Lebanon School Board Meeting Part Three - The Superintendent's Report (with a special shout out to anyone interested in racist mascots!)

This is a new feature of board meetings, and it is supposedly designed to promote better communication between the board and superintendent.

Good idea. While it should have been done a long time ago - is communication really so bad between the superintendent and the board? - I am glad to see it done now.

Anyway, there were six items on the agenda. I'm going to skip some most of them.

One item that got some time was an update on the Unfair Labor Practice filed by Kim Fandiño over Jim Robinson's ridiculous information control policy. A lone administrative law judge had offered a preliminary ruling that included calling Robinson's policy illegal, so the district is appealing to the full panel.

Wineteer wanted to know why the board did not get to decide what to do, since the Board is usually responsible for ULPs, and Robinson responded by saying that legally, his actions up to this point are his purview - but anything beyond this, like actually challenging the ruling of the full panel, would require board action.

Robinson then some something transparently self-serving: He suggested that if there had been no Superintendent's Report added to the agenda, the Board would not know about this issue at all! Because it was THE ONLY WAY they could have ever found out!

Gag me. Sometimes his attempts at making himself look caring and communicative really suck, probably because it's not his inclination and he's forcing or faking it. In the long run, he's genuinely got to get this 'open communications' thing down - meaning really believe in it, not just hold his nose and pretend - or he's not going to make it, I think.

The only other item I'm going to mention was Robinson's reporting of his meeting with other Oregon superintendents regarding the proposal that's been kicked down the line to eliminate all mascots and logos that are Native American-themed. I could tell the second he brought this up that most people in the room were pissed - not at Robinson, but at the idea that they'd have to change at the behest of someone else.

In all fairness, Robinson did a damn good job explaining this while remaining neutral on the merits. He went over Che Butler's presentation for the benefit of the board, relayed the position he had presented on behalf of the district at the meeting and outlined possible futures.

I'm not going to rehash the following conversation in detail, since it resembled perfectly every other debate I've ever heard about this issue. To wit: I'm Native and I don't care! Self-identified Native students in this district don't care! This is just PC extremism! What's next, banning everything!? I think Warriors are honorable! It's been that way for years! They can pry my mascot out of my cold dead hands! It's all the victim's fault! Blah blah white privilege blah blah blah!

Repeat for 20 minutes with no one disagreeing personally, but with another white person (in this case Robinson) hypothetically & carefully pointing out the reality of the situation, and you've got the debate.

Robinson and Sprenger both pointed out - and I think this is absolutely true - that no matter what the position of the district was, the district had to develop one, and had to be prepared for the possibility that they were simply going to be told what to do with no say in the matter. This was not popular, but I got the sense the crowd actually agreed with it. I would consider such an acknowledgment of reality, however small, a good thing.

Robinson also pointed out - as I have before - that if the state mandates a change without buy-in from the relevant districts, things will not go well. There is some education and learning on the part of the districts that needs to happen for this to work.

On the other hand, making Che Butler go to 16 districts around the state is a pretty harsh example of a person of color educating white folks...again.... when the white folks can fairly easily educate themselves.

Josh Wineteer called Native Americans, or possibly the Warriors mascot, "stoic."

Education and learning indeed.

Robinson pointed out that Aloha High School is also the Warriors, but they are Polynesian Warriors, and that meant they were excluded from possibly changing. Robinson spun this as positive, noting that it might allow LHS to keep the name but not the mascot. (Bizarrely, he also noted that "we have many warriors fighting overseas at the moment," which I think was a mistaken sop to the conservative folks who oppose him - he can't really think that making the LHS logo a soldier is a good idea, can he?)

Wineteer complained that it was a double standard, which indicates to me that he really doesn't understand the issue AT ALL. He really put on a show over this one.

So it goes. I think there's going to be a lot more racist crap spewed unknowingly before this is over, and I think it's going to end in the Warrior mascot being changed, though it may take years.

Aside from Josh's outbursts, the anti-Robinson folks were pretty quiet. I think it was because they are way out of their comfort zone on this one, and probably afraid of saying anything racist.

One, maybe two more posts to go.

Lebanon School Board Meeting Part Two - Hiring and Transfers

In this installment I'm going to cover the consent agenda. I missed part of the discussion as I came late. Apparently most of the hires and transfers were uncontroversial except four: An interim AD, an interim Social Systems Principal, an involuntary transfer from LHS to Sand Ridge, and an Administrative Assistant for Transportation. Those four were pulled and discussed separately; in the end, the latter two passed and the former did not. Here I'll mostly talk about the discussion regarding the two that were rejected.

