A few thoughts

I've been thinking about the Huntsville tragedy a lot this weekend and specifically the media coverage around it. As I suspected, the shooter was almost instantly labeled and quick conclusions were made. Do not get me wrong, I am NOT justifying her actions. My goal here is to say there were a lot more factors involved and it's a more complex situation than is being portrayed in the media.

What I want to throw out there is tenure process. The media barely touched on this. Tenure is a difficult and highly political process. It's a six year process! Six years! Can anyone imagine being on probation for six years?

I found two good articles from the Chronicle of Higher Education that articulated my thoughts over the weekend. The first article discusses the tenure process in depth. The second article discusses the atmosphere in academe.

I'll end on this quote from the second article

Having to add a faculty meeting to the list of places where I'm already afraid to be, i.e., air flights on planes loaded with enough jet fuel to fly coast to coast, or in a skyscraper in dense urban enviornment, means the places where each of us can truly feel safe shrank by one, yesterday.