Comments on Sociology Dept. Fails Power Relationships?

• reflections over a year later
• Posted by still shell shocked on December 13, 2008 at 11:40pm EST

• I never participated in this discussion because it seemed like a trap at the time. Everyone who opened their mouth on the topic in the department became subject to harassment about how to think about it and to consider the consequences of speaking out before doing so. The "don't air departmental laundry" attitude was just the beginning of intimidation toward anyone who was considering voicing an independent opinion.

  My greatest shock at the time was the number of people who believed (and maybe still do) that repressing criticism, especially publicly voiced criticism, in the interest of faculty and graduates was a good and healthy plan for the future. In seminar after seminar, approaches to getting public attention for sociological problems are sought, and then the moment people get a chance to make a public example of dealing with their own problems, they bury their heads in the sand (and everything and everyone else that might make them look bad).

  It is still my belief as a sociologist that the way this discipline improves life is by studying social problems in order to create consciousness and influence change. Instead of that happening, this situation in this department resulted in an intensification of attitudes of defensiveness, denial, and deference toward public opinion perceived as evil and repressive - while no responsibility was taken for the repressive spirit among individuals working and studying in the department.

  I only pray that we're all healing and that we can all overcome the damage done and possibly do things more openly and fairly in the future.

• Time For A Sting?
• Posted by Craig C , political pundit at http://blogresponder.blogspot.com on March 19, 2007 at 6:56am EDT

• Without direct corroberation from student's testimony, not much can be done about this. Sounds like the University will need to plant fake students into the classes of some of the supected perpetrators, to catch them in the act.

• Sigh
• Posted by James on March 19, 2007 at 9:30am EDT

• The story says that professors act inappropriately, *according to anonymous comments from students*. One student says that filing a public complaint would be akin to being a martyr, but to me, hiding behind the veil of anonymity is just cowardly.

  Apparently a huge gap in understanding exists in Gainesville. Why are we convicting the sociology faculty of misbehavior with stories like this one, when clearly the behavior is not so bad that anyone is willing to subject themselves to any personal risk to complaint?

  In the United States, people are innocent until proven guilty. If someone wants to make a public accusation, where the professor has the right to review the accusation and defend herself or himself, then fair enough. But if no one wants to do that, every single one of the faculty in that department remains innocent and deserves only to be known by their scholarship, teaching, and service.

• Posted by John on March 19, 2007 at 10:11am EDT

• Dear James,
  You must be joking. By preserving the "deserving", the instructors in question who should be known only by "their scholarship, teaching, and service," you are placing the entire burden of proof on a rather sizeable number of students, the victims. While this tactic may work in a court of law, I sense that you have no idea how harrassment works, either for the perpetrator or the victim. I suggest you take a sensitivity class.

• Amazing!
• Posted by Dr. Tony Husemann , Science Dept. Chair at CCA on March 19, 2007 at 11:46am EDT

• I'd have to say, you've never been to college or grad school where I attended to not have seen this sort of pressure on students from profs. There is a god-like veil of unquestioned authority for many professors, and many I know, at Florida Atlantic U. for instance have expressed how they were attacked, abused, and berated for their beliefs for 45 minutes at a time. And that right in front of their classmates.

  In fact, the professor indicated he'd been doing that sort of thing "for 15 years" and "you can't get rid of me, people have tried." Whatever happened to the Civil Rights Act guarantees every intstitute of higher ed. signs off on as part of IRS regulation 75-50? Nondiscrimnation on the basis of "race, creed, color, or national origin" is patently illegal. So where are the DA's and prosecutors?

• reply to John
• Posted by Larry on March 19, 2007 at 12:55pm EDT

• John, I read with interest your comments, and now I am curious, as to why, rather than responding to James comments with substantive criticisms you state “I suggest you take a sensitivity class.” I have to admit that I have never taken such a class.

  First of all, University of Florida is obligated to provide people with some degree of due process before disciplining them.

  Second, The lowest level of “due process” as defined by the Supreme Court is often called “fundamental fairness” includes, at a minimum, notice of the charges, an known burden of proof as well as an opportunity to be heard.

  You propose, based on your training in “sensitivity” classes to eliminate the above. While I respect your view, the Supreme Court in Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 573 (1972), essentially held that when you go around accusing non-tenured faculty that might “that might seriously damage his standing and associations in his community” (which include “immorality” then due process concerns kick in. (I was unable to take a sensetivity class due to my low grades.)

  While I applaud your revisiting of such constitutional norms, I am not sure that we wish to jettison them at this moment, in favor of allowing the executive (i.e. governors and presidents) to deprive people of their jobs or liberty because someone unknown person alleged that they were offended in an unstated way.

• Nothing new at UF
• Posted by Halo on March 19, 2007 at 1:36pm EDT

• http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007703180329

• UF Student
• Posted by Gator08 at University of Florida on March 19, 2007 at 2:39pm EDT

• Where to start, well first off, I am in the Sociology graduate program at UF and thus have some insight as to what is going on. The first thing to note is that it is a majority of students who feel there are problems regarding racism and sexism within the department. There are differing views as to the extent of the problem and most are looking at the overall environment rather than singling out specific professors. The biggest difference between most students seems to be what to do about the situation, not whether or not the situation exists. The whole situation has created a rift between the faculty and the students, and within the students themselves. There are those who want to make things as public as possible to put pressure on the professors to be more respectful, and there are those that want to keep it "in house" to prevent articles like this from raising questions for all of us who will be graduating and looking for jobs in the near future. Unfortunately there is no easy solution on either front. While i do not believe any disciplinary action will be taken against professors, I do believe that there needs to be a dialoge between professors and students, the problem with that, however, is that those professors that students believe have the most problematic behavior are tenured and thus have no reason to attend such meetings in the first place, so it will be preaching to the quire.

