The Phantom Professor

So there was this adjunct professor at SMU. She anonymously started a blog a few months back, and called it "The Phantom Prof." Her first post offers insight into the nature of future content. She related personal stories about her students and fellow faculty members, and offered her (often scathing) opinions about them. Of course, she would change names to protect their identities.

The problem is, you tell enough stories about enough people on an isolated campus, and someone is bound to catch on. And inevitably, someone did. Word worked it's way up to the higher administration, and she was fired (well, technically she was not re-hired). There is a big detailed writeup about it here if you want all the details.

Okay now, this is a tough one to work through. I mean, yeah, First Amendment rights and all that crap, but she practically laid her head on the chopping block. You publish detailed stories about students, detailed accounts of local current events, detail your school's demographic profile, and it's only a matter of time before someone scratches his head and says, "Hey, wait a sec, this sounds familiar...." You simply cannot stay anonymous at that level of specificity, and this is where the problem arises.

A favorite target of hers were spoiled rich kids. A student pointed out to her that she was discriminant against affluent students, and she responded:

Come to think of it, I guess the rich have been unfairly segregated by society. All their lives they've been forced to ride at the front of the bus. They live in gated communities designed to restrict their freedom of movement. Their clothes are tagged with identifying logos -- little Polo players and crocodiles -- that tell the rest of us who and what they are. Their children attend separate schools (and wear uniforms!). Where is Amnesty International? Why isn't the UN working to liberate these rich people and let them mix freely with the rest of us? ... Maybe they could organize a Million Billionaire March that begins at the Dallas Country Club and ends in the parking lot at Neiman Marcus.

Hilarious? Yes. Accurate? Of course, we've all witnessed it. Appropriate? Well now....

The thing is, she's talking about her students in a negative light -- publicly. These yuppies type of kids know exactly who they are, and now they know exactly what their writing professor thinks of their way of life.... the contempt is obvious. And let's be real, from that point forward, any mutual respect in the classroom (critical for learning and development) is completely shot to hell. Obliterated. Not only that, but I'm sure many would be afraid to even speak to her, in class or out, knowing that they could possibly be quoted. The teacher-student relationship is soured forever.

I guess the bottom line is that it was a very un-professional and imprudent decision to include details about students in her postings. She put herself, her students, and the administration in a very awkward position, so that not receiving an offer to teach next year was only the smoothest way to end things. Sure, she has the right to publish whatever she wants, but like my momma used to say, just because you can don't mean you should.