Could you stand up under the pressure?

Before anyone gets too sanctimonious about the members of the N.C. State University hierarchy who resigned after being caught in the Mary Easley web, ask yourself: Do I have the guts to stand up to the boss when I know that what he's doing is wrong and that opposing him will cost me my job? That, essentially, is what Provost Larry Nielsen and Chancellor Jim Oblinger faced when word was handed down from the Executive Mansion that first lady Mary Easley would like to have a job at N.C. State, and it shouldn't be just any job.

Nielsen created a job for the governor's wife. Oblinger essentially negotiated the deal, finding a niche for Easley and getting all the right deans and department heads on board. Both men have now resigned, but their resignations are not the result of hiring Mary Easley. Nielsen resigned because the pressure to explain why he created the job and why he bumped her pay up 88 percent became too great. "I did what I was told," might be ridiculed as the Nuremberg defense, but it's a fact of life in the corporate world.

Oblinger resigned after he lied about two things: He said Nielsen's transitional pay was a standard package for any administrator going back to teaching, and he said he couldn't remember any contacts about Easley's job. It turns out Nielsen was getting an unusual three-year transition back to a professor's salary, and e-mail sent to a federal grand jury shows Oblinger had numerous communications about Easley's job, far too many for him to have forgotten.

This could have turned out differently, as University President Erskine Bowles pointed out Monday. If Oblinger had simply said, "Oh yeah, they asked me about a job for Mary Easley, and I passed her name along to the right people," he might still be chancellor. If Nielsen and Oblinger had told the governor, "If your wife wants a job a job at N.C. State, she should fill out the online application, and she'll be considered for any vacant positions along with everyone else who applies," they'd be out of a job a lot sooner than they were. If your boss says, "Hire this person" or "Don't hire that person," you either obey or you get fired for insubordination.

I've never worked at a big university, but in more than 30 years in the newspaper business, I had many occasions when I disagreed with the boss about some matter. In each case, except one, I swallowed hard and did what I was told. The one case, from 30 years ago, involved a corrupt politician my city reporter had heard allegations about. I took him off of his regular assignments and gave him a week to check out the allegations. A week later, he had the goods on one aspect of the allegations, that the politician was running a private business out of his city office on city time. We ran the story past the paper's attorneys, who signed off on it. Then the publisher decided she didn't want to publish the story. The reporter resigned in protest. I did the same. I thought getting the facts to voters was more important than my job, even though I was supporting my wife and three small children. It worked out for both of us. The reporter went on to be a big-city columnist, and I landed a job in Wilson about two months after I quit my old job.

Would I do it again? Foolishly enough, I probably would if I were still 30 years old. But at 60 and worried about retirement income and finding a new job at this age? I'm not as sure.

I empathize with Nielsen and Oblinger. It's not easy standing up to pressure from above.