The discussion was so stupid when I walked in that I almost left without even finding a chair.

How so? Well, Rick Alexander asked what the difference between a substitute and an interim hire was....and he did not appear to be asking a rhetorical question.

I am still shaking my head over that. Who let him on the school board again?

Josh Wineteer then made the "point" that since LHS has three other principals, not hiring Dick Behn as an interim principal would not really affect the school.

That, I thought at the time, is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Each academy has its own principal, so not filling position requires either a) the other three to somehow collectively fill in, which would be pretty difficult given the small schools structure, or b) to leave Social Systems at a severe disadvantage and without leadership (alternatively, they could just have Dick Behn as an indefinite sub). Either Josh was really, really fishing for a reason not to hire Behn, or...well, or he just said something monumentally ignorant. Again, this did not appear to be a rhetorical question.

Josh also complained that an internal candidate (which reportedly turned out to be Nancy Bauer) did not get selected, and he was confused as to why. I have no idea as to the internal hiring process, but that was the wrong time to ask about it. Seriously - again, it came off as a transparent attempt to get his way without a shred of supporting evidence.

I can only imagine what Ken Ray was thinking in regards to Josh's questions and comments. I consider the fact that Ray's face remained expressionless throughout most of the discussion to be evidence of his professionalism and experience, but damn, would I be furious were I in his position. He had both his interim principal and his interim AD hires rejected.

Speaking of that, Rick kept making motions to reject the hires, and Sherrie kept pointing out that there is no motion required to reject; the board simply lets the matter die. Motions are positive things. Despite this, Rick just kept trying to make the same motion over and over again, doing so at least three times when I was there.

I cannot believe that dude has yet to learn Robert's Rules of Order. I was once given two weeks to learn it - not a problem. This guy has had years and has not bothered. He does not belong on the school board. It's an insult to the students in the district, some of whom probably know Robert's Rules better than he does.

When I first saw the meeting agenda, I had thought that the only possible contentious items on the Consent Agenda would be the AD and Assistant Principal hires. I was told that was unlikely but possible.

I wish I had been wrong.

Let's face it: Rick, Josh, and Debi are really fucking the district over on this one. Yeah, you didn't get Bo Yates - so what? He's got an unresolved complaint against him filed with the TSPC and he's got another full-time job in the district. Once those are resolved, see if he is available next year. For now, deal. Hiring him as AD at this time is not a good idea, and is not in fact evidence of the evil of Sherrie Sprenger or Jim Robinson.

The same goes with Dick Behn - what does anyone have to gain by not letting him fill in as interim principal?

These are two cases where it's really obvious that the high school students and staff are being fucked over so that Rick, Josh, and Debi can throw a fucking temper tantrum.

Please. Grow the fuck up, people. Passive-aggressive behavior is only cute in toddlers.

I hate small-town politics. I hate the backstabbing and the unwillingness to deal with things honestly and openly. I hate the attempts at nepotism. I really hate the fact that the School Board is filled with people who honestly consider their own understanding of issues to be better than those of trained professionals, including the District's surely-insane-and-rich-by-now legal counsel.

Yes, I am aware that there is a huge class schism here between Lebanon's blue-collar, lifetime residents (Allen, Shimmin, Yates, etc.) and the mobile professional class of outsiders (personified by Robinson). I get that, and I even get that I'm coming down hard on the side of the educated. But such a divide in experience and education does not have to result in a mess like this.

More posts to follow.

Lebanon School Board Meeting, Part One - Outing the Anonymous Blogger

Preface: Two nice young gentleman recently informed me that my blog posts are too long. I'm going to go ahead and break what is probably my only principle regarding blogging - don't listen to anyone else, no matter how good their advice - and try something new. Normally, when the LCSD School Board has a meeting, I write a monster post that details everything. This time, I'm going to try and shorten things up, instead dividing the content into several shorter posts. The Lebanon Community School District School Board met on Monday, November 5th, and I would like to relay some of what happened at the meeting in series of blog posts.

Topics that will be covered in the next several blog posts: The board's processes, the appointment of interim staff to cover positions, the Sand Ridge Charter School report, a report on the various Title programs funded by the district that the state mandates be received in the next two weeks, and a few other odds and ends.