• Dear John
• Posted by James on March 19, 2007 at 3:43pm EDT

• Your response actually models the whole problem, John.

  Let's say I found your post to be degrading and offensive, so I decide to speak to your supervisors or another office on your campus anonymously. Should you mandated to go to "sensitivity training" as a result or suffer some other penalty?

  Of course not. Unless I am willing to put my name on the line, bring formal charges, and provide evidence, then I could be making allegations up, just to harm your reputation.

  Incidentally, do you recommend a particular sensitivity training? I can think of three or four programs that would have huge political differences, so now you'd be imposing a particular diversity agenda on me.
  Not good.

  I really am not trying to be insensitive to the graduate students. My feeling is just that they have to decide how serious the matter is. If it's serious enough, then one or two or more of them should file individual complaints and let the processes happen. If not, let it go.

  This sort of behavior happens everywhere -- industry, academy, even church -- and everyone in life experiences discomfort from time to time. The real question is if the discomfort denies educational opportunities in this case. If so, then a complaint should be filed.

• sociology dept fails power relationships
• Posted by Mike on March 19, 2007 at 8:50pm EDT

• Where to start? Well, perhaps Gator08 belongs in a remedial English class, not a graduate sociology program.

• What a joke
• Posted by Racist Gator Sociologist , Grad student at University of Florida on March 20, 2007 at 1:56pm EDT

• Wow. It amazes me to see that a group of underperforming graduate students were able to parlay trumped up allegations into an Inside Higher Ed. Story. Being a student in in that department and knowing the 6-7 complaining studnets (out of 57) I'm compelled to declare shenanigans. The only reason these bellyaching malcontents have continued to flog this imaginary dead horse is to distract from their underperformance in the areas of teaching and scholarship... Seriously, they suck. It is their hope that by manufacturing a crisis they will be able to avoid becoming the miserable failures they were bound to become.

  There is nothing wrong with the UF Soc. Department other than a small band of professional agitators.

• Blaming is pointless
• Posted by Sympathetic on March 20, 2007 at 2:16pm EDT

• First, I don't think Gator08 was submitting their response for publication, and I think we can all look past some mechanical mistakes in a casual email to get to the content of what someone is saying.

  That said, Gator has a good point. Whatever is going on, clearly there is a rift between students and faculty in this department, and some dialogue is needed. There is probably miscommunication happening on all sides, and until everyone airs this out, it's just going to continue.

  Also, and maybe this is because I'm an administrator and not a tenured faculty member, no amount of tenure excuses treating anyone--students or colleagues--with disrespect. The same goes for students, of course. I hope that all parties involved can communicate productively at some point without feeling like their jobs or their degrees are in danger.

• Posted by Jeff D , Assitant Professor on March 21, 2007 at 5:51am EDT

• James:
  Why are you defending an institution as if it is a person? If people desire a change in government, isn't a secret vote sufficient evidence that the existing government isn't serving them? We don't hold trials to determine whether the US government is racist or sexist -- instead we look at concrete outcomes and aggregate public opinion.

  No one has charged any person with anything -- no professor is being called out by name and asked to defend his/her actions. Instead, students believe that there is a problem with the institution. Isn't that reason enough for the institutional protections (not punishments) reccommended in the article? How does moving to three-person committees punish any particular faculty member? It doesn't.

  Not everything is a criminal justice problem. Sometimes we have to design policies around what is "probably" or even "possibly" true (example: what are the odds that the US government would mandate a single Church without the First Amendment? I'd guess they are low, but that risk wasn't one that early Americans were willing to tolerate).

  These complaints show that the existing structure of the instution allows bad people to do bad things without consequences. In politics, we take this as a sign that we need to reform the structure, because even if our current leaders (read: faculty members) are good, selfless people, that won't always be the case and it would be foolish to design our departments around the assumption that no one will ever have unexamined prejudices or a tendency to bully others.

  Redesign the institution, and it will become difficult to discriminate without producing public evidence of such that CAN be used in a disciplinary proceeding against the few bad apples (if there are any of the less-than-fresh variety, that is).

• UF Soc alum
• Posted by Gatoralum06 , Assistant Professor at Illinois State University on March 25, 2007 at 6:00am EDT

• As a somewhat recent soc alum I would add that there is a sizable contingent of graduates who do not share the feelings of those making the accusations.

  When I was there recently, most students were aware of a few individual profs that were sometimes offensive, patriarichal, and maybe even racist. This was limited to an isolated few old timers (as is the case in many major university graduate departments). If anything, it was other graduates that posed more of a problem.

  As has been relayed to me some current students and faculty, it seems that there is a strong faction of newer grads who are or have pushed this issue with the effect being that it is now getting blown out of proportion; of which there will always be some unintended consequences.

  My suspicion is that these students want more then they deserve without encountering the obstacles of graduate life. I also think some their anger and perceived problems are misplaced anger misdirected at the faculty for what is essentially institutional shortcomings and the general malaise that sometimes characterizes the "down" part of graduate life.

  Grad school is not supposed to be easy and it certainly is a marathon of hoop jumping with some arrogance, offensiveness, and downright unprofessional behavior mixed in.

  However, it seems to me that the current bru-ha-ha at UF sociology is less institutional and more individual. And as such, it should have been handled internally.

  There was no need to drag everyone through the muck of one department's dirty laundry. If the current students feel vindicated in any way, I would suggest to them that their victory just might be Phyrric one.

  Former Soc Grad