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Politically Correct Zoology
flynny51 writes "Dr. Dylan Evans of the School of Medicine, University College, Cork, Ireland, has had a two-year period of intensive monitoring and counseling imposed upon him and as a result his application for tenure is likely to be denied. His offense — sharing an article from a peer-reviewed journal on fellatio in fruit bats."
For copies of the letters sent back and forth along with far more details:
http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/
http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/c1.jpg
http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/c2.jpg
http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/reply.pdf
http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/report1.jpg
http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/report2.jpg
http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/reply_report.pdf
http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/reply_reply1.jpg
http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/reply_reply2.jpg
http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/letter_2_pres.pdf
http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/ifut.pdf
best guess but going mostly from rumor and reading between the lines: the woman who lodged the complaint is quite likely the wife of one of the VP's in UCC.
It wasn't a student.
It was another member of staff.
Seriously, grow up. As the paper in question demonstrates, the animal kingdom clearly has at least as many kinks as us humans do. It's not "sinful." Far from it -- if you believe in a deity, it seems obvious that this deity heartily approves of sex in all kinds of variety.
Or, if you can't deal with that, fine, believe whatever you want -- but stop retarding scientific and social progress with your puritanical ideals.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
He wasn't even lecturing about it to students, if his protest letter is accurate. He was sharing it with a colleague, which I assume means another professor, a research scientist, or some other variety of non-student researcher, in the context of "an ongoing debate with the colleague in question about the relevance of evolutionary biology to human behaviour, and in particular about the dubiousness of many claims for human uniqueness". Seems rather relevant, and strange to object to.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If nature facts don't agree with your moral beliefs... the worse for the facts.
Next Vatican will be sending missionaries to teach the bats about properly moral sexual practices.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
This is not everything that he has been accusing of.
" According to her statement, these include over-enthusiastic hugging and cheek-kissing, unwanted compliments about her physical appearance, lying to her about his qualifications, and spreading rumours about the special nature of his relationship with her and her husband. "
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
He contends that the paper wasn't a joke at all but that others classed it as such.
Science is science; what little simple-minded cretin made this decision? Someone should dig up the name and contact details, so we can mock him/her properly.
AND THEY WILL KNOW OUR NAME IS THE HIVEMIND.
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
If you read on he was cleared on everything except showing her the article.
keep reading: he was cleared on everything except the article.
This government is demonstrating it is still in the dark ages, where idiotic canned morals and ethics based on superstitious and largely fictional books still dictate the rules of state.
It's going to be a long, long haul getting rid of the "Sky Daddy" moralizers. Everywhere. In the meantime, the religiots will continue to look for contemporary alternatives to burning at the stake. Ruining one's career, and to some extent one's life... a fairly effective replacement, I'd say. A lifetime of suffering coupled with loss of ability to teach what one knows in an atmosphere of respect and personal and professional growth.
Fellatio in bats. What should be extremely interesting, is instead a hair trigger for idiots.
Sometimes I can go days without having to realize just how much I despise religion. And then something like this happens.
By the way, IRISH MORONS: Sex is good. Violence is bad. Imposed government/social censorship is MORONIC. Freedom for people to view what they CHOOSE and make their own decisions is the ONLY correct path through this mess. Is that convenient for everyone? Will everyone feel good about it? No. But it is still the BEST path. Because freedom of knowledge for everyone totally trumps anyone's moral qualms.
Teach your kids what you want to teach them. What you think is right. But don't attempt to sanitize the rest of the world in the shape of your morals and ethics. My kids are not your kids and you have NO right to impose your morals and ethics upon them. That's MY job. And I teach my kids that sex is good, and violence is bad. I'm not in the least interested in your goat-age, superstition-driven stupidity. Thanks.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
For which she provided no proof, and which were only mentioned in passing at the end of the complaint letter as an attempt to bolster her case. It also notes that the external examiners decided that the email exchanges between them that followed cast doubt on these allegation and did not uphold them.
In fact the only part of the complaint that was upheld was that he showed her a published peer-reviewed article in part of a debate on biology.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
I read the complaint, replies and rest of the documents. Made me miss the first period of Montreal @ Philadelphia.
The lack of evidence is staggering and mind-boggling. Who knows what really has been going on, but what I do know that the investigators or the president don't know anything that would be warrant a two-year monitoring and counseling period.
