On Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:13:07 -0800, Marie Helweg-Larsen wrote: >It appears (according to the news paper article) that the dean did have a 10 >min collegial chat with the professor (and other administrators) and then >suspended her. I wonder how the university determined that she was a threat >(and such a threat that a security guard escorted her off the premises). I too have no additional information about the situation but I think the following may be relevant:
(1) The professor in question is an African-American woman who had apparently caused some "concern" for the school's administrators. Quoting the article: |Gadsden also said the Facebook-based suspension had roots in a |2008 incident, when she published an essay in The Chronicle of Higher |Education that was critical of what she saw as inadequate efforts to retain |minority faculty on university campuses. | |In that essay, Gadsden, who is black, cited poor treatment by students |at several campuses where she'd worked. | |She said one student called her "the N-word while passing me in the hall," |while another threw something at her as she went to her car, among other |examples. | |"I was trying to be very careful and not mention any names of institutions," |she said of the essay. "I was really writing about a larger issue that a number |of institutions have. ... I was never suggesting it was just ESU or anything |like that." | |Gadsden said the letter resulted in three sometimes tense meetings — one |with ESU's president and two with top administrators. They proposed |forming a committee to reach out to faculty of color, but nothing happened, |she said. She also said the letter sparked other tensions internally. Nothing puts a faculty person in better with the adminstration than the "hint" that they may be less than fair. "Disgruntled employee" today takes on additional meaning which administrators will be quick to seize as a justification for their actions. (2) The Representativeness Heuristic: I would not be surprised if the administrators relied upon their "gut feeling" (tm Gerd Gigerenzer) to come to a "fast and frugal" decision that there were enough "features" or "aspects" to Gadsden to make her an adequate match to what they might consider to be "trouble-maker" faculty. And as we all now know, we all must now be hypervigilent for trouble-maker faculty. (3) Confirmation Bias: see, she gets suspended and what does she do? She make a public issue of this by going to the press. Is there anything that makes one a trouble-maker than going to the news media about being "allegedly" wronged? The administration is probably patting themselvs on the back that they suspended her before she could bring to campus a tactical nuclear weapon. There are probably additional cognitive biases and heuristcs at work. It would probably be a useful exercise to determine how many influenced a decision when the decision-maker thought that they were being measured and rational in their decision-making. >I don't know anything about this case specifically. I worry that throwing >the book on every possible incidence is a distraction away from the actual >serious (and extremely rare) incidence of workplace violence. There is real problem in predicting violence because it is hard to see it coming (it often involves people that seem like such unlikely candidates; one reason why serial killers seem to be so successful is because they appear to be so normal rather than the monsters we imagine such people to be) but after the "I knew it all along heuristc" kicks in, it is hard not to think that one should have seen it coming. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] -----Original Message----- From: Anthony Golden [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, March 01, 2010 5:54 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: RE: [tips] Professor Suspended Over Facebook Venting While I was sitting in the waiting area at a small regional airport in Virginia in the early 1970s, two young men sitting next to me were talking in hushed tones about the bomb they were carrying. I could see them smiling and looking upward at a rather large microphone hanging from the ceiling by a cord (airport security in the early days of our loss of innocence). Within minutes both were handcuffed and being led away by police. Laughing and winking (actually or virtually) while making a threat do not necessarily make it any less real and we know how difficult it is to interpret emotional intent even with adequate context. Imagine how one of us would feel if a student we barely knew walked into our office after class, smiled, and while making a mock gun out of hand and fingers says "Well Professor, that was a much better class today and I've decided to hold off killing you for a while." If a trained psychologist is unable to accurately evaluate the potential for sudden aggressive violent behavior during an extensive interview or protracted treatment, why should we expect a dean to be able to do so in a collegial conversation. Imagine trying to explain after the fact why no action was taken toward an individual who made a threat and subsequently carried it out. Tony Anthony Golden, Ph.D. PACAT Incorporated / NOMESys 866-680-2228 www.collegeoutcomes.com -----Original Message----- From: Helweg-Larsen, Marie [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, March 01, 2010 3:11 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: RE: [tips] Professor Suspended Over Facebook Venting Yes it is surprising that people don't have common sense (my daughter's high school FB friends repeatedly post detailed pictures on FB of their underage drinking and drug use). But is suspension for the professor (or any employee) really necessary! What about just a normal "chat" by the dean (or whomever) reminding the professor about how public facebook is. Gesh - imagine if people had to be suspended every time they didn't make a good choice or made a minor error. Marie **************************************************** Marie Helweg-Larsen, Ph.D. Department Chair and Associate Professor of Psychology Kaufman 168, Dickinson College Carlisle, PA 17013, office (717) 245-1562, fax (717) 245-1971 Office hours: Mon & Wed 2-3:30 http://users.dickinson.edu/~helwegm/index.html **************************************************** -----Original Message----- From: Penley, Julie [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, March 01, 2010 3:56 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: RE: [tips] Professor Suspended Over Facebook Venting It's like that old commercial...they tell two friends, and they tell two friends, and so on and so on. I'm not a FB expert but, while Gadsden's posts wouldn't be seen by non-friends, I believe comments to her posts would be visible to the poster's friends. Right? Depending on where she's doing her FB'ing, universities have the legal authority to monitor employee's computer use. Although a lack of common sense isn't a crime, this case is a good example of why people should think twice about what they post on social networking sites. It's hard to convey humor (or sarcasm or whatever she was going for) in writing. Julie Julie A. Penley, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Psychology Special Assistant to the Dean El Paso Community College PO Box 20500 El Paso, TX 79998-0500 Office phone: (915) 831-3210 Department fax: (915) 831-2324 email: [email protected] webpage: http://www.epcc.edu/facultypages/jpenley -----Original Message----- From: Michael Smith [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, March 01, 2010 1:44 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Professor Suspended Over Facebook Venting I suppose one of her 'friends' must have supplied the postings to the relevant people otherwise how would they have it if it was only visible to her friends? (admitting I don't really know much about facebook). Is freedom of speech still alive? --Mike On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 12:44 PM, Pollak, Edward <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Professor Suspended Over Facebook Venting > > East Stroudsburg University has suspended Gloria Gadsden, a sociology > professor, for joking comments she posted on her Facebook page that > apparently were taken seriously, The Pocono Record reported. One comment was > about wanting to hire a hit man. Another said "had a good day today, DIDN'T > want to kill even one student :-). Now Friday was a different story." > Gadsden said that in the meeting where she was told of the suspension, a > dean referenced last month's murders at the University of Alabama in > Huntsville. Gadsden said that the humor was clear to her Facebook friends > and she doesn't know why the university was monitoring her account. > University officials said that they did not routinely monitor Facebook > accounts and that they couldn't discuss details of Gadsden's case. --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=979 or send a blank email to leave-979-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
