April 23, 2007

College Fires Adjunct Who 'Shot' Students in Class to Make a Point

An adjunct professor at Emmanuel College was fired last week after he mimed a classroom shooting while discussing the massacre at Virginia Tech with students in his financial-accounting class. Nicholas Winset, the professor, used a marker pen to represent a gun and pointed it at several students, saying “bang” repeatedly until one of the students, whom he had prepared beforehand, “shot” the professor with another marker, according to The Boston Globe.

In a four-part video that he later posted on YouTube, Mr. Winset says that he was trying to suggest to his students that “fighting when you are confronted with violence is probably a good idea,” and that “gun control is probably not a panacea.” In the online video, the professor defends his actions and decries what he calls the “prissiness” in American culture, a state of mind that he says led to his dismissal.

Emmanuel College released a statement after Ms. Winset’s dismissal, saying that the Boston college prohibits “any behavior or action which makes light of or mimics the terrible tragedy at Virginia Tech.” —John Gravois

Comments

1. It seems to me that students and teachers did “fight” back when possible, including distracting Cho so he didn’t shoot someone else and barring the doors so he couldn’t enter the room. And, yes, we are all a little more sensitive to certain statements and actions now than we would have been. I think that’s only natural.

   — Anon    Apr 23, 02:08 PM    #

2. One question. What did this lesson have to do with financial accounting?

   — Robert    Apr 23, 05:02 PM    #

3. Key word: adjunct. These types—often full-time teachers at other schools who then shirk their out-of-class work for that job (grading, planning, etc.) in order to step up a level and teach a college class—whether or not they are actually qualified to do so (and are in effect scabs whose very presence cuts the need for full-time faculty, and thus reduces full-time jobs in the profession), are, in my experience, accidents waiting to happen—like this gentleman, whose bizarre take on a national tragedy in order to make some obscure “point” (which was?)—though actually to make, in this case, himself the subject of the class, thus reducing time which needs to be spent on the actual course content, and thus showing no respect for the subject matter. Yet another black eye for the profession, this “cult of personality”-based method, the last (or is it the first?) refuge of the unfit-to-teach scoundrel. Don’t let this fellow hide behind “free speech”—his actions do not fall under its auspices in this case. Few of us enjoy true “free speech” when on the job. And don’t forget to pass along a portion of the blame to Emmanuel, for employing him in the first place.

   — anthony    Apr 23, 09:13 PM    #

4. Lol, locking a door is not fighting back. Fighting back is disabling/ killing the maniac.

   — mike    Apr 23, 10:05 PM    #

5. Well, anthony, interesting if not grossly overgeneralized view. Here’s a different perspective on adjuncts: at our local regional research university, many of the adjuncts are known as the better teachers. Why? Because the tenure-track faculty don’t get tenure for teaching, they get it for research. And who set those guidelines? The tenured faculty. Who can change those guidelines? The tenured faculty. If tenure was granted with any serious consideration for teaching, department chairs wouldn’t be searching desperately for adjuncts who take the job solely because they’re interested in teaching students (it sure isn’t for the money). I haven’t looked at the data yet, but I would not be surprised to find that smaller colleges, in particularly liberal arts colleges, that tend to emphasize teaching typically employ proportionally fewer adjuncts. Tough to call adjuncts scabs when tenured faculty are the ones preventing teaching from being the priority it would have to be to reduce the demand for adjuncts.

   Ironically, I happen to agree with most of the non-adjunct-related remainder of your comment – this guy made himself (or at least his public policy views) the subject at the expense of financial accounting.

   — anon    Apr 23, 11:13 PM    #

6. Reading about this incident elsewhere, in a fuller article, I learned that the president of the college had explicitly told the faculty to discuss the shootings. So much for “What does this have to do with financial accounting?” And the person who disparaged adjuncts needs to talk to a few.

   — Norman Boyer    Apr 24, 09:03 AM    #

7. Dear Anthony,
   How offensive your absurd generalization of adjuncts. Some of us have no desire to join the ““tenured club” though we are committed teachers. I much prefer the happy freedom of choosing where I will live and work even if it means my contributions are completely disregarded or misunderstood by smug professors like yourself.

   — Mishelle Shepard    Apr 24, 10:05 AM    #

8. Perhaps if we ignored this professor’s label (adjunct, tenured, etc) and perhaps if we recognized a college as a place to acquire knowledge (what does this have to do with financial accounting) and did not ignore the evidence that many attempts were made to help the young man but ultimately no one would do the difficult (insensitive, whatever) thing and take responsibility to follow through rather than pass him on or say we’ve done all we can when nothing really was done – then maybe we would see this in a different light and maybe some REAL and USEFUL conversations with EFFECTIVE results could take place. It could happen anywhere to any of us.

   — Valerie    Apr 24, 11:55 AM    #

9. It seems from the CNN interview with the instructor that he was also trying to make a point about the relative number of deaths at VT vs. Iraq or elsewhere and generate some discussion about the varying intensities of reaction by the American public to one over the other. His mode for generating the discussion seems rather odd to me personally, but perhaps this blog could address that point?

   — M. E. Menninger    Apr 24, 12:33 PM    #

10. Anthony, your comments about adjunct instructors misses the point of the story. The only issue the instructor’s status as an “adjunct” would have an impact on was his quick dismissal from his position. Please spend some time learning about what adjuncts truly do before you make such bold, untrue statements.

    — adjunct instructor    Apr 24, 01:33 PM    #

11. Would he have been fired if he had turned the lesson into a passionate argument for more gun control?

    The college was at fault for calling on all faculty to introduce this event into classes in the first place. How many faculty are qualified to lead a sensible discussion? Perhaps those teaching about mental health, or law. But accounting professors? If anyone should be fired it should be the person at Emmanuel College who issued that idiotic directive in the first place.

    — PJ    Apr 24, 08:30 PM    #

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