Reputations

Ok, I have a confession to make. My last post was several days ago and it was an abbreviated one because I was sick. Even though I was pretty sick, it shouldn’t have stopped me from posting for this long. I’ve been slow coming back to posting because I was simply getting exhausted by all of this. Although I knew that nothing was going to go away if I simply ignored the ridiculous situation that I find myself in, I thought maybe I’d give it a shot.

From one perspective, the rest felt pretty good, but nothing much has changed. The university public relations people keep churning out letters saying that the campus had to be protected from the threats made in The True BU. I keep hearing from people who have written to administrators at Butler asking for an apology for their actions. Instead of an apology, they’ve been receiving form letters from PR discussing the “defamation, threats, harassment, and intimidation” that was supposedly included in The True BU. Of course, they don’t point to a single sentence that I’ve written in support of their ridiculous claims. The irony of having Butler opt to endorse a policy of defamation against me, with statements that are clearly false, while attacking me for writing a blog that expressed opinions that were not only well documented but have now been publicly supported as accurate by a large portion of the faculty in the School of Music, is fairly incredible.

The other thing that hasn’t changed is that the national negative attention that Butler has brought on itself through actions of this sort seems to be continuing. College newspapers around the country have been regularly reporting on the issue and writing editorials critical of Butler’s administration. As I said from the outset, Butler’s actions, while directed at me, have huge implications for students, and others, around the world. If critical speech is attacked in one place, it is actually being attacked everywhere.

The latest student editorial, along with another editorial cartoon reproduced below, appeared in the SUNY Brockport newspaper, The Stylus. The headline makes it clear where the newspaper stands: “Fight for your right to speak: censorship.” As with so much of what is being written around the country, this editorial paints Butler administration in a terribly unflattering light:

"How can Butler say they support freedom of speech, while they do that to Zimmerman? Suppressing their student's ability to question those with power, for fear of repercussions. Even if students wanted to question the administration anonymously, Butler has proven they will seek out the student and try to crush them.

Besides, what kind of student is going to want to go to a university that will sue you if you speak out against them or publish something that is less than flattering? That's like dating someone so long as they do whatever you want, whenever you want. It isn't feasible and shows the low character quality of Butler. In the end, the lawsuit, whether it was dropped or not, and the subsequent internal discipline, will be more damaging than one person's blog."

While virtually every outlet that has covered this story seems to recognize that The True BU was an appropriate way to comment on the university scene, I don’t understand why the Butler administration is willing to stand alone in the face of such relentlessly negative publicity. As I’ve said so often, there are so many very good things about Butler, but the actions of our administrators are doing incredible damage to the school’s reputation. It really is crazy that they’re willing to defame and attack their own student in a misguided effort to mitigate the damage that they have done to that reputation by taking such extreme actions in the first place. In all honesty, since I take time to tell almost every reporter I talk to about all of the good things at Butler, it seems like I care more about Butler’s reputation than do those being paid large salaries supposedly to protect and enhance it.

Open Discourse

Today, I want to answer a few questions. The first, and the one that is asked most often, is what I wanted to accomplish when I started The True BU blog. Instead of trying to remember what I was thinking a year ago, I’ll let you read the first post on that blog, and then I’ll talk a bit about it.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Welcome
The description of this blog reads:

This blog is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for Butler University is not an adventure for those who stand face to face with it. It will simply try to tell the true, anonymous stories of Butler University. It's the truth. It's good. It's bad. It's real.

I stand by that. This blog will be fact. It will be opinion. It will be yours and it will be mine.

This blog will tell stories of Butler University. It can be a resource for information and anecdotes. It can be a tool for prospective students to use during their college selection and it can be a tool for current students who want to know what is really going on. It can be a launching pad for revolution or a coffeehouse of complacency. Only the true conditions at BU will determine the outcome.

This is not a forum for attack, it is a forum for truth. Please refrain from making ad hominem attacks. They do not further discussion or dialogue and they will not be tolerated. I will talk about anything I feel like: Student Government Association, Butler administration/faculty, sporting events, greek life, non-greek life, The Collegian, Dawgnet, random events, and random things. Some posts may be topografical, others superficial, and even others may be somewhat personal.

