The Glade 4.0

http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/9861

Now there is some real contract protection.

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

1st of all it seems like hes treading on legalese.

2nd of all was it a felony or a misdemeanor there seems to be some disagreement in the article.

3rdly if this happened in 09 why is it coming out (no pun intended) now? Was he even employed at the time.

None of this makes his behavior any less reprehensible. Just saying poorly written article is poorly written, thus making it harder to understand the facts of the case beyond Oh my look at the evil unions doing their job and enforcing contract law.

Also now that this has come out can they just decide not to renew his contact in a year or three?

Also so much for arbitrators always siding with the company.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

So apparently there are two conflicting stories. One story says he was convicted of a felony, and the other says he was convicted of a misdemeanor. He didn't rape a nun, he whipped out his dick.

The firing clause stipulates moral delinquencies of a grave order as the criteria for firing him. A felony would satisfy that, and a misdemeanor would not. I'm sorry if penises offend you, but if everyone got fired for misdemeanors, none of us would have jobs. So which was it? Did he commit a felony, or a misdemeanor?

I don't know the answer to that question, as I've never been to New Hampshire. I'm so unfamiliar with New Hampshire that I sometimes forget it's there. It's like Montana. I know where it is and can find it on a map, but if I'm not looking at one, it's like the place doesn't exist. I mean, seriously, who knows somebody from Montana? Or, ****, Wyoming. Where the **** did Wyoming come from, and where does it go when we're not talking about it?

Holy ****, do you guys realize how many places we have in the United States that are like **** Nowhere? And to think, the rest of the world gets pissy when we act like they don't exist.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

And why are Vermont and New Hampshire two different states? One's just upside down from the other. And I can never remember which is which.

Do we really need two Dakotas, Carolinas and Virginias?

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Holy shitsnacks!

I don't know how the provincial nature of New Hampshire is supposed to be relevant here, but a quick trip to NH.gov would reveal that Indecent exposure can be either a misdemeanor or a felony. As an aside, going to a state generally does not familiarize you with the ins and outs of its more esoteric criminal statutes. I have been to NH several times and I didn't know that statute either.

According to the story there was a "child" present. If this "Child" was less than 16 years old (or he reasonably believed the child was of such age) and he was .. well, playing with his dick, or anything like that, in addition to merely showing it, it's a felony. If he was just showing it, or just mooning them, it was a misdemeanor (mooning might or might not even be a misdemeanor depending whether the jury considered it "gross lewdness" or not).

Without access to what exactly was estified to in court, and what the exact jury decision was, we really don't know. It could be either one.

By the way, NH has the most prominent liquor stores in the country. At just about every single highway exit, the sign telling you what road it leads to has a green highway sign style attachment saying "STATE LIQUOR STORE THIS EXIT" or words to that effect. I've never seen a state that encourages people to drink so much.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Why is it necessary that the distinction as to what is or isn't a "moral delinquency of a grave order" must follow the specific legal distinction of misdemeanor vs. felony criminal act? Suppose instead that he had been convicted of vehicular manslaughter due to a fatal, non-intoxicant-related car accident. That's usually (always?) a felony conviction. It might or might not demonstrate bad judgement or carelessness depending on the circumstances, but moral delinquency of a grave order?


Not sure if serious.

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

It's Corolinth. He's always never serious.

Or, perhaps more clearly, it's no more flippant and blatantly shit-stirring than any of the rest of his comments.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Perhaps this man was drunk and urinating in public, not whipping his junk out and flashing it intentionally at a lady and her kid?

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The point is, a single misdemeanor is certainly not a moral delinquency of a grave order, because that's what misdemeanor means. A misdemeanor is a minor offense. If whipping out your dick is a misdemeanor, then the school can't fire him over it. There's no way to justify that one misdemeanor constitutes a serious failing of moral character. The same statement does not hold true for felony convictions. While not all felonies are premeditated murder, and some felonies are simply lapses of good judgement that had tragic and disastrous consequences, all of the crimes that constitute moral delinquencies of a grave order are felonies.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

We don't know, Hop. The article is short on facts. I'm tempted to say almost suspiciously short on facts, which was the point I was trying to make.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

I don't know the specific circumstances, which is why I've been careful not to actually argue that he should be fired. Though I will note that most municipalities have a UIP (urinating in public) ordinance to specifically cover that situation.

I'm only saying that "it was a misdemeanor" isn't a very good counterargument to the clause of his contract cited as the justification for his termination. At least, not as a sole argument. I suppose it works alright as a supporting argument. In theory, misdemeanors are less serious/heinous than felonies. But in practice, this correlation doesn't always hold up too well. Some misdemeanors may be more morally reprehensible than some felonies.


