News-Record.com

The following is a Counterpoint:

By Nelda Howell Lockamy

Let me see if I have this right. Dee Todd got crossways with the folks who thought her hire should have produced a winning football team -- or at least that she should have kept her comments to herself.

So without the benefit of professional courtesy, she was demoted, given a salary cut, and dumped in the academic landfill otherwise known as the School of Education.

Please understand -- my beef is not about football. You could deflate all the pigskins in the world and not affect my quality of life.

Nor is it about what administrators feel they must do to protect the sacred cow of athletics. My complaint is that a person whose background appears to be exclusively in college athletics administration would be deemed a fit for the School of Education.

Why not reassign her to the College of Engineering? I haven't seen Todd's full resume, but I see nothing in print that would indicate she is less qualified to teach quantum physics than she is to teach, oh, say, an instructional methods class.

But I know these are wasted keystrokes. Having spent over a decade on a College of Education faculty, I know that athletics trumps everything. More than once, our department was forced to absorb a losing coach or a disgruntled administrator or a professor under ethics investigation.

For, after all, anyone who went to a school qualifies as an educational expert, right?

I took special note of the chancellor's comment that the decision to reassign Todd was "in the best interests of the athletics program."

But what about the best interests of our future educators who are not only required to produce with winning test scores, but who are hardly rewarded with salaries commensurate with their efforts?

So to answer your question, Ms. Todd, yes, you are the scapegoat for football. After all, what is it they say? "Those who can, do; and those who can't, teach."

The writer lives in Greensboro.