The American Dissident: Literature, Democracy & Dissidence


Grambling State University (Grambling, LA)—Free Speech in Peril

The rise of the buppie, the Negro academic.
          —Amiri Baraka, Afro-American poet

Grambling State UniversityThe price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
          —James Baldwin, Afro-American novelist and essayist

 

It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder.  We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
          —Frederick

 

Douglass, Afro-American essayist and former slave
Grambling State University in the last fiscal year violated two state laws and lost more than $1 million in the stock market, in addition to failing to correct poor accounting practices noted in previous audits, a Louisiana Legislative Auditor's report released Monday said.  In one instance, auditors said GSU purchased stock valued at more than $2.6 million using money that by state law can only be spent on university facilities. In violation of state law and its own cash management policy, GSU used $2,606,899 in plant funds to purchase the stock, which was valued at $1,529,426 on June 30, 2009 — more than $1 million less than the stock's purchase price. [...] No GSU employees were fired or disciplined in the wake of the audit findings.  [Are the corrupt ever fired at GSU?]
          —News-Star

 

Students, professors, administrators, and student editors have been informed of the existence of this webpage. What I enjoyed most about Grambling State University as a Visiting Professor were the students who, for the most part, were really quite friendly, open and eager for vigorous debate.  Nearly every day a group of students would meet in my office where we'd engage in serious conversation... and fun.  Without a doubt, I miss them. 

 

What I did not enjoy about GSU was the seeming indifference of the faculty to matters other than bureaucratic ones.  During my two years at the university, I'd written a number of critical essays, some of which were published in the student newspaper.  Only two faculty members ever deigned to comment, though, of course, off the record. 

 

Because I criticized GSU then and here, I risk being labeled racist since I am white.  But I don't give a damn.  I'd rather "go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways" (Emerson) than play it safe and silent like most professors at GSU and elsewhere in America.  Nothing is more easy than dismissing a critic with ad hominem rhetoric in a feeble effort to annul the message.  In a recent interview, I dealt with the issue of racism (see Counterpoise). Just the same, I have criticized colleges that are mostly all white in the same no-holds-barred manner (see Elmira College and Fitchburg State). In fact, if I did not criticize GSU, one might logically consider me racist.  For more on my ideas regarding higher education, examine this website.
 
By the way, Grambling State University (Grambling, LA), an HBCU (Historically Black College and University), hired me for two years (2005-2007) as a Visiting Professor in the foreign-language department, an intellectually bankrupt department where the educationist apparatchik mentality ruled.  My two colleagues, Chimegsaikhan Banzar and Encarna Abella (see cartoon), never used first names with each other or with me, preferring "Dr.," as if somehow that raised them up to the heavens, or at best above the toiling secretary and student masses.  They were exemplary academic functionaries, though dubious human beings, and not in the least defenders of democracy.  They would have fit perfectly into any Stalinist-like regime.

 

Below are the articles I authored, risking the ire of colleagues and administrators and, of course, future employment. But we only live once, so why not live in the truth or at least try to?!  That's what I do.  The Gramblinite published some of the essays, while ignoring the others—the student editors were not very communicative at all.


To the Editor, Wendell Graves: 
Perhaps it would be favorable to respond to emails, especially since you request the college community contribute thoughts.  In any case, please publish the following op ed in The Gramblinite.  I have also attached it because the previous op ed I contributed was published with serious errors made by your typist to the extent that some of it made no sense at all.  It was somewhat embarrassing, considering all the honors The Gramblinite has received.  You will find criticism in this op ed of The Gramblinite itself.  Do you permit that or do you only permit praise?  You wrote something demeaning to introduce my previous op ed, something like “he needs to get something off his chest.”  I noticed you do not do that for other professors who publish op eds.  Why did you do it for mine?  I suppose I’ll never find out… though I will certainly be able to take a good guess or two.  In any event, by writing you these things, I treat you as an adult.  As mentioned in my previous email, I thank you for publishing the cartoons. 
Sincerely, Visiting Professor G. Tod Slone


During my two years at GSU, only two professors ever responded to my published articles, both in private, further supporting my hypothesis that vigorous debate, cornerstone of democracy, had a very low priority for university professors and administrators.  What counted were the business concerns of growth, enrollment, retention, keeping the clients happy, federal money, foundation grants, PR, and marketing.  The following is a poem I wrote on GSU.  It was sent to the president and provost, who did not respond.  The essays follow the poem. 

 

Democracy and the Proliferation of Third-Tier Diploma Mills

against Horace Judson, university president

Institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good and not to further the interest of either the individual teacher or the institution as a whole. The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition. 
            —American Association of University Professors (AAUP)

 

While you cover the land with more and more concrete,
the birds don’t quite know where to perch any more,
and you don’t give a damn—growth, growth, über alles!

While you boast of questionable prestige—after all, what
professor would dare openly question your statements?—you
aspire to more of the same:  growth, growth, and more growth!

While you praise your corps of docile functionary faculty,
especially those proficient in the field of grant-ology,
they stretch their mendacious paws to you for mo’ money.

While you manipulate statistics to bolster your case
for nebulous vacuity—o growth, growth, growth—
your graduating students cannot even write a simple letter
without committing multiple error of spelling and grammar.

And out there, o chubby fellow, you jam your thick shovel
into the earth, breaking ground for a new museum, devoted,
not to a bold critic, but to a football coach—o higher education!

While you grow, grow, grow from so many free dinners, paid for
by the taxpayers, what really ought to count at your institution
—free speech, critique, and vigorous discussion!—might as well
be laid to rest in a mausoleum with that coach and gone-by past.

While professors and administrators thrive, as inbred bureaucrats
—so egregious that even you could not help but make that remark—,
the focus, soul concern, of your institution, like a Frankenstein aberrancy,
has grown into an educational perversion of PR and image discrepancy. 
                                                       
While you scurry about the land, hand held out in endowment and donation
beggary, the squirrels no longer recognize you, though your mentors do,
those rats in gray suits obsessed with the destruction of free contemplation
and the brave thinkers who would denounce their nefarious modus operandi.

Well, this little poem I dedicate and send to you, for kamikaze “hier
stehe ich” and “ich kann nicht anders”* in the corporate organization
of higher edifice-cation where growth, growth, growth has grown to
constitute a sarcoma, malignant on the remnants of liberty in the Academy.
....................................
*Martin Luther

 

Essays

1.  "Open Letter to Four Black Public-University Administrators" was sent to The Gramblinite in September 2007.  Unsurprisingly, given the little value accorded to vigorous debate at GSU, nobody ever responded. Clearly, this was my most RISKY article because it was a direct criticism of four top GSU administrators. 
2.  "Post Scriptum:  Open Letter to GSU Students" was sent to The Gramblinite in August 2007.  Nobody responded.
3.  "Grades, Grades, Grades:  Or the Road to Monetary Success, Not to an Education Life" was submitted once in 2006 and once in 2007.  The editors did not respond.
4.  "In Search of Veritas" was published (with the title screwed up by editors) with the satirical cartoon on prayer at faculty meetings
5.  "How to Muzzle the Student Newspaper" (title slightly altered by editors) was published
6.  "A Violent Assault… and Some Consequent, Perhaps “Offensive” Thought" (title screwed up by editors) was published in December 2006
7.  "Higher Education, Big Business, and the Failing American Democracy" was sent to The Gramblinite in 2007.  The Editors did not respond.
8.  "A Fundamental Value of American Democracy:  Expressing Ones Opinion… Openly and Proudly" was sent to The Gramblinite in 2007.  The Editors did not respond.
9.  "A Pretense of Objectivity—Outstanding Teaching" was sent to The Gramblinite in 2007.  The Editors did not respond. 
10.  [Not an essay] Other GSU News of Interest That Might End up Buried in the Oubliettes

