Professor Spooner's Blog

By this point in the semester, I am getting a little loopy. I have too many papers to read, time in running short to cover everything I want to cover in class, and as I drive home in the pitch black darkness (at 4pm) I develop Christmas-light anxiety. As in, why does everyone else have their house decorated for the holidays already?

I sense I am not alone in being a little loopy. All my students have deadlines, exams, papers and projects, but at the same time they are making plans for winter break and dreaming of sleeping until noon in their childhood bedrooms.

We are all tired. Which is why I thought it might be a good time to pass along this brilliant article I read that lists 10 Questions You Should Never Ask Your Professor. I am fairly certain I can add a few, and probably get this list up to about 15. The point is, I get it. We are tired, we are stressed, we are worried about the outcome of our class. I feel the same way. So this is a gentle, and somewhat tongue-in-cheek, reminder to keep your wits and common sense about you. That, and a good sense of humor, will help us all get through the next few weeks.

Last night my husband was telling me about the "purge" at Apple, where the company had fired several key employees that had close ties to Steve Jobs. This story is fascinating in all sorts of ways, because it raises questions about new CEO Tim Cook's leadership, perhaps his efforts to move the company away from just being about Steve Jobs, and how Apple deals with its mistakes. Interestingly, rather than completely getting rid of Scott Forstall, the executive that refused to sign a letter of apology to customers regarding the map application that failed on the new iPhone, he is being kept on for a year as a "consultant."  Why would the CEO keep around someone that he dislikes enough to fire?

The answer comes from the law. In California, non-competition agreements are not enforced. We will discuss these contracts next week, but basically they are agreements between an employee and employer whereby the employee promises not to work for a competitor for some set time after leaving. Although these have all the required elements of a binding contract, for policy reasons many courts have decided not to enforce them, or to enforce them only in limited circumstances. In California, the courts refuse to enforce these contracts, so employers and employees know that once the employee leaves (whether fired or quitting), the employee can start to compete with the former employer right away. Many analysts have cited Massachusetts's strict enforcement of these contracts as a reason why our high tech industry hasn't grown as fast as California's high tech industry; freedom to hop around from company to company stirs innovation and growth. Here we see the flip side: Apple has to pay to keep Forstall on as a consultant to prevent him from running out the door and competing.

What do you think? Are non competition agreements good for business, or bad?

Just when you thought Constitutional Law couldn't get more interesting, Mayor Menino, the Mayor of Boston, brings us a case that tops even the Bachelor's First Amendment rights. Trojan, the condom company, has proposed a giveaway of vibrating sex toys on the plaza at Government Center (remember that vast concrete wasteland on your way to the courthouse?). The Mayor thought that giving away sex toys would take away from the "family atmosphere" and wrote a nasty letter to Trojan's marketing company asking them to refrain. The problem? Government Center is a public place, so Trojan probably has a First Amendment right to be there.

This week the Supreme Court hears argument on a case that will surely impact my children, and all those applying to state universities in the future. In Fisher v. U. of Texas, a young woman from Texas sued the university for its use of race in admissions. She gave her first interview recently, and it gave a very interesting human perspective to this constitutional issue. I see both sides of this issue, and haven't really decided whether I think race should be considered. As of now, it is constitutional to consider race as one factor in a holistic review of an applicant. But is it ethical? On one hand, several racial minorities in this country have suffered from discrimination and segregation historically, and may still be recovering. Racial minorities are also more likely to be poor and go to bad high schools. Thus, a boost in admissions seems fair in leveling the playing field. I wish we leveled the playing field in kindergarten instead, but that is a broader social issue that takes much more work. Affirmative action at the university level is really a short cut.

On the other hand, affirmative action creates a stigma, as assumption that racial minorities are only admitted because of their race, that is extremely harmful and painful to watch (I have seen it in my own classes). And it can set students up for failure, by placing them in unfamiliar situations with people that are nothing like them. Good support systems are crucial to success.

Read the interview and let me know what you think.