Students Complained About Bishop a Year Ago, Concerns Were Ignored

Tragically, it appears, the one person in particular they complained to was one of Amy Bishop's murder victims.

Students said they signed a petition and complained to no avail about the classroom conduct of an Alabama professor accused of killing three colleagues and wounding three others in a shooting rampage at a faculty meeting.

The students upset with biology professor Amy Bishop told The Associated Press they went to University of Alabama in Huntsville administrators at least three times a year ago, complaining that she was ineffective in the classroom and had odd, unsettling ways.

The students said Bishop never made eye contact during conversations, taught by reading out of a textbook and made frequent references to Harvard University, her beloved alma mater.

"We could tell something was off, that she was not like other teachers," said nursing student Caitlin Phillips.

Bishop is charged with one count of capital murder and three counts of attempted murder in the shootings Friday in a campus conference room where members of the biology department were meeting.

She is being held without bond and does not yet have an attorney. Police have not revealed a motive, but colleagues say she was vocal in her displeasure about being denied tenure in March of last year. Her appeal was denied in November.

There have been revelations since the shooting that she killed her brother with a shotgun in Braintree, Mass., in 1986 but was never charged because police said it was an accident, and that she and her husband were scrutinized in 1993 after someone sent pipe bombs to a Harvard professor she worked with. The bombs did not go off and no one was ever charged in that case either.

Bishop's students said they first wrote a letter to biology department chairman Gopi K. Podila — one of the victims of Friday's shooting — then met with him and finally submitted a petition that dozens of them had signed.

"Podila just sort of blew us off," said Phillips, who was among a group of five students who met with him in fall 2008 or early 2009 to air their concerns.

After students met privately with Podila, Phillips said, Bishop seemingly made a point in class to use some of the same phrases they had so they would know she knew about it.

"It was like she was parroting what we had said," Phillips said.

In other words, Podila ratted them out. And look where that got him.

Why the media bothers going to her husband for quotes escapes me. It's probably in his best interest to STFU right about now.

Bishop's husband, James Anderson, said Wednesday the "vast majority" of students were happy with her.

How he would know this he doesn't say. Must have some magical mind-reading talents.