 

1.  Open Letter to Four Black Public-University Administrators

President Judson, Provost Dixon, Dean Walton, and Assistant Dean Duhon
If you do not serve truth, you do not serve higher education or the nation; instead, you serve yourselves.
            —G. Tod Slone, editor of The American Dissident 

We do not approve of censorship or prior review, and we stand by our editorial decision to inform the students of Grambling State University of news events that effect them on campus, in the community and everywhere.
            —De'Eric M. Henry, editor of the student newspaper

 

Free speech at your institution is and has been, for the most part, tongue-tied.  It is thusly so at probably most institutions of higher learning in America .  Professors and even their students are tongue-tied in order to get those three letters of recommendation—so necessary for “success” in a professional career.  “A long resume doesn’t guarantee good judgment,” had declared Barack Obama regarding Vice President Cheney.  I might add that three letters of recommendation do not guarantee the courage it takes to “go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways” (Emerson).  

 

Every instance you choose to tie your tongues is an instance of repressed human dignity.  Our nation is the sum-total of tied tongues, as is the state of our so-called democracy.  A morally strong and courageous person will tend to take that rope off his or her tongue, though it might mean job loss and/or other consequences.  Nevertheless, that person will speak because to do so is to manifest his or her dignity as a human being.  It is really quite that simple. 

 

Likely, you will not comprehend this discourse, for to ascend as you have in the ranks of academe, you have had to keep that rope firmly tied round your tongues.  “Collegially” demands it and those three letters of recommendation, shamefully, tend to certify it!  Likely, you will believe your institution to be a bastion of free speech and vigorous debate.  Your sense of self-worth demands that erroneous perception!  

 

Unfortunately, the academic system itself strongly encourages you to trade free speech and expression for “collegial” silence.  In other words, for money and the comfort of job security, you willingly choose to become careerist academic functionaries of pomp and circumstance.  Sadly, the system’s very goal is to turn naturally questioning and challenging students into “professional” functionaries.  Has that not been your goal too?  Each of us has only one life to live, so why therefore do so many of us choose to live it as careerist functionaries?  America is turning into a grotesque satire of democracy because an increasing number of its citizens choose that path over truth. 

 

While at Grambling State , I was disappointed to discover just how little professors cared about free speech and vigorous debate.  I’d authored a number of essays published in the student newspaper that urged debate on issues, including religious prayer at faculty meetings in a public university.  Not one professor responded or otherwise deigned to enter into the arena of ideas and engage in vigorous debate.  To do so would have required a conscious (and perhaps Herculean) effort to step out of the mold of the careerist functionary.  Perhaps institutions of higher learning ought to be judged on the degree of democracy, free speech, and vigorous debate existing and encouraged in their hallowed halls, rather than on the football team, its coach, and unaccountable backslapping faculty.  Grambling State ’s motto, "Where Everybody is Somebody," reflects the vacuity of the faculty and administration.  Why not be truly unique, alter the focus of your university from a professional training ground to a citizen training ground and establish a First Amendment core curriculum to be taught by professors who dare risk, as opposed to those who prefer existing as careerist academic functionaries?  Why not change that motto to “Where Free Speech and Vigorous Debate Are Demanded!” 

 

One of my essays, published in the student newspaper, was an account of my having been beaten and robbed by three black racist cretins last November in Baton Rouge . To this day, I am still surprised that not one black faculty member or administrator deigned to express his or her empathy.  Contrary to the faculty, a number of students did so.  Was the silence of black administrators and professors due to anti-white racist impulse? 

On another note, I was promised a letter of recommendation from Dr. Duhon last May and have yet to receive it, despite my having written several reminders.  Why make promises, if one does not intend keeping them?  Why rehire someone for a second year, who you would not recommend?  Currently, I am unemployed and certainly could have used that letter.  But why would you care?  I’m a white male and an ardent critic of academic careerist functionaries. 

Finally, as an American, I am disgusted that a public university like Grambling State would continually hire a Mongolian without citizenship (with great letters of subservience?) for a position in French that many qualified Americans, myself included, would gladly have taken.  Do you simply look at this as yet another case of Americans don’t want to do that kind of work?  Since the student newspaper will likely not publish this letter (it has remained silent regarding my last three submissions), it shall be published in the next issue of The American Dissident under its “Experiments in Free Speech” rubric, then posted on its website.  Please feel free to respond.  As a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit organization, The American Dissident is required by regulation to publish your response, though it would do so anyhow, which is what makes the journal somewhat unique.  Unsurprisingly, not one person in the English Department at Grambling State proved interested in the journal or its stance.  After all, it does stand clearly in favor of free speech and vigo rous debate… 

 

2.  Post Scriptum:  Open Letter to GSU Students

At its essence, the willingness to protest represents less a response to a perceived affront than the acting out of a state of mind. […] Often, the desire to change the offending situation which is beyond our reach may be an incidental benefit and not the real motivation.  Rather, those of us who speak out are moved by a deep sense of the fragility of our self-worth. It is the determination to protect our sense of who we are that leads us to risk criticism, alienation, and serious loss while most others, similarly harmed, remain silent. 
        —Derrick Bell, first-tenured black professor at the Harvard Law School, sacrificed his teaching job by protesting the absence of minority women on the law faculty

 

This letter will likely not be published, for such things tend not to be done in the world of higher education.  Former professors are rarely if ever permitted post-mortem voice, especially if that voice is critical commentary.  Just the same, I know some of my former students might like to read this.  So, why keep it from them?  By now, you are aware I am not returning to teach French and Spanish this year.  It was not necessarily my choice, since I did enjoy interacting with many of you.  Currently, I am unemployed and collecting unemployment insurance from the State of Louisiana, though living in Massachusetts. 

Four essays of mine, sent to The Gramblinite last academic year, were never published.  In fact, neither editors nor staff ever responded with their regard.  Eventually, I shall resubmit them because of their pertinence to your education… and to your professors!  Hopefully, this year’s editorial staff might prove more responsive than last year’s.  If not, then indeed your professors have been doing a great job… teaching you that silence is the best form of expression in the professional realm.  See no evil, hear no evil, and especially speak no evil.  Indeed, it has become the very key to “success” in our so-called democracy.  Sadly, it has become the key to “success” in the nation’s institutions of so-called higher learning, including Grambling State. 

Currently, I am working on a webpage devoted to GSU and will eventually put the essays up on that page.  This letter and that page will evidently not be beneficial to my professional career, which has been on a rocky road for over a decade now, ever since I decided to choose to do what professors shamefully learn not to do, that is, speak out critically regarding the dubious state of affairs in the nation’s public universities.  Thus, professionally I have been rather “unsuccessful,” though as a citizen I have been quite “successful.” 

By the way, not one GSU English professor expressed interest in the literary journal, The American Dissident, which I’ve been publishing since 1998, despite my posting and distributing flyers in and around the English department.  They must be fervent believers in the old proverb:  curiosity killed the cat?  The library never subscribed, but you may find a copy of the journal on the shelf of the Lincoln Parish Public Library, which subscribes… along with Harvard University, Buffalo University, Brown University, Wisconsin University, and Michigan University.  Be warned, however, that the journal does stand in direct opposition to the sacred modus operandi favored by the nation’s English professors:  silence.  On that subject, consult my op-ed in the News-Star (Monroe, LA) and/or the Poesy magazine interview.

