The University’s recent censure by the American Association of University Professors is part of a larger problem, according to biology professor Dominique Homberger, who was removed from a BIOL 1001 class in 2010 after low midterm grades and a high drop rate.
Homberger’s well-publicized removal and former University director Ivor van Heerden’s firing “violate academic freedoms,” according to the AAUP, and are reasons for the censure.
“I feel mortified,” Homberger said. “[This situation] is totally unnecessary simply because I think the administration feels they can do whatever they feel like and not listen to the faculty.” After her removal, Homberger filed a complaint with the Faculty Grievance Committee, which voted unanimously in her favor, but the University took no action to resolve the issue, according to Homberger.
She said many faculty members and other professors around the country voiced their support for her and said they were also facing pressure from administrators to give good grades, “or else.”
“The problem we have now is that non-educators have the impression that the grades a student earns are a reflection of the quality of the teacher,” Homberger said.
Chancellor Mike Martin released a statement last week concerning the AAUP censure that stated Homberger’s matter had “long since been resolved internally.”
Not so, according to Homberger.
“They did something that is fundamentally wrong, and I’m still at a loss to wonder why they did this,” she said. “It could have been avoided just by talking to me.”
Martin’s statement also said the AAUP “did not speak to me” and therefore he “can’t know all the details,” a point that was refuted by Homberger and by Ravi Rau, Homberger’s husband, a physics professor and former president of the LSU chapter of the AAUP.
“At the most charitable, we can see taking liberties with truth when he says the AAUP ‘did not speak to me at all and can’t know all the details’ when it was he who ignored all their written requests and refused to meet the three members of [AAUP] when they visited LSU for three days,” Rau said in an e-mail.
Homberger agreed, saying there were documents that showed Martin never responded to invitations to meet with the AAUP.
“To pretend…that nobody talked to him, this is disingenuous,” Homberger said. “It’s not that [the AAUP] only got one side of the story.”
Rau also pointed out Homberger’s removal violated the University’s own policy on grades.
“Once an instructor is assigned to a course, he or she has the freedom in how it is run and how grades are assigned,” Rau said.
But Rau said the administration has reacted by trying to amend the policy, which Rau said won’t change the AAUP’s mind.
“When a mistake is made, to compound it by altering and then establishing it as a policy is not going to convince the world outside LSU,” he said.
Faculty Senate President Kevin Cope called the censure a “national disgrace” and said it could lower future hiring rates.
“It sends a clear message to faculty members that LSU is not providing a working environment that meets national standards or that fits with the dignity of a great university,” he said in an e-mail. “Such a censure will surely discourage faculty members from accepting positions at this University owing to fear that the exercise of free inquiry may lead to ill consequences.”
Cope also said the situations with van Heerden and Homberger were handled appropriately – once they came into the public light.
“[The University] handled these situations properly after they came to public attention and after facility activists began exerting pressure, along with the general public,” Cope said.
Homberger also criticized the University for taking the censure lightly.
“I consider censure a catastrophe,” she said. “I’m not very happy about it at all.”
The censure also creates problems for the Faculty Senate, according to Cope.
“It creates a new problem we need to address,” Cope said. “A problem that should never have arisen at all.”
LSU System Vice President for Communication and External Affairs Charles Zewe said the LSU System must “defer comment at this time” because litigation involving van Heerden’s claims are still pending in federal district court.
 
____ Contact Taylor Balkom at [email protected]