So, on to the content!

I'll get to the most relevant one first: While the board had plenty of passionate and emotional discussion regarding the now-Level-4 complaint that Kim Fandiño filed with the district alleging cyberbullying on the part of blogger Lebanon Truth, in the end, the board did not act on the agenda item presented to them. That's the short version. The long version is as follows:

The agenda item that I was really there for was the one regarding the appeal of the cyberbullying complaint to the school board by Kim Fandiño (hereafter KF). As an anonymous blogger who has been known to write about the Lebanon Community School District, I was very curious about the inclusion of this item on the agenda and the potential consequences for my own blogging. All the talk was about how KF was essentially requesting that the board subpoena Google, the company that owns Blogger, the blogging software used by this blogger and Lebanon Truth, to reveal the identity of Lebanon Truth. (Side note: All it takes to get a blogger account is an email address...meaning that revealing someone's identity requires tracing an IP address or similar detective work. Real names are not required - a point that I think none of the pro-subpoena folks know, as they seemed to think it would be as simple as asking Google for a name.)

I have this sinking feeling this post alone, even excluding the preface, is going to be over the prescribed limit given to me by the two gentlemen - hereafter known as Punk #1 and Punk #2 (in no particular order) for blog posts. Screw it.

Rick Alexander started the discussion by immediately motioning to have the board hear KF's complaint.

Tom McHill, a Lebanon attorney and former board member, immediately stood up from the chair he'd been slouching in for the past three hours (the cyberbullying issue was basically the last thing on the agenda) and said that he represented the blogger. He then stated that he was there to defend the blogger's right to free speech.

I did not see that coming, though I should have. It is a brilliant move by LT - I think it caught many people by surprise, and it showed the folks on the board who wanted to out LT that it was going to involve some real work. I'd call it a preemptive strike, though I really hate that term.

Chris Fisher then asked how this issue moved the district forward, and how this was related to educating children, which was actually a comment I found insulting. Workplace safety is completely relevant to educating children, and a violation of that was a central part of KF's complaint, as far as I could see. While I don't think Chris meant it that way, it sure came across as trivializing the obvious emotional pain KF has gone through over this.

Ensuing was a short discussion regarding the various levels of complaint. I learned that a 'level one complaint' involves talking to the person one is complaining about directly, which is a challenge in the case of an anonymous blogger - though not impossible, as LT has an email address posted on their blog. This was something much overlooked in the discussion: the assumption that a resolution to the issue necessarily involved outing LT.

Rick Alexander asked if identifying LT removed their free speech. It was a leading question and he obviously thinks it doesn't. However, I think it does, as it would likely provide an avenue for attack on the part of LT's detractors that would surely serve to silence LT. Furthermore, it's irrelevant to the issue at hand; if I heard Mr. McHill right (and I may not have) protected free speech gets some Constitutional protections as well.

Rick then asked how one enforces a cyberbullying policy, his answer being that it requires outing the anonymous. However, this is a theoretical question masked as something relevant, as the district's legal counsel had ruled that the material presented in the complaint did not constitute cyberbullying by the district's standard. Rick was again trying to lead people on.

Josh Wineteer really only said one thing during the whole debate, but he said it over and over and over: That the board had to choose between preserving Kim's rights and outing LT, and that if the board chose not to out LT they should remove the cyberbullying policy entirely. This assumes, again, that what happened was cyberbullying. Josh is free to believe that, but I'll take the opinion of the Linn County DA and the LCSD's legal counsel over his any day.

Chris Fisher pointed out, as he does often, that this would cost money that, in his words, should be used on kids. This is also a bit disingenuous, as providing a safe environment for teachers is part of creating a good learning environment for kids. Josh called him on it - correctly - pointing out that there were lots of school board policies that take cash away from kids.

At this point, the whole thing struck me as a witchhunt (not for the first time, but the proceedings had become so farcical that it was impossible to not think in those terms). Wineteer and Alexander were asking the same questions over and over and over, questions that were designed to imply that outing LT was necessary and good, even though the reasons against it had been given in spades: It was against the legal advice of the district's counsel and the district office had found it to be a civil matter, irrelevant to both criminal prosecution and violation of district policy.

Chris Fisher asked if the Board had the authority to subpoena Google, and Tom McHill said "no" in no uncertain terms.