On another note, it was disappointing that only two GSU professors ever responded to the essays I published in The Gramblinite.  A third professor responded, but only after I placed a flyer in front of his face.  He told me The Gramblinite was a bad paper.  He is an English professor.  Why doesn’t he do something to help improve it, if he thinks it’s so bad?  Isn’t that partially why he’s receiving a salary?  On another note, not one professor or administrator ever expressed his or her condolences with regards my having been beaten nearly unconscious and robbed in Baton Rouge last November by three black thugs.  In fact, all I got out of the dean was a cold approval for a new office key (yes, it was also stolen).  The provost and president did not deign to respond.  Did my being a white male have anything to do with their silence?  Well, at least a certain number of students expressed their empathy, and that meant a lot to me.  Perhaps students and professors coming from the north ought to be warned that Louisiana is rife with racism, black and white, like few other states in the nation.  Whereas I definitely miss the warm weather, I don’t miss the rampant racism.  Note, however, that I did feel fairly comfortable at GSU with that regard. 

Despite all, I immensely enjoyed my experience in Louisiana and enjoyed many of my students.  The foreign-languages department, however, was a pit of vipers… or rather harpies.  The degree of intellectual exchange between colleagues was extraordinarily and embarrassingly low (e.g., “Dr. Slone, you forgot to erase the blackboard” and “Dr. Slone, could you please fill this form out”).  In fact, my departmental colleagues, from day one, proved to be so amazingly anal in personality, bureaucratic in mentality, and petty that it quickly became impossible for me to simply ignore them.  My creativity helped me cope with them.  Indeed, they became an excellent source for my critical and satirical poems, essays, and cartoons.  On a positive note, Dr. Duhon, Assistant Dean, proved to be unusually fair and understanding, though she did promise to write a letter of recommendation and never did, despite my requesting one on several occasions.  She did not answer my emails.  Well, I suppose I could look at it this way: she was black; I was white. Dr. Duhon has since been promoted to Vice President.

Finally, I came to realize the other day I was censoring myself—telling myself not to write this letter, for it could hurt my already weak prospects for future employment.  But I viscerally hate self-censorship.  I hate what it does to people, depriving them of their dignity as human beings, their “self-worth,” in the words of Derrick Bell.  So, I kicked myself in the ass, wrote it, and sent it. The student newspaper published it as an open letter.

 

3.  Grades, Grades, Grades

Or the Road to Monetary Success, Not to an Education Life
But we lie to ourselves for assurance. And it is not they who are to blame for everything—we ourselves, only we.
            —Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “Live Not by Lies”

 

We all have good students, the ones who apply themselves, do the homework, learn, and actually ask pertinent questions.  This essay is not about them.  It is about the others, sometimes many others. 


Some students tried bribing me with a $10 discount certificate for Lowe’s, a bag of chocolates, a coupon for a free massage, a free tee-shirt with the logo of my choice, six chocolate bars, a $10 university-inscribed pen, a small bottle of whiskey, a small sachet of marijuana, a Starbuck’s coffee, and $100.  As for the latter, the student stuck the bills right into my shirt pocket.  I took them out and told her, no.  Then she stuck the bills into my desk drawer.  I took them out and again said, no, and asked her to please sit down on the other side of the desk.  Partially, the bribes could be explained by the fact that I didn’t tend to cocoon myself in badges and diplomas or otherwise erect a wall between to keep students out.  Oddly, at least as far as professors are concerned, I tended to think of the students as human beings, not as inferiors. 

 

One week prior to the end of my courses and during the week of finals, many of my students suddenly “panicked” with regards their grades, realizing they might not be getting the grades they wanted or “felt” they deserved, as opposed to the ones they actually deserved.  Some of them never even had a textbook.  Some never did the homework.  Some didn’t even take all the exams or present the obligatory oral presentation.  But somehow, they still thought they were entitled to pass the course… or even get a B. 

 

The barrage of phone calls and emails continued even after finals week.  “Dr. Slone, I can’t believe you gave me a C,” wrote a student.  Yet he’d never gotten anything higher than a C.  Excuses like the following were numerous.  Note all the errors in the email, yet that was a graduating senior. 


Dr. Slone i apoligize for missing classes, but i had to face a situation i never seeing, or imagin in my life. my mother almost got killed, and it was a major set back for me wit school, football, and in my life. the thing is my mom doesnt evevn know i know, my grandma told me, and i didnt know how to take it because i lost my farther behind the same situation. so if i could take the finals and be granted a D, so i could have somthing postive going in my life. [xx] Please give me call   

 

As for another student, I caught him cheating on the final… red-handed!  He’d kept moving his head from the top of his paper to the bottom, as if he were copying something.  And indeed he was.  He was holding a little file card.  He saw that I saw.  I asked for his test.  He gave it to me and left.  Since his average was a D prior to the final, I flunked him for the course, though didn’t report him. My assumption was that he’d cheated on the other tests too.  And why shouldn’t I have assumed that?  He was always seated in the back row.  He wrote me several letters and even telephoned, pleading… begging.


Hello Mr. Slone,
How you doing Mr. Slone? I am writing you cause I am in dyer need of graduating and I just wanted to ask if there is anything I can do to pass your class cause I had relatives coming from florida, trinidad, and all over. Please Mr. Slone I am begging you to help me, I can't say how sorry I am but please Dr. Slone please. Just a D so I can graduate.


Another student implied I was “cheating” her on her “education” because of the grade she received.  Yet wanting a higher grade had nothing whatsoever to do with her “education.”  Asking pertinent questions, not about grades but about the subject matter, had everything to do with “education”… and, as I recalled, that student never asked such questions at all.  In other words, she was cheating herself of an education, not I.  The following is the email I received from that student.  It sums up nicely the grade inanity. 


Hey Dr. Slone,
My main concern is my grade for this class because i feel like I deserved something better. Not to be in anyones business but another student final grade was better than mine I know my grade was better than hers. If I know I deserved this D Dr. Slone do you actually think I would be bothering you. On my presentation, I received a D, and I stated all five parts of the presentation except the ending and that was the passe compose. In the beginnning of the presentation I did not state some of the beginning parts of the presentation but towards the end I went back and stated them properly and still received a D. So did I receive a D for not stating them properly or what because if that's the case I should have received an C. All the hard work I put into studying for the presentation and all I could get was an D the only thing was my mind just went completely blank while attempting the presentation but I still completed every part except the passe compose. Trust me Dr. Slone if I honestly believed that I deserved the D in the class I wouldn't even be bothering you. I know in my heart that my grade should have at least been C or maybe even a B. The thing about me is that I won't let anyone cheat me of my education or short-hand me of anything. Now I want to speak on fairness because fairness did not take place when my grade was being prepared. My main question is how can my grades be higher than another student's grades but in the end their grade comes out higher than mines. It seems that grades are just being handed out and that should not be tolerated. I saw this student grade and it was higher than mines. Now if you made a mistake that is understandable but still I want my grade to go up because being fair is being fair and that's not fair for me to get a D and another student gets a C and their grades are lower than mines. When you are computing someone's grades you should double check to make sure that you are putting in the right grade because you never know who are comparing their grades in the class everytime grades are handed back and I know something isn't right. If I got a D and that person received a C. I should have received a B.  

