I suppose when everything's just chemical chance etc., facts are meaningless, and setting up straw men is as good a way to win arguments as any? It's like "why bother", right?
Posted on 02/12/2010 3:31:27 PM PST by Colonel Kangaroo
HUNTSVILLE, AL (WAFF) - Police said a female member of the UA-Huntsville staff shot and killed three co-workers on campus.
Huntsville Police, Madison County Sheriff's department and HEMSI responded to a shooting at the UAH campus at 4:00 Friday afternoon.
The shooting happened in the Shelby Center, a math and science classroom building.
Authorities said a female faculty member during a Biology faculty meeting learned she would not receive tenure. She then pulled out a gun and started shooting.
(Excerpt) Read more at wlbt.com ...
The extent to which grants are 'profitable' for the university is greatly exagerated. In most cases, the salary money from grants goes to pay extra compensation for faculty members (such as summer salary), rather than to replace the salary dollars contributed by the state. Almost never does a tenure track faculty member cover more than a tiny fraction of their regular salary (5-15%) with grant money. However, roughly half of the time of every fauclty member at major universities is devoted to 'research'. The money that pays faculty to conduct often meaningless research comes directly from the pockets of state taxpayers at most public institutions. At private institutions, the money comes indirectly from taxpayers through student loans/aid to cover the enormous tuition costs, which are then used to pay faculty salaries for faculty members that spend only a fraction of their time teaching.
Don't get me wrong. I've built and run successful research laboratories, and all faculty members should be engaged in some research to keep current. However, there are huge cross-subidies in the system where state taxpayers are paying faculty to write meaningless papers that are read by a half dozen people worldwide, when they think they are paying faculty salaries to educate their children.
Women faculty members feel like they are entitled to tenure. They think they are akin to blacks under Jim Crow.
Ahhh, she’ll go to jail, write of her experiences, convert to Islam. Then she’ll get published, become famous, then get paroled. She’ll get a job in a womyn’s studies literature section at some university, get tenured and she’ll be set for life!(sarcasm on).
“You would have to get that confirmed that it was premeditated”
True, and equally anyone would have to get it confirmed that it was not. Someone arbitrarily stated that it was not, so I responded by arbitrarily stating that it was!
It probably was though. Lib college woman - not your standard concealed carry to-keep-people-safe type. Most likely premeditated murder.
True, and equally anyone would have to get it confirmed that it was not. Someone arbitrarily stated that it was not, so I responded by arbitrarily stating that it was!
I'm sure the DA is going to be "proving his case" on the matter... and a jury will consider that one. But, it's as likely that it was premeditated as much as it might not be... at this point, one can't tell.
But, then again, that's why we have trials... doncha know... :-)
If someone is being paid from research funds, then their job is absolutely to do research. For tenure-track faculty members, the salary of their job for life is paid directly from the taxpapers (at a public institution) or indirectly through government student aid for high tuitions (at private institutions). These faculty positions are sold to taxpayers on the premise that the facutly are engaged in educating students, so if they are engaged in mostly 'research' and little teaching, there is a problem.
Actually, at a lot of schools, their main job is to pull in grant money.
The extent to which these research programs are 'profitable' to university is greatly exagerated. Yes, they increase overall revenues, but they are heavily supported by cross-subsidies.
A university may make a big deal in a press release about a new $1 million dollar grant where five faculty are going to work on a project for 3 years. However, little or none of that grant will support the basic salary of the faculty members who are working on it. The money will be spent on graduate students salaries, lab equipment, travel, and extra summer salary for the faculty members. If the five faculty members are earning $100,000 annually with 30% fring benefits and they are spending 1/3 of their time on this project, then the university is spending about $650,000 on faculty time which isn't charged to the project. That's before factoring in the lab space, secretary time and other factors needed to support the projects.
Yes, the university is increasing it's overall revenue by winning that grant. But they are accomplishing it by diverting resources that were originally intended for teaching. If Wal-Mart was evaluating a new revenue producing idea, and it turned out that it required keeping the customers waiting in line with the cashiers left their cash registers to do something else, their accountants would factor in that cost. Universities don't.
Oh there is mania in those eyes. People have got to learn not to try to finesse and play mind games with unbalanced people. Crazy folks OFTEN DO know what other folks are thinking about them and are often sensitive to subtle speech nuances used to try to pacify them while at the same time criticize or exclude them. She took the denial of tenure as a total rejection of her as a person. I’m not sympathizing with her nor am I blaiming the folks she killed. As I understand the story, she was up for tenure consideration which meant the committee involved was in a position to offer tenure. If tenure was not to be available because of budget issues, they should have never started the process to consider her.
My guess, and I have seen this type of thing happen by experience, they went thru a shuck and jive exercise just so they could get rid of a person that most in that department found distasteful. They learned their lesson the hard way. Many crazy people define themselves by their own perceived jobs and the inflated value they place on their job. They have no strong internal compass so they use external structure to help them maintain some semblance of meaning and order in their lives. Threaten those structures and they will fight to the death to maintain those structures; to do otherwise means that the paranoid individual has no more being and is dissolved into nothingness.
Hence the psychology you find in Islamic extremist Jihadi movements!
In fact, private universities do confiscate your money to operate. Most good private schools charge outrageously high tuition ($30-40K per year is not uncommon), which few students could afford, unless they were heavily subsidized by government student aid (Pell grants, etc) or government guarantteed student loans. So you're paying for the private school too.
“that’s why we have trials”
Sure, thankfully we can’t incarcerate on the basis of what we instinctively know to be true, because people would inevitably abuse that. But truth is not determined by trials, only the most just outcome, ie. just-ice. We know OJ killed his wife, despite the courts, for example.
Two small changes to tenure systems have been widely reported in recent years.
Some universities have made more use of non-tenure-track instructors, especially for introductory freshmen/sophomore level classes. These instructor positions are largely dead-end jobs, with little opportunity for advancement, but at most universities, the vast majority of instructional positions are still tenure-track faculty members.
Second, many universities now have some form of post-tenure review available in theory. So if a tenured faculty member is truly non-productive in every aspect of their work, such a review can be used as a threat to pressure that faculty member to improve or retire. However, these review processes which theoretically allow a tenured faculty member to fired usually take 2-3 years of detailed evaluations, with the strong presumption in favor of the faculty member at every step of the way. Post-tenure review is seldom, if ever, invoked as more than a threat.
You get splinters that way. Baseball bat is better. Or a sword.
Laz, Laz. Here is hitable material:
No still no lady with green sweater and high heels...wonder if the photo was an early mistake and they took it out.
Question for you: I get the impression that a major factor in whether somebody gets tenure is how much grant money that person brings in as a result of his research. Do you find that to be true?
My guess, and I have seen this type of thing happen by experience, they went thru a shuck and jive exercise just so they could get rid of a person that most in that department found distasteful. They learned their lesson the hard way. Many crazy people define themselves by their own perceived jobs and the inflated value they place on their job. They have no strong internal compass so they use external structure to help them maintain some semblance of meaning and order in their lives. Threaten those structures and they will fight to the death to maintain those structures; to do otherwise means that the paranoid individual has no more being and is dissolved into nothingness.
I think you've explained it.
It could be a lady who they initially thought was the shooter, or connected with the shooter.
Or it could be the husband, who was reported as also arrested. Haven't seen a picture of him yet, though I've been looking...
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