Hanging on every word about the noose

Danbury's regional media is abuzz this morning. As I came to work, I saw to my surprise a television crew doing a story on the lawn. The media interest stems from what certainly seems like a serious incident: the discovery by university employees of a noose in the middle of Ives Concert Park.

The incident is described very well in print in today's edition of the News-Times. Apparently, the operations manager of Ives Park found the noose while inspecting the grandstand, where concerts and other performances are given frequently in the summer months. No other evidence of criminal activity was found.

University officials speculated that the incident might be linked to an alleged burglary several weeks ago in Ives Park, though it is unclear what the basis for this speculation is, and discussed the noose incident in connection with a prior bias incident in which a Swastika was found etched by a finger on the dew-covered side window of a car in the WestConn parking lot.

The University Administration was quick to issue a appropriate and timely statement condemning the perpetrators who had left the noose. In a memo to the campus community, President Schmotter emphasized that "symbols of hate and bias are not tolerated at WCSU." His statement recalled the swastika incident, noting that the "perpetrators" of that act were "apprehended and disciplined."

In general, this statement seems appropriate. There is no question that in many cases the hanging of a noose is an act of deliberate racial bias and is a painful reminder that lynchings, Klan rallies, and other acts of hate may not only be a legacy of America's troubled racial past but also a fundamental part of our present culture.

Yet in addition to condemning these incidents, we also need to inquire into what they might mean. We may jump to conclusions about incidents of potential bias, conclusions that are not helpful in understanding their causes and preventing these incidents in the future. The circumstances behind these incidents may surprise us at times. For example, it might astonish some that the victim of the swastika incident was not Jewish, nor was this person perceived to be Jewish by the perpetrators.

The noose found in Ives Concert Park may well turn out to be more complex than it originally appears as well. First of all, this incident can be clearly distinguished from the more famous 2007 incident at Columbia University in which someone tied a noose to the door of Teachers College professor Madonna Constantine (who--in a possibly unrelated incident--was fired for plagiarism the next year). It also differs from the very public hanging of nooses on a tree in Jena, Louisiana by white students who objected to the fact that black students were deciding to sit in a spot that was "theirs." In both of these two prior cases, the nooses in question had a specific, and very public target, and the meaning of their hangings could not have been lost on their communities.

But a noose found on the stage of Ives Concert Park in the spring is different. Those not familiar with WestConn's Westside campus might be unaware that Ives Concert Park is essentially closed off at this time of year. Walking down the main path to the park, visitors would encounter a white gate closed off with a "no trespassing" sign on it. Of course, this does not stop the occasional member of the local community from walking their dog through Ives Concert Park in the winter and spring. In essence, however, the "park" is in fact a desolate forest, disconnected and far removed from the WestConn campus at large.

The isolation of Ives Concert Park this time of year raises a critical question: why would someone hang a noose in a place where it would not be seen by anyone for weeks, and then only by a groundskeeper who is white? Who would commit a bias crime in the middle of nowhere, hanging a noose that no one is likely to see and that was directed at no person in particular?

Of course, the fact that the noose was found in an obscure and remote closed-off area does not eliminate the possibility that the intent of the noose hanging was to commit a hate crime. After all, there is always the remote possibility that a hate organization is operating in or around Westconn and that they held a secret meeting in Ives Concert Park that included a noose.

It's also possible that the noose may have an explanation that some might consider innocuous. Consider for example, the possibility that a drama club was rehearsing a play that included a discussion of lynching on the stage of Ives Concert Park, or that the noose was a prop left over from some earlier dramatic performance staged at the park. Any number of dramatic performances, such as Ten Perfect or Minstrel Show, include depictions of lynchings in order to expose the horrors of American racism, and these performances include the use of nooses. This possibility, however, also seems unlikely.

The most likely explanation for the noose hanging in Ives Concert Park is that its display was a prank performed either by local high school students or perhaps a younger student at WestConn, a prank that was meant not primarily to display bias but to do something on a dare that was perceived of as "dangerous" or "illegal." Certainly the fact that WestConn's earlier swastika incident was essentially a case of such a prank lends credence to this theory. Additionally, this explanation explains why the crime had no apparent intended victim. Perhaps the perpetrators chose Ives Concert Park because, although they wanted to do something that was forbidden, they did not want to be caught doing it.

