The University of Massachusetts can’t do anything right.

If our students aren’t busy rioting in Southwest, if our administrators aren’t busy cutting majors out from underneath those same students, then our academic departments are busy catching flak from the media.

In this case, it’s our Political Science Department. That would be the same department that happens to house my major. So to say that I took affront to the Chronicle of Higher Education’s recent attack on said department would be an understatement.

Before I begin, here’s da’ facts.

Neta Crawford is a professor at UMass. She is a highly touted researcher in her field, widely praised for her study of both the Iroquois Nation and the role of emotion in world politics. She lives in Boston and has frequently spent a great deal of time away from UMass, teaching at other universities on fellowships of one variety or another. Her time at UMass has been checkered by, shall we say, less than stellar reviews of her teaching by students, specifically a staggering 58 percent of her students that described International Security as “one of the worst” classes that they had ever taken.

When Crawford applied for tenure, her department’s tenure committee turned her down, 5-2. We are taught in our Political Science classes that one side getting 55 percent or more of support is a crushing victory. In this case, it was 71 percent of the department opposing her.

They voted against her, not because her research had been substandard (it had been well above what tenure traditionally requires), but because she had spent so much time away from the University and because her teaching had apparently been so god-awful. Typically, she appealed the decision through the various subcommittees around campus until her appeal lay on the desk of new Chancellor Marcellette Williams, who overruled Crawford’s department, awarding Crawford the tenure she’d wanted.

She then promptly accepted another fellowship to teach at Brown University. In her years at UMass, half of them have been spent on other campuses, teaching other students.

“You know I have a question about the International Relations certificate and classes in the Political Science major…” This is what a friend of mine asked Crawford, her advisor.

This is how Crawford responded: “I don’t really know. I can’t help you. I don’t like students. Let’s just not waste anymore time so you can leave now.”

Another told a story of, “my friend, who took her class. He said her teaching left him with a stomach ache she was so abusive to her students.”

This is a person that deserves to have a guaranteed job?

There are some that have argued that Crawford, regardless of her apparent ineptitude in the classroom, should have been given tenure because her research is so amazing.

It should not matter, they’d argue, that she doesn’t care about her students.

It should not matter, they’d argue, that she doesn’t spend any time at this University.

It should only matter that she does what some would term fascinating research.

Well research shmesearch. Neta Crawford should not be teaching at this University.

Ignoring this University’s current budgetary crisis – this University cannot afford to pay Neta Crawford the $51,306.32 that she currently makes, especially if she isn’t going to be here – one wonders why UMass would keep somebody around who doesn’t care about teaching. If she doesn’t want to spend time in the classroom, if she isn’t going to help her students to better themselves, then what in the hell is she doing at an institution fundamentally established to educate its students?

Crawford clearly cares about her research, her pocketbook and ultimately, herself. Unwilling to give, she instead demands. And Marcellette Williams concedes.

Williams’ decision might be the most disconcerting part of this whole situation. Seemingly like all administrative decisions around here, Williams’ overruling of the Political Science department is designed only to make the problem go away. But what did it solve?

Crawford, every fifth semester that she actually spends here at UMass anyway, will never be professionally respected by a department that knows she had to go crying to the administration to keep her job.

The Political Science department won’t have faith in the administration for a long time to come, especially when it comes to making, independently made, internal decisions.

Williams gambled the trust that her employees have in her, all to keep a professor loathed by students who is never here anyway, on staff.

UMass has again found a way to lose face in the national media despite all the good that occurs on this campus.

And students? Poked, prodded, pushed and again forgotten, our best interests have been ignored by everyone that is supposed to know better.

Excluding the five votes against Crawford, everyone apparently believes that research far outweighs in-class ability. This University apparently values a totally incompetent teacher, as long as she’s willing to better her own career with her own research done at other institutions with our paychecks still going into her pocket.

UMass once again managed to take a situation where an excellent precedent could have been set and botched it completely. Instead of taking a stand against professors who don’t care, UMass caved completely. Instead of firing Crawford, which is what a tenure denial would have accomplished, UMass kept an employee on staff that doesn’t care about anyone but herself.

No wonder UMass never does anything right; every time we have the opportunity to, we do the exact opposite.