Then Santa Claus & the Easter Bunny sent out this memo...

To: Faculty
From: Santa Claus & the Easter Bunny
Re: Response to the Memo by the Hiring Committee and Chair
CC: the Dean & the Provost [who, by this point, have to be thinking, "What is wrong with these people?!]

We are writing in response to the memo by the Hiring Committee for Position, co-signed by Chair of the department.

In our memo explaining our resignation, we did not name names or discuss the specifics of the candidate’s qualification. We would like to remain collegial with the committee members; however, in order to respond effectively to the above mentioned memo, we will have to make our statements specific and clear, which will involve naming names.

Let us first establish two facts with which we hope the memo writers would agree: 1.At the meeting with Dean last semester in his office, Vlad the Impaler asked the Dean whether or not the department could hire a couple to fill one line. The Dean gave an indirect but clear negative answer. That happened before the formation of the hiring committee and her reading a single application. 2. General George Armstrong Custer and Conan the Barbarian were not at the first meeting.

At the first committee meeting, in the absence of General George Armstrong Custer & Conan the Barbarian, Vlad the Impaler strenuously argued for both Candidate A and Candidate B, who are assistant professors (Candidate B a visiting Assistant professor) in the English Department at Name of University. The following did NOT happen at that meeting. 1. At no time during the meeting did Vlad the Impaler reveal to the committee that Candidate A & Candidate B are husband and wife. 2. No one at the meeting “asserted that Vlad the Impaler must recuse herself from voting on that candidate [A].” Santa Claus did ask, with good reason, “Is she your friend?” When Vlad the Impaler gave a negative answer, Santa Claus said, “Fine, just checking.” At the second meeting, Santa Claus asked the same question about Candidate A, and when she received the same emphatic denial from Vlad the Impaler--she said she had never met him, talked to him, or knew who he was, Santa Claus responded the same way, “Just checking.” In fact, our suspicion was not confirmed until we checked the candidate’s website after our resignation. We found that Candidate A & Candidate B are husband and wife and that Vlad the Impaler participated with Candidate A in the Workshop Session at the Conference. If you want to see the listing for yourself, please find the Link. We found it curious that Vlad the Impaler never met Candidate A at the same workshop session. Even then we were not certain that her relationship with Candidate A was necessarily one between friends, so in our last memo we wrote that we believe one of the committee members was trying to hire “a candidate who might be an acquaintance or a relative of an acquaintance.”

This is what did happen before and at the first meeting. 1) Both Casper the Friendly Ghost and Santa Claus voiced strong preference for Candidate C, the only candidate whose file received unqualified “yes” votes from all committee members (five at the time). In comparison, Candidate A received three “yes” votes and two ‘no’ votes, and Candidate B received two “yes” votes from Vlad the Impaler and Conan the Barbarian, “maybe/yes” from Casper the Friendly Ghost, “maybe” from the Easter Bunny, and “no” from Santa Claus. Vlad the Impaler not only recorded “yes” for both candidates on their file covers, but also wrote enthusiastic recommendations on each. 2) When the Easter Bunny suggested that Candidate B was weak in qualification according to the job description and that we should strive to hire minority candidates to represent more fairly the ethnic composition of students, Vlad the Impaler immediately and unfairly charged him with “racism.” Because the Easter Bunny, then chair of the committee, was unclear about Candidate B’s affirmative action status and the attendant guidelines, Candidate B’s name was included in the final pool of seven, even though he thought the candidate was poorly qualified. 3) Santa Claus suggested that the pool was too small and that we extend the search further to attract more candidates, particularly minority candidates. That suggestion was rejected and the committee proceeded to review the candidates with her full participation.

As you already know, at the second meeting, Candidate B, who barely made the final seven, was ranked first by the other three committee members: Vlad the Impaler, Conan the Barbarian, and Casper the Friendly Ghost. General George Armstrong Custer ranked him third; the Easter Bunny ranked him last. Santa Claus, due to an unexpected circumstance, was late for the meeting and missed both the vote and the discussion about the candidate.

We judge Candidate B as the weakest candidate of the seven finalists because he has virtually no teaching experience or any publications in the Field or the Experience that the job description stipulates.

In his file, under “Teaching Experience,” the only relevant experience is “English Course A and English Course B” which he was scheduled to teach this semester, Spring 2006. Whether he is actually teaching those courses now needs to be verified by the committee.

Candidate B's professional publications are far fewer than any other candidate who made the final list. He has one conference paper, co-written with two colleagues, published in the proceedings of that conference. He has a chapter accepted by an anthology edited by his wife, Candidate A, and another editor. The anthology, according to Candidate B, will be published in January 2006, although the Publisher lists its publication date as March 2006. He lists three journal articles, yet two of them were published by a student-run magazine, and the other by Non-Academic Magazine. He also lists 16 conference presentations, but none has anything to do with the Field. Equally important, Candidate B has never administrated a Program in said Field, which according to the job description, is a requirement for the position.

Finally, allow us to refute the statement that “none of us argued that the candidate rated highly because he is minority.” Since it is fruitless to pit our words against [those of] the other committee members, we suggest that you read Vlad the Impaler's commentary on Candidate B's file. It starts, “This is the first clearly minority candidate I’ve come across.” Vlad the Impaler, at the very least, repeatedly emphasized Candidate B’s status as a minority candidate.

We strongly urge the department to read the files of the final seven candidates—including the ratings on their folder covers, which document the independent judgment of each committee member before the two committee meetings—and to decide for yourselves the truthfulness of the two versions of the same story.

We regret that we were forced to name names and discuss the contents of a candidate’s file, but we felt it was important to defend ourselves by sharing with the department our recollection of the events discussed in the committee’s memo.