However, when examined in this light, the publicity generated by the response of President Schmotter, the campus administration, and the local media suddenly looks like it might be very unproductive indeed. If the purpose of the incident was to do something scurrilous, then publicizing a condemnation of the event and having every member of the local media announcing the event will only encourage such acts to continue, since the perpetrators will know that their act will attract attention. One would be remiss to forget that the publicizing of Professor Constantine's noose led to dozen of copycat acts throughout the country, leading to a considerable amount suffering that could have been avoided but for the media frenzy. Blanket, highly publicized condemnations such as President Schmotter's may well contribute to these acts being committed, rather than to deterring them.

Of course, even if the incident is not based on racial intent, there is no question that the perpetrators need serious punishment anyway because of the kind of wounds that are opened and the atmosphere of fear that is created by each one of these incidents. I wonder, however, whether such an investigation should be so heavily publicized before we know the results.

This episode may provide an interesting test of a 2008 Connecticut law that makes the hanging of a noose in a public place a crime punishable by imprisonment of up to a year. Clearly, depending on the situation, this law may well be too overbroad to withstand First Amendment scrutiny.

In any case, as a campus, we need to do a better job of trying to understand both the situation that gives rise to these kinds of acts and the way to best prevent them in the future.

Things are Mushrooming in Pinney Hall

I know many of my students were concerned at the end of last week when one of the dormitories on the WCSU campus went on lockdown after a student became the victim of an armed robbery. As the Danbury News-Times has reported, the student, Austin Fry, was also found with a small quantity of hallucinogenic mushrooms and arrested. Subsequent to this arrest, President Schmotter sent out an email to the university community that detailed that in addition to Mr. Fry's potential criminal prosecution, the university would consider its own punishments for him, including potentially expulsion. The News-Times article also quotes Sharon Guck, the coordinator of WestConn's Alcohol and Substance Abuse Programs, as commenting that immediate suspension would be an appropriate sanction for Mr. Fry.

Undoubtedly both Dr. Schmotter and Sharon Guck are correct in their interpretation of Mr. Fry's potential punishments. Hallucinogenic drugs can be uniquely dangerous in a university community, and those taking them can be a danger to themselves and others. I do wonder, however, why no one expressed their concern or condolences to either Mr. Fry or his roommate. Regardless of whether Mr. Fry enjoys shrooms, he was, in fact, indisputably a victim: a victim of a frightening armed robbery. So was his apparently totally innocent roommate. So were the residents of Pinney Hall who were interrupted from studying for finals in a most disturbing way.

Yet rather than being ready to apologize to these students for the lapses in security that caused the robbery in the first place, it seems that the university's main response had to do with scapegoating a student who was a victim of their incompetence for his drug use. This seems both unfair and mean. Certainly it may have been the case--though I have nowhere as yet seen it alleged--that there may have been a connection between the two. But this is beside the point: just because a student may be engaging in activity that is illegal or violates school policy does not mean that he, his roommates, and the other students in his dormitory do not have the right to expect the university to have safeguards in place to protect them from armed robberies. It is very disappointing to me that the university has shirked responsibility in this way, particularly by passing the buck onto a student who was a victim of the attack.

The President and the Registrar: A Study in Contrasts

Recently, I had the pleasure of attending WestConn's opening faculty meeting. At this meeting, we heard both the bad news of the ongoing budget crisis in the state of Connecticut and its persistent negative impact on universities in the state and the good news about the innovative things that WestConn is doing to ensure that our students will not be negatively affected by this crisis. Among other things, Dr. Schmotter encouraged faculty to emulate MacGyver, the astronauts of Apollo 13, and the "foxes" as opposed to the hedgehogs. Out of these analogies, the MacGyver simile spoke to me the clearest--I understand now that when the copy machines are down (which seems a daily occurrence now) I am supposed to fix them with some bubble gum, scotch tape, and an owner's manual for a 1935 Smith-Corona.