Let me repeat: not guilty.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers - Pablo Picasso
According to this, she laughed and asked him for a copy when he showed it to her. Sounds like there's some sort of personal vendetta going on here.
http://felidware.com/DylanEvans/ifut.pdf
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the only thing that makes me vote for the guy is the fact that she refused apology and counselling when it would've been best. In my opinion, that girl is as shy as a mouse, and the guy is a bit of a jerk, but that ain't a reason to apply a formal complaint without trying to resolve the issue by their own means..
Is there some objective definition for "being creepy" in the workplace?
Creepiness is in the eye of the beholder. And absent a documented violation of some code of professional conduct, it's just the opinion of the accusor. So if such accusations are taken too seriously, it enables the least tolerant individuals to define the culture of the workplace. That's not a good thing, in my opinion.
Have gnu, will travel.
Just what we need flying furry priests who enjoy fellatio.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Apparently I am really lenient guy. I read the summary real quick and thought he got fired for blowing fruit bats in front of other people and felt it was a bit extreme of a punishment.
Of course that might have something to do with the fact "two-year period of intensive monitoring and counseling imposed upon him" and "fellatio in fruit bats" happened to be on top of each other (no pun intended) in bold and italics.
That is not the point in these cases unfortunately. HR departments esp ones with affirmative action offices can often take unilateral action against you without any proof at all. The amount of power alloted against individuals in institutions by these and other offices on campus that are answerable to no one is unbelievable.
We had a case here that involved a woman getting a man's disabled parking permit taken away because he honked at her once in a parking garage, which she claimed was harassment.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
He provided evidence such as emails which didn't match with her account so they went with his account.
Read the material.
There's links to the various letters back and forth in TFA.
As you'd imagine he's not crazy about his career being fucked up by "sexually harassed co-worker" on his record with no warning or recourse.
simply saying that everyone was within their rights is true but at the same time it would also be true if she'd complained about an overly friendly handshake- she'd have every right to avail herself of a standard procedure to file a complaint and the president of the university would have every right to determine any course of action.
1:He wasn't screwing the person.
2:This wasn't an undergraduate or student of any kind.
This was another academic at the university.
And the medical faculty at that.
If a professor in the School of Medicine can't walk into another academics office and show them a peer reviewed paper about fruitbats that pretty much rules out showing them more shocking papers about anal warts and STD's.
He also showed it to a few other people on the way over and the other person in the office at the time.
You can shit on academic freedom all you want but if doctors can't talk about peer reviewed scientific papers which might embarrass the fragile sensibilities of someone where they work then they're not going to be able to do their job for fear of being accused of destroying the mind of the office wallflower.
I read that part, but bear in mind that the investigation does not show any collaborations of these claims.
He strikes me as a doctor who is overenthusiastic in his field, and doesn't understand that others may not share his same interest in behavioral psychology.
She strikes me as someone was was deeply offended by the article, decided his interest in it was creepy, and recast any prior experiences with him in that light.
But I could be wrong. All I have is the letters that were posted.
Is it politically correct to be for oral sex in fruit bats or against it? Could someone please explain?
Bullshit.
They threw out everything else because she was LYING and he was able to prove it with EVIDENCE like emails.
hehehe you said "staff"
I love how you use "like being a dick" to paraphrase how a court would view it. It's funny because it's true. Your response reads like an Onion article or the script for The Daily Show.
One really difficult situation I've seen a few times is in same-gender sexual harassment. Sometimes gay guy hits on a straight guy or worse hits on a closeted gay guy in public on purpose. I've even seen guys do this to attempt to out someone against his will. Maybe a straight guy makes jokes about another co-worker or fellow student and the target is afraid to complain because that would be seen as effete by the harasser. In younger students, around middle school, boys tease each other about what they may or may not have done sexually yet. If a gay guy asks someone out who's not willing and the target makes sexual harassment complaints, there's a possible counter-complaint about homophobia and possibly about sexual harassment based on homophobia. If the guy being hit on is in the closet, the investigation of the complaint may out him as surely as the original harassment. Teasing people about their sexuality or their effectiveness at finding sex partners is clearly sexual harassment, but it's often overlooked and underreported. It's often embarrassing for the victim and not taken seriously by authorities.
I personally had a problem with a female student sexually harassing me back in high school. I had to contact the equal rights officer for the district, remind him that men were just as equal as victims as women were as athletes and students, and threaten a lawsuit before the school even attempted to alter her behavior. I had previously complained to the vice principal in charge of student discipline and the school principal, and it was still a nearly daily issue until that point.
I find it sad in this day and age of supposed equality that men's treatment of women is closely watched and critiqued, but men against men or women against men isn't even given credence once it's been brought to light. That combined with many people believing allegations and not questioning accusers or waiting for evidence, especially when it's a woman or child making the accusations (or as likely someone making allegations on behalf of a child) makes it a dangerous time to be a man.