Rick then proceeded to act as if he'd not heard a single word said to this point and pointed out that the district is required to promptly investigate and take seriously any credible evidence or allegation of cyberbullying. He claimed that not voting to try and out LT was a violation of that policy, but I think he is full of crap; the District obviously took it seriously enough to let legal counsel look at it as well as have the Linn DA (and reportedly the Lebanon PD) check it out. Once it was decided that it did not violate policy, it was dropped. That's taking it seriously and finding it wanting; instead, I think Rick and Josh (and probably Debi, though I am less sure) equate 'taking it seriously' with doing what they want, which is to open an investigation on the assumption there is something to find. (And, of course, to out LT, which I've always thought was one of the real points of the complaint in the first place.)

Sherrie Sprenger, who constantly looked like she wanted to kill someone, reminded the board several times during the discussion that they had received clear & confidential legal advice from legal counsel, and that choosing to accept said advice basically meant dropping the matter. She also repeated her concerns about once again making the district liable for a potentially illegal action. Instead, she proposed talking to legal counsel directly at the earliest opportunity to clear up what the board's options were.

Jim Robinson interjected hinself into the discussion at this point, noting that it was impossible to actually follow up on complaint procedures without knowing the identity of the blogger, since established complaint procedures required giving the person being complained about notice of the complaint. This, I think, was pretty disingenuous on his part, since the district could at least attempt to contact LT at their provided email address and see what happened. It is also transparent bullshit, or at best a stupid suggestion, since it relies on the assumption that outing LT is necessary to get to the desired outcome, which is something to be proven (personally, I don't think it is necessary). It was not Robinson's finest moment of the night.

At this point I want to insert an aside and note that Sprenger and Robinson, who have both constant targets, were pretty obviously pissed and fed up with what they consider all the bullshit. Neither of them would give an inch, instead offering the most conservative interpretation of LCSD policy possible, which often meant summarily dismissing the concerns of others. This is, if nothing else, bad politics - it has been suggested to me that both Sprenger and Robinson should give their opponents enough rope to hang themselves (my words).

Hm. While I agree that Sprenger and Robinson's actions are somewhat counterproductive, I will say that they are wholly understandable, for two reasons. One, that both of them are exhausted of acting professional in the face of such amateur and unprofessional crap. Two - and this is the big one - I am beginning to think that given the board's recent history, both Sprenger and Robinson legitimately fear that Debi, Josh, and Rick, if given any rope, will manage to hang the district along with themselves. They'll do it through simply ignoring any laws or legal advice they don't like and acting from what appears to me as the gut. I have not considered this option until now, but at the moment I'm finding it pretty frightening. Now back to your regularly scheduled account.

Josh just kept saying that the board 'had' to ditch the policy if it didn't investigate the complaint in this case.

Here, KF got permission to address the board from Sprenger. KF made an impassioned plea to let the board hear the complaint directly, a plea that would be turned down multiple times before the end of the meeting. I think - though I could not see Kim's face - that she was wound up very tight with emotion almost the whole time, which is pretty understandable.

Sprenger then asked for a motion. Debi Shimmin pointed out while appearing to cry that she thought the content of the posts definitely rose to the level of cyberbullying (I should note that LT has talked about Shimmin in the past in less than glowing terms).

Shimmin also claimed that not following up was a denial of KF's rights to due process, and said that the spirit of the complaint was legitimate even if the technical details were not. I found that incredibly unconvincing, as I interpreted it as saying that a school board should judge the case based not on legal interpretations but on how they felt. Um, no?

Interjection: Yes, the debate really went on this long. I am trying to capture it in detail since I know no newspaper will cover it so thoroughly, and besides, I like having a written record of who said what and when (even if it is a rough record).

Josh Wineteer actually suggested that the person behind LT might have become anonymous specifically to violate board policy, which was a suggestion so far out of left field I'm still confused as to what he was thinking.

Tom McHill, LT's attorney, pointed out that if LT is a school district employee, trying to punish LT would bring up a whole host of procedural problems related to how employees are handled (I suspect this is something that the district's legal counsel also said).

Jim Robinson chose this moment to remind the board and audience that civil court was an option he'd suggested to KF as an alternative to criminal court since her complaint was found not to show any violation of the district's cyberbullying policy. Robinson also pointed out that he, Shimmin, and Fandiño had all been attacked and that despite that, the three were all legal amateurs and should seek legal counsel instead of presume to know best.