I know many, but probably not all, faculty members feel the way I do about this advice: if that's what Dr. Schmotter asks, that's what I will do. This is because I feel that Dr. Schmotter and really most of the upper administration of the school has earned this respect through years of putting the proof in the pudding. They have attended our faculty meetings, spoken to students, heard our concerns, grown the campus, and engaged with both faculty and students as collaborators. This is not to say that everything WestConn's administration has done has always been perfect over the last five years. But it is to say that the faculty and students have felt like partners in the decision making process. I have always felt a part of this community. And so if it is the case, at least for a little while, that I have to wait for a computer upgrade, or my job description will include mopping bathroom floors while the janitorial staff is short of members, I will do so willingly and with enthusiasm.

Such loyalty and understanding of policies is built through years of establishing trust with faculty and students. I really believe that the President, the Provost, and many of the Vice-Presidents and Deans have done this, because especially in comparison to other university WestConn is outstandingly run.

I cannot say the same thing about the way that the Registrar's office has been run recently. Do not misunderstand me: I believe that the staff of the registrar's office is nothing short of excellent, and that they consistently provide an excellent level of service while seemingly being perpetually understaffed. I also believe that it is good that our relatively new registrar, Lourdes Cruz, has implemented a number of changes to streamline what was sometimes a chaotic registration system in the past.

My concern is not about the myriad changes in policy from the registrar's office, or even about the enforcement of policies that previously went unenforced. It is about the perception, apparently widespread among WestConn faculty, that these changes are being pronounced from above with very poor communication about these changes to faculty or students. We are bereft of any information about why these changes are being pursued or why they are for the best.

Just two examples will suffice. The first is the enforcement of a policy that incomplete grades need to be turned in in written, rather than email, form and that they need to be handed in personally by the instructor to the registrar, rather than going through campus mail or handed to a student. There may be good reasons for this policy, though I doubt the benefits outweigh the inconveniences caused by it. But the bigger issue is how faculty came to know that the policy was being enforced. Chiefly, we came to know there was a problem weeks or months later when students would come to us announcing that there was an issue with the resolution of their incomplete grade--even though the form had been submitted long before. We would then have to contact the registrar to learn that there had been a problem with our procedure. Increasingly, processes that were done very efficiently via email in the past seem to be slipping through the cracks under the new policy, resulting in students getting erroneous failing grades on their transcripts and other problems.

Perhaps there are good reasons for this change. But to impose it on faculty without discussion or announcement is going to cause the faculty to resent the registrar.

A second example is the increasing demand, emerging I presume from the registrar's office (although it might also be from the provost) for faculty to set their schedules for teaching years ahead of time. I recently received a notice that I am to detail me schedule of courses, dates, and times through the summer 2011 semester. Again, perhaps there are good reasons for this. But without having an opportunity to know what they are, this requirement seems both unreasonable and detrimental to our students, since we cannot possibly estimate accurately now what the needs of our student population will be two years from now. That being said, I would be happy to accede to this demand if it were only explained to me by a person in authority. Why is it necessary for faculty to schedule courses two years in advance? What are the benefits? How do these benefits outweigh the opposing concerns that we will be scheduling courses that are neither timely or appropriate for the now-unknown needs of our future students?

All of this could be easily explained, I think, if the originator of these policies, whether it is Ms. Cruz or someone else, would simply come to faculty meetings to explain the changes at the registrar's office. Alternatively, emails could be written explaining these changes in detail. As it is now, many faculty don't feel included as partners in these decisions in the same way that we very much do feel included in conversations about the university's direction. This problem should be addressed.

The Ever-Expanding Syllabus

Welcome to another year at WestConn! As I peruse the halls here and meet with students and colleagues, one aspect of the new semester appears to be changing very rapidly: the syllabus. This ever-important document, which I remember as a general outline and description of a course, seems to be ballooning--both in its size and its importance. Once a brief synopsis, today's syllabi are bloated contracts filled with boilerplate language from the banal to the alarming--where to find student help, where the medical services are, whether it's a crime to chew gum in class. The syllabus, it seems, has eclipsed the function of the campus code of conduct. It is becoming less a description of academic activity and more a code of rules and regulations. Students: don't come to class with your hats on! Don't leave to go to the bathroom! Turn off your ipods! No computers in class!

As professors and students, I think we should vehemently protest the scourge of the bloated syllabus. Grafting more and more regulations on the syllabus just means that students will pay attention to the syllabus less and less. Our syllabi become akin to the legalistic disclaimers that one finds on the back of bank statements--the more the fine print, the less people will read it, much less take it seriously.