A minor criminal offense. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a minor moral offense.

Both of these statements depend entirely on what moral standard you're using. Laws and morality don't necessarily align (nor should they). There are a number of things that I personally believe are a "moral delinquency of a grave order" which aren't even illegal at all. By many moral frameworks, it is entirely justifiable that at least some felonies are serious moral failings. Without the entire text of the contract, it's impossible to say which standard is being used. And there's a good chance that this wasn't even clearly defined.

Which brings me to the takeaway lesson: if you sign a contract with a clause like that, you're pretty much exposing yourself (hurrr) to getting fired for anything your employer finds objectionable.

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Except that "moral delinquencies of a grave order" was a phrase appearing in a legal document. When contested, that document is going to be reviewed by a justice of the peace and not a priest. The criteria was not simply moral delinquencies, but moral delinquencies of a grave order. The measuring stick used to determine what does and does not satisfy the "grave order" condition is going to be the law because we're talking about a legal contract. The man was fired for committing a crime. The arbiter is tasked with weighing the severity of that crime against the "grave order" clause.

There is a different takeaway lesson here: If you include a morality clause in a contract, you're setting yourself up to have someone use a metric that is decidedly not morality to judge whether you have adhered to the contract.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

A legal civil document. Felonies and misdemeanors are crimes, but there can be civil wrongs that are not crimes. That moral clause is not limited to the distinctions of criminal law.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The term "legal document" does apply here, but "legal", in our system, is purposefully divided into civil law and criminal law. You can civilly contract to all sorts of provisions and standards that have nothing to do with the standards of criminal law. If for instance your employment contract specifies that you can be fired for inappropriate attire, it's up to the contract to define what that means. Except where civil law provisions themselves specifically demand otherwise, a contract is generally free to define such standards any way that both parties are willing to agree to it.


True, assuming that we're not talking about a private mediation scenario. However, the judge/justice's role is only to decide whether or not the contract has been fulfilled according to the language of the contract. Injecting a 3rd-party standard -- whether that's a standard of attire or a standard of moral behavior -- is outside of the judge's pervue unless the contract has failed to define what such terms mean.

That may be the case in this situation; I really don't know, since the whole text of the contract isn't available (that I know of). If the contract failed to define any concrete metrics, then the decision is going to be based on some combination of the judge's own knowledge/judgement and expert testimony offered by both sides, depending on whether and to what extent specialized knowledge would be required to reach a reasonable judgement.

In the absence of any specific definition in the contract, I would expect a civil court to follow a similar procedure used to decide questions of morality as are used elsewhere in the law, such as resolving FCC indecency complaints. Typically this revolves around the notion of "community standards", rather than any criminal standards. The question is whether the community would, on the whole, regard his behavior as a serious moral failing or not, rather than whether it is criminally classified as a misdemeanor or felony (or whether it is criminal at all).

Having said that, the outcome of the criminal trial may be indirectly relevant, depending on specific NH law. In some places, criminal standards for things like "lewd conduct" are themselves based on the criteria of community standards. If this is the case, and he was tried locally, then the conviction may be relevant in that it (arguably) sets a precedent for how the community regards the action. I say arguably because this would only hold if both felony and misdemeanor charges were filed simultaneously. The fact that he was only convicted of a misdemeanor rather than a felony would be of little consideration if the DA decided not to press felony charges in the first place.

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Another, more balanced article on the situation, with a few more specifics.





Appears to me the discrepancy in the first article regarding the felony and the misdemeanor could be attributed to pleading guilty, and therefore to a lesser charge, probably based upon the lack of a history of this kind of behavior, the findings of the psych exam and the age of the women.

I'm not sure however why he wasn't required to register based upon that activity. Of course, that would immediately disqualify him from working on campus I believe.

I think the fact that the girl turned out to be 17 prevented it from being a felony. As the statute indicated, it's children under 16 (among other factors) that elevate it to a felony.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

So he was just hanging loose or had finished doing something and not zipped up? You can go to jail for that? Seems weird and kinda creepy, but I'm not sure it's legally grave lapse in morality or just a wardrobe malfunction.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

If this was a girl and flashed her boobs... this would be a non-story.

That's 'cause peni are scary.

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In time, this too shall pass.

I doubt it was just a "Wardrobe malfunction". If you're commando and your **** isn't zipped AND it's hanging out.. it'd be hard not to notice. I mean, there's a lot of nerve endings down there.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Im just trying to understand. If there was more to it then just hanging there, you'd think we'd know.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

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In time, this too shall pass.

I see.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

So did everyone else!

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill