A controversy in the Department of Psychology is causing legal problems for Fred’s University and has the troubled department under the microscope. Over the pandemic, the Department Chair invited several young members of the department to quarantine with him in his large house on his family’s luxury lakeside estate.
This spring, after the group dispersed, the Chair sent an itemized bill for food and lodging to the other professors. When his colleagues objected that they thought that they were invited guests, things got unpleasant.
As the conflict escalated, both sides went public. The Chair attempted to backpedal and claimed that the demand for payment was all part of a “psychological experiment”. His junior colleagues have countered that if they were party to an experiment, they should have filled out informed consent paperwork as human subjects.
The Faculty Oversight Committee is now investigating other so-called “experiments” conducted by the Chair over the last five decades, including asking his students to a skinny dipping party as his lake house, inviting female students to his office at night, and inviting students to look at pictures of his genitals.
Concerned that the scandal could interfere with departmental fundraising in the Race to Cure Narcissism, the President of Fred’s University has personally offered to pay the faculty’s lake house quarantine expenses.