Ronnie Polaneczky: St. Joe's students plan protest today

AT SOME universities, student protests are so commonplace, they could qualify as a minor.

Not at St. Joe's. The 7,700 students at the aggressively pleasant school on City Avenue rarely get publicly incensed about anything beyond a bad call at a Hawks-Owls game.

"We're not Swarthmore," said sophomore Samantha Koch.

So it's startling that, today, St. Joe's students will protest the university's denial of tenure to assistant political science prof Susan Liebell and assistant sociology prof Melissa Logue.

The beloved teachers have been at St. Joe's for six years. They're permitted to hang out for a seventh while they look for work elsewhere.

It's an unthinkable turn of events to students on whom Logue and Liebell have made a profound impact. A Facebook page supporting Liebell is getting major hits, and Logue's support is growing by the day.

Students and alumni have written letters of protest to St. Joe's president, Father Timothy Lannon, and to the board of trustees. And a front-page story in The Hawk student newspaper has added to the buzz.

"There is no equal" to Liebell "as an adviser or in the classroom," poli-sci major Koch told me. "She embodies everything St. Joe's is supposed to be about."

That would be the Jesuit tradition of cura personalis - care for the entire person - as touted on the school's Web site.

Junior Sal Profaci is equally dazzled by Logue, with whom he took three classes.

"She cares deeply about social-justice issues and about us as students," he said. "I came in as an English major, but she's the reason I'm now double-majoring, in sociology. She inspires you to really care about what she's teaching."

Logue didn't return a call for comment, and Liebell declined my request for an interview. Nor would St. Joe's say what aspects of tenure requirements - teaching, scholarship and service - the board of trustees found lacking in Liebell and Logue.

So I admit there could be more here than meets the eye.

Nonetheless, the board, which meets today with Lannon, really ought to chat with the students who will be protesting outside McShane Hall at 11 a.m.

Any teacher whose potential loss can mobilize usually immobile students is a teacher they might want to hang on to.

Especially for two additional reasons that some students preferred I not mention in this column: race and gender. They argue that neither is the reason for the excellence they'll miss if Logue and Liebell leave.

But as student Beth Melena noted, most of St. Joe's poli-sci teachers are male. She regards Liebell as a personal role model and an "absolutely vital" adviser.

And Profaci, who is white, said that Logue, who is African-American, brings an important race perspective to her overwhelmingly white students.

"I also think she helps students of color feel more comfortable here," he said. "At a school committed to diversity, that seems important."

Coupled with what a colleague of the women calls their "exemplary scholarship," the loss of Logue and Liebell is "widely viewed as a tragedy by the faculty," said the colleague, who prefers to remain anonymous.

"They are extraordinary faculty members. I think this is about academic narrow-mindedness and bean-counting - which is a total mismatch with the mission of this university."

So: Will St. Joe's reconsider?

"I don't recall any situation where student protests reversed a tenure decision," said Barbara Lee, a lawyer and human resources professor at Rutgers University who teaches higher-education law and is an expert on tenure practices.

"Students see only one dimension of a professor's performance, whereas the review committee sees the whole picture."

Part of the university's whole picture, of course, is its finances. It's conducting a $150 million fundraising campaign for improvements to help the school become "the pre-eminent Catholic comprehensive university in the Northeast."

If St. Joe's students want their newly activist voices heard, maybe it's time to arrange a sit-down with the successful alums who support their alma mater with generous funds.

Perhaps Brian Kisielewski, '06, could lead the charge? In a eloquent letter to Lannon, he said that the loss of Liebell "would be a devastating blow to the school and to my confidence, as an alumnus, that Saint Joseph's is committed to academic excellence in all areas."

Pass the man a bullhorn. *

E-mail polaner@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2217. For recent columns:

http://go.philly.com/polaneczky. Read Ronnie's blog at http://go.philly.com/ronnieblog.