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SMU Lecturer Takes Heat For Blog 84

Posted by Hemos from the who's-rights? dept.
nasta writes "Houston Chronicle article For most of the past two semesters, nobody knew the identity of "The Phantom Professor." The educator's anonymous Web log, set at an unnamed university "in the South," spun tales of spoiled-rich "Ashleys" with their $500 sandals and $1,500 handbags, eating disorders, plagiarism and drug use, legal and illegal. "At this school it seems like every kid is on multiple medications," the professor wrote, describing her charges as "barely literate," prone to emotional problems and "terrified of displeasing Mommy and Daddy.""
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SMU Lecturer Takes Heat For Blog More

SMU Lecturer Takes Heat For Blog

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  • Southern Methodist University (Score:4, Informative)

    by __aaitqo8496 ( 231556 ) on Monday May 30, 2005 @07:28AM (#12675543) Journal
    ...in case anybody was wondering.

  • Amen. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Monday May 30, 2005 @07:32AM (#12675559)
    Man, no kidding. I'm surprised by how many people I know who are on one, two or more medications. And we're usually talking xanax, prozac, zoloft and the like rather than blood pressure meds. And not just spoiled little rich kids, though they tend to be the most likely, because they're more likely to get a therapist if they have "problems" and, in turn, are more likely then to be prescribed drugs to deal with whatever lame problem they supposedly have.

    I can't even count how many people I know who claim they have "anxiety disorder" and "panic attacks". So they dope up on half a dozen things, instead. I mean, yeah, life sucks - but holy shit.

    And then after awhile, they start trading their prescriptions with other people. A few zoloft in turn for a few valium. Or if they have some leftovers (especially stuff like valium and percoset), they hand them off to their friends so they can get off on them, too.

    It's just pathetic. And I bet that half the people I know other than at work are like that. Often people I would have never guessed. They'd like you to think that they need it because their life is so terrible, but the truth is lots of peopel have a hard life. These people just have a hard time dealing with life.

    And yeah, I know the girls with 400 pairs of expensive shoes who have traveled more by the age of 18 than I could ever hope to travel in four lifetimes. Their biggest concerns seem to be "panties or not?" on any given date for any given night. Oh, such dilemmas.

    If I were a professor and I had to deal with people like that for a living on a daily basis, I'd probably vent, too. In fact, I'd probably climb the nearest clock tower.

    • Re:Amen. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by FidelCatsro ( 861135 )
      The worst part of it is , the people who truely do need the medication seem to always slip through the net.
      Ive seen people with Goth disease(Oh my parents are so nice blah blah my life sucks) shoved on zoetrope and other manageries of medications whilst people with true problems and certifiable conditions are just passed by and ignored .
      Ive seen it all too often and ussualy it does involve parents who are better off and pay for private Psycholigists and therapist who dont think twice up presribing a miracle

      • Re:Amen. (Score:1, Troll)

        by torpor ( 458 )
        The worst part of it is , the people who truely do need the medication seem to always slip through the net.

        nobody needs these drugs. they are sold simply to line the pockets of the pharmaceuticals' executives ..

        most 'modern mental health' problems can be solved by removing the blind faith one puts in so-called 'mental health professionals', who really are little more than shills for the biggest con ever played on a society by mass market engineers.

        • Re:Amen. (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Hungus ( 585181 )
          I am glad you are so knowledgeable in biochemistry and specifically the brain's neuro transmitters. I wish you could have told that to my great grandfather so my grandfather, father and I wouldn't have had top suffer from his obviously not congenital illness.

          The fact is while many meds are over prescribed in the form of designer cocktails there are many people who would not be functional without proper medication.
          • I lived with someone who was profoundly depressed for six months.

            She had the whole Physician's Desk Reference memorized and could talk with amazing knowledge and erudition about every antidepressant that ever existed.

            She had a psychiatrist she loved, and she would go to him and discuss prescriptions with him on a PhD level.

            None of this -- I repeat, NONE of this -- ever helped her with her depression.

