The University as a Hostile/Libelous Workplace

[Sleeping in EQ]

Lawyers, can you conceive of either:

a) A professor successfully suing the employing university for allowing a hostile workplace filled with malicious, hyper-sensitive students who are one comment away from trying to take the professor's job

or

b) A professor successfully suing the employing university and/or specific students for being libeled through student evaluations


"b" seems possible to me, although I have little understanding of such things...

[Color Me Badd Fan]

Lawyers, can you conceive of either:

a) A professor successfully suing the employing university for allowing a hostile workplace filled with malicious, hyper-sensitive students who are one comment away from trying to take the professor's job

or

b) A professor successfully suing the employing university and/or specific students for being libeled through student evaluations


"b" seems possible to me, although I have little understanding of such things...

A doesn't work.

You could sue a student for libel if they lie about you, but it would be pointless. The university can't be held liable for what an idiot student says about a professor.

I'm sure the hyper-sensitivity extends to more things than what the nutjob Yale student was screaming about to that professor. Grades being one big example. "Rape culture" being another. I'm not sure how widespread the hypersensitivity is -- it seems worse now than it was 10-20 years ago. But people who have some years between their high school/college years always complain about the younger people -- that doesn't necessarily mean the criticism isn't valid. The argument against students in the 90s I suppose would be somewhere along the lines that they have too much sex and drink too much compared to college kids in the 70s. The argument against students in the 70s was probably that they had too much sex and did too many drugs compared to college kids in the 50s.

I think the argument now isn't so much that these kids are having too much sex or drinking too much, I doubt that they're outdoing the 90s. Now the perception is that they're a bunch of hypersensitive kids pleading for campus administrators to punish people they disagree with. I'm not sure if I linked this article yet or not.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...n-mind/399356/

[Jeff Lebowski]

A doesn't work.

You could sue a student for libel if they lie about you, but it would be pointless. The university can't be held liable for what an idiot student says about a professor.

I'm sure the hyper-sensitivity extends to more things than what the nutjob Yale student was screaming about to that professor. Grades being one big example. "Rape culture" being another. I'm not sure how widespread the hypersensitivity is -- it seems worse now than it was 10-20 years ago. But people who have some years between their high school/college years always complain about the younger people -- that doesn't necessarily mean the criticism isn't valid. The argument against students in the 90s I suppose would be somewhere along the lines that they have too much sex and drink to much compared to college kids in the 70s. The argument against students in the 70s was probably that they had too much sex and did too many drugs compared to college kids in the 50s.

I think the argument now isn't so much that these kids are having too much sex or drinking too much, I doubt that they're outdoing the 90s. Now the perception is that they're a bunch of hypersensitive kids pleading for campus administrators to punish people they disagree with. I'm not sure if I linked this article yet or not.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...n-mind/399356/

I linked that article a couple of weeks ago. SU responded by saying that James Fallows was wrong about the Japanese in an Atlantic article a few decades back so you can't believe anything they publish.

For some odd reason, SU doesn't seem to hold the NYT to the same standard.

[Topper]

Lawyers, can you conceive of either:

a) A professor successfully suing the employing university for allowing a hostile workplace filled with malicious, hyper-sensitive students who are one comment away from trying to take the professor's job

or

b) A professor successfully suing the employing university and/or specific students for being libeled through student evaluations


"b" seems possible to me, although I have little understanding of such things...

A doesn't meet the standard for "hostile work environment," under federal law. It might meet the definition for some cities such as NYC or San Francisco, but I haven't researched them to know. NYC has some weird ordinances which turns normal employment rules on their heads.

I would need to ponder B further, but I can't imagine a scenario where the University would be liable for accepting libelous evaluations. The university would have to be on notice that the evaluations were false yet failed to reject them. How can the University have notice of their falsity?