professor put on paid leave after video of him chastising hard of hearing student

[Demovictory9]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/california-professor-put-on-paid-administrative-leave-after-video-shows-him-chastising-student-who-is-hard-of-hearing/ar-BB1dXgmW?bep_ref=1

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He asks the student, who says she can hear him a little bit, why she hasn't been answering.

"You can hear me a little bit? Abram asks. "Why didn't you answer all the times I spoke to you then?

The student attempts to respond, but Abram continues to talk over her.

"I'm hard of hearing," she says in response to Abram.

"Why don't we talk sometime? Why don't you email me? We'll set up a live Zoom and we're going to have some real communication at some point in time," he says. "Maybe you can have your counselor join us, OK? Do you hear me? OK, wonderful, do that," he says.

After that interaction, another female student on the Zoom class says the student is hard of hearing and cannot respond right away.

"She's not paying attention, she's not trying," Abram says.

The other student says, "It's slower on her end because she needs to get it translated and then it goes to her hearing piece."

Abram tells the student who is hard of hearing to "have your counselor speak with me because you've got too much distraction to even understand what is going on."

"Yes, I do because my translator is next to me explaining me everything that you're saying," she replies.

Abram suggests the student's translator teach her moving forward.

"Just have them teach you, the whole class, that makes sense to me," he says. "I don't know, I don't understand it," adding he saw the student who is hard of hearing "laughing" and "giggling" with someone else and is not paying attention. She replies that she's in a good mood.

Abram continues to repeatedly ask her to have her "counselor" talk to him, to which she agrees, but says she feels like he is "attacking" her.

"I'm not attacking you, I'm not attacking you," he says. "I'm just significantly disappointed in you. That's all, that's all it is. I'm not attacking you."

[onetexan]

1. Jerk needs to be fired, not placed on paid leave

[jtb653]

2. I agree.

Zero empathy from him.

Too bad he can't walk a mile in her shoes for a month or two.

[Bonn1997]

6. You can't fire someone with a contract for being rude

It’s not clear he made a material breach of his contract. If he is not tenured, they could consider not renewing his contract, but would probably do that only if this is part of a pattern.

[onetexan]

8. BS. The university can certainly fire a staff member for discrimination of people with disabilities

Which BTW is law -look it up -American Disabilities Act.

[Bonn1997]

9. I doubt this would qualify, but a legal expert could clarify this

If necessary accommodations are explained to him and he refuses to accept them, I could see that as different. If he lost his temper for a moment but then agrees to provide all required accommodations, I don't see that a reasonable court could count that as a material breach of contract.
I also suspect the university has not had any training on interacting through Zoom with disabled individuals.

[leftyladyfrommo]

3. Some professors are real jerks. I have run into a few

myself.

[Bonn1997]

4. We are in a new era where everything is recorded

This was inappropriate but probably also minimal compared to what this unfortunate student often encounters.

[GPV]

5. 6As someone who's HoH, this seriously ticks me off. People

treat us as being stupid. We're not!

[WhiskeyGrinder]

7. This happens *a lot.*

[Sympthsical]

10. This week in punchable faces . . .

And what's with the green screen background? Is he teaching assholery from Oahu?