            When there was a problem with her supply of drugs, she would get frantic but it felt almost like she was

            • Re:Amen. (Score:3, Insightful)

              by FidelCatsro ( 861135 )
              Anti-depresants can work in some situations , others require them coupled with intensive therapy to get to the root of the problem , sadly all too often docters are far too happy just to dole out the pills , fire and forget
            • I knew a person who didn't get a prescription filled in time, and when she took the first anti-depressant, whe immediately changed in personality. Clearly, the pill takes longer than that to take effect: the placebo effect is stronger than the actual medication!

              (The 'i'm not a script' thingy is damn near impossible to read!!!! WTF?!?)

            • Re:Amen. (Score:4, Insightful)

              by hey! ( 33014 ) on Monday May 30, 2005 @12:22PM (#12676923) Homepage Journal
              None of this -- I repeat, NONE of this -- ever helped her with her depression.

              OK, let's assume that your assessment is correct, and that the anti-depressants did not actually help her, and the reason she was obsessed with them was that she had what an earlier generation of psychologist would describe as a neurotic and infantile fixation on them. Can you logically deduce this statement:

              My conclusion from this is that antidepressants do virtually nothing real.

              The logical bar for such a broad statement is very high indeed; it can only be true if there is no identifiable subset of people with depression for which the drugs are statistically better than nothing. I think what you have proven is that some people do not benefit from any of the anti-depression medications that are available.

              Depression is very complex; basically it is a set of symptoms that I think any thoughtful person will conclude could come from multiple causes. It follows that depression is very difficult to treat. If the depression is secondary to some other condition other than the specific organic cause the antidepressant addresses, why would you expect the antidepressant to help in that specific case? For example, if the person has problems with his life falling apart due to substance abuse, the related depression cannot be treated with Prozac, but Prozac might be helpful if the underlying problem is an abnormality in the way his brain uses serotonin.

              I only mention this because I happen to know some people who your friend reminds me of. You say she was frantic, but actually seemed better when she was having problems getting medication. It may not have been that the medication was harming her, so much as that the problems were helping her. I am not a psychiatrist, but the people I have in mind also have a tendency to do better when things are going worse. Some of them,after watching them in action, clearly actively seek out chaos, generate emergencies, and incite interpersonal conflicts, particularly when things seem to be going fine. When the emergencies hit, they actually seem to be serene and in control, provided the level of chaos doesn't get too high (which is inevitably does sooner or later). These people seem to need an extra "oomph" that emergencies bring. They also tend to have a pattern of dependency on others for stability and long term direction. But, if you lead the kind of lives these people lead, depression is almost a normal response. You can't expect to treat that kind of depression by monkeying with the mood mechanisms of the brain.

              In any case, I don't offer this as advice or diagnosis, which I'm not qualified to give, but to point out how difficult it is to reason from specific to general cases.

              Moving on from the specific issue of antidepressants to psychiatric medications in general, even if you grant that antidepressants are useless in every case, it doesn't follow that all psychiatric medications are useless. I know personally, because I have a familiy member with schizophrenia. If you've never seen the difference between a person with this condition on medication and off, all I can say is that it is not something subtle.
              • I don't have that much to say in a response, but I wanted to thank you for a most interesting post.

                And you are right that logically, a single instance cannot prove whether something works or something doesn't.

                On the other hand, if I have this post on Slashdot for, say, 24 hours or so, and nobody comes up with a story of an antidepressant actually working well for them, I would say it's likely to be pretty rare that antidepressants do work.

                So we'll see. I'm trying to keep an open mind.

                D

                • Re:Amen. (Score:2, Interesting)

                  by Hungus ( 585181 )
                  I can say that anti depressents and other psychiatric meds work for me. I take 2 drugs for issues that I have and both are mapped physically (one a problem with my addreanal gland and regulation of them , the other a problem with the reticular activating system) I have had these conditions for 27 years and for 22 years I went through counseling, trying to just deal with it, and drug cocktails galore. Finally, I found a doctor who diagnosed me properly and changed my meds. One of the drugs is fast acting as
            • My fiance takes Zoloft and an anti-anxiety drug called "Busparin" (sp?). These two drugs have changed her life pretty dramatically (she started taking them about six months before we started dating). She used to have trouble with obsessive thought patterns and felt that her life was in a rut.

              Since taking the drugs, she has been able to control the obsessive thoughts, meet me (we met through an online dating site), start her PhD (just the dissertation to go), get engaged to me, buy a motorcycle, enjoy rid
              • If either of you have the inclination, you may be interested in other tools available to reduce her dependence on the drugs... (Disclaimer: I know nothing about the condition beyond what I read in books and the scientific press...)

