Thanks for this post. All things considered, I think Beth wrote a pretty straightforward story and I appreciate that. I do question the idea that we rarely do anything good that is newsworthy. I have a laundry list of dozens of stories me and my colleagues shared with reporters this year that weren’t picked up. No doubt competing interests and precious little time play a big role in any reporter’s inability to respond but I think one sad factor is that it is presumed by business people in the world of journalism that good news doesn’t sell papers the way bad news does — especially for a publication like Willamette Week which has a certain bent.

Jodi Heintz — director of public relations @ LC

Kaz was here through (I think) 2002, before going home to hawaii — in addition to having an ubiquitous name, he rocked the Gaming Society and (I think) Ultimate.

The ur-bon-tray-name-guy seems to be Paul Barney, a long-ago RA, who’s name-on-trays eventually became so far flung that travelers would find it on the seat-back-trays of airplanes that had flown out of PDX… …after Paul Barney’s death, his family set up a award fund, which goes to a senior each year (its one of those senior awards, as memory serves) — part of the award is a metal serving-style tray, with the recipient’s name etched into it.

Other notable LC types would include “The Reverend” (as one Jeff Crowl was known during his time here).

This is an excellent post, I look forward to seeing what other people come up with!

What’s missing from this overall discussion, is some context and some critical thinking (liberal arts degrees anyone?). One only has to look at the Watzek Library Archives to view pictures of the Frank Manor Estate before the construction of Stewart, Odell, Akin, Pamplin, Watzek, Howard, Copeland, etc. to discover that OMG! this campus used to be covered with Douglas Fir trees! To the extent that most sunny days were not that sunny- it was actually a pretty dark place up here. Now I don’t have anything against students standing up for trees, but please have some sense of context and history. Without tree cutters coming before you, you wouldn’t have that dorm room, or that class room, or that beautiful library you have today.

Additionally, the administration does make some good decisions. I was a student when the glade or grassy knoll was a parking lot. It was the most sought after parking on campus. There were a few trees that had to come down – but at the same time there was a lot of asphalt that was torn up and a whole street (like the existing one from campus safety to Watzek) was taken out and replaced with….oxygen producing plant life.

All of the info cited here was easily found in the archives. I have no doubt that the administration will be planting at least 3 trees to replace the ones being cut down, granted they aren’t old growth, but you’ve gotta start somewhere. Protest and send emails to administrators if you like- by all means, your free to do so.

I for one, am glad to have the beautiful space being added to campus that future students can use to meditate, pray, dance, sing, and express themselves. And I am grateful that this College has benefactors who have the means and vision to provide such a space.

————————————————————————————————————

HATE AND BIAS **MOTIVATED** INCIDENTS
The College appreciates the complexity of defining language and actions that are not acceptable in a community
which values freedom of expression. All members of the Lewis & Clark community must be free to hold views that
others may find distressing or offensive. However, freedom of expression does not include the right to** intentionally
and maliciously** aggravate, intimidate, ridicule, or humiliate another person.
The College has a comprehensive discrimination and harassment policy (see p. 224) which articulates our
commitment to combat racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of bias. To further clarify the types of
language and behavior that are unacceptable, the U.S. Department of Justice’s definitions and examples are
offered:
“A hate crime can be generally defined as a crime which in whole or part is **motivated by the offender’s bias toward
the victim’s status**. A hate incident is an action **in which a person is made aware that her/his status is offensive** to
another, but does not rise to the level of a crime.
“Hate crimes are **intended to hurt and intimidate individuals because they are perceived to be different** with
respect to their race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, or disability. The purveyors of hate
use physical violence, verbal threats of violence, vandalism, and in some cases weapons to instill fear in their
victims, leaving them vulnerable to subsequent attacks and feeling alienated, helpless, suspicious, and fearful.
These acts of hatred can leave lasting emotional impressions upon their victims as well as entire communities.
“Federal and state reporting requirements vary in the definitions and victim categories for hate crimes. The FBI
Uniform Crime Reporting Program (28 USC §534), Campus Security Act (20 USC §1092), state, and local hate crimes
legislation list specific crimes which are identifiable as a hate crime, including murder, manslaughter, robbery,
aggravated assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft, arson, forcible and non-forcible sex offenses, intimidation,
destruction, damage or vandalism of property **in which the victim is intentionally selected because of the actual or
perceived race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or disability of the victim**.
“**When they do not fall into one of the listed criminal categories, hate offenses are referred to as bias-motivated
incidents**. These incidents may include cases of minor harassment, verbal slurs, etc.”
**Hate- and bias-related incidents are demeaning to all members of the campus community and subvert the mission**
of the College. **Any hate- or bias-motivated act is unacceptable** and will not be tolerated.

Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (aka Buckley Amendment, aka a reason I can decline to tell your parents/employers/etc. all about your life).

In short (and this is very short and very generalized, since the amount of legal discussion that goes on around FERPA has been significant), FERPA governs how colleges handle people’s “educational records” (conduct file, grades, etc.) does three things:

(1) Gives students the rights to see (“access”) their educational records

(2) Gives students the right to have the school correct (“amend”) records that are mistaken or misleading — if the school declines, everyone gets to have a hearing — good times.

(3) Requires schools to have written permission from the student to disclose/discuss protected records, most of the time.*

* Exceptions to the we-need-your-permission-to-disclose/discuss include:
–”Directory Information”: name, address, campus extension, birth date/place, honors/awards, dates of attendance.
–Schools you are trying to transfer to
–Accrediting/auditing organizations
–If the info is requested by judicial order or subpoena
–College staff/faculty with a legit educational need to know
–Appropriate personnel in case of health/safety emergency-type situations

@Nicola
To speak about the issue generically, whether or not the College can disclose that a student sent them a letter would depend on the context… If the letter was mandated (for a class, or conduct sanction, etc, etc.) then it probably counts as a protected record, and can not be disclosed w/o permission. If the letter was simply sent as non-College-business correspondence, then it probably does not count as protected. If it is somewhere in between, then it probably counts as something in between…

@Danny
So in this case “transparency loses to federal law” is largely irrelevant — the option of transparency **with the student’s permission** pretty much is Federal law… …that said, permission by way of a blog reply probably is not going to meet Fed standards, but there are plenty of offices on campus with FERPA waivers on hand, so it is possible for any student who was interested to start waiving FERPA all over the place.

…

All of that said, there is a lot of ground between what FERPA gives a college the options to do, and which options that college is actually going choose to take advantage of…
…For example, back in the day, Congress decided that FERPA should have a specific exception that *allows* a college to tell a student’s parents any and every time they have a drug/alcohol policy violation — most colleges (including LC) do not *choose* to take constant advantage of this option that was so thoughtfully written into federal law.

Thank you.
-Cary/Administrator

This is just one of many inconsistencies in things that you have said. All in all, these inconsistencies keep me from treating your words with any sort of sincerity. If you are going to lie, at least be consistent.

Everybody gets that you were well-intentioned, and you admitted that you went about it the wrong way. All in all, not much to impugn your character. But people are getting annoyed now, and I think you (and the student body) will be much happier if we can all move on.

This isn’t an “internet joust.” Just trying to help.

Even if you give someone permission to kill you, it’s still murder, still illegal.

Concerned Student
(posting relatively anonymously for fear of posters with my email address appearing all over campus, I’m sure you understand)

My biggest question is why did the administration leave out that they would be cutting down these trees? And, why was it that the Student Senate only found out about this when a student who was not suppose to know in the first place told them? It is indeed unfair to assume that the administration did not take the necessary steps to insure that this process was well thought out- I do not doubt that they spent the time, money and effort to do so. However, I am just confused for the apparent need to keep information from students. A few of the questions that you raised about placement and donor request are exactly the type of questions that I hope to raise during my conversations with the administration. I just think that the students have the right to fully understand what is happening on their campus.

Also, if you don’t want the attention then why do you keep making noise about the issue?

I don’t want to fight you on this, nor do I intend to engage you further after this comment, I just feel that if your opinions are so important than everyone else’s should be equally so.

I told Brad that it would look bad for him if it said one thing on one email and another thing on another email. Which it would. If he hadn’t sent out the whole thing, he would look kinda stupid when Cary posted this up. I have nothing against Brad, he’s been a pretty good guy.

Also, there were no “thinly veiled threats” the first time I sent the email to him. I sent them because he didn’t attach any time qualifiers to it after I specifically asked him to.
Defending my dignity is not a threat.

