How Would You Handle It? Pizza Bribing Professor Edition

Each week I plan to ask a question just to get YOUR take on it. If you have a question contact me and I’ll see if I can use it. I’ll so this meme until I run out of  questions.

This one really happened to me but many years ago.  I want to know…how would YOU handle it?

I was in college and producer of a radio show that was assigned to cover a sit in on campus. The facilitator was an associate professor who wasn’t known for great teaching or even knowing what they were doing. Even after all these years I can only remember what not to do in communications because of their poor example.

But I digress.

The professor also oversaw the TV station and their news coverage of the same sit in. The professor asked if they could hear and see our coverage but asked when both the radio and TV crews were just getting started.  Remember this was many moons ago where digital editing wasn’t available. We asked that the professor wait until we had more footage. We were switching tapes and wanted to get more coverage, return to editing and put our newscast together.

The professor said that was fine.

Flash forward.

The TV producer came to me and said there was a problem. The professor didn’t want me to know but went behind our backs and wanted to listen to the radio footage. In doing so, they erased all the footage from the tape I just dropped off and asked them not to touch. This left me with no coverage from the beginning and left the professor with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar.

The TV producer confessed the professor begged the TV producer for their footage. Not knowing what to do they obliged and admitted the professor was dubbing TV audio as we spoke and was about to pass it off as my original radio coverage.

Looking back, I guess I see why my daughter has spunk because I forgot how much sass I’ve always had. I went straight to the editing room and caught the professor. I was pretty clear that what I was witnessing was wrong on every level and there was no excuse for what  I was seeing.

Their response was to pull money out of their pocket and ask if I would be interested in forgetting this if they bought my floor pizza for dinner?

I’ll share the end of the story in the comments but what would you have done? Think it through. The professor was the head of both the TV and Radio departments but both heads (including me) asked that they not touch the footage until later. The professor disobeyed our wish and destroyed my tape. To cover it up, I caught them trying to pass the TV tape off as the radio tape as well. It was deceitful at the very least to this college junior Barbara Walters.  When confronted, the professor offers a pizza bribe.

So…comment away. I look forward to communicating with you.

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