If you want be a contributer to True BU, Email TheTrueBU@gmail.com


I will be anonymous. You may be anonymous.

I welcome you to submit your stories and thoughts for posting. I won't censor and I won't judge. I won't ask for your identification. You can be called whatever you want to be called. Email them to TheTrueBU@gmail.com

Til we next meet,
Soodo Nym
Posted by Soodo Nym at 10:37 AM

As you can see, all that I had figured out when I started the blog was that I wanted people to feel free to discuss anything. I hoped the blog would provide an outlet for members of the Butler community to express themselves. I was open to anything: There was no grand scheme or overarching plot. I just wanted to see if we could create a space for honest online discussion and I wanted to let it evolve without too much prodding from me. That evolution was an interesting one, and one that I will touch on in the future.

A Butler Blogger (linked on the right), ChristinaL, answers another one of the questions that I have been asked a number of times. A reporter from the Indianapolis Star was probably most direct: He asked me why I haven’t transferred from Butler.

I wish that my answer to that question had made it into the story that was published this morning. (I've linked to it on the right.) I told him that Butler is not comprised of just one thing. It is not just the students, just the administration, or just the faculty. It’s not just one college or department: It’s a community to which I am very proud to belong.

My time at Butler is not something I would trade for a stint on any other college campus. My friends here are some of the smartest, most supportive, inquisitive, and fun people I’ve met in my life. My professors have taught me to think critically and to ask questions: The hallmarks of a good education. I’ve gone with students and faculty to do literally hundreds of hours of community service in Indianapolis. Yes, it’s possible that if I were on another campus, I would feel similarly about my experiences and friends there. But the fact is, the people here have become my friends and have helped to define who I am. I have no desire to give any of that up.

It is because of all of the positive things that go on at Butler that I’m willing to talk about some problems here, and I encourage all of you to do the same in whatever community in which you are a part. To ignore negative things is to be adverse to change and to advancement; to talk about them is to make an effort to better our community. Well-intentioned dissent is healthy because it leads to introspection and progress. It helps to further lines of communication and it enables everybody to see a debate from many angles. When all segments of the population are allowed to be a part of the conversation, we are all richer and the likelihood that there may be positive solutions is greatly enhanced. That is what The True BU developed into and that is what I believe this blog is: A different perspective.

ChristinaL understands and epitomizes this. She said much of what I am thinking. Her title, “In support of Open Discourse” is exactly what I hoped to accomplish with The True BU and, now, hope to do with this blog. Like her, I believe that Butler would be a stronger place, a better place, and an even more interesting place if the administration shared that perspective and allowed alternative voices to be heard. Taking aggressive steps to silence those voices ends up silencing more than a single individual; it keeps people from ever trying to speak.

Some Important Corrections

So I’m back at it. I’m writing about inaccuracies in things that are said and published by administrators at my school. Beyond simply saying it, I don’t know how to explain the sense of freedom that releasing my identity as Soodo Nym brought, or how quickly that freedom was replaced by trepidation. I’m back doing exactly the things that they are so angry at me for: Asking questions, finding answers, and sharing my opinion. I don’t know what the administration is planning on doing, but I know what they’ve already done. They unjustly silenced me once, and though I will freely admit that it scares the hell out of me to say this, I’m not going to let them silence me again.

So here goes.

On Tuesday morning, the president of the school met with the faculty senate to discuss the pending lawsuit about The True BU blog. His meeting was a response to a number of questions being asked by faculty about the justifications that Butler had for investing its money and prestige in a lawsuit against a student.

The president’s statement and the subsequent memo that he sent to all faculty members were, unfortunately, filled with inaccuracies. I will address them here and you can access the full text of his memo in a link on right side of the page. In every instance where I refer to a document that has been made available to me, I will make it available in its entirety to you. I think it is essential for you to have the full and original text so that you may form your own opinions. This is exactly what I did in the True BU blog and, as you’ll see, this is not a courtesy that has been extended to me.

