Who is this man?

A personal account...

After working for the University for 23 years, I have finally been driven out. I gave up my tenure and resigned in July. Both Spencer, my husband and I have been having problems with our Department Head. This has been going on for five years now, but the proverbial (and literal) final blow came last November when I was assaulted by a co-worker (‘colleague’ is a label he does not deserve). It is quite a long and sordid tale, so I offer the abridged, and yet still long version here. For this story, we’ll call my assailant ‘Bernard’.

A few weeks before the ‘fateful incident’ the same ‘man’ had sent me an email that given my experiences at work the last few years, seemed very much like a threat. What prompted his email was this: In what turned out to be an act of sedition, I recklessly asked him to improve the training given to our teaching assistants (only some of whom speak English, and most of whom suck, but all of whom are among the best paid teaching assistants on campus), and he “cautioned me” not to criticize him. Apparently, striving for improvement and getting people to do their jobs is no longer what we do. He ignored several attempts by me to get him to explain, so I went to his office. I asked him to explain what he meant by his threat (on the day before Remembrance Day no less – lest we forget!) Well, looks like he forgot. He began yelling at me and accusing me of being abusive (!?) and then he slammed his door in my face. He’d have broken my nose if I hadn’t put my foot in the door. There were several awkward moments as he continued to yell, pushing on the door while I tried to figure out how to get me and my foot out of there without getting hurt. Bernard is not a large, nor as it turns out, a strong man. I managed to extricate myself without further physical injury.

Now, I suspect I’ve been very lucky in that the last time any human tried to hit me was when I was about 9. Being a pacifist probably helps. And even after 23 years of dealing with university kids fresh out of high school - some of whom are very unhappy when I fail them - this is the first time someone has tried to attack me at university. I had a very hard time coping. There were, of course, no witnesses.

[Aside: I bought a Siamese Fighting Fish (Betta Splendens) and named it Bernard as part of my own personal therapy. They have much in common my colourful little Bernie and the man who assaulted me. Both are: Small. Angry. Insignificant. AND wear a suit that looks 3 sizes too big. Curiously, I ended up having to buy a second fish because the first Bernard I bought did not survive the night in his new home. My family thought it particularly fitting since we had put him in a vase with a Peace Plant - Bernard couldn’t, apparently, live with the Peace. (Wee Bernie the fish, is now nearly 3 years old, and each time I talk to him I am reminded that I have survived, and he – the human Bernie – is still small, angry and insignificant. It may seem silly, but it helps me.)]

Without skipping a beat our obdurate Department Head suggested that if I felt unsafe having my assailant’s office just down the hall from me, *I* should be the one to move. My office was the last thing I had in that department that I valued since he had already taken or canceled everything else, and unfortunately he knew that. I went on a medical leave and did not return until after classes were over.

Not long after getting back to work I learned that the man who assaulted me had filed a grievance against ME for harassment. Is that A) ironic or B) what? Turns out, the correct answer was ‘B’. I seemed to be the only person surprised by this. I’m learning though. Human Resources refused to acknowledge my doctor’s orders for reduced duties (they really ARE evil, like Dilbert says), and the ever-vigilant Campus Security had conveniently omitted the entire criminal incident from their report – all they said was that I had had an email threat. After all, it’s hard to claim our campus is safe if people go around reporting assaults. Can’t have that. Besides, there’d be all this paperwork. It’s just easier to claim nothing happened. As if that wasn’t enough, THIS year I’d gone all out in trying to implement the university President’s “plan” for a rich undergraduate experience. My students loved it. Not to be outdone by the perversity of a pseudo-police unwilling to enforce law, my annual assessment from the Head pretty much trashed everything I did this year. In spite of the fact that what I do in my classes is publishable work, my teaching was assessed by my head as inadequate. The problem, you see is that I’ve been treating my students as individuals. This is apparently bad.

