UNC likes to talk about itself as being a genteel place, and a little bit of heaven. My experiences since working here have indicated otherwise: UNC is a heartless institution, with policies and personnel that have no interest in individual faculty, staff or students.
I started my job here in July, 1997. I was an assistant professor in the School of Information and Library Science (SILS) until my departure for greener pastures in 2003.
Let me tell you 4 major life-changing events that UNC has brought about. The 5th, in 2003, was being denied tenure. Yes, I am basically roadkill (one of NC's state treasures).
1. I interviewed at UNC-CH in spring, 1997. During the two-day interview, I met with the entire SILS faculty individually and in groups. The question that literally everyone asked was, why do I want to leave the University of Illinois (where I had a similar position) to come to UNC.
My answer was that I was seeking better job opportunities for my wife, Ilana. Urbana, Illinois, is a small city in the middle of a large expanse of cornfields. It's a huge university (twice as many students as UNC), and lots of qualified potential employees live in the area. Ilana had several jobs, but no real career prospects. So, we moved to Terre Haute, Indiana (100 miles away) so Ilana could take a job at Indiana State University. I commuted to Urbana several days per week, and worked other days from home.
What I hoped to get from UNC was better job prospects for Ilana to pursue her career as a librarian and Internet developer. I was encouraged by the SILS faculty. Not only were there excellent job prospects in the area, but UNC could provide spouse hiring assistance. So, I took the job, and we moved to North Carolina.
Here's what we actually found out:
UNC had screwed me. After hearing from dozens of people that UNC would help find a position, and that the outlook for positions in the area is rosey, the truth emerged: UNC does not help at all, and while there are many positions there is a very high level of competion for them.
Eventually, Ilana found a job, then a couple more. Finally, she ended up working at UNC as an applications programmer. Later, she worked at Cisco and IBM. The bottom line is that she started looking for jobs in the area in April 1997, and did not find a permanent position until March 1998. This was a time of many resumes sent out, many interviews, and uncertain finances.
2. Ilana was not hired for a SILS position. The new Dean of SILS, Joanne Marshall, had invited Ilana to apply for the position. In two discussions Ilana had with the Dean, and several that I had, she made it clear that Ilana was well-qualified and had an inside track.
I had mentioned to the Dean the difficulties we had had with getting help from UNC for job-seeking, and Marshall was sympathetic. Ilana was very highly qualified for the job. The focus was on managing educational technology for the school and playing a role in educating SILS students, faculty and staff in the use of the technology. Ilana had already been teaching INLS 50 (a basic computing course) for SILS as an adjunct faculty member.
SILS hired someone else. The person they hired had 3 months job experience, as compared to Ilana's 5 years. He had no teaching experience at all, compared to Ilana's teaching for SILS and teaching many training workshops at Indiana State (the type of workshops that were supposed to be part of the job at SILS) 1.
We were screwed. After hearing sympathetic noises from Dean Marshall, and being re-assured by my faculty colleagues that Ilana's candidacy was strong, she wasn't hired. The bottom line is that the person who was hired also had some Unix systems administration experience, something Ilana lacks. Systems administration skills were not part of the job ad or job description, but were supposed to be part of a newly created job in SILS.
The newly created job fell through (UNC funding didn't receive a grant they were hoping for), so the SILS search committee and Dean decided to hire the other person so he could do both jobs.
3. Ilana was fired from her position in the School of Social Work. This is an incredible story, but easy to briefly summarize. Since summer 1999, Ilana had been working in the School of Social Work at UNC as a Web database programmer.
Since November 1999, her supervisor, Laura Zimmerman, had been giving Ilana a hard time. Ilana had been trying to work things out (by speaking with someone from UNC's Human Resources Counselling Center, and speaking with Zimmerman's boss, the dean of the School).
On March 3, Ilana was copying a Microsoft SQL database from one server to another, using a database copy facility built-in to MS SQL. During the transfer, the database got corrupted somehow (it might have been the power failure that happened during the transfer [Zimmerman's server computers were not using UPS']; it might have been that a drive filled up; it might have been some sort of MS SQL error; it might have been entirely Ilana's fault. We just don't know).
The problem was, there were no backups of the database files. None. The systems administrator evidently didn't know how to back up a live database.
Under UNC's provisions for "grossly inefficient performance," Ilana was fired. She was accused of losing $576,000 worth of work. The database that was lost was part of a state contract, and people from human services agencies around the state had been spending months entering data into the database that Ilana set up.
We were screwed. Backup tapes are not Ilana's job, they never were. They were someone else's job (Manny Garcia), and that someone else had screwed up badly. Ilana never even saw a backup tape, and never had any responsibility for system backups.
Ilana was used as a scapegoat by Zimmerman. The database had been lost, evidently due to Zimmerman's "grossly inefficient performance" in not having proper backups for a $576,000 state contract. Perhaps because of prior tension with Zimmerman, it was Ilana that was fired, and the real systems administrator wasn't even disciplined.
UNC is a state institution, and the state has extensive sets of procedures for firing people, and for grievance procedures. What we found out was:
It's hard to believe that anyone would be fired because a file was not properly backed up, especially when the backups are not at all related to that person's job. But that's exactly what happened.
4. My class materials were censored. I taught INLS 183, Distributed Systems and Administration. It's a class in Unix systems administration. The class consists of lots and lots of software demonstrations -- everything from Linux installation, to Web server software, to applications like email, graphics, editors and compilers.
When I was planning my spring 2000 class, in December 1999, I decided to include new software for DVD players under Linux. We use Linux systems in INLS 183, so that people in the class can use a small "lab" of generic PCs for their class software installation exercises. People also use their home computer systems.
Like many people, I recently bought a new computer that came with a DVD drive. However, there was no software to play DVD movies with Linux until DeCSS was released in October 1999. DeCSS had been challenged by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) under the new Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) as violating provisions of the act by decrypting the encrypted DVD movie data.
I included the software in my class because it helps play DVDs on Linux systems, is a good example of a software installation (there are some difficult parts involved, such as re-compiling the Linux kernel), and it is a good starting point for discussion about the nature of open source software and copyright.
On March 16, Jeanne Smythe, an Associate Chancellor at UNC, received email from attorneys representing the MPAA asking me to remove my copy of the DVD software from my class pages. Note that there had not yet been a ruling on the MPAA's court cases, and these cases are filed in NY, CA and CT (not NC!). In short, the MPAA thinks the DeCSS software is illegal, but no court had made a ruling on it (other than to grant a preliminary injunction while the court case proceeds).
On Monday March 27, I was informed by UNC's legal counsel office's David Parker that I would have to remove the software. They had looked over the DMCA and decided that the software could be in violation.
I had been screwed. The obvious thing for the UNC legal counsel to do was to (a) realize that the MPAA's actions and requests were at best unsubstantiated and at worst completely ridiculous; (b) see that the DMCA was being actively challenged by many court cases, and the provision they were worried about was likely to be ruled illegal; and (c) let me make judgments about what's appropriate to include in my class.
They didn't do these things. Instead, they ordered me to remove the software from the class Web page. There was no hearing, no recourse. I had made my case by email and telephone to Parker, and received his response in a memo a few days later. There is more to this story, and more letters from the MPAA (in which I was actually defended by UNC, for a change). See the details on my DVD pages.
NOTES: 1. The person they hired is a perfectly nice guy, and has performed quite well in the position. It's not his fault that he was hired instead of Ilana, and I don't blame him for it.