What’s the problem? College students all over the country have to deal with ridiculous rules of conduct.

Colleen Flaherty of Inside Higher Ed reports.

Writing Bad Code?

Is a professor sending out a late recommendation letter for a student as bad as one who commits academic misconduct or, say, sexually harasses a colleague? And shouldn’t staff and administrators be held to the same ethical standards as faculty members? Professors at Yale University are asking those questions, among others, and generally scratching their heads at what they say is a “curious” and “confusing” proposed faculty conduct code threatening undefined sanctions for a mishmash of transgressions.

Faculty members who are critical of the document also say it seems like it’s being ramrodded through an appointed committee just weeks ahead of the formation of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ first-ever Faculty Senate.

The university, meanwhile, says the document is an attempt to centralize its various policies regarding faculty conduct.
“This document is one of the strangest disciplinary procedures I have ever seen,” said Glenda Gilmore, the Peter V. & C. Vann Woodward Professor of History. “I have seen documents from peer institutions that provide much more detail about faculty discipline codes, and documents that are about shared commitment to ethical standards. But this appears to be the administration’s attempt to draw lines without telling what will happen to us when we cross them.”

Christopher L. Miller, the Frederick Clifford Ford Professor of African American Studies and French, said he believed opposition to the document was widespread among faculty members and shared via e-mail the feedback he recently submitted to Yale. Many of his comments echo Gilmore’s, and those of other concerned professors.