A Tempest in a Teapot Is a Tempest No Less – Part 2

“Hi Aronsonians,  I am forwarding a note from Gregg Morris, who teaches journalism at Hunter and who has raised concerns about the Aronson student undergraduate prize. Separating his concerns from how he states them would be a good thing. Most Film and Media dept. faculty know that Gregg can raise issues in ways that are contentious.”  [– Blanca Vasquez, Adjunct Instructor]

So, what’s the skinny on this teapot?

Answer: A microcosmic footnote in D:F/M’s sprawling brawl which can best be visualized in several complaints filed with the Hunter College Ombudsman office. And from several complaints filed with the Hunter College Senate. Even more in a myriad of posts on Hunter-L, the College Listserv. And numerous memos to the department – numerous – including those surreptitiously leaked.

Regarding the latter, I wrote this memo a while back, and the department chair leaked it to a dean who wrote me a letter demanding that I participate in an investigation (tantamount to an inquisition) of several colleagues. The chair had been hoping I would get into some kind of trouble for the manner in which I described some D:F/M debauchery – there had been previous leaks – but the plan ricocheted. Backfired/ Careened and boomeranged and flip-flopped and then flop-flipped, threatening to draw into sniper scopes of embarrassing scrutiny, not me but several colleagues with influence.

I, however, told the dean it wasn’t in my best interests to drop dimes on the debauched. I mean, I wanted to but not the way the dean wanted me to.

And there’s the smattering here and there of this and that, like that with the New York Civil Liberties Union and those requests for tactical support from the National Writers Union and PEN and the PSC others and others and others, amounting to a byzantine paper trail, beyond normal academic imagination, unlike any ever developed at Hunter College or City University of New York or … anywhere. Of near cosmic proportions. Whew.

So much for the rehash. On with the latest deconstruct.

Journalism Faculty,
Please post to your students and encourage applications! There is a $200
award to two student winners We are also posting on student sites and
Hunter-L.

Thanks,
Blanca

That announcement with an attachment was sent to three full-time faculty members teaching journalism writing classes and four part-time instructors, unwittingly creating an opportunity for a discussion about the discombobulation in the D:F/M journalism effort. I had issues I wanted to air, actually, to reiterate, and the microcosmic promise of this attachment was too much too ignore.

So, I replied.

And then Blanca did her thing.

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End, Part II of VI

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