Can Celestino really not answer your question if you ask him if Adrian sent him the letter months ago?
Good to know.

I was one of the few (along with David Rosengard and then later Reiko Hillyer) that Adrian initially sent his apology letter to so any of us can attest to the fact that it was written and sent months ago. I am not sure if that, coming from me, is any consolation to you, but hey, I thought I should try.

-Nicola Warmuth

http://www.lclark.edu/offices/facilities/campus_planning/projects/

On the other hand, being someone who has used the chapel on many an occasion, I can totally understand the desire to change it. The building has no lobby, the acoustics are awkward, and the amount classroom space available is next to none. And really, just check out what they’re planning on doing!

https://webdisk.lclark.edu/planning/WebPageDoc/2009_10_02_faculty_presentationChapelAddition.pdf

I am all for saving trees. But if the plans, which were first drawn up over two years ago, are redrafted now to avoid those trees, the renovation is bound to cost more money and take more time to build. Not to mention the fact that the trees used in the renovation will have to come from SOMEWHERE — why not utilize the trees we have here, instead of adding to the carbon footprint and bringing trees in from somewhere else?

In all honestly, I’m torn on the issue. However it is essential for the student body to start looking at both sides of arguments rather than pitting the administration as the bad guy all the time. I vote for constructive and thoughtful discussions, who’s with me?

Food for thought.

1. RAs are held to a higher standard of just about everything, and I would hate for something someone posted on this website to affect a an RA’s job–even if that’s an extremely unlikely situation. I wouldn’t want someone to be put in the position of “delete this post because it’s not suitable for an RA to be facilitating/endorsing/commenting.” (I feel at least a little bit justified in making this statement because I was an RA for a year and a half)
2. I can imagine a similar situation if a staff member ran this blog… there are countless examples of companies firing people for their conduct online, outside of work (not to imply that L&C would actually do something like that, but if it can be avoided entirely, so much the better).
3. Most of the content this year has been student-driven, so I think it makes sense that a student keeps control (as always, I welcome anyone to make posts here–send me an e-mail and I’ll hook you up with an account).

Ideally I’d keep it out of the control of “the administration,” whatever that means. Mostly because the school itself has a plethora of venues to make its positions and opinions known (listservs, the official website, the Source, etc.) and I’d like for this to stay distinguished from those outlets. This is not to say that I want to discourage officials from posting here or reading this website (I’d be just as fine giving PubComm a posting account as I would giving one to anyone else), but I would like the ultimate moderation power kept by a more impartial party than the institution itself.

Regarding moderation, I really only want to regulate speech in the following circumstances:
1. If someone is being maliciously, unproductively hurtful (basically, “no hate-speech”).
2. If someone is posting something illegal (DISTINCTION: notice that I did not say “posting *about* something illegal”).
3. If someone is trying to exploit/deface/vandalize/”hack” this website.

So. Anyone in mind? I have a few ideas I’ve been considering, but nothing’s decided yet.

Summer break couldn’t have come at a better time. Let’s all let this sit over the next few months, and hopefully return with cooler heads and better priorities.

Point is, he screwed up, his posters were a bad decision and ultimately only managed to hurt other people. I think he deserves his punishment.

Now it’s turned into an alleged administration conspiracy and this exceedingly haughty open letter. Hopefully this will be the last we hear from Adrian.

You’re right that motivation isn’t referenced as much in the policy as it is in the title of the policy, and I probably should have addressed that, but I don’t think that the way it *is* phrased in detail legitimizes the administration’s interpretation in this case.

Your reading of the policy is a little wrong. Don’t get so caught up with the word “motivated” in the title of the policy: the definition has no comment of motivation. The Bias Motivated Incident, as it reads from the excerpt, is any “hate offense” that is not categorically a “hate crime” but still has a victim that “is intentionally selected because of the actual or perceived race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or disability of the victim.”

It might seem trivial, but unless you think someone should be able to put up a banner on campus that says “I love [insert racial epithet]” or allow people to simply lie about their motivation, it’s a necessary clarification.

Also, who wants to pay 40K a year to attend (or for their kids to attend) a school getting treated like a crack house? It’ll be interesting to see how this impacts their enrollment for FA 2010. It’s not May 1 yet…

[deleted duplicate comment] -David

To treat students like this without student input is inexcusable. Why do students have the Peer Review Authority?