And is it really necessary to inform students of every kind of conduct that is appropriate or forbidden? It seems to me that if we treat our students as if they were in high school, then that's precisely what we will get--a class full of high school students. Furthermore, when we make such restrictions, our primary concern should be whether it facilitates student learning. Certainly, the fact that some people might use facebook on their laptops is not a sufficient reason to ban laptops from the classroom, as many more students--both those with disabilities and those without them--may have legitimate reasons to believe that taking notes on computers is more effective than taking notes on paper. This restriction on teacher's syllabi really grates at me the most since I think it detracts from the ability of many students to learn.

I think we should return to the simple syllabus that describes the learning that goes on in the class. Professors are much better as teachers and mentors then they are as police officers.

Some Thoughts about Jhumpa Lahiri and One Book, One Community

I was fortunate to attend the discussion and question/answer session with Jhumpa Lahiri this week. For those of you who may not be informed, Jhumpa Lahiri, the best-selling author of collections of short stories such as Unaccustomed Earth and The Interpreter of Maladies and the author of the acclaimed novel The Namesake, was invited to come to WestConn as part of the One Book/One Community Project. As I understand it, the Danbury Library and several other community organizations, including WestConn, created this project with the goal of producing a common reading for the Danbury community. The idea was that everyone in Danbury (or at least everyone interested in this project) would be able to access a copy of The Namesake and read it. As part of this project, WestConn made The Namesake a common read for our university and made efforts to require incoming first year students to read it.

I think these are all wonderful developments. The idea of a common read for an entire community is both ambitious and interesting.

Nevertheless, I have some reservations about how well this project was executed, particularly when it comes the Lahiri discussion, one of the purported high points of this project.

First, it seems that not many freshmen actually read the book, and that many of them only had a vague realization of this requirement. They received a letter or email about it, apparently, but very little follow-up. Of course, it may well be unfair to blame this on an administrative failure, since it may just be that our freshmen are not paying attention. But there is additional evidence of the failure of the university in this regard. For example, there appears to have been only small attempts to integrate this requirement into the curriculum. It does not appear to have been discussed in first-year seminars, for example, or in many relevant classes. This may be the reason why first year students appear not to have been the main audience at Lahiri's talk in Ives Concert Hall on Wednesday. Instead, the audience appears to have consisted of South Asian-American students, WestConn faculty, and members of the community--arguably, the people whom this project least needed to reach.

The other comment that I have concerns the talk itself, which seems to not have served the purpose for which it was designed. It appears, from the conclusory words of President Schmotter among others, that one of the purposes of choosing The Namesake as the common read was to highlight questions of immigration and cultural identity. The problem with that choice is that both The Namesake and Lahiri herself tend ultimately to eschew such questions. In The Namesake, Gogol ultimately realizes that both his search for "Indian" or "American" identity are futile; that searching for such identities by dating ideal-typical white girls to fit in as an American or an ideal-typical Bengali woman to fit in as an Indian are beside the point of a universal struggle for identity.

My point is that it seems like an interesting paradox that a book written in part to reject the blind celebration of otherness or of a universal "immigrant experience" was chosen as an archetype from which to celebrate such an experience.

That being said, I was disappointed in both Lahiri and the way that the discussion went. Lahiri, by her own admission, is not a distinguished orator, though she may make up for that with her apparent thoughtfulness. Still, the disconnect between the writer and the audience was sort of disconcerting and seemed to be underscored by Lahiri's disturbing elitism. The discussion between Lahiri and WestConn's own Professor John Briggs tended far too much toward the quoting of literary luminaries and discussions of "the craft." Lahiri and Briggs did more than simply push the audience into different directions--they brazenly ignored their concerns. Many audience members came up to the microphone during the question and answer session. They poured their hearts out about how The Namesake had helped them work through their own identity conflicts and asked for Ms. Lahiri's help in the questions that were pressing to them.

In response, Lahiri and Briggs made it clear that their purpose was not to provide "pop psychology" and made jokes about charging "hourly rates" (to uncomfortable laughter in the audience) and engaged in discussions about the preoccupations of writing, the drawing of compelling characters and the creation of riveting dialogue, questions that transcended identity politics. I suppose it is well and good to talk about universal themes (in Lahiri's words, how to narrate the repeating story of being born, loving, losing, and dying), but in this case the tack of Lahiri and Briggs seemed openly disrespectful to the passions and concerns of their own audience.