It was at this moment that Rick Alexander blurted out - and I am sure this was unintentional on his part - the words "why don't we go criminal?" This, despite the fact that it had been explained multiple times including moments before that the district had no standing to bring a criminal charge...and that the Linn County DA and Lebanon Police Department had both decided that the complaint did not rise to the level of a criminal case.

I am thoroughly convinced Rick does not listen, but instead just beats his head against the wall until it ejects another half-baked statement he thinks will help him pursue his goal. He has no place on the school board, as he cannot act like a reasonable adult.

After a bit of back and forth, KF was recognized. She noted that under existing district policy, she had a right to a hearing by the second meeting after filing a complaint. The 11-5-07 meeting was the second meeting, and she wanted her hearing. Sprenger agreed that it was possible to give her one, and that Sprenger would facilitate it, but she also noted that she really disliked the procedure.

At this point the debate was really heated, with KF nearing tears (and Sprenger, I think). Wineteer AGAIN claimed that the board had to make a choice between outing LT and violating KF's rights.

After a few more comments, Rick Alexander made a motion to hear, on the spot, Kim's complaint. I believe Josh seconded it, but Sherrie, finally exerting some serious pressure, decided not to entertain the motion as is her right as board chair (OMFG, what would this circus look like if Rick or Josh or Debbie or even Chris was chair?). The crowd - myself included - was shocked, as was the board. Sprenger was obviously tired, and came right out and said that the board could overturn her denial to hear the motion if they wanted to, but she was not going to allow it.

Sprenger gave the following reasons for denying the motion: It went against direct legal counsel, it exposed the district to legal liability, it was out of order, and 'I'm just trying to keep the district out of legal trouble.' I think she's essentially correct, though feel free to quibble.

KF immediately asked how telling her story made the district legally liable. I think it was a great question, and the only answer I ever saw was that given earlier by Robinson - that doing so without giving the blogger a chance to respond to the complaint would violate the blogger's (if they are a district employee) rights. I think it's a relatively weak answer.

Sprenger got really upset here, letting her long-simmering anger come to the surface. She pointed out both that she believes LT's blog does not help bring about unity or community, and also that she would not be party to the school board once again going down a road that resulted in backtracking from legal liability. Rick Alexander, in his all-time finest moment, interrupted her to say with surprise "We did?"

I wanted to throttle him, since it was obvious that Sprenger was referring to Robinson's suspension, which was initiated by Rick. That means one of two things: Alexander is so stupid he never realized what he'd done the first time around, or two, that Alexander is such a dick he threw that in there as a jab. I'm betting the former, which does not make him look good. If the latter, it's a great bit of comedy, but an incredibly mean and divisive statement.

Wineteer addressed the crowd and claimed that a legitimate concern was being stifled by the school board and that the public should know; this was the closest, by far, that he'd come to sounding like KF's lapdog all night. Sprenger interrupted and snapped at the board to either override her denial of the motion or let it die, practically claiming that the rest of the board did not have the gumption (her word) to do so.

Sprenger won that incredibly tense showdown that lasted all of 10 seconds. After that, the crowd deflated and several people got up to leave. The meeting was over in less than 30 seconds, the room strangely quiet despite the tension.

Yeah.

I am damn glad to see that Sprenger won that fight (though of course it may not be over), and I'm sure LT is at least somewhat relieved as well - it's that much less in legal fees they'd have to worry about if nothing else.

I'm also incredibly fascinated that no one was willing to buck Sprenger and make a motion to override her. She flat-out won a battle of wills, three to one. Hatred for her is only going to go up, but I think she did the right thing, especially when it comes to following board procedure, legal advice, and her own personal legal liability.

Meanwhile, the three clowns - and on this count Debi really did join Rick and Josh, I suspect because she's never been a public figure or had her decisions criticized like this before - showed just how little they understand public governance or what it means to act in anything resembling a professional manner.

It was a long night - this whole debate started some time after 10 p.m., and it was obvious the board, who had been meeting since 5:30, was exhausted.

More to follow; if you made it this far, this post is over 3000 words.

Youtube Videos: Yes on 50

Not generally work safe unless you're wearing headphones, and maybe not even then.



This video is even better, and really eviscerates the tobacco industry's history of advertising. Favorite line: "Why do you hate the children?"



Via Blue Oregon.

