http://integral.virishi.net/node/43997
Amy Bishop:
Seth Bishop:
Posted on 02/13/2010 11:47:33 PM PST by Bodleian_Girl
Colleague says suspect ‘aloof, superior’
The UAH professor accused of killing three colleagues Friday once called herself aloof, arrogant and superior, and a colleague did not disagree.
Psychology professor Eric Seemann also said he knew biological sciences assistant professor Amy Bishop was stressed about an adverse tenure decision, but he was shocked at how she dealt with her frustration.
Bishop, also referred to as Amy Bishop-Anderson by authorities, has been charged with capital murder. She is accused of killing three professors in her department — including department chair Gopi Podila — and wounding two professors and a staff member who were attending a faculty meeting.
‘Personal beef’
“What she told me was there were some people in her department — she did not name them — who had a personal beef with her,” Seemann said. “She said one or more of those people were directly involved with her tenure decision.”
Seemann said he had no clue Bishop’s frustration would lead her to the alleged shootings.
“She was sounding a little paranoid. I’m not sure she was taking responsibility for her part in the tenure decisions,” Seemann said of a conversation he had with her in November.
Seemann joined the faculty of the University of Alabama in Huntsville’s psychology department the same year Bishop joined its biological sciences department. Both were eligible for tenure in March 2009.
‘Not on list’
“They sent out the letter of everyone that was tenured,” Seemann said. “Amy’s name was not on the list.”
Bishop told Seemann she had hired attorneys to appeal the adverse decision, but in December she told him she was frustrated at her attorneys’ lack of progress.
The psychology professor said his counseling and forensics practices have exposed him to plenty of people with inclinations toward violence, but he saw no such signs in Bishop. He watched media reports as the public tried to understand what had happened.
‘How could this be?’
“I’m thinking, wow, who could this be? My thinking was some student went crackers and shot up a bunch of people for various reasons.
“Then they said it was a female, and I’m thinking it’s a female student who shot a bunch of people because of a lover’s triangle. Then they say a female staff member, and I’m thinking, ‘Who could that be?’ ”
Only when he heard the next report did it occur to him.
“Then they said biological sciences, and I thought, oh crap, it’s Amy Bishop. Because she’s the only one I knew in biological sciences that was under a tenure constraint.”
Bishop, who is in her 40s and the mother of four, was seen as an excellent researcher. Seemann said her dealings with other faculty members, however, hampered her efforts at tenure.
‘Given a raw deal’
“I saw her at a spring (2009) orientation for the new freshmen,” Seemann said. “She said she was not tenured and she felt like she had been given a raw deal.”
Despite her excellent research ability, Seemann was not surprised she struggled to obtain tenure.
“Amy was kind of hard to get along with,” he said. “I’ve talked to people who said, ‘Wow, she can be really arrogant,’ or be really headstrong. I knew that to be true. But at the same time she was brilliant. She was really one of UAH’s rising research stars. People I know in biological sciences would say, ‘She’s a great researcher, but she’s lousy to work with.’ ”
She was brilliant and she knew it.
“At one meeting I was with Amy, she was complaining to a group of us. She said she was denied tenure not because she was a lousy researcher — she’s not, quite the opposite — and not because she didn’t have good classes, she believed she did — I think some might say otherwise — but because she was accused of being arrogant, aloof and superior. And she said, ‘I am.’
“She said, ‘I am arrogant, I am aloof and I am superior in my attitude. But it doesn’t mean I don’t want to get along with people.’ ”
Seemann’s recollection of his frequent dealings with Bishop continued the theme.
‘I was arrogant’
“During a conversation she and I had at one point, she said she got into an argument with another faculty member who accused her of being arrogant and acting like she was better than him, and she told me, ‘That’s because I was arrogant and I was better than him.’ But that was in the context of a heated argument,” Seemann said.
“I think Amy was a little easy to provoke.”
He said his impression was students tried to avoid taking her classes.
“The comments I heard from students over the last several years was that she was brilliant, but she couldn’t teach and she’s was not personable.”
Seemann suspects Bishop had an unrealistic view of the likelihood of a successful appeal of her tenure denial.
Appealed decision
“Amy told me in November that she filed an appeal through the university and had retained an attorney. The appeal was based on her belief that somebody had a personal gripe with her on the tenure committee, and that she asked that the person or persons — there may have been more than one — be removed,” Seemann recalled.
“That request was denied. The appeal went through the appeals process. Amy told me she believed that there was a good chance of the appeal working.”
Despite her expressed hopes, Seemann said tenure denials rarely get reversed.
Seemann stressed he did not know what happened at Friday’s biology faculty meeting before Bishop allegedly began shooting, but he knew the deadline for final decisions on tenure appeals was nearing.
