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.

Rhetorical Gymnastics: A presidential Sport

Two pieces appeared in the latest edition of Butler’s student newspaper that I want to bring to your attention. The first was a news report about the settlement I reached with Butler. The second was an opinion piece written by Professor Bill Watts.

I very much hope that you read both pieces because, in very different ways, they are both amazing.

The news story addressed the fact that Butler demanded that I post a $100,000 bond to delay the disciplinary proceedings against me. Remember, I filed suit asking for a temporary restraining order against Butler because they had demonstrated that they were not prepared to undertake a fair disciplinary process. The judge agreed with me.

The newspaper story broke some absolutely astounding news: “When asked about the bond amount, Fong said he had no knowledge that the action had been taken.” The president of Butler University claimed he didn’t know that his institution had demanded that one of its students post a bond of $100,000? Can anyone actually believe this stuff?

The president has a pattern of denying any knowledge of the most important actions taken by the university in this case. As I’ve pointed out before, he also claimed he knew nothing about the decision to replace “John Doe’s” name with my name in the original lawsuit. Really? I don’t think anyone believed him last time and I doubt that anyone believes him now.

Frankly, though, I don’t know which is worse: that he is so out of touch that he doesn’t know what’s going on in the university in his own name, or that he authorized such an outrageous action and then opted to lie about it. Both options are shameful and embarrassing.

That wasn’t the only amazing piece of news in the newspaper story though. The sentence immediately following the one I just quoted in which the president denied knowing about the bond is also bizarre: “After speaking with university attorneys, Fong said in an e-mail that the bond was merely a legal formality that had to be added to the document for the restraining order to stand.”

Apparently the president is claiming that first he heard of the bond demand was from the reporter, about two months after it was filed with the court, and, upon hearing about it, he immediately contacted the university attorneys (again, note the use of the plural – the university is certainly willing to spare no expense to attack their undergraduates) to ask about it. His response, as reported, is also beyond belief: “the bond was merely a legal formality that had to be added to the document for the restraining order to stand.”

As I’ve done with so many of the president’s earlier statements (see my posts on Oct. 15, Oct. 19, and Oct 27, for example), let me explain the absurdity in what he has said. First, as I noted on Feb. 12, the request for a temporary restraining order that my attorney filed had a place for the judge to fill in the amount of money to be posted as a bond. The judge, as is his legal right, opted not to require any bond at all, for the simple reason that postponing a kangaroo court was not going to cost Butler University any money.

Second, if you read the document submitted to the court in response to my request for a temporary restraining order (a document, by the way, submitted in the president’s name, even though he claims not to have been aware of the most important point in it), you’ll see that the last thing the university wanted to do was to have the restraining order stand; indeed the title of that document begins by calling itself an “Emergency Motion to Dissolve Restraining Order.” Nonetheless, what the president is claiming, is that their demand for me to post a bond of $100,000 was actually their way of doing me a favor. After all, according to his statement, had they not asked for the bond in that amount, my request for a temporary restraining order would have been thrown out and I would have been forced to participate in their kangaroo court.

If you’re as confused by the president’s rhetorical gymnastics as I am, I can’t say I’m surprised. As has been his pattern in every aspect of this case, he refuses to take any responsibility for any action, he refuses to acknowledge any possible errors or misjudgments, and he weaves stories that make absolutely no sense in the belief that people will simply accept them because he is, after all, the president.

This is all simply ridiculous.

As I said above, there were two pieces in the student newspaper about my case. The second was an opinion piece written by Professor Watts. As he has done throughout, Professor Watts asks probing questions in his attempt to hold the university responsible for its actions. I can’t tell you how appreciative I am of his efforts on a campus where faculty are so afraid of what the president will do to them if they disagree with him, that they have to take confession with a priest to get their opinions to the public.

While I recommend his entire article to you, I want to focus on one part because he perfectly captured one of the things that has been bothering me. He noted that “a high university official” explained the “aggressive campaign” against me because that administrator believed that my father was ultimately the force behind The TruBU. Professor Watts went on to say that this is “just another way in which the university has denied Jess his autonomy and personhood.”

Exactly!

