University of Virginia Human Relations

Human relations offices exist to enforce a top-down power-playing institutions. At least that's my experience at the University of Virginia. HR officers smile and smile and turn deaf ears to the complaints of what one powerful  administrator has referred to as "low-level employees." The few low-levels who ignore the sword of Damocles that hangs over their heads when they register grievances to the office of moral redress, receive everything but justice. Instead they are served up meals of insincere reassurance, promises of aid and on-purpose inaction.

Every once a while in this bleak place, some HR officer with a death wish lets escape some candor. One weary woman once told a little man reporting a violation of his rights as outlined in the U.Va. employee handbook, that he could expect no redress. She said that his high-level boss was immune from the supposed consequences of the abuse of power.

In the zoo, the keepers protect the mouse until it is time to feed him to the snake. At the University, H.R. does the same. Witness the story of Kevin Morrissey, who was maintained in his job until Ted Genoways got hungry.