Whistle Blowing vs. Blowing Whistles
SteveI love a nice juicy workplace drama story. And when the workplace drama also includes a sports angle then I am in the happy zone.
Submitted for your consideration - from the State University of New York at Binghamton - (courtesy of Inside Higher Ed), Coach's Exit vs. Whistle Blower's Exit.
The important details from the Inside Higher Ed piece:
The State University of New York at Binghamton announced last week that it had agreed to a $1.2 million settlement that will lead to the departure of its suspended men's basketball coach, Kevin Broadus. Under Broadus, the basketball program achieved athletic success but found itself in the middle of a controversy over the admission of academically unprepared athletes and numerous arrests of players.
One of those who blew the whistle on the basketball program, however, faces a future much less financially secure than Broadus does. Sally Dear, an adjunct since 1998 and a key source for a New York Times article last year on the scandal, received a letter Monday telling her not to expect a renewal of her teaching duties for the next semester. She currently teaches two courses and is paid $5,000 for each one. In the Times article, which angered many supporters of the Binghamton athletic program, Dear was quoted about how basketball players arrived late, left early, and disrupted class in other ways.
Nice. The school more or less looks the other way on some questionable and possibly illegal activities associated with the basketball program in order to see some success and get some notoriety for the program. After some time, the behaviors and violations become too egregious and well-known that eventually it all comes crashing down. The coach, who has at least some, if not most of the blame for the mess will walk with a cool $1.2M, while one of the whistle blowers gets casually shown the door. Interesting how Binghamton can find seven figures for the coach but can't free up $10,000 for Ms. Dear to continue teaching her two courses.
I don't know much more about the tale than the few details in the piece, but the bit that is concerning is how colleges in particular, and corporate organizations in general can come to view and value the service, contributions, and expandability of temporary or contract staff.
Colleges use adjuncts for lots of reasons - sometimes to fill slots to teach unique or specialized courses, to backfill permanent faculty doing research or on sabbatical, or often to cut costs and improve incremental profit margins. Kind of the same reasons that organizations engage temporary or contract staff in the corporate world. Many adjuncts will tell you that while they enjoy their work, and are committed to their discipline and their students, they fully realize their (low) place on the institutional pecking order.
But as we heard last night on the HR Happy Hour interview with Dan Roddy of IBM, the trend towards more flexible and fluid workforces, with more representation of contract and temporary staff is not only continuing, but likely is accelerating.
My guess is Ms. Dear has not been (effectively) dismissed because she was a whistle blower, but more likely since she was merely 'contract' staff, and therefore much more expendable. Not a big deal you might think, part of the reason that any organization employs temporary or contract staff is the ability to adapt and react to changing conditions and new opportunities much more rapidly than in the past. In many organizations there has always been a bit of a stigma attached to the 'temps'. But I wonder in a world that seems to be barreling towards an even greater use of temporary and contract staff if we really need to think more consciously about how we have traditionally viewed these contributors.
I don't think we can continue to view and treat them as mere commodity purchases. I don't think we can continue to cast them off for acting in a manner that is consistent with what we would expect and demand from the 'real' employees.
At SUNY Binghamton, the 'real' employee that blew a whistle for a living is walking away with a sweet exit package. The 'fake' employee, one of the whistle blowers, now has to scramble to find a way to replace the $10,000 she won't earn this semester.
Hopefully she can land another temp gig somewhere else, and soon.
Reader Comments (2)
Nice post and excellent point. I have a friend who was an excellent engineer, now retired, who lamented that some of his peers who became problematic in the late years of their career were offered packages to leave, while he was discouraged from retiring. He was considering misbehaving as a way to a richer retirement.
It ain't right.
On a separate note, I did stats for my college B-Ball team, and we used to joke that one player, who had frequent legal problems, should be announced as "wearing number 7342231 in the striped shorts". The SID didn't think it was too funny.
I think that the referees in basketball are fairly leniant, it's not like that in the UK.