Edna Chun’s Sad Tale or As the World Turns at UNCG

All right, I finally did it. I broke down and bought an ergonomic keyboard. I simply can’t keep up with the pace of the UNCG soap opera if they are going to keep churning out news at this rate. I really am going to have to ask for health insurance and a pension if they keep me working full time like this.

The News and Record reported yesterday that Chun has filed a grievance with UNCG.

The irony was not lost on me. I think it would have been considered heavy handed as a story line even in the world of daytime television, but this is reality where no such bars on the purest melodrama exist.

Chun’s angle is that she was fired because of her age (68) and her ethnicity (Asian). She certainly wasn’t fired because of her abilities (insignificant) or her strength of character (absent).

One of her primary complaints isn’t that she was innocent of royally screwing up but that she wasn’t extended the courtesy of being allowed to resign or retire rather than be fired.

Wait, I’m tearing up and I can’t see the screen clearly.

Okay.

In other words, she is the first one that has been dealt with appropriately. That has got to hurt.

Somebody more fluent than I in the subtleties of this system might need to fill us in, but I would imagine that if you retire or resign you get a different set of benefits than if you are fired. At the very least you get to save face.

Something that doesn’t happen, of course, if you are carted away in handcuffs and your mug shot is posted for all the world to see.

But I digress.

So, she wasn’t given the velvet handshake. Also, she says, she doesn’t know why she was fired. And she didn’t have anything to do with the UNCG3 anyway. And Paul Mason made her do it.

I’m having a hard time processing all of those different angles at the same time. She didn’t do it, except for that they made her do it, and she doesn’t know why they fired her, but she didn’t do it anyway, so it doesn’t matter. I think that’s the argument.

Pulling together all of his talents as a university spokesman and after a lengthy incantation to invoke the muses, Joe Gallehugh responded bravely on behalf of UNCG with words that are sure to echo through the ages much as the speeches recorded by Tacitus in his Histories that the university couldn’t comment.

Chun is showing some backbone in refusing to allow others off the hook and go silently. Of course, it would have been helpful earlier if she had brought it to the public’s attention that Paul Mason had demanded to know the names of those who had filed grievances against him and pressured her to dismiss the matter. Also, apparently her supervisor, Charles Maimone created a hostile work environment – something Chun suddenly seems to clearly understand.

But if she wants to call out the whole rat’s nest, I would advise everyone to put on goggles and gloves because it’s going to get dirty.

Maybe Lyda Carpen can offer Chun some pointers about going through the grievance process. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Carpen is too busy these days to have time to help.

The Chancellor Needs to Answer

Now there has been a settlement, the final admission by the university that it didn't have a leg to stand on. Not one, not a stump, not a lean-to, not a dream, not a prayer. There wasn't even a whimper despite the promised bang.

Where is the evidence of egregious wrong doing now?

The lies should stick in Linda Brady's throat.

And if the faculty had any guts at all, they would be at her office on Monday morning demanding that she answer for herself. She should beg our forgiveness and she should leave now. There isn't enough crow to serve her what she deserves.

This. Is. Unacceptable.

We do not forgive.

We do not forget.
Expect us.

Paul Mason is Leaving UNCG but We Aren’t Done with Him Yet

Free at last, free at last.

Paul Mason has not yet announced it, but will be leaving UNCG on February 6^th to pursue better opportunities. Who wouldn’t these days? After all, he only cleared out nearly a century’s worth of accumulated knowledge distributed among those who were once employed in the now ravaged university relations department. He’s been hired to swing the axe somewhere else, that’s for sure. Anyway, he’d done what he came here to do and so why would he stay?

It probably would be hard for him to come back to work the day after the public hearing that will be held as part of Lyda Carpen’s grievance process.

There’s also not that many people left for him to intimidate, fire, or have arrested.

His protector, Linda Brady, will be leaving at the end of the year.

This is a man who never holds a job for very long anyway.

Here’s the thing though. He doesn’t get to walk away from this as quietly as he’s walked away from the other places where his devastating personality has been allowed to roam freely. Now, if you type “paul mason uncg” into the Google search engine, the top hits are almost all about the damage he has done and the brazen stupidity of his actions at UNCG.

The people who hired him no doubt know who and what he is, and my heart goes out to those who will fall under his dominion. However, no longer will they have to search and scrape to find out why this is happening – it’s well documented that this is what he does. If you find out you’ll be working for Paul Mason, you’d better get your running shoes on, but you won’t be alone. Eventually, his name will stand for the pure toxicity that his personality leaks.

We’ll follow you Paul.

This isn’t over.

Linda is a Liar

Everyone knows that Linda is lying about there being more to the ‘crimes’ of the UNCG 3. Everyone knows she is ‘retiring’ only because of this latest debacle and not because she had said she was only going to work for seven years when she came here.

Even Linda knows this, but her policy has always been to take a hard line and to budge for nothing, even the truth.

When the judge dropped the charges, she knew then that Linda was lying.

When in the first stage of the grievance process the independent arbiters who heard the cases for the firing of the UNCG3 led to the offers to rescind those firings, they knew that Linda was lying.

When the three member grievance panel heard Mason’s fairytale about Lyda Carpen, they recognized that the things for which she had been fired were as bogus as the possibility that Hansel & Gretel should be tried for the murder of the witch. Their determination that the personal use of a university issued laptop might possibly, maybe been worthy of firing (although they even tempered that with the idea that possibly it was only worth demotion) was their way of setting aside the merits of the case and trying to find something that wouldn’t get them in trouble with their superiors.

You don’t go to court, let’s say, for murder and come out with a verdict of community service for Jaywalking. Carpen was fired for signing off on time sheets and the grievance panel found that she used a university laptop for personal business. How is that even allowable as a finding? Did they investigate whether she had ever gotten away with parking overtime in a metered spot? Does she have any late library books? Did she rewind all of the videos before she returned them to the store?

We can’t fault the panel though, in fact it seems that what they have done is actually quite courageous. They have rejected the foundation of Carpen’s firing – this in the face of an environment in which simple disagreement with your superiors leads to…firing and arrest.

That has been made very clear to the staff at UNCG and the three members of the staff panel are all very aware of the possible consequences of making the list of those who are out of line with the administration. You see, Mason isn’t the first bully to be brought in to clear out a department of ‘undesirables.’ Brady operates this way and the fear and mistrust that has been created is palpable. In an atmosphere where many have told me that they are afraid to click ‘like’ on the UNCGcleanhouse facebook page for fear of repercussions, you cannot say that it was ever possible for Burns, Moore, or Williamson to give an unbiased opinion.

The Board of Trustees has a very important word in the title of their entity that some seem to have forgotten about: Trust.

They are entrusted with the stewardship of the entire university, not with the task of protecting the interests of the upper administration at all costs. Their wards include the faculty, the students, and, as is too often forgotten, the staff of the university. Rather than taking sides, they should advocate for the most complete transparency possible in regard to this situation. Working to get UNCG off of the front page of the newspaper and out of the Chronicle of Higher Education isn’t going to happen by stonewalling – everything will be known. UNCG will only resume its status by cleaning house and setting itself in order.

Brady is leaving in July, Mason needs to leave sooner and a message needs to be sent through the entire campus that this regime of bullying and intimidation will be tolerated no longer; that there will be no more lies; and that UNCG is a community of people who care for each other and for the university as a whole.

The Board of Trustees can help to lead this rebirth or it can find itself wishing that it had. It’s time to roll up our sleeves and not just wash away the stains, but dig out the rot.