An Ironic Petition

Have any of you noticed that there’s a new Butler petition housed on the ipetition web site? If so, do you share my amusement in the irony of that petition?

For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, let me bring you up to speed. Last fall, a group of my friends (creatively entitled “Friends of Jess Zimmerman”) began a petition demanding that the Butler administration apologize to me and to the Butler community for their crazy actions associated with the True BU blog. (That petition has grown very nicely and all the people who have signed it have been completely ignored by the Butler administration. Take a look and add your signature if you haven’t yet done so. It won’t help, but it can’t hurt!)

Now, the president of the faculty senate has created her own petition to the Butler administration! It seems that the administration, with virtually no input from faculty or students, has decided to do away with the science library. Faculty and students are not happy about the decision and, because meaningful communication on the Butler campus is virtually nonexistent, the president of the faculty senate has had to resort to creating a public petition to give people a voice. The petition is growing rapidly and must be a huge embarrassment to the administration. In a little over 24 hours, the petition garnered over 500 signatures.

But beyond the obvious embarrassment, what can anyone think about Butler when the only way for the faculty senate to be heard is for its president to have to go public with a petition. And I bet most faculty will be too frightened to add their names to the petition.

All I can say is that this is yet another example of the Butler Way!

FIRE assesses the Butler – Duke match-up

Like virtually everyone else on and near campus, and many around the world, I’ve been incredibly impressed by all the men’s basketball team has accomplished. The players and coaching staff handled themselves remarkably well and their efforts have elevated all of us. They are, however, only a part of Butler University and there are other members of the university community who also deserve high praise for their accomplishments. One of the exciting side effects of the men’s basketball success is that attention beyond the “Butler bubble” has been brought to others deserving of it.

But not all of the attention focused on Butler is good, however. FIRE ( Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), one of the country’s organizations most strongly fighting for free speech on university campuses, offered a head-to-head matchup of Butler and Duke – looking at free speech issues rather than basketball skills. Their conclusions are not pretty!

Their article ran with an interesting headline: “Butler vs. Duke: Who Wins in the Arena of Free Speech?” As they say, given the widely reported problems Duke has had with the way it trampled on the rights of falsely accused players on its lacrosse team and a major embarrassment with its Women’s Center, the contest shouldn’t be close.

But Butler’s actions, coupled with the needless and vindictive aggressiveness of its president, changed the complexion of the contest. As FIRE states, “Butler may be the underdog du jour, but it's shown that it can play with the big boys at more than just basketball.”

After presenting a good summary of my case, mostly from the original Inside Higher Education article and from an essay on Finding Dulcinea, FIRE called the contest a draw:

"Zimmerman said of the saga, "I would have hoped that we could have the trial first and the verdict second, but that isn’t the way Butler has decided to operate." The same, of course, could be said about Duke's handling of the lacrosse scandal. Neither school, then, gets away clean when it comes to respecting student rights. Whether you root for Butler or Duke tonight, know that the Latin saying caveat emptor--let the buyer beware--applies equally to them both."


Butler’s president, then, did what Butler’s fabulous basketball team was unable to do: he played Duke University completely even.

He has some important lessons to learn from Butler’s basketball program. All members of the program handled themselves quite wonderfully, spoke well of their adversaries, took credit for their own actions and looked to learn from their experiences. Butler’s president, on the other hand, continuously claimed ignorance of all actions, charged that his lawyers acted without either his knowledge or approval, and seems to have learned nothing from his brutish activities. He’s not even been willing to offer a simple apology to the campus community (let alone to me) for his actions, despite more than a thousand people calling for him to do so.

Butler has much to be proud of this spring, but, as FIRE has so clearly shown, the actions of its president and its record on freedom of speech issues don’t fall into that category. Instead, they tarnish spectacular accomplishments.

Under the Bus

Although I didn’t have the energy or the desire to attend last Thursday’s symposium on free speech, my father did go. He reported two interesting facts to me that are worth sharing with all of you.

First, although there was virtually no discussion at all about my situation, all three of the panelists made it clear that the type of actions Butler University engaged in was entirely inappropriate. Repeatedly, the panelists described what they thought were bad things to do under situations similar to our situation and repeatedly they almost perfectly described the actions the Butler administration took.

Second, John Hargrove, president of Butler’s Board of Trustees told my father after the event that Butler has made a change in its legal representation. They are no longer represented by Ice Miller and have moved to Baker and Daniels. While I think that this is a very good move, from my perspective, Ice Miller was belligerent and unhelpful throughout, I do not believe that they were the sole source of the problem. Attorneys don’t act unilaterally!

But it appears that Butler’s president may have managed to shift all blame away from himself and to Ice Miller. It appears that he may have managed to convince the Board of Trustees of his outrageous statements that he was completely unaware of the legal actions taken in the university’s name – from filing a lawsuit against a student to demanding that a student post a $100,000 bond to insure a fair on-campus disciplinary procedure.

It’s hard to believe that competent people could believe statements of this sort, but it appears that Butler’s president has been successful in throwing his attorney’s under the bus while walking away unscathed. Amazing.

