A reader writes to explain the measures he takes to avoid being falsely accused of insensitive or harassing classroom speech:

Upon reading these various stories of teacher essentially persecuted for classroom speech that is either non-existent, or largely removed from context, I have committed to a technological solution to the "he said/she said" problem. The basis of most of these type of complaints usually comes down to a student or someone else with an agenda claiming something, and the teacher in question trying to defend themselves by saying that such a thing was never said.

What, of course, is missing for the teacher to defend him/herself is an unbiased observer that could faithfully reproduce the entire stream of speech in question. To this end, I am digitally recording each and every one of my lectures, though not only for this reason. The main reason is that both students and myself are able to go over any given lecture. I use this to be able to see if I have conveyed the material to my satisfaction, and the students understanding. The students use it to review subjects that remain unclear, and to catch up on any lectures they may have missed.

But, if ever faced with this kind of accusation, I will be able to produce an exact transcript of the event, and let my words stand for themselves. If, indeed, I am a racist, or abusive, or a poor teacher, I fully expect to be reprimanded and punished for it. I, obviously, do not believe I am any of those things, and am perfectly willing to bet my career on it. I find it a sad commentary on the current state of academia that I am forced into this role of preemption, but until the "witch hunt" mentality ebbs from the university status quo, I prefer the inconvenience of wearing a microphone to having to suspiciously watch every word that I say in lecture.

By the way, the technology to do this is not particularly expensive or difficult to use. I use a wireless (bluetooth) headset and USB dongle (about $150 together) and a program called "Camtasia" (academic licence about $130) to capture my voice (there are other programs that do this as well, I'm capturing more that just my voice). Each lecture winds up being about 100 MB/hour but that includes video of the screen. I'm sure that the voice alone could be compressed far below that. I figure that an $80 hard drive holds about one year of archived lectures, and that is extraordinarily cheap insurance against false accusation.

The advantage that I have in all of this is that I am in engineering, and this kind of thing really shouldn't come up. If it does, for whatever reason, I will at least have recourse to an unbiased recording of my side of the conversation. It is sad, but in my opinion, it will greatly reduce the probability that someone will make this kind of accusation falsely. Again, if the accusation is true, then let me hang by my own record.

Thanks for writing.