 

The excuses poured in, some valid, some less valid:  deaths, sicknesses, auto accidents, basketball games, field trips, and even now and then an admission of no excuse at all.  In the middle of final’s week, a coach called to inform me there would be a track meet the next day.  She then sent me an email at my request. 


Good afternoon Dr. Slone,
I informed [xx] that I spoke with you at 12:50 p.m. and you stated that you would allow her to take the final exam in SPAN 101 today no later than 1:30 P.M. Dr. Slone we are very sorry for this inconvenience.  I'm not sure of why the SWAC Office changed the date for the SWAC Championship Tournament, but I sure hate that it has affected our final exam schedule and the student-athlete's ability to study and prepare for an exam as necessary.   [xx] is an exceptional student and athlete, and she was very disappointed that she did not have the proper study time for this particular exam.  I thank you very much for allowing her to take the exam at an earlier time on such short notice. [xx]


Higher athletics or higher education?  Well, I think we know the answer to that!  Everything and anything seemed to automatically take precedence over the course.  You name it.  Students came up with it.  Some even tried “playing me” with amazing transparency.  Did they think I was really that stupid?  The following email was written by a student whose final was almost blank.  Note all the errors in the email. 


Dr. Todd Slone
It has been a true honor to be a part of your french and spanish class for the 2007 spring semester. There are things that I have learned and things that I have been reluctant to excell at. I have know one to blame but myself. I am unprepared because foriegn language is extremly new to me. Although I could have worked harder and did somewhat better but my other duites of being a fulltime student, a fulltime employee, and trying to graduate so that i can start my career by serving my country as a 2nd lieuteant in the United states Air force enabled me. Dr. Slone you are a true gift to this student body by giving us a chance to think outside the norm and expand our minds to places some of us will never see or never thought of seeing. As a person i ask for forgiveness for the things that i did not learn and as a student i appreciate the time and effort you put forth to make my experince in your class a little better and less  stressfull


What I did to get the persistently mendacious off my back, at least momentarily—and some were like veritable pit bulls of persistence—, was to have them write emails explaining why they thought they deserved the particular grade they wanted.  That way, they were no longer in my face jabbering away at me, wasting my time, but rather quietly composing sentences. 

 

A certain number of my students did not have the textbook, nor did they even attempt to get one.  Sometimes it was a matter of finances.  Yet if students could not afford the course book, they ought to have gotten a part-time job to buy one.  But that’s probably a politically-incorrect statement.  If students were having severe family problems, they ought to have taken time off from the university.  Ah, but that’s another politically-incorrect statement; besides, the university depends on maximum student enrollment to obtain maximum federal funding!  So, indeed, there is a conflict of interest:  money vs. truth.

 

It seems that somewhere along the line students have been taught (the business ethic?) that a valid excuse means they should be excused from covering the course material and be permitted to pass the course… because the “tried,” even if they didn’t.    
Dr.Slone
I [XX]  was unable to prepare for my oral presentation because I had surgery. Also my dad is very ill he had a liver transplant and a open heart surgery. So do to these problems I was required to be at home for along period of time. Then last week I had to return back home because my dad had a real bad diabetic seizure. I apologize for the incoveince.Furthermore, I am a senior graduating and hopefully I will be able to receive a passing grade. Thanks for your time and generosity.  

 

If students were graduating seniors, they (not all of them) made it a point to impress upon me that I did not somehow have the right to fail them in the course.  Where did that rule come from?  Was it in the student handbook?  Were instructors generally complicit?  One graduating senior could not conjugate the simplest of verbs and received an F on each exam (and I was certainly not a tough instructor).  How had she managed to become a senior, let alone a graduating one?  And, of course, I was the bad guy, the guilty one, because I actually had the nerve to flunk her, whereas her other professors had passed her on.  Never would it occur to the student that she might have been the guilty one, the one who failed to learn the material. 

 

Another student implored me to change her grade from D to B because, otherwise, she would lose her scholarship.  Again, I was the guilty one, the bad guy.  Others informed me of similar potential “problems.” 


I am writing you in reference to the discussion we had following my final exam today. I understand that I am probably in no position to bargain regarding my grade in your class, but I am concerned about my standing at the university. When I came to Grambling, I was admitted on a probationary basis. After a few semesters, I was able to achieve good academic standing. After last semester, I received a SAP alert letter, and I have been struggling with my classes this semester. All I ask is the chance to continue my path into this last stretch of my collegiate career.  I hope to speak to you about this matter, [xx]

 

When students asked questions, 99% of the time the questions concerned grades, not the subject matter.  How disheartening!  Most did not seem like they gave a damn about what they were supposed to be learning.  All that mattered was grades… grades, grades, and grades!  How did they ever end up so obsessed? 

 

Clearly, it was indicative of the very direction of our society.  Grades and diplomas seemed to count more in America today, than knowledge, the ability to think critically and individually, and the courage to stand up and speak the rude truth, especially when one was encouraged not to.  That had become our America.  Unfortunately, the university (the professors and deans) seemed to be encouraging that direction, as opposed to discouraging it.  Indeed, most universities sought to be just like all the other universities and to follow the tie-and-jacket business model of growth, growth, and more growth—and to hell with ethics and truth!  Most also seemed bent on keeping the children, children— insisting on attendance and excuses.  If an adult student did not want to come to class, why force him or her to do so?  Unlike high school, the university was not obligatory.  But, again, it was all about money.  Attendance assured federal funding, which assured growth, growth, and more growth.

 
Dr. Slone,
First, I want to thank you for the opportunity to be in your class this semester. You added me on after the class was full, and I told you I was not giong to be one of those graduating seniors who did not attend class and try my best on the test. I have attended all class sessions except when I attended my doctoral orientation at the Univeristy of Iowa. Although I have recieved B's on all of my test thus far and my oral presentation, I believe my willingness to redo my oral presentation and my classroom participation has shown my thirst for an "A". I will recieve an "A" on the final and that should boost my grade to the "A" that I want oh so bad. Thanks for the consideration.  Sincerely, [XXX]


Finally, my experiences as instructor have largely been at third-tier institutions of higher education.  Perhaps things are better higher up.  Hopefully, they are.  The emphasis of educationists on self-esteem building has sadly rendered many students, at least in third-tier institutions, entirely incapable of effecting reality checks.  In fact, one must wonder why third-tier institutions exist in the first place.  They should probably be replaced with business-training, sport, and social-interaction institutions.  To call them universities or colleges is a misnomer.  Sure, all the trappings are present—the black robes, the sports brouhaha, the Dr. titles, the power hierarchy, the pomp and circumstance, the expensive computers and paraphernalia—, but they are not universities and colleges.  How could they be when so many of those attending them can’t write a sentence without making an error?  As a foreign language professor, I’ve told students that, for example, on every test they’d take in my class, they’d be asked to conjugate the verb “estar.”  Amazingly, 2/3 of my students would not be able to conjugate that verb even on the final exam!  Aren’t professors and deans doing students a grave disservice by handing those students university and college diplomas?  Perhaps the professors and deans are more interested in their own careers than in those students…

 

4.  In Search of Veritas

Critical dissent is acceptable—if it is left at home.  My advice is—leave it at home.  Keep it under the bed.  With the piss pot. […] Let me make myself quite clear.  We need critical dissent because it keeps us on our toes.  But we don’t want to see it in the marketplace or on the avenues and piazzas of our great cities.  We don’t want to see it manifested in the houses of our great institutions [i.e., universities!!!].  We are happy for it to remain at home, which means we can pop in at any time and read what is kept under the bed, discuss it with the writer, pat him on the head, shake him by his hand, give him perhaps a minor kick up the arse or in the balls, and set fire to the whole shebang.  By this method we keep our society free from infection.  There is of course, however, always room for confession, retraction, and redemption.
            —Minister [of Culture], from Press Conference, Harold Pinter, Nobel laureate