The Butler administration seems to have such a low regard for Butler students that no administrator could believe that a student could possibly be responsible for bringing to light all that The True BU brought to light. They simply dismissed my competence and, by extension, the competence of all of my fellow students. Not surprisingly, I have felt incredibly demeaned by their position. Beyond that, why would these people want to be in charge of a university that, in their minds, enrolls such pliable students who are incapable of acting on their own? And why would the University want administrators who clearly hold their students in such low regard?

Let me, again, say as clearly as I can: the information in The True BU came from faculty and staff members who were willing to provide information to me anonymously because they were too scared of administrative retaliation to speak openly. And let me make it clear that my father did not know that I was Soodo Nym.

Let me conclude today by asking why was “a high university official” discussing such incredible things with a faculty member? Isn’t this simply yet another way of defaming another member of my family, something that “high university officials” have felt comfortable doing regularly?

To be completely honest, I think it's about time the University got new "high university officials."

Secrecy and Discipline: The Butler Way – Part 3

In the first two parts of this post, I pointed all of you to public documents available to any and all, that summarized the struggle I was having with the Butler administration. In the first two parts of this post, because of Butler’s incessant and unfair demand for secrecy, I told you nothing more than what was present in those public documents.

Now, in part three, I will bring this part of the story to a conclusion, but, unfortunately, I will do so in a way that is particularly unsatisfying, at least to me. The overall outcome is certainly not unsatisfying, at least to me, in that Butler and I reached an agreement. But what makes it less than fully satisfying is that I can’t tell you any of the details. As before, I am limited to being able to point you to publicly available documents.

Let me recap briefly. As you can see from my request for a restraining order against Butler, I was forced to go to court to ask that any internal disciplinary procedure be put on hold until the university could guarantee that it the procedure would be handled fairly. Butler’s attorneys responded by ignoring the substance of what my request was all about, instead opting to demand that I put up a bond of $100,000. They claimed that this was the amount of money Butler would lose if they could not discipline me in a secret hearing on campus. Ridiculous! My lawyer replied by further explaining the inappropriate actions Butler administrators had undertaken.

The resolution, except for the secrecy, was a wonderful one for me – and perhaps Butler administrators feel similarly. Upon reaching an agreement with Butler I immediately sent in applications to law schools. And, as I said, within days of filing my applications, I was admitted to one of my top choices.

There are three points that I want to make about all of this. First, my experience has convinced me that it is possible to fight abuses of power – and to win. In my mind, I clearly won, but as I’ll note in my second point, I didn’t win everything. I won not only because I was right; I won because I was able to generate a huge amount of support from people around campus and around the world who saw an injustice and were willing to support me. That support came in many forms, some public and lots private, and all of it was incredibly important to me.

Second, although I believe I was able to win, I feel I lost a great deal in the process. Butler administrators from the president on down, on a regular basis, on campus and off, in public and in private, defamed me. They regularly said that I was guilty of actions they couldn’t prove and actions they knew they had no evidence to link to me. They used innuendo to accuse me of making racially and sexually intolerant statements. They used those same tactics to accuse me of threatening violent acts. And they abused their positions of power by telling anyone who would listen that they knew things about me they couldn’t share – things that were really terrible. The reality is, however, that none of those things ever existed, but it didn’t keep unscrupulous people from implying that they did in their misguided attempt to further their own ambitions.

Third, even though my victory is very real for me, it has to be an incredibly hollow one for the Butler community and for the broader community composed of people who care about civil rights. I believe that it's clear that Butler administrators abused their power and the university’s financial resources in their attempt to stifle criticism. Members of those communities have demanded an apology from Butler’s administrators for their unconscionable actions, but none has been forthcoming. The same administrators who did all of this are hoping that their veil of secrecy will protect them. If we, you and I, let them refuse to take responsibility for their actions, they will never apologize, and they will likely abuse others in the future. I hope you do at least two things to help prevent this from happening. I hope those of you who have not yet signed the petition asking for an apology sign it now. And I hope that some of you begin asking the Butler administration just how much money they spent in legal fees in their persecution of me. At a time when Butler is cutting budgets related to teaching, if not related to the provost’s remodeling schemes, don’t you think that this money could have been more profitably spent?

