UNIVERSITY*CITOYEN wrote:
as always, we need to be careful in public discourse to avoid
resorting to ad hominem. the issue here is not about personalities or
personal likes/dislikes but about public organizations and the public
roles involved, about the public actions that were and were not taken
while assuming those roles within those organizations, about public
accountability. and in this case a man was suspended, publicly, and a
seriouis rift of mistrust between ucd and blackwell's office, between
ucd and the community, was deepened, publicly, under wendell's
leadership. none of this happened as a result of ucd's director acting
in a private or personal capacity.
I was upset about UCD's handling of this, initially, but for one
problem. What UCD did is _standard procedure_ for many such
organizations. It's not _nice_, and it's not fair to Fenton. But it is,
in many corporate organizations, SOP.
UCD was handed allegations that one of its employees had done something
that-- if true-- would have endangered UCD's status as a 501(c)3
organization. The allegations were, at the time, widely circulated, and
given credence by many in the community. UCD _had_ to investigate this
for any number of reasons-- and make their results known to a very
contentious community.
They had to determine if the allegations were true or not, to begin
with. (And if they found that they _weren't_ true, they'd have to show
that they weren't just whitewashing themselves.) If the allegations
_were_ true, they'd have to determine a lot of other things. Was this a
one-time-only violation? Was this a failure of existing policies? Was
the employee aware of the violation? Alla that. In other words, where
did the fault lie, and what should be done about it?
So why is suspending the employee with pay SOP in such situations?
Because such situations aren't always about John Fenton and this
particular allegation. Employees may be investigated for such things as
misrepresenting themselves or their company, or engaging in irregular
bookkeeping procedures, or stealing or destroying sensitive documents.
Internal investigations frequently require isolating people who are
suspected of wrongdoing.
It's not nice. Yes, people begin to suspect the person even more when
he's been suspended. It's never fun to be investigated, and you feel
_violated_ if your company does this to you. And we all think the world
of John Fenton, who is a genuinely good guy who's done a lot for us. But
UCD did what hundreds of other organizations would do in this situation.
It's crummy, but it's nowhere near as _wrong_ as people claim.
UCD was caught in a tough situation. If they didn't make an attempt at
an internal investigation, they'd be accused of covering up or
whitewashing the incident. If they did investigate, and exonerated
Fenton, they'd be accused of covering up or whitewashing the incident.
If they found that Fenton _did_ go out of bounds... well, if they let
him off with a warning, they'd be accused of covering up or whitewashing
the incident. And if they _did_ fire him over this, they'd get slammed
for being mean and evil, and throwing away their best asset, and of
being out of touch with the community, and there'd be calls for Lewis
Wendell to resign, and...
(GodDAMNit. I wrote all of the above, refreshed my email... and saw that
Kyle's written pretty much the same thing.)
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