Still I persevered – after all, we live in modern times, no? Violence against women is no longer condoned, especially in an enlightened Science Faculty, and even more so during a time when there are almost weekly news stories about how we need more women in IT (information technology). And besides, I come from a long line of people that do not give up easily. Can you guess what happened next? Machiavelli would have felt right at home. The brand new Dean of Science found ME guilty of harassment. Somehow, I am to blame because Bernard felt the need to hit me. My punishment: I was to be banished (they forced me to move out of my office WHILE I was still on a medical leave); I was to enroll in courses that would teach me how to get along with people, and if I bothered poor Bernie again I could be fired. Interestingly, when Spencer (who is in the same department as me) asked the Dean why I had to move my office to a different building, and to the top floor no less (a point as far away from the students as was possible), the Dean told Spence it was so I could be close to my HUSBAND. Isn’t that progressive of him? After 23 years of professional service, I am still just a wife. That’s when I realized I would not survive five years under this man’s “leadership”, nor would my staying make any difference. Tyranny wins. Sigh.

Ah, but the story doesn’t end here. Oh no my weary friends, there’s more. Administrative positions at the university come up for renewal about every five years, and this year it was our Department Head’s turn. A man known to be dishonest (he was caught in a lie during his “re-appoint me” talk!), who is known to treat some people like royalty and relentlessly bully others, was,…wait for it….RE-APPOINTED for another five years. The Dean clearly has a use for the likes of him, and that can’t mean good things. Our department has gone from a place that used to supply graduates to some of the coolest places on the planet to work (Disney, Industrial Light and Magic, Jet Propulsion Labs, …) to one of which I am ashamed, and who’s graduates are wanted almost nowhere. And, it seems Spencer and I are not the only ones who feel this way. The department HAD about 45 faculty, among them 9 women. Besides me, we lost two other faculty this year (one woman; the other world-renowned in his field), and by my last count we will loose 6 more this year (2 of them also women, and none of them due to retirement). Those are only the ones I know about, there may well be others. Tragically, Spencer is still there, but since he has a few years left before retiring, he has arranged to be one of the six leaving this year. This summer Spencer will be moving to the Faculty of Environmental Design. I think it will be interesting to work with architects. Spencer’s not so sure – but it’s bound to be better than working with reprobates. Meanwhile, the department that used to be one of only two in the country visited by Bell Labs recruiters continues to circle the drain.

So the moral of the story is…. (some) Universities remain mediaeval institutions where men get to be men, and women, well, they need to remember their place. It leaves me, for the first time as an adult, without a job. It is hard not to be bitter (as if the last two pages weren’t clue enough), but I’m working on it. Spencer and I have learned much about who our friends are, and it will take us a long time to heal. I know I for one will never again offer my loyalty freely to a place – only to people. On the plus side, through my experiences I have met a whole pile of very nice people who have been similarly abused by this University (not just women), and when I have some time I plan to write a book about it. It seems this institution has quite a history of what mobbing and bullying expert Ken Westhues calls “the envy of excellence”. He says that most people targeted in this way possess a perilous combination of traits: excellence AND integrity. A menacing pair of traits, huh? Clearly something a university must control.

In the mean time, if anyone knows of any job openings…

Anonymous

Bullying among support staff in a higher education institution

Purpose – Workplace bullying has been a subject of increasing study in recent years, particularly in the UK, Scandinavia and Australia. Health effects of workplace bullying are often cited as an undesirable outcome of being bullied, yet these health effects have not been studied systematically. This study was small and exploratory. The overall aims were to explore support staff perceptions of the nature and causes of bullying, and to examine the perceived relationship between bullying and self-reported health complaints.

Findings – A total of 42 employees responded, 19 reporting experiencing one or more forms of bullying in the previous two years, while 17 had witnessed colleagues being bullied. The top four bullying tactics ranked in terms of frequency of reporting were undue pressure to produce work, undermining of ability, shouting abuse, and withholding necessary information. When bullying occurred it was likely to be by a line manager. Major findings are that headaches, loss of confidence, loss of self-esteem, fatigue/listlessness, and stress are the most commonly reported health consequences of being bullied, and that these syndromes are associated with a decrease in workplace morale, increased stress at home, and propensity to seek alternative employment.

