Shooting at Univ. Alabama Huntsville (merged thread folds in Parents Cafe comments)

[AL34]

<p>seriously, it may have to do with the recommendation thing. DS runs a warehouse club, has some 250 employees at any given time. They are not allowed to give a recommendation other than verifying years of employment etc. The guy who gets fired and jailed for major theft gets the same reference as the star employee. I’m sure it is done to eliminate lawsuits as his company tends to be a big target (shoot, even Lucky on King of the Hill got a 30K settlement for slipping on pee in a Costco).</p>

<p>So if an employee threatened another’s life, or got fired for sexual harassment - they can’t say. Criminal record is another thing but that doesn’t come from the employer. Maybe it’s the same with universities like Harvard?</p>

[mom2collegekids]

<p>how does this not come up when applying for a job (at UA)? I do think hands are tied as far as giving negative recommendations, I know DS cannot give one for a former employee, but certainly this was common knowledge around Harvard at the time. How does this not come up?</p>

<p>First of all, this was not at UA, this was at UAH…a totally different university.</p>

<p>Harvard awarded this lady a PhD after this odd bomb threat, and obviously after the whole killing the brother incident. Since she was a local girl, Harvard would have had an easier time finding out about the brother issue. Plus, they went ahead and gave her the PhD…were they satisfied that it wasn’t her?. </p>

<p>I imagine that an internet search would not have turned up this info about Dr. Bishop before these recent events since no charges were ever filed.</p>

<p>I don’t think a person has a “criminal record” if they’re never really arrested or found guilty of anything. It sounds like she was never formally arrested with the brother’s death. The booking process was stopped, and the records destroyed.</p>

[tomofboston]

<p>I wonder that now, in the internet and google age, will it be easier to do informal background checks? Google someone’s name and it may bring up arrests and other info even without convictions. </p>

<p>It may not be valid info to deny employment but it would give the employer/university some inkling of what this person’s past life was. Any info before 1995 or 2000 when newspapers etc. went on line would not be available. Come to think of it, the Boston Globe and New York Times put their entire archives on line.</p>

[QwertyKey]

<p>Not really important, but Lucky got 53K settlement money, not 30K.</p>

[midmo]

<p>So what was Bishop doing between 1993 and 2003? That is enough time to do two post-docs and a tenure-track appt. somewhere else that failed to produce tenure. I am suspicious that she just kept getting passed on to someone else. </p>

<p>Last night I asked a prof. who was a long-time dept. chair and is still involved in hiring committees if they do background checks. I wasn’t all that satisfied with the answer, but he did make the point that in this case, the shooter didn’t have a criminal record, not even a formal arrest (at least she wasn’t booked and charged), so nothing in a standard search would have come up.</p>

<p>Perhaps UAH should have been suspicious if she had moved around a lot–can’t say, because I don’t know her professional history. Perhaps former employers and grad. school officials were just glad to sweep her out the door and let someone else have the problem? I am curious to read more.</p>

[tribe1]

<p>An Alabama professor accused of shooting six colleagues was a suspect in the attempted mail bombing of a Harvard Medical School professor in December of 1993, the Boston Globe reported.</p>

[midmo]

<p>From the story about the bomb plot investigation:</p>

<p>

During a search of Bishop’s computer, authorities found a draft of a novel that Bishop was writing about a female scientist who had killed her brother and was hoping to make amends by becoming a great scientist, according to a person who was briefed on the investigation and spoke to the Globe on the condition of anonymity.

