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Update: I’ve posted a further discussion of Chopra’s actions here.
The Chronicle of Higher Education has its first major article up this morning on the Southwestern College faculty suspensions, and it, along with a couple other new stories, clears up some of yesterday’s unanswered questions.
None of those answers make the situation any less bizarre.
To recap: last Thursday a few hundred students and faculty carried out a peaceful protest against budget cuts at SWC, a southern California community college. That night four professors, including the president of the SWC faculty union, were suspended from their positions and barred from campus. The next morning the college’s president and HR director both left on extended vacations, leaving a low-level administrator behind to insist that the suspensions were “unrelated to the student rally.”
That’s what I had gleaned last night. Here’s what I’ve learned this morning…
The claim that the suspensions had nothing to do with “the student rally” can most charitably be described as deceptive. Yesterday the university clarified its previous statement, declaring that the suspensions came about because of an incident that took place during the protest, but after the officially sanctioned rally had formally ended.
SWC, like far too many American colleges, has a designated “free speech zone” in an isolated corner of the campus, and permission for the rally was limited to that area. At the end of the rally, however, a group of students and faculty marched on the offices of college president Raj K. Chopra, where they were stopped by a line of campus police officers.
SWC campus police chief Brent Chartier told the Chronicle that some of the protesters engaged in “illegal activity” at that point, that the incident is currently under investigation, and that criminal charges against protesters are under consideration. In a letter to the campus community yesterday, the president of SWC’s college district board said that “no formal charges or allegations” had yet “been made against any college faculty member or employee.”
Suspended prof Philip Lopez, the president of the faculty union at SWC, reacted with disbelief to the new statements. “If there are no charges,” he asked, “why were we placed on leave? Rumor? Reputation? Union-busting? Poor personal hygiene?”
It should be noted, by the way, that Thursday’s rally was not just a generic response statewide budget cuts. It was a protest against specific policies and tactics of Chopra’s, most notably a plan to balance SWC’s budget by cutting the number of classes the college offers each semester by 25%.
President Chopra has long been a controversial figure at SWC, and was the subject of a no-confidence vote by the campus chapter of CSEA, the faculty union, in May of this year. In that resolution, the CSEA chapter declared that a campus reorganization plan undertaken by Chopra had been conducted “with a complete lack of regard for Southwestern College’sstanding commitment to its own Shared Governance Guidelines.” As noted above and in yesterday’s post, the current president of CSEA’s SWC chapter, and one of the chapter’s former presidents, were among the four professors suspended on Thursday.
One last bit of background: The section of the California state code that allowed Chopra to kick the faculty members off campus empowers him to bar an individual from campus grounds “whenever there is reasonable cause to believe that such person has willfully disrupted the orderly operation of such campus.” It allows him to ban such an individual for no more than fourteen days, and requires that he hold a hearing on such a ban within seven days of receiving a request for one from a banned individual. If any of the three suspended faculty return to the campus before their suspensions are lifted, they are liable to arrest on misdemeanor charges that carry a maximum penalty of six months in jail.
Update: I’ve put up a follow-up post with new details and links on this story here, and a discussion of Chopra’s actions here.
Wow. This is … wow.
Four professors at Southwestern College, a community college in Chula Vista, California, have been suspended from their jobs and barred from campus — apparently for supporting a peaceful student budget protest.
The protest took place last Thursday, and drew the participation of several hundred SWC students. By Friday, the four professors had all received letters saying that they had been suspended effective immediately. The letters suggested that each of the four had violated a California state law prohibiting the willful disruption of “the orderly operation of the campus.”
English Professor Philip Lopez, the president of the college’s faculty union and one of the four suspended professors said he had been given no clear explanation for his suspension, but was sure it was an act of retaliation for the protest. “Clearly,” he told Inside Higher Ed, “the administration doesn’t think there is such a thing as the First Amendment.”
Another of the suspended professors, creative writing instructor Andrew Rempt, told the San Diego Union Tribune that the college’s head of human resources showed up at his home on Thursday evening with a police officer in tow to deliver his suspension letter by hand.
