Andy Borgmann's Blog

This was a great week. Awesome Braves game on Tuesday that was probably the most fun baseball game I have been to. I finally got my new office organized. A 60-hour work week. No wolf criers. And to top it all off, a two-day weekend on the beach at Hilton Head Island with friends. When I went out to the beach this morning, I grabbed a Business Week that was sitting on the coffee table. I eventually read an article about recruiting methods used by top companies (like GE, ExxonMobil, etc...) and contacting college professors for "leads" on their top students.

All is good right? Seems simple. Companies want good, rising stars. Therefore they turn to college professors. Well, it gets complicated because often times these companies pay professors directly for help, or they support them in other ways (donation to the university ear-marked for their department, support of their PhD program, etc...).

This brings us to the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business. In their fear of favoritism, they have set a policy that disallows professors to recommend students unless the company has contacted the student first. Now, as I sat in a beach chair thinking about this, I had to ask myself: if I knew this as a student considering UV's Business School, would I attend it? And the answer I have come to is no!

Maybe it is because I think this is actually a really smart idea. Maybe it is because I was liked by most of my professors. Maybe because I have seen first hand a great example of a professor recommending a friend of mine for a position that fit him and the company remarkably well. But frankly, Darden is a classic example of disabling fear.

We did a show the other weekend on volunteering and "serving others." One of our callers commented that people don't help much anymore because they are feared of "doing it wrong and then getting sued." Bingo! A fear of being sued disables them from doing something they should. Darden has a fear of showing favoritism (and possibly being sued), so they are disabling their professors to provide a great service to companies, to their students, and to themselves (usually there is some compensation to the school).

I don't want to live my life in any sort of disabling fear. Whether it was flying the weekend after 9/11/01, or studying abroad in the Middle East (both of which I was afraid to do but did anyways); or helping people even though they might possibly be able to sue or slander me, or setting University policy, fear should never be an influence in the decision to do the right thing.