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"Pathologies" and destruction of evidence The two versions of the Corner/Esler report |
What the Corner/Esler report said, and why there were two versions...There were, in fact, two copies of the Corner/Esler report which differed in relation to two significant details (see copy 1 here and copy 2 here). 1. In the copy that was sent to the Principal of the University of St Andrews (Dr Lang) on 28 September 2001, the two University Executive members stated that: "there has been a failure, at the unit level, to manage the unit in such a way that duties were fairly distributed and tensions lessened and a failure, at the school level, sufficiently to intervene when necessary to facilitate more effective management". In the copy that was given to members of the Department of Social Anthropology on 28 November 2001, this statement was watered down to mitigate the failures of management. The revised report stated simply: "We consider that, in what was a difficult situation, local management has not succeeded in lessening tensions within Social Anthropology". 2. In the copy that was sent to the Principal on 28 September 2001, the two University Executive members recommended that: "the best solution is to remove the present chairman [Professor Overing] from her duties at the earliest opportunity and to introduce an experienced and fair-minded academic from outside the unit... to manage it for one year, ensuring that tasks are equitably distributed and giving everyone confidence that his or her career development is important to the University". The implicit criticism of the incumbent chairperson could hardly have been clearer, though no mention was made of the most damaging criticisms that were levelled against her in the course of the employment tribunal: misuse of departmental monies, and her spreading of unsubstantiated defamatory rumours of a particularly damaging kind. On 5 October 2001, however, Professor Overing e-mailed her departmental colleagues saying that she had decided to resign the chairpersonship of the department during the preceding summer — i.e. before the Corner/Esler investigation. There was no truth in this whatsoever. Had it been true, Professor Overing would not have been engaged in all the normal activities of a departmental chairperson during the preceding few weeks at the beginning of the new academic year 2001/2. Had it been true, a new chairman would not have been parachuted in from another department to take over with immediate effect from Monday 8 October 2001. In order to cover Professor Overing's deception, the phrase "to remove the present chairman from her duties at the earliest opportunity" was deleted from the copy of the Corner/Esler report that was issued to Social Anthropology staff on 28 November 2001. The University Executive thus allowed Professor Overing to give the members of her Department the impression that she was resigning the chairmanship of her own volition. Under cross-examination during the employment tribunal, Mr Corner stated that Professor Overing had been removed because she was in one of the Department's "factions" though he rather curiously maintained that this was not in any way a disciplinary matter. Mr Corner declined to link the chairperson's removal to her improper use of funds or her spreading of unsubstantiated defamatory rumours. ********** Skorupski's Law: "The more vain one's ambition, the more redundant one's grasp of morality" |