The president of the college, Raj K. Chopra, is on vacation, and the position of college spokesperson is currently vacant. Inside Higher Ed was unable to reach any other college official for an explanation of their action.
Update | A short, cryptic statement from Chopra’s executive assistant claims that the university is conducting an “investigation” of a matter “unrelated to the student rally.”
Second Update | This story keeps getting weirder. According to the blog Save Our Southwestern College, Chopra and HR director Jackie Osborne both went on vacation on Friday morning, hours after putting the faculty suspensions into effect. Chopra is expected to be gone from campus for three weeks.
Third Update | A post at Save Our Southwestern College identifies all four suspended professors. An anonymous comment on that post states that three of the four suspended professors participated in the budget rally, and that the suspension of the fourth was lifted when it was learned that she had not been in attendance at the protest. That commenter also claims that “at least one student … has received a letter warning him of the consequences of speaking out at SWC.”
Fourth Update | In a new interview with a local television station, targeted professor Philip Lopez calls the suspensions an act of “union busting,” and says all four profs were critics of Chopra’s policies.
Tuesday Update | As noted at the top of this story, I’ve now written a follow-up post with new details and links.
Here’s a story with a happy ending.
Two weeks ago, Jacob Miller, a graduate student at the University of Arizona, was arrested on campus. His crime? Chalking.
Miller, along with a number of other students, had been writing slogans and drawings on the university’s sidewalks in chalk to promote a rally protesting the commercialization of higher education. A university employee called the police, and Miller was arrested for criminal damage and disturbing an educational institution.
The two charges were each class one misdemeanors, and carried a combined maximum penalty of a year in prison and $5,000 in fines. Miller had been identified through video surveillance footage.
The arrest sparked a huge uproar on campus. The following weekend a group of students began buying sidewalk chalk in bulk and handing it out by the bucketful on campus. Early on Monday morning a Poli Sci major named Evan Lisull was was arrested for writing the slogans “Chalk is Speech” and “Freedom of Expression” on campus sidewalks.
Lisull’s arrest seemed likely to escalate the situation further, but instead it brought the university to its senses. On Monday afternoon UA president Robert Shelton instructed campus police to drop all charges against the two students, and declared that the university would no longer treat chalking as a criminal matter.
UA said at the time that it would in the future handle chalking complaints “as possible Code of Conduct violations through the Dean of Students Office,” but soon it was in full retreat, announcing this week that chalkers would not face disciplinary consequences of any kind.
Chalk one up for … well, you know.
FIRE — the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education — is on the right side of the issues a fair chunk of the time. Their (right-wing) politics aren’t mine, by any stretch, but when they’re beating the drums for freedom of expression and due process on campus, they’re doing important work.
I just wish they could do that important work better.
Here’s the latest example. Back in early August, Professor Thomas Thibeault of East Georgia College was called to the office of EGC president John Bryant Black. By Thibeault’s account, Black demanded that he resign from the college that morning, and threatened to make public Thibeault’s “long history of sexual harassment” if he did not.
Thibeault refused to resign and was escorted from the campus, under threat of arrest if he ever returned. In the two months since, Thibeault says, he has not been given a hearing, been permitted to defend himself against the sexual harassment charges, or even been told what exactly he’s being charged with, despite the fact that Black convened a faculty committee to investigate him.
This is seriously screwed up. If Thibeault’s version of events is true (and neither Black nor EGC have publicly disputed it), the EGC administration has behaved shamefully — attempting to bully him into resigning with vague and ominous threats, then refusing to allow him a timely opportunity to be informed of, and respond to, the charges that have led to his removal from the classroom. Bravo to FIRE for shining a light on this situation.
…And that’s where I stop praising them. Here’s why.
Two days before Thibeault was brought into Black’s office, he attended a faculty training session on sexual harassment, where he made some remarks from the floor. In FIRE’s gloss, “he presented a scenario regarding a different professor and asked, ‘what provision is there in the Sexual Harassment policy to protect the accused against complaints which are malicious or, in this case, ridiculous?’ ”
FIRE sees this as “Kafkaesque irony,” saying that “Thibeault made the mistake of pointing out — at a sexual harassment training seminar — that the school’s sexual harassment policy contained no protection for the falsely accused.” But Thibeault’s own account of his remarks makes it clear that FIRE’s summary of his comments is woefully inadequate.