 

How not to agree with the African Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka:  “The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism” and, especially, “criticism, like charity, starts at home.”  Yet how many professors would dare submit an article to the Gramblinite critical of Grambling State?  Instead, professors will opine on Bush policy or on whatever else might be risk-free to their careers.  In general, professors throughout America dare not heed Soyinka with regards criticism.  For the most part, they have become careerists, as opposed to parrhesiastic truth tellers.  For the sake of democracy, their self-imposed, freedom-restricting taboo of criticizing the hand that feeds needs to be broken.     
            Recently, I’d incensed a Grambling State English professor because I’d had the audacity to express an opinion he evidently did not share.  He’d informed me and others of his intent to put together a newsletter to highlight the “important things that are done in the College of Arts and Sciences,” which is fine… but I wrote that higher education seems to have become an institution for self-vaunting and, especially, self-censoring.  What about veritas, its supposed mission… or has that mission been replaced by image enhancement and distortion?  In the name of freedom of speech and expression, I suggested he include a “tiny” space in the proposed newsletter for controversial, hardcore critique of Grambling State.  His furious indignation, as I like to term the rather typical reaction of college professors and administrators when criticized, pushed him to respond and oddly list his college degrees.  Yet I’d never questioned his qualifications at all. 
            In any case, if we do not look at Grambling State with a critical eye, we simply cannot expect to improve it. Sure, we can always pump tons of taxpayer money into it, but does that really improve it, does that make professors more courageous, does that enhance truth telling, does that diminish the iron grip of orthodoxy and indoctrination?  For the sake of democracy, Grambling State, like all such institutions of higher learning, needs to be improved (and not simply with regards the physical plant) or it will continue deviating from its fundamental raison d’etre of veritas and consolidating into a corporate training institution? 
            On another note and certainly the most risky subject a Grambling State professor could evoke, I was quite astonished last year to observe the religious prayers at university faculty and student events.  In fact, I submitted a cartoon with that regard in response to the Gramblinite’s request for opinions on the great Danish cartoon controversy, but it was never published (censorship?).  Is Grambling State not a public institution and part of the state-university system?  What about those citizens whose religions do not include Jesus as their savior?  And what about citizen non-believers?  Don’t they have rights in a public institution in America?  Why should they have to be subjected to religious prayer at meetings they are contractually required to attend?  Is this not a constitutional issue, one that Grambling State professors have simply chosen to ignore in order to avoid making waves?  Yet shouldn’t they be doing just that… making waves?  Sure there is the HBCU tradition of religion, but theoretically was that not given up in exchange for ample public monies?  Is there a special provision in the Constitution of the United States that excuses public HBCUs from enforcing the separation of church and state stipulation?  If so, please excuse me for writing this article.  If not, this article is requisite. 
            Will I be demonized for evoking these issues?  Will I lose my job for daring to express my opinion in the public arena of a public institution?  Hopefully, this article might provoke other professors to step out of the conformist mold and actually, now and then, “go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways” (Ralph Waldo Emerson).  Last year, I’d written several critical essays also published in the Gramblinite, yet only one professor and one student responded.  But that’s a start.  Optimistically, this essay will not provoke the gut reaction of furious indignation, the ole America (Grambling State), Love It or Leave It refrain.  Whether or not I enjoy teaching at Grambling State is of course immaterial to the opinions expressed here.

 

5.  How to Muzzle the Student Newspaper

Grambling State University

6.  A Violent Assault… and Some Consequent, Perhaps “Offensive” Thought

Grambling State University Mugging

 

7.  Higher Education, Big Business, and the Failing American Democracy

(Or Why Professors Should Be Less Concerned with Collegiality, the Alumni Association,
and Job Security, While Much More Concerned with Truth and Democracy)
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side. […] The obligation of anyone who thinks of himself as responsible is to examine society and try to change it and to fight it—at no matter what risk.  This is the only hope society has.  This is the only way societies change.
            —James Baldwin


Orthodoxy means not thinking, not needing to think. 
            —George Orwell, 1984


To think is to differ.
            —Clarence Darrow

 

There was jabber in a recent issue of The Gramblinite on the fascinating European cartoon controversy.  Indeed, one of the paper’s editors called for commentary.  This op-ed and a very RISKY cartoon were submitted… to test the waters of democracy at Grambling State… but nobody responded.  I even dared criticize the editors of The Gramblinite.  But they wield the power and decided to kill my opinions.  So, I thought I’d try again.  That’s what one must do in a failing democracy.  Try, try, and try again…


John Gotto, New York City Teacher of the Year (three times!) stated “Compulsory attendance laws absolutely have to be changed.  Nothing good happens from compulsory, unless you look at your fellow human beings as inferiors or serfs or slaves.”  As a professor, I agree with Gotto.  Never have I had to spend so much time taking attendance and checking homework in classrooms than here at Grambling State.  Does such activity increase student learning?  It probably decreases it.  By treating students as if they were still in high school, can professors and administrators really be doing them any good at all? 
Higher education seems to have become anything but higher today… and by no means am I referring only to Grambling State.  There must certainly be a reason.  Does it profit students to make it lower education?  Doubtfully.  Does it profit faculty?  No doubt.  Does it profit the moneyed classes and corporate America?  No doubt!  Indeed, it implies a diminution of capacity and will to question and challenge. 


In my little department, the lack of intellectual exchange and debate is astonishing.  As a writer, thinker, and polemicist, I find it mind-numbing to be assailed on an almost daily basis by mandatory inane paperwork and jabber about the need to take attendance, correct, collect, and grade homework, verify student lab work, and, in general, to track students, as if they were children.  Why do my PhD colleagues seem so willingly accepting of this situation and, at least in one instance, even profess to enjoy it? 


Why don’t my colleagues, who like to flaunt their “Doctor” titles, actively seek intellectual debate and discourse?  Why have they proven indifferent to me as a new colleague—to things I’ve done or written or places I’ve been?  I’ve asked them questions, but they seem reluctant to respond to anything other than bureaucratic concerns.  Why do they seem so accommodating of everything and anything, never questioning or challenging, just passively licking the hand that feeds them monthly checks?  Is that what it means to be a university professor today in America?  


Higher education does not need more proud lifer company women and men with bookkeeper mentalities and apparatchik demeanors, afraid of thinking and speaking out whenever the slightest risk might be entailed—RISK to career, RISK to getting that grant, RISK of offending this one or that one, the dean, or whoever else.  Academe’s corps is already overwhelmingly staffed with the fearful.  In fact, given that reality, how can our institutions of higher learning possibly be, in the words of Professor Nasir Ahmed, “our best hope”?  Declaring it thus is nothing short of egregious backslapping and self-congratulating, an activity in which higher education sadly excels.  (Several front pages of The Gramblinite reflect the inculcation of this activity in the student body.)  Excessive self-congratulating and backslapping lead to complacency and flaccidity, and otherwise serve to create an impervious wall against serious outside critique.