</p>

<p>She wanted to make amends for murdering her brother by becoming a great scientist???</p>

[curmudgeon]

<p>Now it sounds like a bad tv plot. One of those that just gets too dang strange.</p>

[marite]

<p>Thanks to all who have discouraged further discussion of the death penalty and gun control. </p>

<p>I send my condolences to AL34 and my thoughts go to the friend of mom2collegekids for his complete recovery and to the families of the victims. I do feel sorry for the children of Amy Bishop, but I feel even more sorrow for the anguish of the families of those she killed and critically wounded.</p>

<p>Regarding the admission of Amy Bishop to Harvard and her receiving a Ph.D., and then her being hired at UAH, if the death of her brother was ruled accidental, then I do not think a selection committee would have learned of it. Applicants are asked if they have been charged or convicted of a crime–and technically, she was not (we can second-guess this). Even though Braintree is quite close to Cambridge, there is no reason for a selection committee to know what happened there. The death must have happened many years before she applied for the Ph.D. program, members of the committee may have been more recently appointed, and her name is not so unusual as to stick in the mind of people who might have read about that incident years earlier. Universities are not like the FBI or other agencies or companies that conduct background checks on applicants. </p>

<p>“Collegiality” is a criterion considered in promotion reviews, but how much weight is has must vary from place to place. There are plenty of irascible profs, profs who shirk their administrative duties at all universities. Bishop, who was quite productive, must have thought that she deserved tenure, while her colleagues probably dreaded having her around for the rest of their working lives.</p>

[tomofboston]

<p>Other professors have hidden their past:</p>

<p>[Professor</a> With A Past - 60 Minutes - CBS News](<a href=“http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/28/60II/main646074.shtml]Professor”>http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/28/60II/main646074.shtml)</p>

[Youdon_tsay]

<p>Well, someone knew about the brother’s murder based on this in the latest story:</p>

<p>“Bishop surfaced as a suspect because she was allegedly concerned that she was going to receive a negative evaluation from Rosenberg on her doctorate work, the official said. The official said investigators believed she had a motive to target Rosenberg and were concerned that she had a history of violence, given that she had shot her brother to death in 1986.”</p>

<p>AL34, I’m sorry for your loss.</p>

[DonnaL]

<p>From today’s Boston Globe, regarding the DA back when Amy Bishop shot her brother:</p>

<p>

ORLEANS - US Representative William Delahunt said yesterday that he is considering retiring from his congressional seat representing the South Shore and Cape Cod, although he portrayed his deliberations as routine and said they are not related to challenges from Republicans who are energized by Scott Brown’s upset victory in last month’s special Senate election.

</p>

[DonnaL]

<p>From an interview with Amy Bishop’s husband, in the Chronicle of Higher Education:</p>

<p>[The</a> Ticker - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Husband-of-Accused-Huntsville/21254/?forceGen=1]The”>http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Husband-of-Accused-Huntsville/21254/?forceGen=1)</p>

<p>

Huntsville, Ala.—In his first extensive interview about what happened Friday at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, James Anderson said he didn’t know that his wife, Amy Bishop, had a gun when he dropped her off at a faculty meeting at 3 p.m. Nor did he know specifically what might have caused Ms. Bishop, a biology professor at the university, to shoot and kill three of her colleagues less than an hour later. But he knew that his wife felt she had been unfairly denied tenure and that she was taking the fight to the highest level—the university’s Board of Trustees.</p>

<p>Mr. Anderson talked to The Chronicle outside his home Sunday morning as he and his four children prepared to leave for church. He said his wife believed that her denial had been caused, at least in part, by a miscommunication over whether two papers had been published in time to count toward her tenure bid. While some colleagues have said that she didn’t get along well with other professors, Mr. Anderson called her “very personable” and said she was a “loved teacher.” There had been no threats or hints of violence, he said, nor was he aware that his wife even had a gun. . . .</p>

<p>As for Ms. Bishop’s state of mind following her tenure denial last year, her husband said she “didn’t want to go the way of” another university scientist who had lost tenure and was now driving a shuttle bus in Huntsville. But there were reasons to be hopeful: Mr. Anderson said his wife was looking beyond the denial and had already mentioned two leads on possible jobs. She had said she was going to check on one of the leads when she got home from the faculty meeting.</p>

