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Flasher Scandal Complicates U. of New Hampshire Contract Talks

October 27, 2011, 3:23 pm

The controversy surrounding the University of New Hampshire’s inability to fire a German professor convicted of indecent exposure has created a sticking point in contract talks between the university and its faculty union, a local newspaper, The Union Leader, reports. The old contract allows the university to fire tenured faculty members for “moral delinquency of a grave order.” But the professor’s crime, exposing himself to a woman and her daughter in a parking lot, was held by an arbitrator not to have been severe enough to have met that standard, putting the university in the awkward position of having to retain the professor in his job. The university wants to rewrite the contract to allow the immediate termination of any faculty member convicted of a violent or sexual offense, but union representatives have objected that such language is too broad and, for example, could be used to justify the termination of a faculty member arrested for urinating by the side of a road. Disagreements over pay and benefits also stand in the way of a contract settlement.

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  • forevergradstudent

    While I agree it’s absolutely necessary to write protection of this sort into the contract, surely the contract language can be sufficiently specific enough to avoid these situations in the future while still maintaining faculty protections.

  • wagn0194

    Is this the kind of employee you want to protect?

  • latb

    And everybody knows that urinating on the side of the road without consequence is a hard earned right for professors. 

    What do you think all that time spent in grad school was for??

  • bunicula

    who is this “arbitrator” ?  name him and shame him !

  • bbaylis

    the flap over these issues remind me of a situation at a small institution with which I had some passing acquaintance years ago. The student handbook ended up to be well over 100 pages becauses everytime a student did somethng that the administration or faculty found offensive that particular activity was banned and found its way into the student handbook. One of what I thought was the more amusing banned activities resulted from an incident involving a student with an athletic injury who  was provided a golf cart to get around campus. This particular student thought it would be funny to drive the cart down the main hallway of the administration building. So the next year the student handbook had a prohibition against using motorized vehicles inside any college building. They had to change the rule the next year when someone pointed out that the way the rule was written college vehicles and lawn service tractors couldn’t be run into the college’s barn for service and storage. I am not sure how they would handle motorized wheel chairs today.
    Arriving at precise, concise language in contracts and handbooks is an art that few people or institutions possess.

  • 3224243

    I didn’t know that flashing was tied to academic freedom.  Why isn’t the AAUP providing their usual vocal defense?

  • cwinton

    I assume that part of the issue here is that the professor’s conviction was for a misdemeanor and not a felony offense?  Absent the particulars behind that distinction (i.e., was the guy inebriated, off his gourd for some medical reason, or simply carelessly dressed?) and lacking a recap of the arbiter’s reasoning, it’s jumping to conclusions to decry the ruling.  We’re only getting the surface texture of the story, presumably because it has become a wedge issue in union contract negotiations.  I hope no one is seriously suggesting that using arbitration to settle a contract dispute between a faculty member and the administration is a bad idea.

  • oklahomakid

    The unionized faculty members are teaching so few courses and doing so little research that they spend their time protecting perverts. How many of the UNH faculty members are doing stuff like this, anyway? Perhaps the univeristy should hire a matchmaker so that they can find spouses who will meet their physical needs.

  • katisumas

    The prof went into therapy for months before resuming teaching.  Give that fellow a break already!  And also give  mentally ill people in general a break, particularly since one out of four Americans will suffer from a mental illness in the course of their lives.  You too might need help one of these days.

    It seems to me that the Harvard profs who took millions from Kadhafi (Quadafi) to do PR for him and make him sound like a decent person have done much worse….

  • katisumas

    The guy suffered an episode of mental illness.  He has undergone treatment and his doctors have pronounced him cured/stable.  So yes, he was “off his gourd”  — hope it doesn’t happen to you or me, but it could..

    And you’re right, his act was a misdemeanor.  It takes a felony to get fired from most jobs, including academic ones.

  • thedoctorisin

    So do we have to wait for a felony before we stop someone from harming our students or fellow staff / faculty? 

  • bunicula

    yes, let’s give him a break (which part do you suggest we break !  :) )
    If “cured”, this “poor guy” should have the decency to resign and move on to different job
     

  • anonytrans

    Yeah, I heard those are really easy to find right now.

  • old nassau’67

    Another case of terminology hastening to catch up to the times. The professor, Edward Larkin, pled (or “pleaded”) guilty to a misdemeanor, not a felony. If the statutes of New Hampshire consider exhibiting one’s genitals (not in the NH winter, surely) a misdemeanor, then UNH is stuck with the professor. I would think that the contract could be rewritten to make a felony, or repeated misdemeanor, a “fireable” offense.

  • hawkeye515

    On the bizarro Planet Faux, I’m sure all that you’ve described actually happens. On Planet Earth, however, reality is somewhat more nuanced.

  • bsawhill

    Readers of ProfHacker (and elsewhere) might also be interested in Skritter (http://www.skritter.com)

    The Skritter development team found  (through their own experience as college language learners)  that flashcards were extremely ineffective as a learning tool ( according to their research, after three semesters, students only remember 39 % of the characters they’ve learned. Skritter uses a spaced repetition algorithm and Skritter users remember 90.2% on average).

    You can read about the tool here: http://www.skritter.com/about. 

    I would encourage Chinese/Japanese language learners to try the demo and then sign up for an account to use the complete program. http://www.skritter.com/demo

  • hagerstown

    I also use Anki: http://ankisrs.net/ and it’s wonderful. I use the android app to study Thai and Chinese. You tell the program how soon it should bring back the word so that if you have trouble with it, you are reviewing it much more often. I find that the word does begin to stick after several repetitions. And I can easily add new words that I run across. I also use it to remember names and people. It works great. 

  • geopa58

    I use Anki to help me learn the names of the students in my classes, along with a few other facts about them, such as adviser, research topic, and outside interests. 

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