Again, I want to thank you for your support.

presidential Advice

Ok, while Butler’s president hasn’t admitted it publicly, I have to believe that he’s regretted bringing up the tragic massacre at Virginia Tech as part of his explanation for why he filed the world’s first-ever lawsuit in which a university sued over on-line speech. After all, how could he not be terribly embarrassed to have his ill-considered remarks repeated so widely?

A Virginia resident with ties to Virginia Tech made the case as well as it could be made when he wrote to the chair of Butler’s Board of Trustees “You may think it a stretch to link Jess Zimmerman’s blog posts to the impassioned essays of our Founding Fathers, but Dr. Fong’s linking of Jess’s remarks to the shootings at Virginia Tech is far greater hyperbole. As a resident of the Virginia Tech shooter’s home town and one with two nephews who recently graduated from that excellent institution, I must protest that those ill-considered remarks trivialize the tragedy of that mass murder in a way that is deeply offensive.”

But what I just realized is that Butler’s president has a tie to Virginia Tech that makes his comments even more reprehensible than I first thought. Soon after the shootings, The Chronicle of Higher Education invited a number of people to address the following question: “If you were giving the commencement address at Virginia Tech this year, what is the core of the message you would like to leave with the graduates?”

Very likely because Butler had suffered through a campus shooting of its own, Butler’s president was one of those The Chronicle approached. His message was a simple but important one: both as individual students and collectively as an institution, Virginia Tech was not alone. He wrote, quite movingly, “In the depths of misery, there will be cords of compassion to draw you back to others.”

He also offered some advice about fear to those who had just experienced the unimaginable. After noting that “Life can be dangerous, full of risk,” he went on and urged them to attempt to move beyond the fear that has to be inherent in such situations: “to respond to life with fear is to diminish yourself.”

When it became clear that he was going to have to explain why he authorized the university’s attorneys to file the lawsuit against “John Doe,” he immediately retreated to fear – and he immediately diminished himself. He told the faculty on October 13^th that the provost “was afraid, for her own safety, for her husband, for her house and property.”

Of course, no one who read what I had written believed a word of what he had to say. And even those who wanted to believe him couldn’t help but repeatedly question why the university didn’t call the police to deal with the threat they perceived rather than file a secret lawsuit.

But by invoking fear as a rationalization, as so many others have said, he trivialized the truly frightful experiences of others and he failed to take the good advice he offered to students at Virginia Tech.

It seems peculiar that the president doesn’t pay any attention when he makes very good sense, but he expects the rest of us to listen when he makes no sense at all.

Faculty Confirm The True BU, 'Culture of Fear'

The powerful, and terribly sad, statement below speaks for itself – I don’t think I need to add any of my own comments other than one sentence of explanation. As Reverend Allen notes, he delivered the statement to the Butler administration; they’ve opted not to respond and thus I’m making it public at this time. As always, I welcome your thoughts.


Over ten faculty members in the School of Music have indicated to me that they endorse the appended statement. Because they fear retaliation if they come forward as individuals, they are unwilling to sign the statement. I have agreed to certify that these people are, in fact, faculty members in the School of Music. I have further agreed, in accordance with my solemn vows as a priest, to keep their identities absolutely confidential. And I have agreed to deliver this to appropriate members of Butler’s administration. That is all I have agreed to do at this point.

I cannot verify that this fear of retaliation is accurate, only that the fear exists. That in itself concerns me. And I cannot verify the contents of the statement, only that I have spoken to faculty members who endorse it and can report that they did so without hesitation.

Since the statement is not my property, I cannot guarantee that it will not become public. That, I’m told, depends on whether or not this new information helps to defuse some of the public controversy around Jess Zimmerman. I hope it does.

I believe this is crucial information about one of several aspects to the controversy surrounding TruBU. It is equally crucial to know that there are faculty members who fear speaking publicly about events as they observed them. That is what finally moved me to act on their behalf.

I hope I am also acting for the good of everyone in the Butler community, especially those who are most vulnerable, but also members of the administration, whom I esteem highly as well. I am hoping that the appended statement will help people on all sides do a better job of sorting truth from falsehood. And I will keep everyone, on all sides, in my prayers.


