Appendix
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Massachusetts Teachers Association and the Massachusetts State College Association refuse public access to the arbitration and grievance-file evidence of corruption maintained in their archives. This policy makes it impossible for the public in Massachusetts to verify just how corrupt the public colleges may be. As opposed to the sunshine state, Florida, which possesses state Freedom of Information legislation, Massachusetts is the cloudy state with a century's old tradition of cronyism, patronage and general public corruption (as underscored by the Big Dig and William Bulger scandals). This of course is surprising, considering the incredible number of institutions of higher learning operating in the state. How can such a high concentration of professors result in such a piteous status quo? With so many supposed brilliant minds, why was Senator Kennedy essentially unopposed during his last bid for the public seat he has been monopolizing for over 40 years?

The transcripts of the editor's particular arbitration hearing at Fitchburg State College underscore the intellectual depravity of both professors and administrators on the public salary and pension doles. Professor Emeritus Harry Semerjian, for example, looked so bad during that hearing that the college president Michael Riccards finally decided to offer the editor a cash settlement.  Part of that settlement prohibits the editor from revealing the cash amount paid to the editor not by the corrupt administrators and faculty of Fitchburg State but rather by the taxpayers of the state of Massachusetts.   What an aberrant provision.  How can it be legal in the state?  Yet be assured it is most likely legal.  Riccards did not have the inner integrity to challenge Semerjian, who, by the way, was on the committee that hired Riccards.

1. Excerpt of Secret Arbitration Transcript taken from the 200-plus page SLONE vs. FITCHBURG STATE COLLEGE. It was obtained from my union-appointed lawyer Lee Weissinger, whose only concern was closure, not justice. The page bears witness to the nonsense that can flourish behind the scenes in a public institution of higher learning. The lawyer for the prosecution (i.e., Fitchburg State College) grilling me in the transcript is Harvard lawyer Mark Peters trained also in the art of closure, as opposed to justice. This is the only piece of the transcript I was able to obtain without signing a form that would have prevented me from exposing it in public. The piece concerns my showing a commercial in French in one of my French classes. The commercial was for Old Nick Rum and filmed in Martinique. It was shown because the class was studying Martinique, rum is the principle export of Martinique, and the nudity depicted in the commercial emphasized a difference in cultures. Note how Peters turns the truth upside down, dumps it into the garbage bucket, and pitifully attempts to convince the arbitrator that I was trying to get college students to buy RUM. Bravo Harvard lawyer Mark Peters!

2. Writ of No Trespass. Fitchburg State College doesn't fool around when it wants to 'destroy' professors. This writ of no trespass, still in effect today, was issued to me because I'd simply told Professor Jeannette Scharf (now dead) that I did not appreciate her less than honest behavior regarding my faculty evaluation. She immediately had a private lawyer threaten me with an absurd charge of anti-semitism. Criticize a corrupt Jewish person... and you're a Jew hater? Imagine, even if I had hollered my brains out and threatened her, which I did not do, there should have been a fair hearing. Instead, there was immediate eviction and gestapo-like hearing in front of the Austrian Vice President of Academic Affairs Franz Nowotny (now living in Florida on public pension) and the Dean of Students Shirley Wagner. To deprive me of liberty in the public space of McKay campus without a FAIR hearing is a Bill of Rights violation. Did the Fitchburg State College faculty care? Not at all. Did the MSCA/MTA teachers union care? Not at all. Would the student newspaper, The Point, print notice of my eviction? Not at all. By the way, it costs about $100,000 to hire a Boston trial lawyer to contest Bill of Rights violations!

Note I was never even informed what it was I had done. My assumption was the Scharf conversation. The writ simply stated: "As a result of your actions at Fitchburg State College..."

The second page of the "Writ" sums up the sham hearing. Note "Confidential" stamped on the letter. Everything corrupt academics do in public institutions is ineluctably stamped CONFIDENTIAL. Note the nonsense language used: "restructuring collegiality and return a professional interaction between college faculty." The First Amendment is ineluctably held hostage to the elusive "collegiality" criteria reducing professional interaction to bowing and curtseying, polite, empty, and heatless discussions of nothingness. In academe, collegiality has sadly come to mean NOT blowing the whistle on corrupt colleagues and administrators.

3. The First Ad Hoc Evaluation Committee Conclusions clearly substantiated my being a good professor. The committee was composed of three professors with the purpose of presenting an independent evaluation, with regards my chairperson, of my teaching.