I guess the lesson is, if you really want to harass someone and get away with it, use the HR department as a proxy.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
In any setting there are expectations of a professional level of behaviour, and he chose not to abide by them.
This guy is a Lecturer in Behavioural Science at a "supposed" School of Medicine!! What do you think his ***profession*** requires of him? What do you think he's paid to do? Is he required to discuss morally safe topics? Is he required to only talk about the Little House on the Prairie and other PG-Safe topics? What would be the point?
The transmission of diseases rarely limits itself to PG-13 safe topics. Vectors of disease transmissions are rarely that palatable, or clean. A behavioral scientist in a school of medicine is, of course, going to study and lecture about abnormal behaviors. Whatever it is: Eating feces, promiscuity, infections, fellatios, incest, etc. I wouldn't expect anything else from the talks of a behavioral scientist in a "supposed" School of Medicine.
No one in academia can claim not to understand where the line is drawn when interacting with other colleagues.
This word "academia", as accurate as it may be in this case, loses the most salient underlying context. This is not an Art School, or even an English Lit School, the Science of Medicine is an infinitely more practical, pragmatic, and less clean professional environment, than what you would normally find in other Ivory Towers. And for good reasons. When someone gets squimish in Art History, nothing bad happens, but when someone gets squimish in Medicine, people die.
"It was just a joke" has long since ceased to be an adequate excuse for offensive behaviour.
And yes, the accused is taking issue with the "bad joke" interpretation. He's even taking to task one of the investigators for some of the things he said during the investigation. One would think that a panel of faculty members would be a little more willing to find out the facts, and interview witnesses (which they haven't done yet), instead of just editorializing their personal opinions and rendering subjective interpretations.
Dr. Evans managed to pull the wool over the eyes of everyone save the president of the university who saw through all of the bullshit and slapped Dr. Evans with what amounts to a 2 year probationary period with some sensitivity training. If Dr. Evans pulled a stunt like this in the states he'd have been out on his ass.
Here, let me fetch you a hose to get the giant wad of sand out of your vagina.
Now that we've sorted that little problem out, let me tell you about a lecturer at my old university. He was a great guy, great programmer, a hacker in the old sense of the word (to the point that all of his web site scripting was done in CGI models written in C). From what I heard, he was in line for head of department, until he pointed out that one of the other lecturers was about as useful and competent as tits on a bull. He was absolutely right, this staff member was abominable and couldn't teach a kindergarten class about crayons, much less teach a 3rd year computing unit. Sadly, she managed to fabricate a harassment claim which not only diverted attention from her own total lack of competence, but also ended his chances for any kind of promotion.
There's nothing more dangerous to an intellectually honest academic than a female co-worker who knows she's incompetent and is prepared to use sexual discrimination or harassment claims as a weapon.
To me it sounds like the good Dr. has done an admirable job of 'spin control'.
Read her allegations. They are just that, allegations, but dispense with Dr. Evans interpretation of events, and read it for what it is.
Dr. Evans engaged in what most of us would recognize as relatively sophomoric antics and flirtation - repeatedly engaging the complainant in discussions of a sexual nature, about Casanova, and ultimately showing her (I assume with much Junior-high-school snickering) an article on fellatio in Fruit Bats.
It IS possible that all of this was just an unfortunate set of coincidences, showing nothing more than an autistic-level of disconnectedness by Dr. Evans in not understanding the context of the repeated discussions.
Considerably more likely is the Dr. Evans had a serious boner for the alleged victim, and engaged in the sorts of feeble things 7th grade boys would do to try to 'spark' some interest in 'that hot girl' - with arguably similar results...she is shocked, disgusted, and goes running to the teacher crying "GROSS!".
If the subsequent dinner "double date" was accurately represented in the reportage, as well as a YEAR of such antics, she (and the school administration) are entirely vindicated.
I congratulate Dr. Evans on his ability to form a groundswell of public opinion in his behalf by mischaracterizing the event as some sort of Puritanical effort to "stifle academic freedom", a message which rings so readily in the ears of the political leanings of so many here on slashdot that its readily believed contrary to the actual reports. I'm sure he can look forward to many job offers from political parties looking for media consultants.
I'd however recommend to both of them that they perhaps make sure Dr. Evans isn't working with any women.
-Styopa
they wouldn't be able to use sex as a tool to destroy you, so at least they'd have to destroy you based on your actual actions.
Please stop stalking me, bro.