In which Piers has an outburst

One of the most trying things this semester has been the long, drawn-out process of searching for new faculty members:  one department chair, one Spanish professor, and one assistant English professor.  I somehow managed to avoid all the search committees, but still, the work has been weighing on us all to some extent.  In the department meeting on Friday in which we met to discuss the final set of candidates for the chair position, it became clear that one of them would win almost by default (the other two had been seriously deficient in one way or another).  During the discussion, I griped about the presentation of one of the candidates, loudly insisting that what she delivered was undergraduate quality.

But that wasn't the outburst . . . just a warm-up to the main event.  When one of my colleagues (who, I'll admit, I find off-putting in some instances) pointed out a problem in the "process" of the previous vote (the one my good friend JVG won by a scant margin), allowing some of our colleagues to apparently "abuse" the vote.  It was at that point that I barked out a challenge, asking him if he was accusing someone of actually abusing a vote in the department.  He affirmed that he was, whereupon I barked again that I'd like him to reveal which of his colleagues he was leveling the accusation at.  He said he didn't know.  I then demanded, "well, you must have some idea.  Was it one of us?  Perhaps somebody in this room fraudulently voted??"  He didn't back down, but did later come over and try to clear the air with me (by saying I'd misunderstood, and yet again repeating the same things he'd already said).  I assured him that I must have gotten the wrong idea.

I don't like losing my temper in a situation like that.  It leaves me far too exposed.

n.b.:  I'm not a fool.  I know quite well that when people start wanting to revise the process of a vote, it's because they didn't like the outcome.  Just like I know that when people start squawking about being "civil" they really just want to be able to control the argument though their ideas are losing.  And yes, I have historical precedent to prove it.