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On another note, for those of you who have asked, I can be reached via Email at jess.f.zimmerman(at)gmail.com.

Butler is at it Again

Many of you have noticed that I haven’t been writing much for this blog lately. Some of you have commented on that and have asked for more posts. I definitely do appreciate your interest.

My lack of posts, however, were a conscious choice I made, a choice to try and put this sordid affair behind me, to move on, to see if I could forget the incredibly defamatory statements so many in the Butler administration made about me. Although I still had a great deal to say, you’ll notice that since the middle of December I’ve only posted seven times.

Unfortunately, Butler won’t let the issue die. Just this week, a “Forum on Civic Discourse” was announced for later this month. So far so good. But Butler decided to frame the event within the context of public safety. I don’t see that as an accident. From the beginning, the president has justified his actions (when he’s bothered to say that he was aware of them rather than claiming that others acted without his knowledge) as necessary to protect the safety of various administrators and the campus in general. He raised the specter of the shootings at Virginia Tech to provide cover for his actions. In an act of unbridled paternalism and amazing hubris he claimed that the provost “was afraid, for her own safety, for her husband, for her house and property.”

In essence, he attempted to do what the Bush administration did to great effect: scare people into accepting actions that they would otherwise find completely abhorrent. There were no threats against any person or property made by anyone except by Butler’s high-priced attorney. I made a promise that I would not forget the actions of the provost. Butler’s administration opted to pretend that that was a threat and now they’re holding a forum so we can hear why campus safety is important.

The forum announcement also notes that discussion might include situations where “messages of hate” are prevalent. I doubt that this is an accident either. After all, in his first tirade to the faculty about The True BU situation, the president proclaimed “Butler does not tolerate racial and sexual epithets in the name of free exchange of ideas.” On this blog, on October 15^th 2009, the day the president made that comment, I wrote the following: “Of course I agree with this statement, as I hope all of you do. The thing is, there is no hint of any such despicable language in anything I have ever written. I think that this is yet another attempt to unfairly and falsely attribute to me things that I did not say.” Since that day, I have repeatedly asked the president to point to one example in my writings of a racial or sexual epithet. He hasn’t done so because he can’t: there are NO such examples. But those facts haven’t kept him from repeating this mantra and, by doing so, continuing to defame me.

I wanted to move on but Butler apparently wants to live in the past – a past they are apparently proud of. So many of you have expressed outrage about Butler’s actions and have called for an apology, to me and to the Butler community. Butler and its president, however, don’t apologize. Instead they attack, they defame, they sue, they intimidate and they besmirch the good name of a once-proud institution.

I wanted to move on but to do so now would mean that my reputation isn’t worth anything. That’s why I’ve written this post.

$100,000: The Price of Justice?

Here’s a question for you to think about: What will $100,000 buy you in our legal system?

I don’t mean who can you bribe for that sum of money, and I don’t mean how much legal representation can you purchase. No, I’m interested in looking at the crimes you would have to be accused of to be saddled with a bond of $100,000.

A random look around the web at bail schedules shows the following:

In LA, you’d be required to post a bond of $100,000 for a felony that could land you in prison for 16 years.

In San Francisco, they’re much more specific. $100,000 would be required if you were accused of assaulting a government worker or car jacking.

In San Diego, you’ve got to be charged with kidnapping.

Note that most jurisdictions that have easily accessible bail schedules don’t list any infractions that have bonds approaching $100,000.

If you search for actual crimes where people had to post a $100,000, you also get some interesting results:

Earlier this month actor Rip Torn posted $100,000 in Connecticut for criminal charges including burglary, possession of a revolver without a permit and carrying a firearm while intoxicated.

Last month a Chicago area man had bail set at $100,000 after being charged with reckless homicide and aggravated driving under the influence.

In December a Seattle man charged with child molestation and exposing himself to a 14-year-old girl had bail set at $100,000.

Also in December a union president in New York City had bail set at $100,000 after being charged with embezzling more than $200,000 of union funds.

And just a little more than a week ago, Dr. Conrad Murray was released on a $100,000 bond after being accused of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Michael Jackson. Oh wait, my mistake. That was $100,000 in Singapore dollars! He was released after paying only $75,000 in US cash in Los Angeles.

So, it’s clear that $100,000 will buy you quite a bit in most places. You have to have done some pretty terrible things to warrant being required to post such a huge sum.

But, here at Butler University, the situation is very different. Here at Butler University, if you ask for a fair disciplinary procedure, one in which you’re not publicly convicted prior to the proceedings and one in which you are permitted to see the evidence against you, you’re told you have to pony up $100,000. You can read their outrageous request here.

Even more ridiculous, Butler’s president claims he knew nothing about this charge made in his name.

Which sounds right: $100,000 for kidnapping, involuntary manslaughter, embezzlement, child molestation, reckless homicide, burglary with a firearm, or car jacking in most portions of the country or $100,000 to delay your appearance before a kangaroo court at Butler University?