Given the Poe Hall PCB contamination scandal, I’ve been doing a deep dive to try and figure out what the health consequences are for me. Unfortunately, the science is quite murky, because it is difficult to determine what is going on for people who have faced years of exposure to uncertain levels of PCBs. Besides skin disease, cancer seems to be the big concern. So I’ve done three...
Historic vote of no-confidence at NC State: only 25% of Education faculty have confidence in the Chancellor’s leadership
Following my request, the faculty in the College of Education voted last Friday on whether they had confidence in the leadership of Chancellor Woodson, Provost Arden, and Dean Sztajn due to their mismanagement of the Poe Hall situation. According to the Technician, this is the first time a no-confidence vote for a Chancellor has ever passed. Here are the results: The results are grim: at best...
Evidence suggests NC State is preventing an independent investigation of Poe Hall by the federal government in favor of a firm under the control of the university, and University personnel are carefully couching their public statements to hide this fact
Point of information: The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) conducts investigations into workplace illnesses and is part of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which in turn is part of the US Department of Health and Human Services, a federal agency. Thus, people can and have been using the two acronyms NIOSH and CDC interchangeably. This also explains why the...
The Provost and General Counsel deliberately misled the Faculty Senate about stopping the federal investigation of Poe Hall
To understand what happened, you first need some background on the alphabet soup of the agencies involved. When the NC Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) receives a complaint about cancer in occupational settings, they typically steer the complainant to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (commonly referred to as the CDC) because of the CDC’s expertise in this area. The...
I just called for a vote of no confidence in the Chancellor, Provost, and Dean of the College of Education at NC State
[UPDATE 2/7: I describe how the university shut down the federal investigation of Poe.] Here is the email I sent to the Chair of the College of Education faculty: Hi Cameron, I’m writing to ask you and the other members of the Coordinating Committee to schedule an emergency faculty business meeting this week or next via Zoom. The purpose is to hold separate votes of no-confidence for Chancellor...