Lahiri can write about whatever she wants, and can interpret her work as she wishes. But as a person, rather than as a writer, it seems mean-spirited to dismiss out of hand the claims of people that you have inspired. And it does suggest to me that the One Book/One Community project, while certainly worthwhile, may not have lived up to all its aims.

Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, But Words?

In the past month, the Echo, WestConn's student newspaper, has run two very thorough and interesting pieces about WestConn's decision to terminate Rosalie Appel, a tenured professor of Art. (Jake Kara, "Professor Fired After Forty Years," The Echo (April 8, 2008))The Echo's article said that the termination, which was the culmination of a lengthy and failed process of remediation, might have been the result of two possible types of incidents. According to documents obtained by the Echo, the University claims that Professor Appel was fired because of her "verbal abuse" of employees on campus and her "unprofessional" lack of social skills which have led to "interpersonal conflicts." Professor Appel, according to the Echo, claims to have been fired for testifying against her department in a lawsuit filed by an applicant for a faculty position.

I do not know Professor Appel, nor do I know the circumstances around her termination, so it would be inappropriate for me to discuss them here. But this case does bring up an interesting hypothetical question: If tenure is supposed to protect the rights of faculty members to hold controversial opinions, should a faculty member be terminated for the manner in which those opinions are expressed, in the absence of any other dangerous or violent actions?

My answer is a qualified no.

The qualifications are hate speech and sexual harassment. No professor, or for that matter any student or administrator, should be afforded any protections to allow them to display nooses, burn crosses, or engage in any behavior that has the profound connotation of violence toward a minority group (whether based on race, gender, or sexual orientation), because this kind of speech, like Justice Holmes's famous "shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic," has such a narrowly tailored relationship to actual violence. A stand has to be made against this speech.

That being said, in other cases, the idea of "verbal abuse" strikes me as simply a way in the backdoor of censoring unpopular ideas. I think the argument that "it wasn't what you said, just the way you said it," is simply a way of distancing yourself from having to stand up and oppose an opinion. And I would think in this hypothetical case, universities trying to use "conduct" as a reason to fire someone are simply making an end run around the academic freedom of professors.

There is an easy litmus test to prove this point: if conduct (the manner in which words are said) is the issue, and not the content or argument behind those words, then it should follow that if the words were replaced with something that could would be agreeable or complementary to the person alleging "verbal abuse," that it would still be seen as verbal abuse. Hypothetically, then, imagine these two situations:

Situation One: A faculty member walks into the computing center, walks up very close to an employee, and screams belligerently at the top of her/his voice:

"You're a bunch of bums! My computer hasn't worked in years! You're so incompetent my three-month-old grandchild could do a better job than you! Go get a real job! $%##%@#%!"

Situation Two: A faculty member walks into the computing center, walks up very close to an employee, and screams belligerently at the top of her/his voice:

"You folks are wonderful!!! You are the gosh darn greatest group of computer geeks on the face of the earth! Bless you all!!"

As you can see, these two situations are not the same. I am willing to bet my bottom dollar that the second situation, while odd, would never get reported as a case of "verbal abuse," where the first one would. This means that such accusations of verbal abuse aren't really about conduct, but actually about the content and opinions of a statement--content that tenure is supposed to protect.

Some might argue here that I've missed the point--the problem is not the content but the way the content is phrased. They would argue that the thesis of situation one, put in a gentler way, would be acceptable.

But here this "gentleness" is just a smokescreen for the social control of ideas. This "gentleness," in the form of active listening, is taught by communications experts and psychologists as a constructive means of communication. We are all supposed to say "I acknowledge you when you say x", "I hear you when you say y," and "I feel this," "I feel that." But all this does is reward an evasive discussion style that will privilege and empower only those people who are expert in manipulating this form of communication. I think ultimately that this psychologically "right" form of communication is just a form of disingenuous dishonesty. In the case of Professor Appel, according to the Echo, the university recommended psychological counseling to have better verbal skills. But the purpose of such communications skills is the maintenance of a societal norm of communication behavior. Psychology privileges the idea that communication be rational and sensitive, but then defines for itself what constitutes that rationality, thus constructing itself as a system of power (see Michel Foucault, Birth of the Clinic (New York: Routledge, 2003) for a more articulate explanation of this).