How can we possibly expect professors, who dare not stand up in their own milieu to “challenge our political leaders, business leaders, intellectual leaders, and cultural leaders” (the words are Dr. Ahmed’s)?  In fact, it seems to be the business leaders, not the professors, who are calling the shots in higher education today.  Have they not been purchasing more and more professors and even entire departments?  For the sake, not of the moneyed classes or individual PhD and DEd pocketbooks, but of the moribund American democracy, higher education urgently needs more professors who actively seek debate, question, challenge, think, and otherwise try to move the citizenry… and student body to a higher level of engagement, as opposed to a higher level of orthodoxy and corporate indoctrination. 


Hopefully, this op-ed will not provoke anger or who knows what, but rather debate.  Hopefully, it will not result in grownups feeling offended, but rather in their rising above paralyzing intellectual lethargy, apathy, and bookkeeping duty.  It ought to not be interpreted as “he doesn’t like being at this institution” or as a j’accuse against the entire faculty and administrators, most of whom I don’t even know, so can hardly personally accuse of anything.  On the contrary, I have enjoyed the diverse exchanges with my students this past semester and would definitely like to return to Grambling State next year and have officially submitted an application, BUT I shall not compromise my duty to speak out against the tsunami of inanity inundating higher education both here and elsewhere today.


As an untenured professor, I am well aware that speaking out in academe usually ends up in losing ones job even at a public institution held to the articles of the Constitution of the United States of America; in particular, the First Amendment.  Nevertheless, how could I possibly compromise that duty when having discussed with my French students the following quote by Emile Zola:  “Mon devoir est de parler, je ne veux pas être complice.”  [My duty is to speak out; I do not want to be an accomplice.] 


Finally, this op-ed should be interpreted as a plea for less academic bureaucracy and for professors to behave less like automaton functionaries with minds concentrated on petty details.  (e.g., Recently, I was requested to remove my office-hour sign, which had the new hours hand written, and replace it with a typed one, though reminded money was not available to buy new ink cartridges.)  It is a plea for professors to act more like thinking human beings with minds wide open to inquiry and hearts with the courage to speak out against stifling bureaucracy.  Sure, BIG BUSINESS NEEDS YOU NOW!  But DEMOCRACY NEEDS YOU A LOT MORE… or it will become Big Business… if it hasn’t already!


For more on the thoughts presented here, you might wish to visit the website of The American Dissident (www.theamericandissident.org), a semiannual literary journal of critical thinking, founded in 1998.  If you find something false on the site, bring it to my attention, since I am the journal’s founding editor.  No doubt, you will find offensive thoughts, especially if this letter has offended you.  But offensive does not by any means signify false.  The American Dissident does publish poetry, but only poetry that burns and has something visceral, something truthful, and something risky to say.  We do not publish self-serving congratulations, but only letters critical of the journal.  Grambling State students are certainly encouraged to submit poems and short essays.  Guidelines are on the site.  Thank you for your attention. 
..............................................................
*Apparatchik is a Soviet term for bureaucrat.
 
8.  A Fundamental Value of American Democracy
Expressing Ones Opinion… Openly and Proudly
It would be a great service to students if it was explained to them when they begin college that, although politeness may be nice, it is of miniscule importance as compared to robust discussion. As we often joke, being offended is what happens when you have your deepest beliefs challenged, and if you make it through college without being offended, you should ask for your money back.
            —Greg Lukianoff, Constitutional lawyer and President of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education

 

Unfortunately, most university students are either entirely unaware or simply indifferent that expressing ones opinion openly constitutes the cornerstone of any thriving democracy.  After all, it seems most university professors are equally unaware of that simple fact.  Most students and professors, instead, are fully aware that the unspoken policy of most, if not all, universities is that it is best not to speak a truth if doing so might offend somebody in some way.  Students have either never been taught or have simply been encouraged to forget the old nursery-school adage:  “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names [i.e., words] will never harm me.”  Today, the university, by example, wrongly teaches its students that names will harm them.  It teaches them not to toughen up, but rather to complain if somebody says something they don’t like.  Professors themselves will complain if somebody says something they don’t like. 

 

To openly express an opinion, no matter what it may be, in The Gramblinite, for example, is to exercise a fundamental right accorded each and every American citizen.  Some time ago, one of my departmental colleagues sneered at me, noting my article in The Gramblinite, and said, “so, you write that kind of thing?”  Any truth exposed in public is apt to offend somebody, especially those without the courage to utter it!  Perhaps this is why most professors keep their mouths shut. 

 

As for my various guest editorials, besides the one who sneered, another colleague actually praised me in an email, while another in person.  But that was all I ever heard from colleagues.  Apparently, “robust discussion” does not form part of professorial agendas.  Just the same, I can well imagine the names I’ve probably been called behind my back by others—egotist, fool, who knows what?  And who cares, right?

 

As for students, a handful commented. “Dr. Slone, you’re crazy,” said one of them in my office, but in a nice way.  Oddly, he didn’t think my ideas crazy at all.  Several others said the very same thing… in a nice way.  Being called “crazy” in this society would seem to be a compliment, not an insult.  Nevertheless, the very implication of their conclusions as to my sanity is somewhat frightening because it is indicative of the state of higher education today, and even more so of our democracy.  More than anything else, higher education should be about free and open expression and vigorous debate, yet it seems to have become anything but that… and students are well aware of it.   

 

“You’ve got balls, Dr. Slone,” said another student, meaning it as a compliment.  But why must it take courage to speak out in America and even more so at a public university?  After all, this is not the Soviet Union where for speaking out a citizen could have been executed or sent to a hard-labor gulag starvation prison camp for a decade or two.  The Russian poet Osip Mandelstam wrote a poem critical of Stalin.  He was sent to a camp, then to another, eventually dying in transit.  He was buried in an unmarked grave.   

 

Professors, like poets, know precisely what they should not talk about in public, that is, if they want to “succeed.”  Of course, their hoped for “success” is really nothing but failure in disguise—a Faustian deal.  Indeed, what we do as professors is make a Faustian deal.  We sell out truth and freedom; that is freedom to speak our minds openly, for job security.  We sell out democracy itself for future promotions.  We sell out our very honor and integrity as human beings for future pension, health benefits, and even emeritus designation.  Today, it has become common behavior that professors do not normally express their opinions in public, unless of course what they have to say will in no way risk their careers—criticizing Bush, for example. 

The harsh question must therefore be posed:  Are professors exceptional role models for student-citizens of a democracy or rather for student-citizens of an autocracy, even a thinly-disguised one?
 
9.  A Pretense of Objectivity—Outstanding Teaching
The metrics that will be used to determine outstanding teaching will involve student evaluations, student performance, and peer reviews.
            —Faculty Awards Program brochure, Grambling State University

 

Corruption in higher education is ubiquitous and rampant. Why do so many professors lie down and simply accept it?  Many books have been written about it, including The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America’s Campuses by Kors and Silvergate, The Goose-Step: Study of American Education by Upton Sinclair, The Graves of Academe by Richard Mitchell, How Teachers Colleges Have Destroyed Education in America: Education’s Smoking Gun by Reginald Damerell, Imposters in the Temple by Martin Anderson, Poisoning the Ivy by Michael Lewis, The Fall of the Ivory Tower by George Roche, Inside American Education by Thomas Sowell, Scaling the Ivory Tower by Lionel Lewis, Profscam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education and The Hollow Men: Politics and Corruption in Higher Education by Charles J. Sykes, and University INC.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education by Jennifer Washburn. 