                I picked up this book at an airport the other day:
                http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/006 0 988479/ref=dp_nav_0/103-5692295-5136626 [amazon.com]
                "The Mind and the Brain", by Jeffrey M. Schwartz and Sharon Begley

                It discusses the successes that several groups have had developing sel
                • In fact, there is an old copy of "Brain Lock" on one of her bookshelves that has been read through several times (I have not yet read it myself). She has mentioned to me that she tried many alternative techniques, and at this point, she considers them ineffective for helping her. It took an enormous number of failed alternatives before she would consider taking drugs. Given the beliefs she has today about medication, I'm a little suprised that she ever made the decision to take Zoloft.

                  I think that she w
          • I am glad you are so knowledgeable ... blah blah .. neuro transmitters. .. blah blah .. great grandfather .. blah .. my grandfather, father and I wouldn't have had top suffer from his obviously not congenital illness. .. i'm sorry you, and your advanced civilization, are so on top of their state of mind, that they were willing to let someone else profit from drugging them into oblivion.

            4 generations of crack-heads in charge, yo!

            there are many people who would not be functional without proper medication.
      • Psychiatrists and psychologists are often to blame, another problem is general practitioners who hand out prozac like candy. Administering these drugs takes a lot of knowledge and experience, I know far too many people who get their anti-depressants straight from their GP. These drugs really should only be prescribed by psychiatrists. Hell, finding a decent psychiatrist (I was misdiagnosed by 3 very highly paid ones) is hard enough, having a completely unequiped GP administer these is one of the worst aspec

        • Re:Amen. (Score:3, Interesting)

          by FidelCatsro ( 861135 )
          Ive seen plenty of people With Bipolar diagnosed as Scitzophrenic or other disoders at first by totaly incompetent docters , and a hell of alot more just classed as having a mild clinical depresion ..
          One thing ive heard alot is docters going "well your ok now though so perhaps you worked through it" or the likes...And as you most likely know with certain types of Bipolar people can seem totaly fine at times , but try telling that to a GP.
          I have often helped folks get things together for taking to the GP and
      • The competence of Docters nowadays...


        Was there ever a time where doctors were any more or less competant than right now? What has changed during the course of human history that makes you think that doctors are espescially poor right now?
        • Today's doctors are little more than pushers... someone goes in and at the advice of a 30 sec commercial and asks their Doctor about $MIND_ALTERING_DRUG and the doctor just hands them some samples and offers them a prescription.

          Perhaps I'm old school but I feel that the brain is far too complicated and too little is known to be messing around with in these minor cases.. the best prescription for 90% of today's problems is something we've been taking for a long, long time.. 300 mgs of Suck It the Hell Up.

      • Re:Amen. (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Seumas ( 6865 )
        The thing that pisses me off the most is how many of these people taking one or more medications (wellbutrin, etc) are diagnosed with little more than "anxiety disorder".

        They're people who are nervous or panic if they go outside or have to be around a group of people. Especially new people. Or whatever. I mean, who ISN'T at least a little on-edge in certain situations? And how can so much of the population have such a hard time with it, that they need to be prescribed drugs just to step outside their door

        • Re:Amen. (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Mr. Slippery ( 47854 )

          And how can so much of the population have such a hard time with it, that they need to be prescribed drugs just to step outside their door or go have dinner in a public place or get their ass to work?!

          Because over the past few decades we've created a seriously dysfunctional society.

          High population density, a highly moblile society resulting in looser and less supporting family and social bonds, an economy where fewer and fewer people do any sort of meaningful work and there is deliberate pressure t

      • It probably has a little to do with the fact that people with real mental or mood disorders are often antisocial or even hostile to the idea of seeing a psychiatrist. Whereas the Emokids are actually friendly and open about telling anyone and everyone how much their life sucks. Psychiatrists are supposed to be above these kind of distinctions, but you can't treat people who won't come into the office or won't talk to the doctor. I'm not saying that it's the fault of those potential patients, just that it
      • How many of these issues are caused by just bad parenting.
        I would love to see a study comparing the mental health of people to the number of hours spend in with their parent.
        It is beginning to look as if drugs, TV, videos, and the Internet are all be used to replace parents.