Here’s how Thibeault himself describes the “scenario” he presented at the sexual harassment training:
Last week two students were talking to me in the hallway after class. One student said that she didn’t want to go to a professor’s office because he looked down her cleavage. The woman was wearing clothing that was specifically designed to draw attention to her cleavage. She even sported a tattoo on her chest, but I didn’t get close enough to read it. The cleavage was also decorated in some sort of sparkly material, glitter or dried barbecue sauce. I couldn’t tell. I told the student that she shouldn’t complain, if she drew such attention to herself. The other female student then said, and I hope you’re not offended by her actual words, ‘if you don’t want anyone looking at your titties, I’ll lend you a T-shirt. I have one in the truck.’ The first student then said, ‘No. I’m proud of the way I look.’ I left the conversation at that point.
Let’s break this down, shall we?
- A female student told Thibeault that another professor’s habit of staring at her breasts made her uncomfortable.
- Thibeault told her, in front of another student, that she had no right to complain because she was dressed provocatively.
- A week later, Thibeault recounted this story to a large group of faculty members at a public meeting, complete with identifying details of, and gratuitously offensive comments about, the student’s appearance.
- To top it all off, he presented the student’s complaint about the other professor as an example of a “ridiculous” sexual harassment charge.
According to the EGC faculty handbook, by the way, “conduct of a sexual nature” that “has the purpose or effect of … creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive academic environment” is sexual harassment.
FIRE has all this background. But they chose not to mention it.
And this is why I find FIRE so frustrating. It’s not “Kafkaesque irony” that Thibeault was hauled in to the president’s office on a sexual harassment complaint two days after the training. It’s not ironic at all. It’s not even surprising. By Thibeault’s own account, he made wildly inappropriate sexualized comments to a female student, told that student that it was her own fault if a professor leered at her while she was wearing a low-cut top, and then shared this anecdote at a faculty meeting in a bizarrely insulting way. (Barbecue sauce? Come on.)
I don’t know whether any of this is actionable as sexual harassment. I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know what Thibeault’s history is, or whether the university’s claims that he has a “long history” of misbehavior have any merit at all. As I said at the top of this post, I’m inclined to believe that Thibeault has been treated unfairly, and that EGC has violated his right to academic due process.
But this whole incident serves as yet another reminder to me that when I see a piece on FIRE’s site, I can’t just take their analysis and run with it. I can’t even assume that they’re presenting the basic outline of the story in a fair and complete way. I have to research and fact-check the whole thing from the beginning. And because they break so much news — because they are out there digging these cases up — I have to ignore their stuff if I can’t find independent corroboration of their claims.
Because they just can’t be trusted to tell a story straight.
And that sucks.
Note: As I indicated above by linking to Thibeault’s statement at FIRE’s website, and again by saying that “FIRE has all this background,” FIRE did post that statement as a PDF document, and link to it from other documents. I never intended to suggest otherwise, and I’m happy to make that clear.
The student senate of the University of North Texas last week rejected a bylaw amendment that would have allowed same-sex couples to run for king and queen of homecoming.
Student government regulations at UNT do not bar LGBT students from running for homecoming king and queen, but they do provide that the court be elected as a male-female couple. The proposed bylaw amendment would have eliminated that restriction.
The bill, which had been introduced a week earlier, generated a strong negative response from UNT parents and alumni.
Debate on the proposal lasted for an hour, and at times grew heated. The final vote was five in favor of the change, ten opposed, and eight abstentions.
One student who voted against the bill said that he had been swayed by threats from alumni to end charitable donations to UNT, and from parents of students who had gone so far as to threaten to force their children to withdraw from the university.
Student government interns conducted an informal poll of two hundred students before the vote, and the UNT student newspaper, the NT Daily, said the results were “generally negative.” Comments on the Daily‘s coverage of the vote have, however, been mostly supportive of the defeated amendment.
(Thanks to @ericstoller on Twitter for the heads-up on this story.)
studentactivism.net 
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