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Editorial: Improving our faculty

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by Badger Herald Editorial Board

Wednesday, March 8, 2006

At its latest meeting, University of Wisconsin-Madison's Faculty Senate formally expressed displeasure with a Board of Regents policy draft on faculty suspension. Specifically, the Senate opposed allowing faculty to be suspended without pay when charged with a felony.

Importantly, the policy states that a school's provost must also believe there is a "substantial likelihood" the faculty member committed the crime. Still, Senate members said they had "issues" with the lack of due process in the policy.

Frankly, this Board has issues with their issues.

Our beef, however, is not with the substance of the Regents' sound policy draft, but rather with the Faculty Senate's obstructionism.

Given the current state of UW's public image, we believe the draft on faculty suspension put forward by the Board of Regents committee is timely and appropriate. After a spate of sordid events involving UW employees, the Faculty Senate's foolish and petty objections set a bad example precisely when a good one is needed. Indeed, the body's move appears to illuminate an underlying motive, namely that of protecting professors' jobs at all costs.

Despite the Faculty Senate's lamentations, we feel the new policy does not give short shrift to due process interests. Fifth Amendment self-incrimination concerns are wholly misplaced, as the protection is largely confined to the context of a court of law. The requirement that professors inform the provost when they commit crimes of an egregious nature is sensible and appropriate. It is also constitutional.

The Senate also criticized a provision in the policy that would allow for an "institutional standing committee" to review proposed dismissals. The faculty took issue with the timeline of 15 days and the burden of proof standard, in spite of the fact that the current dragged-out faculty dismissal timeline is a root part of the problem. We feel the proposed changes would strike a positive balance between preventing unnecessary blemishes to the UW as a whole and preserving individual rights.

Due process, especially in this context, is a lot like sodium — it's crucial for good health, but an overdose is as detrimental as a deficiency.

We applaud the committee's draft policy. The document is marked by a willingness to make concrete change in suspension policies to rectify shortcomings in the current process. We continue to encourage the Board of Regents to adopt this promising policy.

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Anonymous (March 8, 2006 @ 11:25am):

I wish the senators had as much common sense as the Badger Herald board. Someone is sentenced to prison for eight years and we have to waste everyone's time with an appeals process to determine that maybe he should be fired? Wouldn't being unable to show up for work for eight years be a bit of a problem? We have two other faculty who were convicted as felons almost exactly one year ago (they are not "the accused"; they are the guilty) and the appeal process for them is still going on.

The senators might wish to consider the rights and lives of victims as well as those of felons and the accused.

Anonymous (March 8, 2006 @ 5:02pm):

Should those professors be put in jail if they're convicted of felonies? YES!

But should they be outright fired if they're accused of a felony? Of course not.

Victims rights have nothing to do with this. Justice is served when they are prosecuted and sentenced, their job has nothing to do with this.

Anonymous (March 9, 2006 @ 12:44am):

The victims are still involved, because they are brought into the university appeals process. They go through a long ordeal from the felons, then the court system, and then the UW process. So yes, they do have something to do with this.