All Posts Tagged With: "fired professor"
School to A+ professor: you’re fired
University says he refused to do his job, student calls him “lazy hypocrite”
The University of Ottawa has fired controversial physics professor Denis Rancourt, who made national headlines late last year for refusing to grade his students and promising an A+ to everyone in his upper level physics course. The unanimous decision to terminate his employment was made March 31 at a meeting of the executive committee of the university’s board of governors. Rancourt was sent a couriered letter the next day.
In an interview with Maclean’s OnCampus, Rancourt says he plans to fight what he describes as a “steamroller-style” dismissal. “My firm position is that the university administration doesn’t have a case and that we will win,” he says. “It is very, very clear that the professor’s union is going to fight this vigorously… I am pleased about that.”
However, in the wake of the dismissal, at least one former student has come forward with a scathing take on a professor he calls a “lazy hypocrite.” Phillip Vinten, who was in the infamous fourth-year physics class in which Rancourt gave everyone an A+, says in a letter to Maclean’s that he was one of the first to complain to the university’s administration about the professor. Vinten says that the real problem with Rancourt class was not so much the refusal to grade, but the fact that the professor “didn’t teach at all.”
New! Letter from a student: “Denis’ methods are quite relevant”
“Most media stories so far have almost portrayed him as a martyr who is fighting for the students,” wrote Vinten, “when in reality he is fighting for his own personal agenda and does not care at all about students, except those that have the same political ideals as he does.”
“He seems to forget that we are paying to be there and paying to have someone teach us physics,” said Vinten. “It makes me mad to know that my tuition was paying this man.” He writes that Rancourt would stand at the front of the class and let his students talk about anything they wanted. “When one of us tried to get the conversation back on track, he wouldn’t do anything except smirk at us. Probably because he was getting paid $50 an hour or more to sit there and do nothing.”
Vinten says at first he tried to keep an open mind about Rancourt’s pedagogical methods, but once he realized the futility of taking the course, he dropped it. “Had he actually made the effort to teach and we had actually learned what we were supposed to, I would not mind so much if he had just handed out an A+.” He says the media has been far too gentle in its treatment of Rancourt. “In reality, the students are the victims and the university is looking out for us and the value of our degrees by taking action against a professor who refuses to do his job.”
Last December, Rancourt was suspended and locked out of his laboratory and his graduate students were told to find new supervisors. (Three of those students are now suing the university for taking away a professor whom they say is the only person qualified to oversee their work.) The university administration also banned him from campus and, in an extremely rare move against a tenured professor, recommended his dismissal. Two weeks later, while hosting his monthly radical documentary film series at the school, Rancourt was arrested by police and charged with trespassing.
In a statement released Monday, the University of Ottawa said the professor had been invited to participate in the pivotal board of governors meeting and had been given the opportunity to set out his position, but that he chose not to attend. “Rancourt did purport to comply with a longstanding request to produce examination results and other grading materials,” reads the statement. “However, the materials supplied appear to be incomplete.”
Rancourt’s story is very different. He says that committee members were not given adequate access to the legal documents he submitted, and says that they were only told about the hundred-page documents a few days before the group’s meeting. “The documents I was entitled to submit by that day’s deadline? They explicitly said they didn’t look at them,” he says. “You don’t schedule the decision day on the same day as the deadline. Normally they take weeks, months.”
