Delayed Rights

I’m a little upset right now so let me apologize beforehand if this post comes off as whiney. My mom is in from out of town this weekend and all I really want to do is enjoy her company, introduce her to some friends and share some of what Indianapolis has to offer. It’s hard to do that, though, with the university, its president and its lawyers after me. So I don’t want to write too much.

This has been going on for over 10 months. In fact, it’s closer to 11 months ago that the vice president for student affairs demanded a meeting with me to discuss the True BU blog. After that meeting, the administration let it go and I didn’t hear about it for over five months and during that entire time the True BU blog was silent. Oh, the posts from the original blog, cached in some far recess of the net, made a brief appearance on another Butler student web site, but those pages were removed relatively quickly when fear entered the consciousness of the new bloggers.

The administration didn’t forget about me and my opinions, the were just waiting to raise the issue for a time when it was useful to them: when my dad was starting to make some waves over a completely different, and separate, situation, even though the president is quoted in the faculty senate notes from last week as saying that their desire to pursue the blog had waned. “Our intent is not to police the internet and the blog, however hurtful, was essentially let go,” he is quoted as saying. Well, it might have been “essentially let go” for them, but it certainly hasn’t been let go for me or for Butler’s high priced attorneys who seem fixated on this issue. For the last 4 months, the lawsuit and the threat of disciplinary action have been held over my head and threatened repeatedly and, frankly, I’m sick of it. It makes it hard to concentrate, it affects my classes, and it doesn’t get anyone anywhere: The University has nothing to gain and I certainly am not enjoying this. It seems to me that pursuing this right now is bad for every single member of the Butler community and all I want is for it to end. It seems that the only thing they want is for me to be quiet, and I really have no interest in calming down now just so they can threaten to do something later. It needs to end, and soon, because, no matter how hard I try, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to succeed in the classroom and in my other responsibilities.

The US constitution, a document I discussed in my post on Thursday, and a document that Butler seems to ignore in favor of its own rules, addresses this point. The sixth amendment to the constitution provides defendants with the right to a speedy trial. In New York, for example, the prosecution must be "ready for trial" within six months on all felonies except murder. Now I understand that even the administration isn’t claiming that I’ve committed any felonies, but if people accused of those sorts of crimes have a right to clear their name in a reasonable time frame, why don’t I? The constant threats feel completely inhumane and, honestly, it feels like harassment. The president, on the other hand, told the faculty that I’m a bully. With the university’s disregard of the rights outlined in the US constitution, I ask, as I did in my post last Monday, “Who’s the bully?”

Your voices are helping. They’re demonstrating that people on and off campus, people locally and around the country, are watching to see how the administration conducts its business. You’ve asked them for apologies and an end to all of this. I hope our voices get through to the administration. Occasionally, I will publish more posts written by others, like yesterday’s, in the hopes of encouraging more people to come forward, face their fear, and stand up for Butler. I also want to commend those who have already done so, even anonymously. I certainly am not one to judge people for feeling too afraid to use their names: I simply hope that someday soon they won’t feel so afraid.

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.