<p>It’s fine and good to talk about all these weird anecdotal incidents from friends, neighbors and co-worker professors but I think none of it has any bearing on the possibility of stopping Amy before the last shootings. The spat at IHOP, neighbor and friends account of her eccentricities or a professor thinking that she might have mental illness are all not actionable evidence to force her to get help at anytime. I maintain the only glaring screw up here is by Braintree police who ignored evidence that would have forced her to get help, or at least she would have had on her permanent record about the deadly force she used and possibly never put her in a situation like this. Her husband also if he had any idea over the years, he is another person who could have done something about it.</p>
<p>I vote for Maggie Gyllenhall (sp?).</p>
<p>Amy has commited a fashion crime with those bangs. Do the movie a la *Rocky Horror *and have Betty White play Amy using flash backs.</p>
<p>Perhaps IHOP would finance the movie in connection with promoting its Grand Slam.</p>
<p>Does anyone else find it ironic that her latest paper is about the negative side effects of antidepressants?</p>
<p>Is that the one with her kids as first authors?</p>
<p>Yes- that’s the only one I’ve seen the abstract for- I believe it was linked here. It made me wonder if she has strong feelings against medications that might actually help her, or that might have been suggested in the past.</p>
<p>I didn’t notice that. I just zoned in on the fact that all the authors except her had the last name “Anderson” and thought it was strange.</p>
<p>I wonder if her kids will stay home for a while. It has to be very awkward to go to school with a bunch of other kids now that your mom is on the news for killing a bunch of people.</p>
<p>^^^^</p>
<p>Luckily, the kids’ last name is Anderson…very common. I wouldn’t be surprised if the H moves the family out of state and enrolls them elsewhere.</p>
<p>My gut tells me that the H will “wash his hands” of the situation and start a new life elsewhere with the kids. At this point, he owes Amy very little since she brought all of this upon herself and the family. The H’s first obligation now is to get a real job and raise those kids the best he can.</p>
<p>Her husband and kids are going to have a difficult path to make lives for themselves without being permanently connected to Amy Bishop. I hope that her husband has relatives who’ll hire him because it will be difficult for him to find others who will.</p>
<p>I wonder if her kids go to school. The family strikes me as the type who’d homeschool. If they do go to school, it’s likely that their mother killed some of their schoolmates’ parents.</p>
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<p>Maybe charges are impossible now because the statutes of limitations have all expired (other than for murder), but I think it’s still important to find out why none of these eyewitness reports were followed up on, and why no charges at all were filed. These were all felonies. And I’m sorry to bring race into it, but I happen to agree that white middle-class privilege did play a role here even apart from whatever influence the mother had. I refuse to believe that an African-American teenage girl in Massachusetts in the same circumstances (inner-city or not), who had just killed her brother with a shotgun, and then used the gun to threaten at least two separate people in an attempt to find a getaway car, would have escaped without charges in a million years. In fact, she would have been lucky to escape with her life – I have my doubts that the police would have asked her repeatedly to drop her gun, without shooting her.</p>
<p>Speculation like that aside, the whole thing really upsets me. It’s all so awful.</p>
<p>Students complained about prof charged in rampage</p>
<p>HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – Students say they complained to administrators about an Alabama professor accused of killing three colleagues and wounding three others in a shooting rampage during a faculty meeting.</p>
<p>The students upset with biology professor Amy Bishop told The Associated Press they went to University of Alabama in Huntsville administrators at least three times, complaining she was ineffective in the classroom and had odd, unsettling ways.</p>
<p>More:
[Students</a> complained about professor Amy Bishop charged in Alabama rampage - 2/17/10 - New York News and Tri-State News - 7online.com](<a href=“http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/national_world&id=7282307]Students”>http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/national_world&id=7282307)</p>
<p>Well, considering she has a Wikipedia page now, it will be hard for her kids prevent this from following them everywhere for a long time.</p>
<p>*Students say they complained to administrators about an Alabama professor accused of killing three colleagues… *</p>
<p>Well, that could have contributed to the fact that she was essentially fired when she didn’t get tenure.</p>
<p>BTW…what kind of crazy system is it that “fires” someone mid-semester, and then expects them to happily continue teaching and attending faculty meetings for at least 3 more months? </p>
<p>What kind of morale would exist in such a situation?</p>
<p>While I would never kill anyone, I would have a difficult time happily attending weekly faculty meetings while sitting with the same people who fired me.</p>
<p>In the corporate world, when someone is fired, that’s it…escorted out…final check is given or sent.</p>
<p>“BTW…what kind of crazy system is it that “fires” someone mid-semester, and then expects them to happily continue teaching and attending faculty meetings for at least 3 more months?”</p>
<p>Happily? No. But this system is actually for the benefit of the terminated faculty member. There’s often a lab to vacate and move, research work to wind down, graduate students to get reassigned, a new position to find, recommendations to solicit, mailings, notifications, etc. It’s a tense time for sure, but everyone knows their roles so it generally goes well (in my experience).</p>
<p>Tenure is reviewed in the penultimate year of a prof’s contract to allow the university to do a search and find a replacement for the coming year and for the prof to find an alternative job in academia where start and end times are fixed. When a prof decides not to continue in a job, the university must decide how the courses are going to be covered. I am sure that the sudden absence of several faculty members of the bio department, through death, critical injury and in the case of AB, murder, is causing huge problems for the students in the department. By the same token, job announcements come out in the summer and fall, and hiring decisions are made in late fall, early spring. This schedule affects job-seekers. </p>
<p>I do not believe that attendance at faculty meetings is mandatory, and there is nothing the department could do if AB had decided not to attend after being denied tenure. Especially, since this was going to be her last semester, she would have no reason to take part in decisions for the coming academic year.</p>
<p>Don’t companies usually give one month’s notice–enough time, I would think, for an aggrieved employee to exact revenge.</p>
<p>The faculty who are not granted tenure are given over a year to remain on staff because that way they get a paycheck while they are looking for work. They are able to use the university facilities to continue their research, thereby improving their future prospects, and take advantage of the contacts of their co-workers to get leads on other positions. There is no need for them to continue attending faculty meetings, and few do.</p>
<p>There is no question denial of tenure can be demoralizing, but showing someone the door mid-semester would mean a bunch of students paying tuition would not have a teacher for some of their classes. Waiting until summer to deliver the bad news would make it much more difficult for the soon-to-be-jobless prof. to line up another position.</p>
<p>Cross posted.</p>
<p>WOW, a Wikipedia page. 15 minutes of fame is not what it used to be. And in retrospect it is very unfortunate that her children’s names are on the publications. With unusual names like that, this will follow them for decades. “Was your mom that prof that shot…”</p>
<p>Interesting discussion by someone who claims to have known Amy Bishop pretty well. I got it from the comments section to a blog entitled “Collegiality Matters” on scienceblogs.com.</p>
<p>yorkyfan, that was the blog i referred to earlier…so sad</p>