Jezebel

...is the name of blog a friend of mine has turned me on to. At first, I was pretty skeptical - it reminded me of Wonkette but with more celebrities. It also reminded me of the biblical character and the resulting stereotype.

However, once I read enough, it penetrated into my tiny brain that the folks behind Jezebel (who I have been assuming are mostly or all women) are pretty critically feminist.

I like that.

They are also incredibly snarky, which I can't help but laugh at.

Anyway, this post is both an endorsement of my new favorite blog and an excuse to post something I read this morning that struck me as being exactly right. This is an excerpt from a suppose IM conversation between two contributors:

YOUNGJEZZY: I'd like to see a study on how the percentage of people who identify as pro-life dwindles after high school. To me, in a lot of ways, being pro-life is just another way of being a "good kid." The reason they get so crazy about it is because it's seriously the only political issue anyone in high school feels directly affected by.

HOTELLOBBYIST: I mean, I think everyone (Code Pink ladies excepted) is more radical in their youth than they are later in life.

Holy crap, does that describe the folks I went to HS with. It was (assumed) common knowledge that lots of the folks in the STARS (Students Today Aren't Ready for Sex, which was a codephrase for abstinence-only) program were having sex. And drinking, but that's another post...

Though I have to say I don't think HS students feel really strongly about abortions because they are affected by it, but because they've been programmed to feel really strongly about it. At least in my experience.

In any case, good on Jezebel for pointing out the - again! - class nature of HS abortion/abstinence debates: "Good" (read: middle class or higher) kids don't have sex. Only poor (read: slutty) women have kids while in school.

Do I even need to say that I've met HS students with kids, and some of them have their shit together far more than their student leader counterparts? No? Good.

It's Not Quite Blackface, But it's Still Racist and Stupid

Via a couple of places (including Think Progress), this AP story:

A top immigration official has apologized after awarding "most original costume" to a Homeland Security Department employee who dressed in prison stripes, dreadlocks and dark makeup for a Halloween gathering at the agency.

Oops. And, of course Think Progress points out the fact that Ms. Myers is totally unqualified (this was not at all surprising to me).

Maybe if the government didn't actually target dark-skinned men for prison, such a stereotype would not exist.

Trickle-down

From Democratic Underground via Sadly, No!, a story of what can happen when bad politics and eliminationist rhetoric trickles down.

This is one reason I'm appalled by the existence of the Bush Administration and their tactics. It's not the only one.

What followed was a coordinated effort to block Andy’s medical care or his benefit from the medical care we could secure for him. In specific, the Bush right had its agents make small donations so they could then call Paypal with allegations of fraud that froze Andy’s account. They also called Paypal, misrepresenting themselves as the hospital to “verify” that this effort was a scam.

...

As late as week before Andy died, we couldn’t keep the poisonous campaign from him. He felt well enough to log into to his email and found a multipage denunciation, supposedly being filed with his state’s attorney general. He called me, not so much in a panic. Panic was no longer a speed Andy had. He called me in despair, because he could no longer fight the barrage of hatred being leveled at him. I don’t remember what I said to him but I hope it helped for a moment.

An Attempted Clarification Regarding LT

This is a response to the comments on this post, in which I clumsily offered a short critique of Lebanon Truth.

I support the existence of LT. In general, I support the ideas the blogger is promoting and I am supportive of the content of most of the posts (I generally note my disagreements with LT through comments at their place). I support freedom of speech, though I should note that this should not be taken as an endorsement that all speech is good speech. Freedom to speak and the wisdom of one's words are very, very different things.

The catch is that I believe that the same content can be delivered in many ways. Language - especially written language - is a powerful thing. The style and tone one uses is crucial in how readers understand one's writing.

In the case of LT, I sometimes think the tone of their writing is often more confrontational and abrasive than need be, and that as a result, I think readers will more likely become mistrustful of the content based on the tone in which it is delivered.

Repeating the truth loudly and often does not guarantee positive outcomes. The phrase "don't shoot the messenger" did not evolve in a vacuum. If it were so, politics in this country would look a lot differently.

This is to say nothing about the malleability of truth for all you Foucault fans out there. That's another post.

So, specific responses:

One anonymous commenter suggested that I think truth-telling and reconciliation are incompatible. That's incorrect; in fact, I think telling the truth is necessary for reconciliation, but not sufficient. Case in point: I've been calling Bush an idiot for years (a statement there is mountains of evidence for), yet he's still in office.

