do not know how well these apply in various bibliographic management tools.
Andrew Francois - November 10, 2011 at 7:35 am
I too use Scrivener, and its a joy. Hell for me only happens when I am forced to use MSword (on a Mac) for no other reason other than for integration with EndNote in the final formatting. I wish it wasn’t so, I wish Apple Pages had full EndNote support and I could format my final document in something (simple) actually designed for document layout.
bfrank1 - November 15, 2011 at 11:36 am
Why not? You don’t have to have a license to be publisher, and you can do pretty much any damned thing you can think of to make authors and readers dance. After a lifetime of trying to explain this to students, I now have to take a moment to stare into the middle distance and ward off the hysterical laughter before I try, yet again, to explain the ‘Ding-an-sich’ quality of editorial choice, as it affects us through time and space.