OPINION & EDITORIAL
Crime and termination
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by Badger Herald Editorial Board
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
After months of debate and a seemingly endless barrage of verbal barbs from the Legislature, a Board of Regents committee drafted a proposal that would make some much-needed changes to the University of Wisconsin's faculty disciplinary process.
Should the proposal — which the regents stress is still in the drafting stage — be put into effect, students and taxpayers will no longer be forced to line the pockets of felons, the UW termination process will no longer rival the toil of Sisyphus for efficiency and the university may finally be able to quiet the cries of the Legislature (or at least decrease their volume).
In direct response to the recent controversy surrounding UW's Felongate, the proposal would allow the university to dismiss faculty on the basis of "serious criminal misconduct." To satisfy this requirement, according to the current proposal, a faculty member would have to engage in "conduct that constitutes the commission of a felony" and either present a danger to campus safety or "seriously impair" the university's "mission."
Though it remains unclear what exactly constitutes a serious impairment of the university's mission, this clause appears to finally allow UW to dismiss tenured faculty who commit the most egregious of crimes. And it should be noted that the language of this proposal would allow the termination process to kick in even in cases where the offending faculty succeed in pleading charges down to misdemeanors, provided the offense is sufficiently deplorable to constitute "commission of a felony."
The proposal would even set a semi-concrete time limit on the termination process, with the hope that any investigations and hearings be completed within approximately 60 days from the moment the university learns of criminal misconduct. The regents should be applauded for their attempts to streamline the remarkably cumbersome procedure while maintaining proper safeguards for due process. But in classic regents fashion, the fairly reasonable timeline is listed as a "goal" rather than a requirement in the drafted proposal and it may be extended with the approval of the provost.
While we would like to see a stronger commitment to reducing the length of the termination process, the current proposal does alleviate the harm associated with unreasonably lengthy investigations by allowing for suspension without pay during the duration of the termination proceedings for cases in which the offending faculty member has been formally charged, convicted or incarcerated.
Though far from perfect, this proposal is a major step toward improving a seriously flawed termination process and mending the sizable rift between the university and Legislature.