Another commenter suggested that I've bought into a tactic to hush LT up. That's a little unfair, since nowhere in the original post did I suggest that LT should stop blogging. In fact, as noted above, I support LT's efforts. However, my support is certainly not blind. That would be stupid. If anonymous commenter #2 on the original post thinks that supporting LT means never saying anything that could be construed as critical, said commenter is wrong.

This has been my attempt at clarifying my attempt at constructive criticism.

A Novel Defense

From the Washington Post:

A federal judge yesterday issued a rare ruling that ordered Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and more than 10 other prominent current and former government officials to testify on behalf of two pro-Israel lobbyists accused of violating the Espionage Act at their upcoming criminal trial.

The opinion by U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III in Alexandria directed that subpoenas be issued to officials who include Rice, national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, former high-level Department of Defense officials Paul D. Wolfowitz and Douglas J. Feith, and Richard L. Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state.

Their testimony has been sought by attorneys for Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, who are accused of conspiring to obtain classified information and pass it to members of the media and the Israeli government.

Attorneys for Rosen and Weissman say Rice and the other officials could help clear them because they provided the former lobbyists with sensitive information similar to what they were charged for, according to Ellis's ruling and lawyers familiar with the case. Prosecutors have been trying to quash the subpoenas during secret hearings and in classified legal briefs, but Ellis wrote that the testimony could help "exculpate the defendants by negating the criminal states of mind the government must prove."

It sounds to me like Rosen and Weissman are going to argue that what they did was OK because a bunch of senior government officials were in on it.

Sadly, I am not sure if this defense will work or not. If it does, I don't think I like the outcome...

Questions are Important, Dammit

Update: It's post number 300...whatever that means.

If there's one thing that frustrates me about my current job (Ha! There's definitely more than one!), it's the students' unwillingness or inability to ask questions of the material.

I get that they don't bother because they don't care or don't think the material is relevant, I do. But I'm a hopeless romantic when it comes to the intellectual life, and it slays me a bit every time when students fail to get excited by the awesome and interesting material they are being exposed to, especially when it's so obvious that the poem or story in question has something to tell them about how to navigate their lives. I'm also die-hard about interrogating the hell out of pop culture, just to be clear I am a) that boring and b) not talking just about Teh Classics.

That said, I really liked this Q & A from Rate Your Students. I doubt the students I work with could really utilize the method, at least not without some practice, but you never know:

Q: How in God's name do you get your students to stop writing book reports and start writing actual papers with actual theses?

...

A2: I build my literature classes around the idea of asking questions. We begin the semester with a challenging poem -- usually something fairly modern that they wouldn't have seen before -- and instead of my telling them anything about it, I simply instruct them to read it and make a list of questions. They pair up, see which questions they can answer, and ask more questions. With their lists of questions, we can talk about the 3 basic types of questions about literature (as I define them): Questions that could be answered by knowing more background information -- about culture, history, writer's biography, etc.; Questions that could probably be answered by reading more closely, more carefully, or (in the case of a longer text) further; Questions that could probably only be answered by analyzing or interpreting the text. We discuss some major branches of literary theory, but primarily in the context of what questions each theory asks about literature (How do socioeconomic issues shape the characters' interactions? What is significant about George taking on the typically feminine role of caring for the baby?). This sets the stage for what I tell my students all semester: scholars -- your professors, the people writing your texts and journal articles -- don't know all the answers. Scholars know which questions to ask. The class is then built around the students asking -- and struggling to answer -- questions. We are discussion-based from the beginning, and the discussions come directly from the students' questions (I only put forth my own questions if I think they are critical to understanding the text, and no one in the class has gotten there. I'm always surprised by how rarely this happens.) I make it clear that the "Questions that could be answered by reading more closely, carefully, or further" are questions that students should attempt to answer before coming to class. Once it becomes clear that if they bring those questions to class, I am not going to answer them, the students usually buckle down and get to work. When it comes time for the papers, I ask the students to write several questions about course texts. They work in groups and with me to evaluate the questions -- are they likely to have a complex answer? Is there likely to be an answer at all? When the student has a good, solid question, I explain that the paper should answer that question, and show the reader how the student came to the answer. The thesis to the paper is the answer to the question. Since students are comfortable with asking questions, with struggling to answer questions on their own, and with accepting that there may be multiple plausible interpretations of a text, most of them do relatively well. Even the worst papers I see are more complex than book reports.