Iowa college president steps down after beer photo

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

An Iowa community college president resigned less than a week after a photo was published appearing to show him pouring beer into a young woman's mouth.

The school's board of trustees on Thursday unanimously approved Robert Paxton's resignation. It also approved a severance package that officials said was valued at about $400,000.

Mark Crimmins, the president of the board, said although the incident happened in Paxton's private life, "it reflected poorly on the college."

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Okay, so I can understand why the board of trustees would think such a picture might make their school appear to be less serious, or studious, or academically rigorous, whatever, but did this guy's contract even imply anything about drinking beer with young women being a bad idea? Can a college president drink beer at all without sanction? What's over the line? Is a pint of ale at the local tweed pub okay, but Hooter's out of the question? I mean, didn't Hillary Clinton participate in some sort of vodka drinking contest in the Ukraine a couple of years ago? Did that make her less "presidential"?

Really, it seems to me that the gargantuan severance package they're giving Paxton is a straight up admission that the board knows his forced resignation is an exercise in absurdity. I guess they think it's worth it. Very weird. I'm troubled by this--it reminds me of the recent rash of similar sackings of officials across the country for various legal and normal sexual infractions. The suggestion is that it doesn't matter how good you are at your job: what matters is that you look morally correct while doing it, and "morally correct" is usually defined way too late for it to be helpful for the people being fired.

I mean, what good is a "private life," anyway, under these circumstances?

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