A version of the following was posted on the Hunter College listerv know as Hunter-L. It’s about the most recent episode in the longest running scandal at Hunter College (if not City University of New York).
![[Revised D:F/M Logo in the Works.]](https://blog.hunterword.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/usual-suspects.jpg)
[Revised D:F/M Logo in the Works.]
Attention Hunter Administration
It has come to my attention that a Colleague is on a designated mission encouraging students and former students to provide scandalous scuttlebutt to the D:F/M Chair and a D:F/M staffer about a tenured D:F/M Colleague. They in turn are to pass the info onto The Hunter Administration. A diabolical witch hunt of a tenured professor – me? Egad!
An attached jpg file, part of file info passed on to me, seems to be an incriminating smoking gun ever there was one. Rest of narrative is in attached word file.
Best,
Gregg Morris
D:F/MGregg Morris, editor, the WORD & this site.
Colleague Billy D. Herman, as revealed in the attached jpg, “have you ever taken any of his classes … can you wrangle others?” More: “… whatever you’d like to say in writing to the administration is greatly appreciated. Send to Prof. Jay Roman … cc Tina Turner.”
Wrangle others?-!!! Greatly appreciated?-!!!
To think that more than 10 years ago, Colleagues in cahoots with the Student Liberation Action Movement, tried to take control of the WORD, to coerce its editor, their colleague, to publish articles of their choosing – as told to this Colleague in his office by Colleague Tami Gold – in the publication primarily used by the instructor to teach journalism. Part of that nefarious plan called for humiliating the Colleague so much at a faculty meeting that he would surrender editorial control.
The plan of long ago was ignominiously shot down when the targeted Colleague, to the surprise of Colleagues at that faculty meeting – those involved in the plot and those ready to go along with it – sprung Plan XYZ.
Nevertheless, that ignominious setting precipitated the longest running academic scandal at Hunter if not City University of New York as Colleagues and some staff sprung their own plans, which took the forms of classroom, class and office invasions and interruptions with some Colleagues’ insulting female students in classes and the office of the instructor (in that weird male behavior that can be seen in very bad macho B-movies); grade, grade appeal scandals at an unprecedented degree; and, of course, multiple altercations of a serious nature.
It was a colossal, almost never ending reign of vilification and vituperation as well as sundry Academic Freedom and Academic Integrity violations with overtones of race, racism, bigotry* of an unparalleled level on this campus with its problems with Academic Freedom and Academic Integrity, accusations of a climate of fear and bullying. [Hunter has this rep for being a liberal campus {because of its ethnically and culturally diverse student body}. But underneath that image, in that nether region of administrators and faculty, it’s quite different. Anyone who’s seen David Lynch’s BLUE VELVET can easily understand that statement.]
May be the longest running scandal of any college in metropolitan NYC? The eastern seaboard? Egad!
Now comes this: A headhunt by the 17th floor? Because of the Moveon.org petition to make workplace bullying illegal? [Anyone reading this memo can sign here: http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/make-nys-healthy-workplace?source=c.em.cp&r_by=7603820 ] Because of the record number of grade appeals? The complaint filed against Dean Rose? All those other complaints against all those other campus denizens?
As I wrote my Colleagues in a memo a few days ago, using or try to exploit the angst of students and alumni/alumnae for agendas that have nothing to do with learning and teaching can result in a double-edge sword. A nasty exchange with the former Ruth and Harold Newman Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Erec R. Koch (now Baruch’s Associate Provost for Academic Administration and Faculty Development) is a good example.
Here is the short version. The instructor and the former Dean crossed swords over a former student with a penchant for distorting the truth. As a student, her distortions were tolerated as an eccentricity because they didn’t seem to compromise her class performance and academic ethics. But as an alumna, she was rebuked for engaging in deceit on a Facebook page this instructor had been experimenting with for his classes, and her posting privileges were revoked. She wrote President Raab that she was an alumna who had been dissed. Dean Koch contacted the instructor in a surly letter which included an insulting comment about the instructor being on a mission to dis alumnae, alumni.
Dean Koch was told that he and President Raab and Dean Rose and Chair Jay Roman had been snookered. The Yahoo News Service reporter who wrote a related story was also contacted and told that she had been snookered and that she should learn to do some fact checking. Other Internet news mills were contacted and told that they were snookered. Possibly one of the biggest snookering incidents on this campus if not at CUNY.
Will the Billy D. Herman Chapter get more play than the “Hit me … hit me” scandal of a while back? Than the alleged most incredulous snookering incident ever to be connected to this campus? Will wonders ever cease? Egad!
Best,
Gregg Morris
D:F/M*According to several attorney consultations and legal research, it’s the kind of institutionalized racism and bigotry that can’t be addressed with employment discrimination laws on the books. Racists, bigots coddled by the law? Egad!
End Part 1.
Tags: Academic Bullying, Andrew Lund, Arnold Gibbons, Barbara Bowen, Bernard Stein, Billy d Herman, campus bullying, Carolyn Kane, Christa Davis Acampora, Eija Ayravainen, Greggory w Morris, Gustavo Mercado, Hunter College, HUnter College Faculty Delegate Assembly, Hunter College Ombuds Office, Hunter College Senate, Hunter College Senate Chair, Hunter Faculty Delegate Assembly, Hunter FDA, Isabel c Pinedo, Ivone Margulies, James B. Milliken, James Roman, Jennifer Raab, Joe McElhaney, Joel Zuker, Karen Hunter, Kelly Anderson, Larry Shore, Martin Lucas, Mick Hurbis-Cherrier, New York Healthy Workplace Advocates, New York State Assembly, New York State Senate, Peter Jackson, Peter Parisi, Professional Staff Congress, Ricardo Miranda, Robert Stanley, Shanti k Thakur, Steve Gorelick, Stuart Ewen, Tami Gold, The NYS Healthy Workplace Bill, Timothy Portlock, Tony Doyle, Vita C. Rabinowitz, workplace bullying