Part III: Antarctica and Academe - Scott Polar Research Institute

opportunity to defend himself against specific charges before the Fellowship , and
loses, his position immediately becomes much more serious. In my view that would
be more insensitive and unjust. In any case Holifield was clearly aware that he was
entitled to raise a complaint to the Association and had chosen not to do so; nor did
he subsequently choose to follow this route.
The opposition invoked Articles 18 and 20 which are intended for the removal of a
Fellow/Officer and only for gross misconduct. They do not offer a procedure for day
to day supervision and are not a disciplinary route. A disciplinary warning is
expressly for the purpose of seeking improvement in the performance of the person
warned. Contrary to what some Fellows claimed and had been telling others, the
Bursar had not been dismissed and I was not seeking such power.
The Bursar did not follow the greivance procedure, which formed part of his
conditions of service on appointment. It provides for raising a greivance with the
Master, and if not satisfied with the result, to lay a complaint before the Association.
Instead, on 16 April the Bursar wrote an insubordinate letter, disputing my
authority, disagreeing with some of the interpretations made in my warning letter
and offering a few new facts. This letter did not constitute an appeal, nor an
invocation of the first part of the greivance procedure, and in any case even if it did,
he did not proceed to the next stage and did not seek to involve the Association.
Next the Bursar wrote to me after taking legal advice. He said that he was unclear
about the status of the working party and had "treated the whole exercise as a group
of three interested members of the College attempting to bring themselves up to date
on sepcific aspects on the running of the College so as to assist with some
constructive ideas as to its running." He believed that the working party was
unconstitutional and invoked the Article that relates to the Master ot any three
Fellows serving a formal complaint to the Association, concerning his employment as
an Officer of the College. This relates to Fellows and points to another article which
is concerned with coinduct that renders him "unfit to be a Fellow of the College".
This could lead to suspension, an Appeal to the Visitor, who could terminate the
suspension or declare the Fellowship vacated. It is a much less sensitive way of
dealing with such a situation , than the one I had followed.
He wrote that he did not accept the criticisms in my letter, did not consider the time
scale of three months reasonable to improve his performance, because it would take
longer than this to show a change. "I will continue to carry out my duties the way I
consider that I always have done, that is for the good of the College while balancing
all the many and complicated issues with which I have to deal."
He attached a fourteen page (double-spaced) paper of comments on my 16 March
letter. This is an attempted exoneration of his actions, drawing continually on a
supposed delegation of duties "under the Ordinances of the College and the Articles
of Association." While he had some reasonable points of clarification to make (which
he had neglected to make to the Working Party earlier) it was in general and only
superficially an apparently plausible and reasonable justification In effect he
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