“I do not believe that a faculty would tell one person in front of other people, ‘By the way you’re not getting tenure, clean out your office.’ I can’t imagine that’s what happened. My guess is that Amy probably pushed the issue.
“I’ve seen her do that before, where she would ask a question, someone would say let’s discuss it later, and she would just become more insistent until someone said either just shut up or here it is, and it’s not what you wanted.
“I don’t know it for a fact, but I’m guessing she pushed the issue.”
Remains stunned
Seemann said he remains stunned by the shooting.
“Nowhere in any of my discussions with her did I get the idea that she was violent or that she had this inclination to bring a pistol to a meeting,” Seemann said. Behind the most tragic loss in Friday’s shootings — the death of three faculty members and the wounding of three others — is another tragedy, Seemann said.
“It’s not like she would never have another job,” Seemann said. “With the research she did, there are other universities that, if she threw her hat in the air, they’d be lining up to hire her.
“She’s not some random schmuck. She’s Harvard educated. She could have doubled her salary going to these other schools. For whatever reason, she was so ego-invested that not being here was intolerable.”
And apparently was released at the request of a then assistant district-attorney who is now a sitting Democrate Congressman.
Say what?
Prison in AL won’t be fun for her I bet. I’ll have to keep an eye out for her when they have the jail birds out doing trash pickup along the highways around Madison County. Usually it is males but I’ve seen them have the females out there too. Wonder how arrogant & superior she will be then?
“For those of you who have not heard yet, Bishop also killed her brother in 1986.”
http://blog.al.com/breaking/2010/02/police_chief_says_uah_shooting.html
“We have our chance to put him on notice that he probably won’t receive tenure, coming this November.”
He’s already gone postal on the country.
++++++++++++++++
To torture the analogy a little further, instead of killing his brother in 1986, he (and his handlers) killed his entire past:
The List:
1 Certified copy of original birth certificate
2 Columbia University transcripts
3 Columbia thesis paper
4 Campaign donor analysis requested by 7 major watchdog groups
5 Harvard University transcripts
6 Illinois State Senate records
7 Illinois State Senate schedule
8 Law practice client list and billing records/summary
9 Locations and names of all half-siblings and step-mothers
10 Medical records (only the one page summary released so far)
11 Occidental College Transcripts
12 Parent’s marriage Certificate
13 Record of baptism
14 Selective Service registration records
15 Schedules for trips outside of the United States before 2007
16 Passport records for all passports
17 Scholarly articles
18 Access to his grandmother in Kenya
19 List of all campaign workers that are lobbyists
20 Punahou grade school records
I agree. More and more professors are judged by their ability to access grant money. The college/University wants the professor to offset their salary and expenses with grant money, so that tuition might pay for anything but.
In the so called social sciences (where the hard left dwells) there are no expensive labs to maintain and expensive equipment to purchase. That puts all the more pressure of faculty members in the hard sciences where there are real expenses associated with REAL research.
From www.ratemyprofessor.com
“This class was great. Bishop makes the class interesting by talking about her research and her friends research. That speaker she had for class was hard to understand but smart. She expects alot and you need to come to every class and study. She is hot but she tries to hide it.AND SHE IS A SOCIALIST BUT SHE ONLY TALKS ABOUT IT AFTER CLASS.”
Interesting. . .
I hope they move her trial out of liberal Huntsville to someplace else!
With all the money her parents have, she’s likely to end up in a mental hospital for a few years instead of prison for life.
Prediction of a rare event like this multiple killing is almost impossible, no matter how well you know the person. From an actuarial standpoint, she has few if any risk factors for violence.
Obviously whatever her demon is she kept it well hidden.
She’s a cross between House and Bones, except crazier.
You’re bad...bad... lol
http://integral.virishi.net/node/43997
Amy Bishop:
Seth Bishop:
I would put it this way....
Is it fair to assume that just because a politician is a DEM that he is also a crook?
NO.
But, if you bet money on it would you be rich?
YES.
As I understand it, he is going to retire. I don't see how 'damage' would apply here.
As I said in further posts, the new info on Delahunt appears to point the finger more at him than the police chief.
It doesn’t preclude the Chief from being ‘in’ on the coverup, though.
Stop it. That's not funny.
OK, I lied. It was funny. I'm still laughing.
Must have been one of those 'autofire' shotguns.
That describes a manager I used to work for only he was an axxhole too. I wish HE had been on Amy's tenure board......
Why didn't they just DONATE money for a new WING to the BIOSCIENCE building at the University?
Surely then the Dean of the college would have granted Amy her tenure.
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