Crawford said Chipper prefers overcast days to sunny ones. The procedure by which professors receive lifetime job security and the freedom to express candidly their academic views recently was found to violate the Florida Sunshine Law's open meetings policy. The discrepancy, discovered by journalism professor William Chamberlin, caused a controversy among faculty and administrators. The tenure and promotion proceedings already in use this Fall were stopped and temporarily modified.
Nobody likes the rules to change in midstream.
It all started with a simple question. Chamberlin, who had been named to a tenure and promotion committee, approached General Counsel Pam Bernard and asked her whether he should be sitting in on their meeting. He said his dilemma stemmed from his belief that UF might be violating the law. The nature of my question by itself did not make the university make these drastic changes. A university-wide committee has been reviewing the tenure and promotion process ever since.