        I watched Nanny 911 last night. I have to wonder why it took an "expert" to tell these parents that.
        1. Children should not have unlimited candy.
        2. That yelling at your children is not always the best action to take.
        For some people those

    • And I bet that half the people I know other than at work are like that. Often people I would have never guessed.

      You'll be surprised to find out about some of those co-workers years down the line.

      In the past few months I found out that, in the time since I worked with them, one former co-worker had a breakdown and checked himself into a mental hospital for several weeks; another is apparently dealing with an addiction to pain meds; and a third, after losing health insurance and not being able to get

    • After being misdiagnosed, I finally went to a doctor who noticed that some of my difficulties were consistent with ADHD. The medication helps, but I've also had to develop strategies to work around some of the difficulties. Although I take Ritalin, I've never considered sharing or trading it. There's really no temptation to take more than prescribed either; in fact, it's challenging to remember to take it consistently. So the idea of psychiatric meds being for spoiled brats who can't handle life bothers
  • Why is this posted under Privacy and not It's funny, because that's what it is. :o)
    • Because someone losing their job over something they wrote on their own time is not funny; especially when you work in a building that has the First Amendment carved on the front of it (FTA).

      I know that SMU said she was let go for reasons not related to her blog, but that seems fishy.

      It reminds my of the flight attendant who lost her job for her blog. http://queenofsky.journalspace.com/ [journalspace.com]

      • Because someone losing their job over something they wrote on their own time is not funny; especially when you work in a building that has the First Amendment carved on the front of it (FTA).

        The First Amendment is trumped by Rich Alumni who send their Rich Spoiled Brats to the university, paying (I mean wasting) tons of money on tuition, housing, and, eventually, big alumni donations.

      • It reminds my of the flight attendant who lost her job for her blog.

        And then there was the Washingtonienne [blogspot.com] debacle...

  • Whose rights? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    from the who's-rights? dept.

    Who's? You mean "who is"? Or "who has"? "Who was"?

    Pertinent question, though. Surely the lecturer's blogging activities, although possibly unprofessional, were completely within the realm of acceptibility -- as long as she wasn't giving away enough specific personal information so as to convey the identities of the people she was writing about.

    Hmm. Newsflash: Kids these days are fucked up. Film at 11.

  • Zero sympathy (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Otter ( 3800 ) on Monday May 30, 2005 @08:09AM (#12675673) Journal
    A point that's made in the article (this happened about a month ago, BTW) but is obscured by the piece the submitter chose to quote is this: she was retelling extremely sensitive stories about easily identifiable students and teachers, including things that students were telling her in private face-to-face meetings.

    Sorry, zero sympathy from me. Beyond the fact that she blatantly despises half her students and sucks up to the other half by badmouthing the "rich girls" (which is unprofessional enough), violating confidentiality the way she did is way over the line. A tenure-track professor should have been bounced for doing what she did, never mind an adjunct.

    Points off to SMU for weaseling about it, though.

    • "Elaine Liner, an adjunct professor who taught writing and ethics classes in SMU's public relations department since 2001, revealed in an online publication that the blog was hers."

      (Emphasis is mine)

      I think they couldn't have picked a worse person to teach that kind of class. This is just so surreal.
      • I think they couldn't have picked a worse person to teach that kind of class. This is just so surreal.

        i dunno, how could you say someone is an 'expert' on ethics if they haven't run the full spectrum on it?
        • i dunno, how could you say someone is an 'expert' on ethics if they haven't run the full spectrum on it?

          I hope this was sarcasm.

          In the case it wasn't, by the same logic a judge would need to commit all possible crimes to be able to judge them.
          • oh, but by your logic, i wouldn't have to know anything at all in order to call myself an expert on anything.

            sheesh. black, white, or chartreuse? pick -only- one for your argument.
      • I figured that the only school in NCAA history to receive the death penalty for football wouldn't be offering ethics classes...

    • Re:Zero sympathy (Score:4, Interesting)

      by DaoudaW ( 533025 ) on Monday May 30, 2005 @09:19AM (#12675964)
      she was retelling extremely sensitive stories about easily identifiable students and teachers, including things that students were telling her in private face-to-face meetings.

      Did you RTFB? She claims and after reading through some of the blog I would agree that she was very careful to protect students' privacy. As a teacher myself, and former adjunct, her stories sound like the typical mix of frustration and admiration that teachers everywhere have for their students. She certainly makes a better attempt at protecting student anonymity than most faculty lounge conversations. She is not writing vitriolic diatribes, but is simply laughing and crying over human foibles.

      • Re:Zero sympathy (Score:3, Insightful)

        by trixillion ( 66374 )
        I read the entire blog. I may agree with much of what she had to say. Regardless, the entire affair is highly unprofessional and SMU was right to can her. She made serious ethical lapses, period.

        Bad mouthing students is sufficient in my mind for canning her. If you are in a business and you run around publically bad mouthing your clients, don't be shocked when you get the pink slip and your colleagues shun you. That's the real world.

        Repeating stories told in confidence is immoral. I imagine that psy
      • From TFA. --- No names were used, but this spring at Southern Methodist University, students and faculty began recognizing themselves in the phantom's prose. A student in SMU's corporate communications and public affairs department discovered the blog had quoted the content of e-mail she had sent to one of her teachers. It called her "clueless." An assistant professor had no trouble identifying herself in another short posting about a faculty member who was "fresh from a mediocre Midwestern University with
    • I, too, read part of the blog.

      She struck me as someone who really cares about teaching and her students, and she certainly didn't name names.

      I don't think it's bad for students to know what teachers really think of them. It might even create some empathy in the minds of the students.

      I now work for a Chemistry professor at a major university, and I know that I would have felt differently about my college experience if I knew about the hard work, long nights and love that goes into teaching a class.

      D

  • URL (for the google challanged) (Score:4, Informative)

    by yo ( 31271 ) on Monday May 30, 2005 @08:33AM (#12675754)

    http://phantomprof.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]

    It is entertaining actually.
  • "Signed with a top agent last week."

    Hmmm....
    1. Write a blog about your job and the idiots you work with/teach
    2. Get fired for it
    3. Get an agent
    4. ???
    5. Profit!

  • Am I the only person here who has read Tom Wolfe's novel, "I Am Charlotte Simmons?"
  • How are they calling her "professor? when she doesn't even have a masters degree?

    Liner, listed on a campus directory as a lecturer, is still working toward a master's degree.

  • The most important statement of them all: (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Stavr0 ( 35032 ) on Monday May 30, 2005 @11:03AM (#12676468) Homepage Journal
    The Phantom Professor on term papers:
    What they don't realize is that it's just college. These are just little assignments that teachers give so we can figure out what grades to type in next to your name at the end of the semester. They're not life and death, these grades, these papers, these group projects. They're very often little more than glorified busywork. Truth? They're to prepare you for a career of TPS Reports and annual "employee self-evaluations."
    • Believe it or not, a LOT of schools do just this under the guise of actually producing employable people with ideas, intelligence (as opposed to memorized facts and assorted bs that means jack shit in the real world) and fluff.

      Most of the good schools that teach you skills, coming all from my limited scope and experience visiting many campuses across the US of A over the past 10 years and reading the curriculum are in fact, a hard search to boot. The old days of a name from an ivy league college are at an
      • Wow, you're an idiot.

        First, you decry the fact that colleges produce mindless drones. Then you say you want a drone. And then you say you don't. And, in the end, you still think the ideal employee has a degree.

        What is it? Do you want employees that "actually work and be efficient", or do you want people who "do what their told"?
  • I was bored on the first page, with her current entries. She's full of herself and how she's better than the people she purports to teach, and yet she says she reads "gawker.com" at lunch. Whether that's a wink to them to try to get a deal, or really her idea of entertainment, I can't be sure, but how can I respect someone like that?

    Of course, my idea of entertainment is slashdot, so I really shouldn't point fingers... oh, yes, I'm a student at SMU, too. But at the geek campus :)
  • My wife is on depression meds, the right ones now, which address the bipolar symptoms of what was regarded as garden variety manic depression with an accent on depression. No more violent outbursts, much more rational thought, much more mature behavior, much greater happiness.

    I probably should be on meds but practice willful almost psychotic disassociation from myself and my cares and instead go right past all the stages, right past acceptance, to someplace riding the wave ahead of everything. This place

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