Everyone can remember a particular teacher from his or her educational history that simply wasn’t cut for the job. My otherwise outstanding Wisconsin public high school, where I received a full and rigorous preparatory education, had one particular egregious veteran of the classroom. We all know the stereotype: couldn’t keep control of the class, couldn’t keep lesson plans organized, couldn’t challenge students with difficult concepts, or just outright didn’t want to be in front of a score of teenagers for hours each day. In my particular instance, guidance counselors and school administrators admitted privately to several of my peers and their parents they knew the particular teacher shouldn’t be in a classroom, but did so with a look that combined pity with indignity. The school was hamstrung from taking action, as WEAC’s (the state teachers’ union) collective bargaining power prevented dismissal unless overt misconduct could be established. Plain sloppiness was not a sufficient pejorative to meet due process in terminating an ineffective teacher, in spite of the fact that so many unspoken lines had been crossed and students were being shortchanged.
Similar situations are present on this campus. Though the TAA will never admit it, all undergraduates will study under a Teaching Assistant who isn’t up to snuff during their careers at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Whether ill versed in the material, unhelpful at exam time or just plain lazy, the bad TA is a universal bane of the undergraduate existence at this university. But the true tragedies are that the remarkably slim possibility for recourse by students shortchanged by poor TAs and that the rewards for being an excellent TA, working hard on behalf of students day in and day out, are almost non-existent. Thankfully, with the nature of graduate work, TA turnover rate is relatively high compared to high school teachers. A bad TA can ruin a course but can’t sour a department.
Not so with tenured professors. Student regent Beth Richlen concedes the one aspect of university life upon which the regents are most unwilling to interfere is the tenure process. When UW-Superior professor John Marder was dismissed in 1998 under vague allegations of uncollegial misconduct, faculty committees from each campus in the state rushed to condemn the circumstances of his dismissal. It is no coincidence University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill’s faculty peers at institutions across the country failed to condemn him where political leaders leapt at the chance. The power to grant tenure and the protections for academic freedom tenure provides are worth dogged protection from political interference in the name of academic freedom, especially at state universities. When legislatures start mussing in the particulars of classroom speech, their efforts must be so intrusive as to be destructive to the honest consideration of difficult or unpopular ideas.
But Churchill has left CU with an image problem extending far beyond his ludicrous political commentary, which taken alone can’t proscribe termination. If unrealistic political views were cause for termination from this or any university, faculty lounges would quickly go the way of the buffalo. More difficult are Churchill’s now-confirmed acts of plagiarism and academic misconduct that have CU’s vultures circling about his head. The university has appointed a task force to make a comprehensive review of Churchill’s viability at the school. University President Elizabeth Hoffman has already announced her resignation over the matter.
The Denver Post reports a buyout of Churchill’s contract is in the works. Rather than fight the battle of tenure revocation and establishing guidelines for misconduct that can be universally applied as points of law, CU is flirting with soliciting private donations to finance Churchill’s early retirement. Clearly, paying off erroneous behavior in the academy sets a dangerous precedent. What might we hear out of some professors’ mouths if the pot at the end of the rainbow can be found with a little politically incorrect commentary? This is the difficulty with political intrusion into the classroom.
The bottom line: public employees are hard to fire by the letter of the law, and even more so when a tenure committee or union bargaining unit stands behind their employment status on principle alone. Turning a blind eye to standards in the classroom assures only a more universal low and saps the power of the student. To borrow from Ralph Nader, consumers must be empowered.
All students fill out the obligatory TA and professor evaluation forms presented them at the close of each semester. Most seem to go about the ritual casually, always unsure if the next 10 minutes of their lives might be better spent enjoying the warmth of spring on a walk down Bascom Hill. How much more seriously might students take those surveys, in their present or a more formal incarnation, if some quantitative assurance on how the given department handles personnel decisions could be clarified? One wonders if students might find office doors cracking open, lectures a touch crisper and if Churchill might not have been exposed long ago.
Eric B. Cullen ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in history.
