U of A Huntsville

All of us in the academy are touched by the news of the shooting of six members of the Biology department of the University of Alabama Huntsville.  Having gone through the tenure process at more than one university, having seen people both succeed and fail in the tenure process, having served on retention, tenure, promotion (RTP) committees, and having been on a committee that wrote a departmental RTP policy I am particularly impacted.  The tenure process, perhaps more than anything we do in our university work, has the power to change the lives of people.

For today I only wish to express my heartfelt sympathy for the injured, and the families and friends of the injured and dead.  I also express my sympathy for the friends and family of the shooter, who must be in their own particular hell wondering if they might have done or said something different that might have kept this tragedy from occurring at all.

T.S. Hall