When a postal worker goes postal, it's going postal.<p>When a PhD from Harvard -- <i>the</i> first detail mentioned, note -- goes postal, they are suffering in an academic pressure cooker.<p>Dumbly applying the nearest pop-psych explanation to hand to explain the inexplicable only makes it more difficult to show respect for the victims and sympathy for the grieving.
"Ms. Bishop, a grant-winning scientist"<p>That is like saying, "a salary-earning division manager." I don't know of any serious academic scientist who isn't funded by grants. Seems like the writer really wanted to put "award-winning," but there were no awards.
See <a href="http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=392617&page=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=392617&#...</a>
The irony of this is the fact that I had a lecture that very day across UAHuntsville's campus in which my literature teacher said often times, when a person murders someone, there is a significantly higher chance they will do it again. I'm not saying that the death of her brother was indeed a murder, but I couldn't help but get a chill when I found out the news later that day. All of the teachers at UAHuntsville have passion about what they do; this is evident especially in the passion that the teachers seem to imbue in us as students. It is saddening to hear that three faculty have been killed, especially since one of those teachers was my own this past semester.
What Dr. Bishop did was unjustified, no matter what other facts we may find (excepting force initiated by the victims); justice requires her death. (Because this penalty is irrevocable, and all possible legal systems are fallible, the closest we can get to this ideal is life imprisonment.)<p>Having said that, look at how the system worked. These guys were stringing her along for six years (or so?), while maintaining the illusion that her activities (against university initiatives and attitudes) would have no impact on her career. Obviously her against-the-grain attitudes had a great deal to do with the way they treated her.<p>What's the best way to prevent a similar tragedy from occurring? The only way is to take the pressure off by eliminating tenure completely. That way, there's no insane buildup of emotion on either side. In a properly functioning organization, people that don't work out (for whatever reason, including personality conflicts) should be informed of the situation as early as is possible, which takes what, about a year?<p>Existing faculty could be offered buyouts (which, of course, would have to be lucrative enough to be accepted), and you're at a nice clean slate.
This is one of the things I hate about the NYT... an imposed narrative contained in a headline without any identifying details. Wouldn't "Huntsville University Killer May Have Killed Over Lost Tenure" be a) more accurate b) less obtuse?