• The president’s statement reads that the provost was afraid “for her own safety, for her husband, for her house and property.” I have an incredibly difficult time believing that this is true. Rather, might this simply be very convenient after-the-fact sort of reasoning? Two things lead me to believe that this is the case. The first, as I’ll show, is that there were no threats made. Second, other than filing a lawsuit that was, I believe, primarily intended to silence my voice, the president did not report that they’ve taken any steps to ensure the safety of those they claim felt threatened. In fact, according to the legal documents, subpoenas intended to discover the identity of the blogger were not issued for months. I would hope that in situations where a member of the University community sincerely feels threatened, the administration would be more proactive in calming their fears and ensuring their safety and the safety of the entire Butler community.

What did the president point to as being threatening? The first was an Email sent on December 25th that made absolutely no threats whatsoever. The email can be found in the documents tab on the right sidebar. This email made two promises: That students would not forget the way the dismissal of Dr. Andrea Gullickson from her duties as chair of the School of Music was handled, and that the blog would report on positive news, if there was any. Again, no threats of any sort were made. This is not only my opinion. In an essay published on March 29th, 2009, Butler University English Professor Bill Watts came to exactly the same conclusion.

The second thing the president pointed to was another Email. Unfortunately, I can’t provide the full text of that Email because I did not write it and the only time I saw it was when the vice president for student affairs showed it to me in a meeting in January. Without any evidence, and there can’t be any evidence because I had nothing to do with the Email, the president saw fit to imply that I wrote it. He went so far as to provide a fragment from that Email and, in fact, that fragment was the only material that the president quoted as evidence that there were threats, defamation, and libel. If this Email was as threatening as the president claimed, I’m shocked that, as far as I know, the university has taken no steps to find out who wrote it. By talking about this at the same time as he is talking about my writing, he tries to leave the impression that I wrote it.

• The president wrote, “Butler does not tolerate racial and sexual epithets in the name of free exchange of ideas.” 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.

• The president said that the school needed to file the lawsuit in order to determine who the author of The True BU was. In reality, on New Year’s Eve, the president told my father that they had incontrovertible proof that I was the blogger. This was more than a week before the lawsuit was filed.

• The president said that the university’s attorney and my attorney had discussed possible disciplinary action for me. What he failed to mention, was that my attorney is also my father’s attorney, and the only reason they were talking in the first place was to discuss a completely separate issue:

When my father was relieved of his duties as Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the end of last academic year, he had a number of members of the College’s board of visitors tell him that the provost had said negative things about him during a conference call. He got his lawyer involved to ask for a clarification or retraction of those statements. Instead of simply dealing with that issue, I believe that the University decided to use me as a pawn. They brought my case into those discussions and tried to settle it all at once, with a few important catches. Though they would drop the lawsuit about the True BU blog, the university wanted to retain the right to punish me on-campus, would not detail what those punishments would be, and insisted that we neither appeal nor discuss the sanctions or any of the issues associated with all of this. While we were willing to agree to most of this, giving up my rights on- and off-campus was simply too high a price.

Ultimately, the school refused our offer to meet face to face to discuss these issues and decided to close discussions. Their attorney told us that they would proceed to substitute my name for “John Doe” in the lawsuit within the week.

• I saved this point for last not because it’s most or least important, but because I debated dignifying it with a response at all. Yesterday, the student newspaper reported that during his presentation to the faculty senate, the president referenced the shootings at Virginia Tech. It is hard for me to say how incredibly shocked and disappointed I am that he made that decision. I believe that his bringing up such a real tragedy misleads his audience in the present situation but, more importantly, it does a tremendous disservice to all who have been affected by acts of violence, at Virginia Tech and elsewhere. It is, in my opinion, reprehensible.

I alluded to it at the beginning, but it really is surreal to be back here, writing a blog and talking about the administration. I can honestly say that I wish I were doing something else, so tomorrow I think I will. I’ll start to tell my story and the story of The True BU. I’ll talk about the blog’s beginnings and what I intended it to do. If there’s a single concept, or a central idea, that I will talk about tomorrow, it’s this: Sometimes reality just doesn’t conform to your expectations.