<p>The two met when they were undergraduates at Northeastern University, and Mr. Anderson was dating Ms. Bishop when she shot her brother to death more than two decades ago. He called that shooting “an absolute accident.” . . . .</p>

<p>Mr. Anderson spoke to The Chronicle in the doorway of his green, wood-sided house, about 20 minutes from the campus, as a light snow fell in Huntsville. He had talked to his wife by phone earlier Sunday morning.</p>

<p>“I know you guys are obviously in shock,” she told him, but she didn’t go into detail because, she said, her call was being monitored. She wanted to know whether their children were OK and whether they’d done their homework.

</p>

<p>So they were already dating when she shot her brother. Fascinating.</p>

[marite]

<p>I had not read the latest article on the Boston Globe before posting my last post. It sounds even weirder. And yet, it also seems that the police had no proof, otherwise, Bishop would have been charge in 1993. </p>

<p>I am disappointed in Delahunt; I thought he was a great congressman (not my own). I can only hope he truly did not have a role in covering up the brother’s death.</p>

[DonnaL]

<p><a href=“http://www.wishtv.com/dpps/news/national/south/Family-friends-No-hint-of-violence_3237542[/url]”>http://www.wishtv.com/dpps/news/national/south/Family-friends-No-hint-of-violence_3237542&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>

Some of Bishop’s colleagues, including William Setzer, chairman of the department of chemistry, told The Associated Press they did not know about her brother’s death.</p>

<p>Police say the gun she’s accused of using wasn’t registered, and investigators don’t know how or where she got it. . . .</p>

<p>Even in the days and hours before the shooting, Bishop’s friends, colleagues and students said she was acting like the intelligent — but odd — professor they knew. . . .</p>

<p>Tenure — a type of job-for-life security afforded academics — is often a stressful process for anyone up for review, Setzer said. Bishop was up front about the issue, often bringing it up in meetings where the subject wasn’t appropriate.</p>

<p>“That was another thing that made her different,” Setzer said. “In committee meetings she didn’t pretend that it wasn’t happening or anything. She was even loud about it: That they denied her tenure and she was appealing it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” . . .</p>

<p>Killed were Gopi K. Podila, the chairman of the Department of Biological Sciences, and professors Adriel Johnson and Maria Ragland Davis. Three people were wounded. Two of them — Joseph Leahy and staffer Stephanie Monticciolo — were in critical condition early Sunday. The third, Luis Cruz-Vera, had been released from the hospital.</p>

<p>Sammie Lee Davis, Davis’ husband, said in a brief phone interview that he was told a faculty member got angry while discussing tenure at the meeting and started shooting. He said his wife had described Bishop as “not being able to deal with reality” and “not as good as she thought she was.”

</p>

[AL34]

<p>I stand corrected! 53K!</p>

[NYMomof2]

<p>Delahunt was talking about not running again even before the shooting.</p>

[mom2collegekids]

<p>So what was Bishop doing between 1993 and 2003? That is enough time to do two post-docs and a tenure-track appt. somewhere else that failed to produce tenure. I am suspicious that she just kept getting passed on to someone else.</p>

<p>I was wondering that, too.</p>

<p>It’s possible that she “family-tracked” herself for awhile when she was having 4 children.</p>

[molliebatmit]

<p>

@midmo

So what was Bishop doing between 1993 and 2003? That is enough time to do two post-docs and a tenure-track appt. somewhere else that failed to produce tenure. I am suspicious that she just kept getting passed on to someone else.

This doesn’t really answer the question, but perhaps is interesting to note – I’ve seen a few sources list her as an “instructor” at Harvard Med, which is the title given to postdoctoral fellows in HMS-affiliated labs who have been postdocs for >5 years. (As you can imagine, it’s not always a badge of honor.) So there is evidence that she was in at least one postdoctoral position for an extended period of time.</p>

[midmo]

<p>^^^Thanks, mollie.</p>