The University of North Carolina Wilmington recently paid a 55-year-old tenured professor $504,702.76 to retire early. No joke. The professor had a history of tweeting messages that were offensive, and embarrassing to the University, but not illegal.
Higher education faculty around the nation, say hello to your new revenue stream!
This case reflects a new domain within American jurisprudence — Dipwad Law — that is poised to blossom in the United States like poppies in an Afghanistan meadow during the growing season.
For the details, let’s turn to Sheldon “Skip” Loosflem, managing partner at Loosflem, Loosflem, & Sterm, a Houston law firm that has represented more than 75 dipwads over the past 3 years:
“Every college and university in the country has its share of obnoxious faculty members. These are truly miserable human beings — arrogant, narcissistic, and often downright crazy. In the south they’re called ‘dipwads’, in the north they’re ‘a**holes’, and in the west they are ‘pimples with lips’. At Ivy League schools they’re simply known as ‘tenured professors’.
“Our firm helps dipwads develop tweets that do not violate the law, but make the administrations of their schools VERY uncomfortable. For example, we worked with a physics professor at the University of Tennessee on messages claiming that red Twizzlers contain fiber-optic cable that delivers subliminal commands from the CIA to children who consume this product. Tennessee paid the guy $1.4 million to leave. At the Rhode Island School of Design, we coached a faculty member who believes that Melania Trump should stop wearing underwear on Thursdays. RISD settled with her — the professor, not the First Lady — for $760,000 plus a Prius.
“Our largest settlement thus far has been with Louisiana State University, where a psychology professor waged a Twitter campaign to have the University erect a statue, on the quad, of Jefferson Davis and Harriet Tubman making love. Getting that professor to skedaddle cost them $10.2 million. Sweet. We took the entire firm, including the paralegals, to Saint Lucia for a week’s vacation after that one.
“The way I see it, practicing Dipwad Law provides a service to both the school AND the faculty member. The school rids itself of a truly noxious presence, and the faculty member benefits financially. It’s a win-win.”
Moral of the Story: If your colleagues roll their eyes and mutter “Crap!” under their breath every time you enter the faculty dining room, it may be time to start tweeting. Think about it.