The context of the research

The motivation for the research came partly from the writer's own experiences of being bullied and partly through witnessing and hearing “through the grapevine” of the bullying of colleagues. The writer (a non-health professional) had experienced bullying in both primary and secondary school and naively thought that bullying was something that did not happen, or more to the point would not be tolerated or condoned, in the workplace. This proved not to be the case, and the writer in her early working life accepted that some people were natural “victims” and others “bullies”, and this was the way of the world. However, in the latter part of her working life, this has been called into question and bullying behaviour, it appears, may occur for many reasons and anyone may become a target of bullying at some stage in their career. Thus, when the opportunity to conduct some research for a dissertation arose, the researcher was keen to gain insight into the perceived reasons for bullying and obtain details of support mechanisms, effects on relationships and health consequences. While working as a member of support staff in an educational establishment the researcher undertook a small but intensive study of bullying experiences amongst support staff...

Bullying and position in the hierarchy

Research undertaken by Björkqvist et al. (1994a, b) in a university setting found that position in the hierarchy was related to bullying, in that individuals in lower administrative and service jobs were more likely to be bullied and those in superior positions were more often identified as the perpetrators of bullying. Similarly Marmot et al. (1991) in the Whitehall II study concluded that bullying and stress were more frequent in lower grades of staff.

The issue of bullying and unequal power situations is particularly relevant to this study, as there is a great disparity in status between academics and support staff. While universities may deem it desirous to address equal opportunity issues, they are, in the twenty-first century, still mainly entrenched in forms of institutionalised sexism and intellectual elitism...

Conclusion

Studying bullying at work presents considerable difficulties, as the breadth of the phenomenon encompasses many different forms of behaviour and reaction. Bullying, or the more generic “harassment at work”, is claimed to be a more crippling and devastating problem for employees than all other work-related stress put together (Einarsen, 1999). Stress can also have serious implications for the efficient functioning of the organisation. Increased sickness absence, high turnover of staff, low morale, and poor performance can all be consequences or indicators of bullying in the workplace. Cox (1993) suggests that mental health problems are amongst the fastest growing sources of days lost from work. In financial terms absenteeism, loss of trained personnel, higher recruitment costs and reduced productivity can add up to a heavy burden for organisations. The costs of stress, therefore, are paid for both by the suffering of the individual and the financial cost to the organisation.

Bullying is morally as well as professionally unacceptable, and impacts not only on the health of victims and their colleagues but their families too. Job stress due to bullying can have serious and deleterious effects on family life that may manifest themselves in increased welfare costs (Cohen et al., 1997). While it is acknowledged that problems exist in relation to proving the causal link between bullying and ill health, employers have a vicarious duty of care towards its employees. It is therefore essential that employers are aware of such issues and of potential signs of bullying behaviour. Consequently there is an urgent need to address this issue by documenting incidents, finding the source of the abuse and what and who perpetrates it, and developing a procedure to eliminate the abusive behaviour. Any policies, to be effective, must be guided by research...

By: Mary Thomas, School of Education, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK - Health Education; Volume: 105 Issue: 4; 2005

Societal Effects

Harassment can make you a social outcast period. If you do nothing about the harassment those around you might sympathise, but they will in time learn to ignore it and treat it as a common day to day occurrence. If you take action against the harasser, school, or place of employment, you might find that you are ostracized, and retaliated against in many unfair ways.

Socially you might not be invited out to group or social activities, you might be shunned during daily school, or work place events. People who associate with you will be singled out with peer pressure to stop the association. People around you will tell the most demeaning and degrading lies about you.

You might find that your family and friends think you are over-reacting and fail to offer support on any level. They may even be the very ones who turn against you, if they become affected by the harassment through your job loss, or dropping out of school. They may be angry at having to help you out.

From: http://www.targetedindividuals.com

How to recognize mobbing - Characteristics

• The target has a record of success.
  
  
• The mobbers make up the rules as they go along and do not follow the accepted university due process procedures.
  
  
• The timing usually favors the mobbers, such as choosing to attack after the faculty member has had a serious medical procedure.
  
  
• The mobbers protest vehemently against any external review of their actions.
  
  
• The mobbers attempt to carry out their attacks in complete secrecy, using such tactics as anonymous hate mail left in the target’s mailbox.
  
  
• The charges against the target are for relatively minor instances, such as alleging that a faculty member has said certain things that the mobbers find objectionable.
  
  
• There is a unanimity of negative opinion about the target.
  
  
• The target is selected first and then the charges are brought.
  
  
• The mobbers use “impassioned rhetoric” in attacking the target.
  
  
• The mobbers spread rumors and gossip about the target.
  

From: Women In Higher Education

Sticks, Stones and Semantics: The Ivory Tower Bully's Vocabulary of Motives

Abstract

This ethnography focuses on the techniques of normalization used by university professors who are accused by their colleagues of bullying behavior. We examine how the organizational structure and institutional values of the university provide protective coloration for academic intimidation and discourage both the detection and effective labeling of such behavior. In noting that attempts to label bullying behavior frequently fail because the judgments are seen as mere matters of opinion in an environment whose principal currency of exchange is opinion itself, we modify and extend Sykes and Matza's discussion of neutralization techniques to academic settings.

While we cannot speak to the presence or absence of guilt feelings on the part of alleged academic bullies, or to whether neutralization techniques successfully assuage such feelings, we can nevertheless discern the operation of these techniques to resist the imputation of unflattering social identities and/or to lay claim to public identities that are highly esteemed within the academy.

Moreover, we identify three additional techniques of normalization that are employed by alleged ivory tower bullies: appropriation and inversion, in which accused bullies claim victim status for themselves; evidentiary solipsism, in which alleged bullies portray themselves as uniquely capable of divining and defining the meaning-structure of events; and emotional obfuscation, which takes the form of employing symbols and imagery that are chosen for their perceived ability to elicit an emotional response on the part of an academic audience.

By E. D. Nelson and R. D. Lambert, Qualitative Sociology, Vol. 24, No. 1, 2001

Minister vows action on 'falsified' student survey

The Government has promised to act if reports that students are being pressed to give falsely enthusiastic responses to an official survey prove true after staff at London's Kingston University were recorded doing so.

Innovation, Universities and Skills Secretary John Denham was pressed at Commons question time over allegations that the National Student Survey was being "falsified". Mr Denham said he took the claims "very seriously" and "utterly condemned" the practice, adding that action would be taken if any breaches were found.

Students from a range of universities are claiming they are being pressed to make falsely enthusiastic responses to the survey. Staff at Kingston University were recorded telling students to falsify their ratings of the institution.

Hundreds of students have e-mailed the BBC News website claiming this is a more widespread problem.

The National Student Survey, set up by the funding council (Hefce), provides a league table of student satisfaction, which is intended to be useful for young people choosing a university.

Raising the issue in the Commons, Tory David Evennett asked: "Given that the National Student Survey is endorsed by the Government and funded by the taxpayer, what action will ministers be taking to investigate recent claims that records have been falsified."

Mr Denham told the Bexleyheath and Crayford MP: "I take those allegations very seriously.

"The evidence, such as it is, is that this is a very isolated example of students apparently being encouraged to rate their institution more highly than they might have done unprompted. I utterly condemn it."

From: http://www.worthingherald.co.uk
But also worth checking: Universities face survey warning

University staff faking survey - Kingston University

By Sean Coughlan, BBC News education reporter

Students were instructed to exaggerate as "that's what everyone else is doing". University staff have been caught pressuring students to dishonestly answer an official funding council survey of student satisfaction.

Kingston University staff have been recorded instructing students to inflate their responses in the annual National Student Survey. "If Kingston comes down the bottom, the bottom line is that nobody is going to want to employ you," staff warned.

The university says it regrets this "isolated" incident. The audio recording, published on Live! the student news website of Imperial College, London, reveals members of university staff strongly urging students to falsify their responses in this national survey, in order to create a more positive impression for the university.

'It might sound biased...'

"The reason it's important is the results of this survey get fed into a national database which then feed into league tables - and it's the league tables that prospective employers and postgraduate courses use to assess the value of your degree," an unnamed member of staff tells students.

If you think something was a four - my encouragement would be give it a five, because that's what everyone else is doing.
Kingston University staff to students

"If Kingston comes down the bottom, then the bottom line is that nobody is going to want to employ you."

Using an expletive, the member of staff tells students that a poor ranking will make employers think that their degree is without value. The university says the recording is authentic and that it is investigating the identity of the member of staff, which the press office says it believes to be a lecturer.

This National Student Survey was introduced by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) as part of its quality assurance process - "to gather feedback on the quality of students' courses in order to contribute to public accountability".

