Ravi Shankar, a member of the faculty at Central Connecticut State University, received a coveted promotion to full, tenured professor under most unusual circumstances last year. He was sitting in jail at the time.

The newly minted professor wasn't behind bars for the first time, having acquired a rather extensive rap sheet that included credit card fraud, drunken driving, evading responsibility, leaving an accident scene and driving without a license or insurance. All this while employed as a teacher of poetry and literature at Central.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Shankar's off-campus activities raised questions about the decision to make a full professor of as problematic a role model as he. This was not lessened in any way after both the university and the Board of Regents for Higher Education offered an explanation.

Both CCSU President Jack Miller and Board of Regents President Gregory Gray said promotion decisions are based solely on the individual's performance as a teacher. Activities outside the classroom, even when they result in sending the professor to jail - twice - as was the case with Mr. Shankar, are not considered.

They can't be because the university's collective bargaining agreement, which was agreed to after negotiations between the CCSU administration and its unionized professors, requires promotion decisions to be based solely on the professor's teaching and scholarship, without consideration of his extracurricular good works - or bad.

Not surprisingly, legislators from both parties were dumbfounded by this agreement and a bill has been introduced requiring future union contracts to allow colleges and universities to conduct background checks and take criminal activity into account prior to promoting faculty members.

State Sen. Steven Witkos, R-Canton, the ranking member of the General Assembly's Higher Education Committee, introduced the bill because, he explained, "I was just so shocked that they would grant him full professorship while he was in jail."

We share the legislator's dismay but we do not believe the legislature should mandate anything in a collective bargaining agreement, even when the parties have come to an agreement as manifestly ridiculous as this.

We would like to believe the union was interested in protecting outside activities that might involve a professor's political beliefs or personal relationships, not his criminal acts. Perhaps they were concerned a minor offense, like a traffic violation, would harm an otherwise qualified professor's promotion. Sen. Roberta Willis, D-Salisbury, the committee co-chairwoman, said it won't and the final bill will deal with only serious offenses.

Nevertheless, the idea of a legislative body dictating the contents of a collective bargaining agreement smacks of Big Brother and we agree with Diomedes Tsitouris, executive director of the University of Connecticut Health Center's chapter of the American Association of University Professors, who testified that if passed, the bill would make the legislature a party to collective bargaining by taking away the unions' rights to negotiate disciplinary and promotion procedures.

We also cite testimony submitted by a management representative, University of Connecticut Faculty and Staff Labor Relations Director Michael Eagen, who said the university is able to handle off-duty misconduct, including arrests, through its regular disciplinary process and pointed to the termination of two professors for criminal convictions.

The Central Connecticut administration and the Board of Regents should review UConn's disciplinary procedures for inspiration and instruction in how to make criminal activity a factor in considering employment and promotion of all employees.

Meanwhile, the legislature should stay out of the collective bargaining process.