Professors, who are supposed to be intellectually curious, should read these books.  But how many have?  How many will?  Corruption—not necessarily monetary, but intellectual—has become higher education’s very modus operandi… and because of it democracy suffers.  Most professors seem to accept what is fed them without even questioning and challenging it… because they profit from it.  Indeed, corruption pays their salaries and provides them with life-time job security and health benefits, that is, if they “behave” (i.e., keep their mouths shut)—so why should they question and challenge it?  Sure, some do, but they are far and few and when they do, they often find themselves without a job, blackballed, or at best ostracized.  Thus is the academic culture, which is not really all that different from the corporate culture. 


The concept of good teaching is an example of intellectual corruption in higher education because it is purposefully vague.  For decades, the main criterium for determining teaching excellence has been student evaluations, which more often than not reflect an instructor’s likeability and personality, not his or her teaching excellence.  Administrators favor this criterium because it gives them power, power to keep those they like and power to get rid of those they dislike.  In other words, if an administrator doesn’t like an instructor (e.g., someone who has been outspoken and critical), but who has good student evaluations, he or she will simply ignore those evaluations and find another reason to get rid of the instructor.  If an administrator likes a professor, who has poor student evaluations, he or she will simply find other reasons for retaining that instructor.  Tenured professors, who receive poor student evaluations, will tend to dismiss this criterium as a joke, while those who receive good ones will tend to argue the contrary.  By the way, if student evaluations do in fact determine good teaching, how does one explain the tenuring of professors who receive poor ones? 


Student performance, cited by GSU administrators (and professors), is yet another vacuous criterium for determining excellence in teaching.  Performance is very difficult to determine and in most cases is simply not determined.  To evaluate the performance of students in Spanish 101, for example, would require a thorough test of student abilities and knowledge prior to their taking the course.  At Grambling State and probably most other institutions of higher learning, this is simply not done.  Thus, if a student receives an A in the course, there is no way to determine if that was the result of an excellent teacher, an easy teacher, or simply prior knowledge.  The student-performance parameter evidently exists to help give the impression that the evaluation procedure is objective, when in fact it is anything but.  

 

As for peer reviews, the third criterion cited in the Faculty Awards Program brochure, they also tend to be highly subjective.  For example, a department chairperson will tend to like an instructor who does not question and challenge the status quo and dislike an instructor who does.  Likeability is the key factor involved in peer reviews just as it is in student reviews, not excellent teaching.  In fact, excellent teaching (e.g., likeability on the part of students) will probably provoke jealousy among peers, who might then write mediocre evaluations.  On another note, instructors and administrators have become increasingly indoctrinated in the do-not offend liberal orthodoxy of the day.  So how can we trust them to offend, that is, criticize a colleague with regards teaching?  The logic is there.  Indoctrination kills logic and logic is not what rules in higher education.  Instead, vacuous terminology, fluff methodology, and fraudulent procedures tend to rule.  Given the lack of objectivity in the evaluation criteria for excellent teaching, it would certainly not be surprising to hear a graduating senior with limited reading and writing ability declare his or her writing instructor excellent. 


What therefore constitutes excellent teaching, if not positive student evaluations, student performance, and peer reviews?  “Well, you’ll know it when you see it,” was the answer I received a decade ago from a hostile chairperson at another institution of so-called higher learning.  In other words, he would make that determination subjectively.  Sadly, his is probably the same de facto definition employed today by the large majority of higher education evaluators.  In the absence of objective criteria, designating excellent instructors is akin to designating the university’s annual beauty queen.  These things said, the biggest problem confronting higher education is not really the lack of objectivity in the criteria for teaching excellence, but rather the rampant in-breeding (via networking) and proliferation of fit-in, collegial, yes-men and yes-women instructors, not apt to question, challenge, stir things up, and otherwise embarrass their superiors and disturb the comfortable and profitable status quo.  Recall the silence of professors in Germany during the rise of Nazism and in America during that of McCarthyism.

...................................................................
10.  Other GSU News of Interest That Might End up Buried in the Oubliettes

GRAMBLING, La. —  Officials at Grambling State University were meeting Monday after the school newspaper ran photographs of adults at a campus-run elementary school putting a noose around at least one child's neck.

Kindergarten and first-grade students at Alma J. Brown Elementary School were being taught why nooses are a symbol of racism, an article from the historically black university's student newspaper said.
The article said the children also were being taught about the "Jena Six" — black high-school students who are accused of beating a white schoolmate. Court proceedings brought about 20,000 to 25,000 people to Jena, about 70 miles from Grambling, for a civil rights march in September.
A press release posted on the Gramblinite's Web site said three photographs from the event were removed after a staff conference call. Ten others were re-posted to the site Monday after the university's president ordered the removal of all the photos and the story over the weekend, according to the Gramblinite press release.
"The Gramblinite only did what our motto stands for: 'We don't make the news; we report it,'" said De'Eric M. Henry, the paper's editor in chief. "We do not approve of censorship or prior review, and we stand by our editorial decision to inform the students of Grambling State University of news events that effect them on campus, in the community and everywhere."
The Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have said the charges were too heavy for the actions and that three white students who were suspended after hanging nooses from a tree on the school campus three months earlier should have been expelled and prosecuted.
The date of the Grambling incident was not clear and the photos that showed nooses had been removed from the site.
University President Horace Judson said he ordered photos removed from the Web site as soon as his secretary called him Friday to describe them. At the time, he said, he was driving to Dallas for Saturday's football game against Prairie View.
Judson told The News Star of Monroe and the Ruston Daily Leader on Friday that he was starting an investigating immediately, and would meet Monday morning with everyone involved.
It is at least the second time this year The Gramblinite has tangled with school administrators.
Provost Robert Dixon ordered the newspaper on Jan. 17 to stop publication, a move criticized as censorship by alumni, the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Va. and Gramblinite editor Darryl Smith. He accused Dixon of trying to block editorials criticizing the school's maintenance and suggesting the state was trying to shut down the university.
Eight days later, Dixon said the newspaper had provided a satisfactory plan to end what he said was shoddy editing and plagiarism, and the paper could resume publication the following week.
The brief Gramblinite article about the elementary schoolyard "march" said teachers "even had a replica noose and explained why it is such a symbol of racism," but did not mention that the noose was put around anyone's neck. That was shown in photographs, which The News Star of Monroe obtained by e-mail and e-mailed with the article to The Associated Press.
The Daily Leader, which does not have a Saturday edition, also published an article about the incident online Saturday, saying it was not using Grambling photographs because of copyright considerations and to protect the child's privacy.
It said the student paper sent it copies of pictures and the article Friday morning, but later asked it not to use the photographs removed from the Web site.
One shows a young girl in a school uniform being held up by a woman while someone else, mostly hidden by a tree, holds a noose around her neck and up to a branch.
The article said kindergarten and first-grade students circled their playground with their teachers as a "march" to protest "the imprisonment of Mychal Bell, and the seemingly racial bias shown toward blacks in a small Louisiana town."
Judson said Sean Warner, dean of the College of Education, has spoken with the principal of the elementary school about the incident.
"This is very serious. I will say that," Judson told The News Star. "I'll have a face-to-face meeting with everyone involved. We're going to find out what the facts are. At this point I don't know if my students were involved.
"These are minors at our school and this is a student paper that still must practice complete accountability," he said.
Given the nature of the situation, Judson said, "it was certainly my judgment to take those pictures down."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Teachers’ actions under scrutiny
Alma J. Brown school draws attention for racism lesson
Nick Todaro, Reporter
09-30-2007

A teacher-organized exercise last week at Alma J. Brown Elementary School during school hours has come under scrutiny for actions that involve kindergarten and first grade students.