Policing the way that people say things to others automatically polices the content of that speech. Thus, in the hypothetical example of a professor who is terminated because his or her manner is considered to be offensive, what is really at issue will always be the content of his or her ideas. That's my opinion, anyway, even though I might well be wrong.

The Parroting of Fatuous Political Slogans; or, why can't WestConn students think?

This week, I told one of my classes that if they responded to a reading we are doing in their papers by saying "the characters in this novel symbolize the evils of imperialism," they would be on their way to a very poor grade.

The reaction I got was stunned, silent, and hostile. At first I was confused--why was my statement so controversial? It was only after the class and in the course of some discussions that I realized that many of my students had jumped to the totally illogical conclusion that my statement meant that they had to now write that imperialism was wonderful and just hunky-dory, whereas what I had meant to imply was that the sample statement above is so general that no one could possibly dispute it, and academic papers should not consist of the parroting of conventional wisdom.

This problem epitomizes a frustration that I am having with the general level of critical thinking at WestConn. In the past, I have assumed (correctly to some degree, I think) that most WestConn students can't write critical papers because high schools only teach them facts, and the faculties and contexts needed to question the interpretation of those facts are not taught. But I also think that there's another problem: students are getting the impression that merely repeating a mildly left-of-center line in their papers is an easy avenue to relatively quick success. As long as they write that "We need to understand other cultures" and "need to be tolerant of other people's beliefs", or "we need to reject the bigotry and prejudice that caused the Holocaust, slavery, etc," or that "I learned a lot through my exposure to x person or y event," they'll do well.

Obviously, I think that diversity is a good thing. My point is that, if you ask students why
these things are the case--for example, why "we need to understand other cultures"--you'll either get no answer at all, or you'll engage in a conversation that will be comical in its tautologies and circularities. It will go something like this:

Professor: "What's the most important thing a university can teach us?"
Student: "To accept multiculturalism and learn to understand different points of view."
Professor: "And why is that so important?"
Student: "Because we live in a multicultural society."
Professor: "What do you mean by that?"
Student: "Everyone has a different point of view."

Even the slightest problem with this line of reasoning will stop the average first year WestConn student in their tracks and keep them there.

Professor: "If we have to understand different points of view, how do we choose between them?"
Student: "We should appreciate everyone's culture, not make a choice between them. Each should be valued equally."
Professor: "But what if they conflict with each other?"
Student: "Huh?"
Professor: "European political theory says that individual rights are fundamental, but some African and Asian societies hold that you must think of the good of your family or community first before you think of yourself. Which is correct?"
Student: (Tuned you out 30 seconds ago and is listening to Maroon 5 on his/her ipod)


I've come to understand that the problem here is that the statements made in high school and even college curricula about diversity are so broad and meaningless that their net effect is probably negative. Since the focus of student's minds is on extreme examples, it will be too easy for students to simply disavow bigotry by saying "that's not me. I don't do that." That's why the only time there's really a controversy about racism is when a textbook or teacher tries to implicate students in it. I'm thinking here of the incident at the University of Delaware last week in which the residence life office used a diversity training manual steeped in critical race theory that argued that all white people are implicated in racism. They were eventually reported to FIRE, a group trying to stop the enforcement of liberal political belifs on campus. This is unfortunate, because showing how whiteness is still around and how it gives privileges to all light skinned people is perhaps one of the more valuable lessons students can learn, because then they are implicated.

We have to do a better job teaching students why this stuff matters. If anything, we need to force them to make or read controversial or even offensive arguments so that they can better understand why these arguments are wrong. The problem is that we don't go far enough.

Another prime example of this problem is Banned Books week. Every year, professors trot out in front of the student center and read from books that had been banned--that is to say, at some point of time, in some area of the world. Very few people seem to listen or care, chiefly because these books rarely expound ideas that are banned or censored here. They may have been controversial at some time in the past, and may still be controversial somewhere in the world, but not at WestConn in 2007. If professors really want an honest discussion about censorship, they should stand outside the student center reading hardcore porn or hate speech. But no one's going to do that, because the truth is we don't want to have the real discussion.

That might make our students actually have to think. We wouldn't want that, would we?