Collegiate Times

In any business, decisions to hire or fire an employee are often controversial. And the business of higher education is no different.

A coalition of about 50 Virginia Tech students made initial plans for a protest last night. Sparked by recent news about the departure of political science professor Chris Clement, students amassed to plan a Wednesday afternoon protest for what they described as institutional racism and underhanded hiring policies within the Department of Political Science.

?I think we need to stress that this is not just about Chris Clement,? said Greg Sagstetter, senior philosophy and political science major and next year?s undergraduate representative to the Board of Visitors. ?This is about institutional and systemic discrimination.?

Despite recent diversity efforts on the part of the university administration, Sagstetter and others said the Clement situation shows that Tech has made little progress.

?The department?s willingness to let him go shows a lack of commitment to the Principles of Community,? said senior accounting and sociology major Shalim Basnayake.

Clement, who could not be reached for comment Monday, circulated an e-mail to his colleagues and other members of the Tech community that aimed to hold the Department of Political Science ?accountable for the unscrupulous and dishonorable practices behind my firing.?

In that letter, Clement describes a hiring process in which the department found two qualified applicants for a single, tenure-track opening for a professor specializing in international relations. Although only one slot for the position existed, Clement wrote that the department hired one of the applicants and then planned to get a job position for the other using a ?target of opportunity? process ? that is, hiring a prospective employee with a newly created job title.

And Clement wrote that the decision not to continue his employment related to the creation of this new position.

Jerry Niles, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, declined to comment on the specifics of Clement?s claims, citing a college-wide confidentiality policy regarding hiring decisions. But he did shed light on the search process for tenure-track faculty.

?It is not unusual for us at all to take two people out of a search,? Niles said.

The CLAHS administration has received four requests this year from various departments to hire more than one candidate during a search for a single opening, Niles said. But when an opening in an individual department happens, this vacancy goes to the college, not a department.

?Departments don?t go around making their own positions,? said Niles, who has the final authority in hiring decisions within his college.

Ilja Luciak, professor and head of the Department of Political Science, also declined to comment on the specifics of Clement?s written complaint, but he confirmed he had read the letter.

?This is a personnel matter, and I cannot release any information about it,? Luciak said.

Despite this, Luciak did insist that the political science department had not broken any hiring policies.

?I can only say that the department followed all of the university regulations,? Luciak said.

In his open letter to colleagues, Clement charged the political science department with creating a hostile working environment.

?From the start, fellow faculty members made me aware that they saw my dissertation as sub-par, my Howard University education as poor, and my mentors there as inept,? Clement wrote.

Shawn Braxton, a graduate student in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, said Clement?s Ph.D. at a historically black university caused problems for him at Tech.

?His scholarship has been marginalized. Not only that, but his education has been marginalized,? Braxton said.

But this wasn?t the only issue that students cited as a problem. Stressing the importance of using Clement?s story as a flash point, junior economics major Devin Stone said Clement?s activism may have influenced the Department of Political Science?s decision to deny tenure.

?We believe there?s a larger, larger issue at hand,? Stone said. ?We believe that his political activism played a role. We also believe that possibly racism played a role.?

Clement, who serves as an editor for Latin American Perspectives, made the news last week for organizing an event dealing with the CIA?s interrogation tactics.

Students at last night?s meeting brainstormed ways to protest the decision in such a way that it would serve as a springboard to address other racial and gender diversity concerns with the university, eventually deciding to amass Wednesday at 1:15 p.m. in front of Major Williams Hall, the headquarters for political science faculty. At 1:45 p.m., demonstrators will then depart for the steps of Burruss Hall to symbolically show their concern to the Tech administration.

Tonya Smith-Jackson, industrial and systems engineering professor and representative for the Black Caucus, said concerned faculty members within the Black Caucus, whom Clement has allowed to act as his voice to the university administration, should be meeting with Niles and Provost Mark McNamee before the end of the week, despite scheduling setbacks.

?You should be assured that the Black Caucus is definitely on the case,? Smith-Jackson said to the group of students.

The brainstorming meeting, however, was not without mild dissent. One student questioned whether or not denying tenure to a tenure-track professor constituted an actual firing, and another student proposed that a large protest this early might not be giving the Tech administration enough time to formulate a response to the Clement situation.

Many of the students in the room, including Sagstetter, said the news that Clement would not return to the university next year affected them personally.

?He?s the single greatest professor I?ve had at Virginia Tech,? Sagstetter said. ?He?s the reason I decided to stay with the Department of Political Science.?

One student in the crowd even went as far as to say that Clement had done more for improving campus climate than Ben Dixon, Tech?s vice president for multicultural affairs.