However the recording from Kingston University shows an attempt to use the survey to manipulate the university's standing.

"In effect you're competing against lots of students at other institutions who also want their university to look good," students are told.

"Although this is going to sound incredibly biased, you rate these things on a five-point scale, if you think something was a four - a 'good' - my encouragement would be give it a five, because that's what everyone else is doing."

'Banging my head'

The recording even shows students being told specific areas in which the university wants to change its "profile" by fixing the results of the survey. The staff member tells students that there is a "dip" in the university's profile in giving students feedback. She says they might be failing to recognise the amount of feedback they are receiving.

"Feedback, in terms of this questionnaire, means what happens in seminars. Every seminar you have you get some interactive feedback from the person giving it. So if I ask a question and no one answers, and I start banging my head on the table, that is feedback.

"If I'm smiling and going 'yeah great', you're getting feedback. If you get a mark for a piece of work, that's what we mean by feedback."

Another member of staff instructs students not to use the survey for negative comments if they are unhappy about the modules they have been taught. "All that garbage you're spewing out about us" should not be included in the National Student Survey.

A spokesperson for Kingston University confirmed that they believed the recording to be genuine. "We believe this to be an isolated incident and regret the inappropriate comments made to students about the National Student Survey, even if these remarks were not intended to be taken entirely literally.

"With regards to disciplinary action, the investigation has yet to be completed so no decision has yet been made on what action should be taken in this case."

The Higher Education Funding Council (Hefce) says it is aware of this incident and believes it to be authentic - and says it takes this "very seriously" - but that it does not invalidate the overall results of the survey.

The importance of this national survey has been emphasised in previous years by the Higher Education Minister, Bill Rammell - who called it a "powerful tool for student empowerment and institutional improvement".

"Academics up and down the country pore over these results to see how they are performing and how what they are offering can be improved," Mr Rammell had said about the survey.
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To download and listen to the recording scroll to the bottom of the web page and click on 'click here to download'.
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Also how the media covered this story:

Your Local Guardian: Kingston University students told to cheat on survey

Daily Mail: University lecturers told students to give them glowing reports or risk a 's**t' degree to boost league table ranking

Times Online: Give us glowing report or get a s**t degree, lecturers tell students

Flisolo: National Student Survey Rigged

Times Higher Education: Students urged to inflate national survey marks to improve job options

Telegraph Online: Kingston University students 'told to lie' to boost rankings

The London Paper: Kingston University lecturers in hot water over telling students to artificially boost ranking scores

NewsPedia.eu: Students claim survey dishonesty

This is Hertfordshire: KINGSTON: Lecturers involved in university lie exposed

Londonist: Kingston Coaxes Suspect Survey Responses

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And the following - posted on another blog:

Emma said...

I went to Kingston uni first as an undergraduate and then as a PhD student. This behaviour is very typical of the staff mentioned, particualry Fiona. Fiona is engaged to the Head of Psychology and thinks she can get away with everything as a result. When I was working as a memebr of staff whilst doing my PhD this was the kind of thing she would ask us to do.

There is so much favouritism at this uni and many staff are unhappy.

Fiona once told me to give a student a low mark because she kept complaining. She should be sacked for this but because of her fiance being so high up in the uni it probably won't happen.

Workplace bullying: a cross-level assessment

By Joyce Heames and Mike Harvey, University of Mississippi, Oxford, Mississippi, USA

Recent studies indicate that workplace bullying behavior is a noteworthy and prevalent issue in organizations around the world (e.g.Demark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Ireland, UK, Korea, Japan, Germany, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, US, and other countries). A survey conducted in Canada revealed that 78 percent of the respondents felt incivility had worsened in the previous ten years (Pearson, 1999). A survey of 5,000 employees across all sectors of British industry reported that one in ten workers had been bullied in the previous six months causing stress and an estimated 1 million work days lost in production (Keelan, 2000). A study of 9,000 federal employees in the US estimated the cost of workplace bullying and harassment activities to be $180 million in production days annually (Farrell, 2002). In addition, in Iceland, researchers revealed that 8.3 percent of the workforce had experienced and 23.4 percent had witnessed bullying in the six months preceding the study (Olafsson and Johannsdottir, 2004).