The Rev. Dr. Charles W. Allen
Grace Unlimited
Indianapolis Lutheran-Episcopal Campus Ministry
Indianapolis, IN


Here is the statement:

We are a collection of faculty members in the School of Music at Butler University and as such we affirm the following:

Some or all of us provided The TruBU, via e-mail contact with Soodo Nym, the documents related to Andrea Gullickson’s departure as chair of the School of Music;

Some or all of us provided The TruBU, via e-mail contact with Soodo Nym, with our impressions of various meetings that took place related to Andrea Gullickson’s departure as chair of the School of Music;

The characterizations of people and events presented in The TruBU are consistent with our understandings and interpretations;

The information that appeared in The TruBU that we shared with Soodo Nym was presented in a manner that was a fair reflection of what we said and believed;

All of us did not know who Soodo Nym was at the time we interacted with Soodo Nym; and

Some of us had conversations with Jess Zimmerman around the time of Andrea Gullickson’s departure as chair of the School of Music but none of us knew that Jess Zimmerman was Soodo Nym.

Furthermore, all or some of us opted to share information with Soodo Nym because we believed that an injustice was being committed at Butler University and that it was important for others to learn of that injustice. Because we were worried about retaliation, we did not have a faculty outlet for this information. When Soodo Nym came to some or all of us, via e-mail, to ask for information and documentation of actions, some or all of us willingly responded in the hopes that the injustice would be corrected.

Finally, although we still feel it necessary to remain anonymous, we are troubled that Jess Zimmerman risks university sanctions for fairly and accurately publishing the information, impressions and quotations we provided him. TruBU was a medium for faculty to share concerns without the fear of retaliation they would face if they spoke in their own voices.

I am Still "John Doe"

Two days ago, I reported that the president had announced that the school did not, has not, and will not sue me. Unfortunately, the actions of the University again don’t match up with president’s words. The “John Doe” suit remains active in Marion County court.

Since the lawsuit is still open, the school can substitute my name for that of “John Doe” whenever they want to. Are they going to add my name later today? Tomorrow? Next week? Four months from now? Is the president making promises now that he can break once he feels enough people have forgotten? These are questions that I find myself debating almost constantly. The president has said that the school will not sue me. If he intends to make good on that promise, then the school should dismiss the lawsuit with prejudice. Given how often and how forcefully I’ve been threatened with this lawsuit, I won’t believe that they don’t intend to sue me until it is dismissed.

Yet the lawsuit sits, open, ready, and waiting. I believe it is not just a threat to me, but to each one of you who might ever dare to question authority. When you check the court dockets for the status of the Butler v. “John Doe” case, it is hard to imagine what the university wants you to think. Could it be that they want you to believe that “John Doe” might be you? I think, in a very public way, the Butler University administration has decided to say, “Do you want this to happen to you?”

This is simply not right. To date, nearly 600 people have signed a petition calling for the administration to apologize for filing the lawsuit and to apologize for the accusations made against me. Many of those who have signed have also left very strong comments:

“It is inconceivable that a University would operate in a climate of fear and that it would sue a student for a blog, anonymous or not. What are Butler students learning about honor and settling differences and free speech?”

-Reverend James F. Mulcahy

“Too many colleges and universities are using their resources to bully and intimidate their faculties and students. This case appears to be an egregious example that is a disgrace to Butler University and the whole of the Academy.

-Bruce A Voyles, Ph.D.

Grinnell College

“I would think that the brightest scholars in the world could handle a little lively on-line candor better than this. I think I can scratch Butler off the list of possible colleges for my three kids if this is the way they resolve things with students. I sure would not want one of my kids treated this way.”

-Reverend Max Ramsey

“As a lifelong academic I am appalled that a student's freedom of expression is being curtailed and threatened. This defies basic human goodness and decency.”

-Steve A. Wiggins, Ph.D.

If you have not signed the petition, I urge you to consider doing so. If you have signed it, go back and read what our friends on campus and around the country are saying. Their statements are very moving and provide a markedly different perspective than the one Butler administration is promoting. The petition can be found by going to www.ipetitions.com/petition/butler

Right now, I am “John Doe.” The president seems to want you to believe that you too can be “John Doe.”

Don’t let the administration scare you: They scared me once and I sat down, silenced. Now, I’m standing again and I don’t intend to go anywhere. I appreciate those of you who are standing with me and I’m confident and hopeful that together we will make a difference.