Disgraced Professor

(Major Unfavorable Trait)

This trait requires a character to take the trait College Faculty, and cannot be taken with the trait Tenured Professor, as well as any pre-requisite traits involved.

A Disgraced professor is one that has failed miserably within the politics of their field of expertise. They are not employed by any university and are unlikely to be such, as they have managed to ruin their good name in academia. They cannot be a Tenured Professor.

This may come from a matter of supporting unpopular, controversal or downright wrong theories within their field; committing plagerism and getting caught; stealing from the institution they worked for; falsifying research; causing severe damage to the university's good name; getting involved sexually with the wrong person (ex: exchanging sex for grades, having an affair with the spouse of a department head or an administrator, or otherwise causing a scandal that made the newspapers); committing a major crime and getting caught; destroying large amounts of school property (ex: Exploding the Chemistry building while doing research); or just playing politics badly and having someone else plant false evidence of one of these things... such as a rival.

Disgraced professors may be working in a non-academic field, or perhaps continue their work for less dubius employers (ex: a chemist who works for an arms merchant making explosives), turn to a life of crime, living off their savings and trying to undo the damage done to their reputation, etc.

Socially being a Disgraced Professor can taint a character in many circles, dependent on how well their failure and name is known. Trying to recover a lost reputation or prove that their unpopular theory is really right would make this into one of the Story Traits for many characters.

This trait should not be used as simply a cheap means to buy other academic traits to get their advantages - it must produce angst and problems for the character involved to be allowed.