4. Second Ad Hoc Evaluation Committee Conclusions. This second committee was created a year later and composed of three different professors. It also clearly substantiated my being a good professor. Yet it was so pressured to produce a negative report by the intellectually corrupt Vice President of Academic Affairs Franz Nowotny, Honorable Degree recipient from Fitchburg State College (Imagine a college awarding such degrees to its very bosses!), backed by successive presidents Vinny Mara (also recipient of such a degree--talk about grade inflation? What about degree inflation?) and Michael Riccards, that its conclusions were at times incomprehensible. Indeed, ex-marine (semper fi!) Professor Howard Thomas, who chaired the committee and was chosen by Nowotny to serve on it, determined it could not counter chairperson Semerjian's conclusions because the committee could not go back into time to verify my performance at the very same classes the chairperson had observed. Yet his committee was supposed to provide an independent evaluation. The last page of the report clearly indicates a favorable evaluation. Yet the Vice President of Academic Affairs Franz Nowoty was so angered by those conclusions that he purposely indicated on his report that those conclusions were unfavorable (see next document). In any case, the decision to terminate an untenured faculty member rests entirely on the whim of the college president.

5. Report of the Vice President of Academic Affairs.Note the fraudulent interpretation of the last page of the aforementioned Ad Hoc Evaluation Committee conclusions. How can such blatant fraud be tolerated? Yet I'd brought the matter up to the entire faculty at Fitchburg State. Only one professor gave a damn.

6. Letter of Recommendation from the Dean of Continuing Education.

7. Letter of Recommendation from the Director of the Academic Advising Center. Interestingly, Joan Niehaus, the Director of Advising, told me the Dean of Students, Shirley Wagner, her direct boss, told her to refuse to update the letter of recommendation. Both Wagner and Niehaus could care less about their helping to destroy my career and livelihood.

8. Updated Letter of Recommendation from Full Professor Jeanne Moore.

9. Classroom Evaluation Effected by James Colbert (9 pages). Colbert was Acting Chairperson, appointed by good friend Harry Semerjain, despite the fact that the union contract stipulated acting chairpersons be elected by department members. Semerjian took a sabbatical leave of absence. Considering Colbert's close ties to both DeCesare and Semerjian, he gave me a surprisingly good evaluation. He does mention, however, that although my Spanish was certainly good enough to teach the levels I was teaching, it did have some flaws. Note that I was hired only as a French professor. Also, note how Colbert, just like his predecessors DeCesare and Semerjian, omitted highly pertinent information in his report. In this case, he omitted mention that I had been studying Spanish in Spain and Mexico for three straight summers at my own expense in an evident effort to improve. As part of the effort of retaliation, the college refused to help pay for those courses. Yet it readily reimbursed other professors for courses they took.

For proof of my graduate work in Spanish, consult the transcripts(graduate-credit courses). Note also there was no mention of my excellent, near native grasp of the French language. Colbert was and is an excellent example of an academic coward. He knew damn well I was quite competent as a professor, but did absolutely nothing to try to end the corrupt policies of the department chairpersons DeCesare and Semerjian. Massachusetts will also treat Colbert quite well when he ends up pensioned.

10. Rebuttal of Semerjain Classroom Evaluations Effected by Professor Emeritus Harry Semerjian.

11. Classroom Evaluations Effected by Professor Emeritus Harry Semerjian. Prior to my decision not to frequent DeCesare's home, Semerjian gave me a highly positive evaluation. Then his evaluations became highly negative, full of omission and evident desperate attempt to prove me incompetent. Rather than note the many scholarly articles I'd been publishing, he hunted in microfiche for an old letter to the editor published in The Chronicle of Higher Education prior to my being at Fitchburg State. He faulted me because I'd listed it as an editorial, not as a letter to the editor. He also made a big deal out of one student complaint. Yet that student declared in a letter that Semerjian had essentially coerced her to write the letter. The complaint was wholly unfounded. The instances of his deception are almost innumerable. They are detailed in my rebuttal (see next document).

12. Classroom Evaluations Effected by Professor Emeritus Richard DeCesare. DeCesare initially gave me a favorable evaluation. Then when I rebuffed his desire to see me on weekends at his home, the evaluations became recommendations to terminate.

13. Rebuttal of Semerjian Classroom Evaluations.

14. Rebuttal of DeCesare Classroom Evaluations.

15. Rebuttal of Director of Personnel Mary Scott's Conclusions (23 pages)

16. Director of Personnel Mary Scott's Conclusions RE my Sexual Harassment Complaint (14 pages).

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