Alma J. Brown is a laboratory school on the campus of Grambling State University, operated under the auspices of the College of Education at GSU.

Student journalist Justin LaGrande reported in the Thursday edition of The Gramblinite, GSU’s student newspaper, that teachers led kindergartners and first-graders in a classroom lesson that taught students about racism and the Jena 6 case. After they made signs they then marched around the school playground.

Several photos of the event posted on The Gramblinite’s Web site, www.thegramblinite.com, taken by staff photographer Terrance Stokes, showed a woman holding a little girl around the waist off the ground near a tree. The young child, wearing pigtails and her school uniform, has a rope noose around her neck. A second woman is holding the rope up to a limb of the tree while a crowd of the young girl’s classmates looks on.

The Gramblinite’s Web site included a comment from a person who posted under the name “RT” that read: “I was about to commend the staff on educating our kids about the injustice that is currently taking place in Jena. But am I trippin or is that a rope around that little girls neck on pics 11-13? Please correct me if I’m wrong.”

A post from a person identified as “Irene B.” responded to the question.
“Yes, it was a rope around the little girl’s neck,” the comment stated. “It was a (safe) demonstration as to what the rope symbolized to blacks. This was my granddaughter and she along with so many of the other students did not understand the intimidation of the noose. I held her in my arms and she knows that I would not harm her or put her life in danger. In order to understand racism one must experience it to make the connection.”

Other pictures showed students, dressed in their yellow and green uniforms, standing outside holding signs with messages like “AJB Wants Jena 6 Free” and carrying heavy chains and shackles.

GSU President Horace Judson, contacted while on the road to Dallas on Friday, said that the actions captured in the photographs were totally unacceptable.
“I’ve ordered the pictures be taken down off the site immediately,” Judson said. “We need to find out how this happened. We’re going to decide what further action needs to be taken. I don’t want to prejudge it, but this is very serious. Someone will need to be responsible and accountable for what happened.”

Judson said he will meet with the involved parties at 8 a.m. Monday.
The Daily Leader contacted The Gramblinite newsroom and requested the story and photos, which were e-mailed Friday morning. At about 3:45 p.m., the photos were pulled from The Gramblinite’s Web site. Around 4 p.m., The Gramblinite called to request the Daily Leader not publish the photographs that involved nooses and chains.

Judson said parents had not yet been contacted Friday afternoon, but plans to do so were forthcoming.

“I haven’t at this point, we’re trying to get all the names,” he said. “We want to make sure we’ve got the correct information.”

 

Teachers’ actions under scrutiny
Alma J. Brown school draws attention for racism lesson
Nick Todaro, Reporter
09-29-2007

Editor’s note: The Daily Leader has chosen not to publish the photographs from the incident referred to in the story below because of their graphic nature and to protect the identities of the children involved.

A teacher-organized exercise last week at Alma J. Brown Elementary School during school hours has come under scrutiny for actions that involve kindergarten and first grade students.

Alma J. Brown is a laboratory school on the campus of Grambling State University, operated under the auspices of the College of Education at GSU.

Student journalist Justin LaGrande reported in the Thursday edition of The Gramblinite, GSU’s student newspaper, that teachers led kindergartners and first-graders in a classroom lesson that taught students about racism and the Jena 6 case. After they made signs they then marched around the school playground.


Several photos of the event posted on The Gramblinite’s Web site, www.thegramblinite.com, taken by staff photographer Terrance Stokes, showed a woman holding a little girl around the waist off the ground near a tree. The young child, wearing pigtails and her school uniform, has a rope noose around her neck. A second woman is holding the rope up to a limb of the tree while a crowd of the young girl’s classmates looks on.

The Gramblinite’s Web site included a comment from a person who posted under the name “RT” that read: “I was about to commend the staff on educating our kids about the injustice that is currently taking place in Jena. But am I trippin or is that a rope around that little girls neck on pics 11-13? Please correct me if I’m wrong.”

A post from a person identified as “Irene B.” responded to the question.

“Yes, it was a rope around the little girl’s neck,” the comment stated. “It was a (safe) demonstration as to what the rope symbolized to blacks. This was my granddaughter and she along with so many of the other students did not understand the intimidation of the noose. I held her in my arms and she knows that I would not harm her or put her life in danger. In order to understand racism one must experience it to make the connection.”
Other pictures showed students, dressed in their yellow and green uniforms, standing outside holding signs with messages like “AJB Wants Jena 6 Free” and carrying heavy chains and shackles.

GSU President Horace Judson, contacted while on the road to Dallas on Friday, said that the actions captured in the photographs were totally unacceptable.

“I’ve ordered the pictures be taken down off the site immediately,” Judson said. “We need to find out how this happened. We’re going to decide what further action needs to be taken. I don’t want to prejudge it, but this is very serious. Someone will need to be responsible and accountable for what happened.”

Judson said he will meet with the involved parties at 8 a.m. Monday.

The Daily Leader contacted The Gramblinite newsroom and requested the story and photos, which were e-mailed Friday morning. At about 3:45 p.m., the photos were pulled from The Gramblinite’s Web site. Around 4 p.m., The Gramblinite called to request the Daily Leader not publish the photographs that involved nooses and chains.

Judson said parents had not yet been contacted Friday afternoon, but plans to do so were forthcoming.

“I haven’t at this point, we’re trying to get all the names,” he said. “We want to make sure we’ve got the correct information.”

 

Decision expected at GSU
President Judson gathering details of rally incident
Emily Nelson, Reporter
10-01-2007

Grambling State University officials expect to have a resolution to the situation involving Alma J. Brown Elementary lab school by the end of the day, said Ralph Wilson, director of media relations for the university.

“The president would like to have it completed by today,” Wilson said.

GSU President Horace Judson and other university officials are in an investigative meeting, which began at 7:55 a.m. today, with the Alma J. Brown teachers and principal Regina Gregory as well as staff and advisers for the university newspaper, The Gramblinite.

The situation with the elementary school stems from a rally Sept. 20 organized by kindergarten and first-grade teachers for their students in support of the so-called “Jena 6.” Students made signs and played with shackles and chains. One young girl was photographed being held up by a school employee as a teacher placed a noose around the child’s neck.

Wilson said the woman pictured holding the little girl wearing the noose is the child’s grandmother, who is an employee at the school in the kindergarten area.
The rally on the school’s playground was covered by GSU’s student newspaper, The Gramblinite, which ran a story and a picture in its Thursday edition. Other, more graphic photos were posted on the newspaper’s Web site but were removed late Friday afternoon.
The Gramblinite article stated: “The point of the exercise was to educate the campus’ youngest people about the pains of racism and the danger of ignoring it.”

“The school newspaper staff is part of the investigative process,” Wilson said.
The situation at Grambling has attracted national media attention, with CNN and other major media outlets setting up camp at the university for live coverage.
Judson said Friday that he was starting an investigation immediately, and would meet Monday morning with everyone involved.

“These are minors at our school and this is a student paper that still must practice complete accountability,” he said. It is at least the second time this year The Gramblinite has tangled with school administrators.

Provost Robert Dixon ordered the newspaper on Jan. 17 to stop publication.
Eight days later, Dixon said the newspaper had provided a satisfactory plan to end what he said was shoddy editing and plagiarism, and the paper could resume publication the following week.

The Daily Leader, which does not have a Saturday edition, also published an article about the incident online Saturday, saying it was not using Grambling photographs because of the graphic nature of the photograph and to protect the child’s privacy.

 

Op-Ed in News-Star