Lafayette College Professor Got Denied Tenure And Decided To Stick It Them By Going On A Hunger Strike

It always amazes me when, after a person gets in trouble, they punish themselves further in hopes to elicit sympathy from the person who punished them to begin with. This is most commonly seen amongst children. “Hey bud, you’re grounded for taking your dick out in class.” “That’s garbage!! You want to ruin my life? Fine!! I’ll just cancel my birthday while I’m at it and stay in my room, since I’m so bad!!” “Uh ok.” Like why are you kicking yourself while you’re down. That’s other people’s jobs. So I’m not fully following this college professor’s plan to go on a one-man hunger strike in response to not receiving tenure from Lafayette College.

Via Washington Post:

“Since Tuesday afternoon, Juan Rojo, an assistant professor of Spanish at the Eastern Pennsylvania school, has drunk only water and Gatorade. The extreme step, he said, comes after Lafayette College’s president vetoed his bid for tenure, even though Rojo received positive recommendations from two separate faculty committees.

Rojo, 41, told The Washington Post that he was using the strike not only to protest the decision about his own future in academia but to question the role of faculty members in the tenure process.

“What I’m trying to make the administration understand is, if in fact these decisions are primarily faculty decisions and the decision has been made overwhelmingly in my favor, then the nonconcurrence of the president should be relatively a minor blip,” Rojo said.

A Lafayette College spokesman issued a statement to The Post and said the college would not be commenting further on the case: “As we’ve previously stated, we were very concerned to learn from Professor Rojo that he had commenced a hunger strike in response to his recent tenure denial. We are of course not able to comment on the specifics of this case,” the statement said. “However, in this tenure case, as in all others, we followed our procedures as laid out in the college’s faculty handbook. We respect Professor Rojo’s right to disagree with the decision but hope he will express his views in a way that does not endanger his health.””

At least Lafayette is even trying to pretend to give a shit.

“Lafayette College president Alison Byerly denied his tenure, citing negative student evaluations Rojo had received in his upper-level courses. The board of trustees backed her up. Rojo said that “in many cases, students can confuse likability with ability” and it was unfair to use those evaluations as the basis for a tenure denial when his colleagues had overwhelmingly supported him.

“As you probably know, student evaluations can be very subjective,” he said. “In any course that one teaches, there’s likely to be at least one student that doesn’t respond well. There are definitely negative comments in my evaluations. I certainly don’t hide from them. … But those are not the only ways in which performance is evaluated.”

Rojo said he did not have significant interactions with Byerly before the tenure denial, aside from some faculty meetings in which he had voiced his displeasure regarding changes in their health-insurance premiums.”

Welp, there’s your answer, Juan. The few times you’ve met with the one person who can make or break your tenure, you publicly denounced one of her policies. I mean, have you never seen a mob movie? If the head of the family even gets a whiff of insurrection, he’ll turn everyone in the room into fish food. And I really don’t understand what a hunger strike might accomplish. Sure, it gets people talking about you, but they’re not saying anything nice. “Yeah, I mean, I hope he doesn’t hurt himself, but also we’re not changing our minds.” It’s like when people get all upset after they get dumped. “If you don’t take me back I’m going to cut my hand off and mail it to you so you can possess the part of me that was always there to pick you up when you fell!!” If anything, that just further proves how correct everyone was. You can’t have someone who refuses to eat after not getting what he wanted teaching a classroom. Then it teaches him that’s ok. Soon, he’ll be striking over everything. “May I suggest we add a gluten-free option to the faculty lunch menu?” “Yeah we’re not doing that.” “Well then you can take all these plastic forks and knives I keep in my desk because I won’t be needing them until I get my gluten free menu items.”