…Three avenues of thought have developed around explanations for the inherent characteristics of the workplace bully. One group placed emphasis on the genetic and childhood experiences that lead to workplace bullying. Raine et al. (1994) set forth biological “causes” of aggressive bullying behavior in the workplace. Some support has been shown for the assertion is that the adult bully learned this behavior in childhood, is unable to break the psychological cycle as he or she grows into adulthood, and thus mimics the destructive behavior either at home or in the workplace (Haynie et al., 2001; Robinson and O’Leary-Kelly, 1998).

A second group of academics has looked to the context of the workplace and relational stress issues as being instrumental in provoking deviant behavior such as bullying (Einarsen, 2000; Einarsen and Skogstad, 1996; Heames et al., 2006). Their premise suggests that organizational structure, group norms, status inconsistency, and the resulting strained relationships can contribute to or escalate negative behavior that can lead to bullying. O’Leary-Kelly et al. (1996) conceptualized a model of organization motivated aggression, which focused on actions and outcomes instigated by characteristic and situations in the organization that led to aggressive behaviors. A third faction suggests a combination of innate characteristics and social contexts encourages overt bullying (Espelage et al., 2000). They contend that it is both situational and dispositional with employees’ behavior being governed by both their genetic (natural instincts) and the norms of the workplace (environmental instincts).

Pearson (1999) reported that 46 percent of workers considered quitting because of the increased pressure due to the hostile environments created by bullies and 12 percent did quit their jobs. Although this paper proposes that bullying is felt across other levels of the organization, it appears that the victim as the immediate target endures the most dramatic corollary. The target of repetitive bullying behavior can become personally traumatized and in some cases psychologically scarred for life (Leymann and Gustafsson, 1996; Namie, 2003).

The profile of the individual who is repetitively victimized by a bully can become known in the organization, which in turn, lowers their social standing within the organization and results in an even lower level of self-esteem (Crawford, 1999). Individual and social factors within the organization have been identified for employees that might be considered easy targets for victimization (i.e. low self-esteem, disability, physical weakness, shyness and unassertive personality, lack of friends – especially lack of high powered friends, submissive, low in independence, and introversion) (Aquino and Lamertz, 2004; Smith et al., 2003). All of these characteristics leave the potential victim vulnerable and open for the more aggressive personality of the bully (Aquino and Byron, 2002):

The harmful actions directed against a selected target are often performed deliberately to exercise social control, enhance self-identity, or achieve justice as defined by the actor (the bully) (Felson, 1992, p. 5).

Another central tenet for consideration is the victim’s disposition or outlook on life. A predisposition to negativity lends itself to a victim’s perception and belief that once bullied they will always be bullied (Coyne et al., 2003; Jockin et al., 2001). Negative affectivity (NA) is defined as “the tendency to experience negative emotions across situations and time” (Perrewe´ and Spector, 2002, p. 37). According to Watson and Clark (1984), persons with high NA are prone to focus on the negatives aspects of their personal environment and are less happy with their lives, and may project a meek demeanor. If the victim becomes labeled as a “submissive” and perhaps “deserving of mistreatment”, they can be targets for other aggressive behaviors and may even become the scapegoat for other members of the group (Aquino and Lamertz, 2004). Some victims of repeated serious work stressors such as bullying suffer from post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD), an extreme case of anxiety disorder that affects every aspect of a person’s life and including their mental health (Leymann, 1996)…

It is believed that peers, subordinates, and immediate managers are often frightened and sometimes afraid of retribution from the bully if they try to intervene and thus, may experience self-doubt when faced with such a situation (Bowes-Sperry and O’Leary-Kelly, 2005; Delbecq, 2001). For fear, the bully will turn on and make them the target of his/her destructive behavior, other group members maybe hesitant to voice objection to the behavior or to express concern for the victim. This fear perceived by the observers does not have to be real relative to the ability of the bully to actually retaliate (O’Gorman, 1986). Consequently, self-preservation appears to drive many group members into a mode of silence and acquiescence…

From: http://www.emeraldinsight.com

Is it worth it?

Are the target’s needs for fairness and justice outweighed by the price paid for challenging an often smug, hurtful culture that will likely outlast any lone individual’s campaign for justice?