LC is where we work, LC is where students live and begin their adult lives. Let’s start respecting that please. Otherwise our abysmal alumni support will continue to falter with more and more students graduate wishing they had gone with ugly campus but supportive Administration/Staff (Willamette, I’m looking at you).

Also for the record, I apologize for not executing this in a more complete way. It was a stupid mistake to not create more of a permanent context, such as a disclaimer. It caused pain, and that is a tragedy.

As for the harassment question you bring up, I think it’s interesting to think about, but in an instance where someone *did* intend to harass a group or individual by posting flyers, the duration of the flyers’ being posted probably wouldn’t be considered. Do you know what I mean? That being the case, I don’t think it would be fair to argue that something is–or is not–harassment based on whether they were actually able to harass the intended audience.

With the harassment, etc. charges that Adrian faced, why did he get charged with this when all of the posters were taken down before I, for one, and I think a reasonable section of campus ever saw them? I distinctly remember that the first of this that I heard of was in an email from our Dean of Students.

One of my friends emailed a copy of this article to Mr. Coleman. Feel free to pass on my email address to him, it’s maisha@lclark.edu. If you search lclark.edu for my name, my blogs come up and my email address is listed in every single one of those entries; I don’t know why he has had a hard time contacting me. I have not received anything from him.

Sean

Jesse, I think it’s interesting that you say that “independent living is a privilege, not a right.” I feel the reverse. Yes, we elect to go to Lewis & Clark, and by doing so we submit ourselves with full awareness that we will have to live on campus for four semesters. But, ultimately, living independently IS a right. It is also a right to choose to go to a different school, to take time off, to not go to school at all. I’m concerned that in issuing this sanction, LC might be pushing a student to these options rather than attending LC. I can also tell you, in response to your first comment (that the policies violated “could make all the difference in whether this consequence makes sense or not”), that the trigger for this sanction, the fourth write-up, did not even occur in a Residence Hall, nor did it involve use of an illegal substance. From what I know of the incident, the sanction really had no correlation with the final policy violated, and thus should not have been issued as a response to it. Like I wrote in the article, the conduct process is normally intended to have a clear learning outcome related to the policy violation, and this sanction really doesn’t have one.

When students come to Senate, and Senate passes a resolution, and the administration chooses to ignore Senate (transparency, printing allotment redistribution, etc.), then ASLC has expended it’s political capital to the best of its abilities to no avail. At that point, I think students have to look beyond ASLC to protest and direct action against the school. That doesn’t mean that those students disrespect ASLC; it means that they have tried to use ASLC and the administration did not listen. As long as students try ASLC first, I support further direct action.

I think, in the end, it will strengthen ASLC’s position with the administration because there will come a point where, if they don’t listen to Senate Resolutions, then they face a much more aggressive and unwieldy student action.

Cool post Maisha!

(1) Fining isn’t going to deter visitors. Why? Because just like parking enforcement, the only thing we can do if you don’t pay your ticket is put a hold on your account and not let you register in the future. No account and no intention of ever attending LC? Already graduated years ago and no longer need to obtain those transcripts? No way to go about collections. We’re not a public institution. You get a parking ticket at U. Oregon, they’re going to refuse you a renewal of license/car registry/ etc. or GARNISH YOUR WAGES (yes, you read that right). One way or another, they get their money AND the funds to cover the administrative cost of chasing you. Here, we force the Business office to print and send bills that waste paper into the void of that person’s “junk mail I threw out b/c I can” without any ability to recover those costs and wasting paper. That’s just how it is. Fining won’t deter those people, so the fact that the campus conduct system doesn’t reach them is irrelevant.

(2) Fining only punishes those who are low on funds. Yep. It’s a classist method of enforcement. While student (a) who has to work two jobs to afford to be here every semester will probably be deterred by that first ticket, do you honestly believe that student (b), who has a five figure trust fund and drives a shiny new BMW is going to be deterred by a $25 ticket? They spend more than that on cigarettes every month. They don’t care. That’s been the whole reason we don’t say, fine people for alcohol violations, like some other schools do. It’s classist. It’s not an effective deterrent on wealthier students, and creates a weird internal system of privilege.

Lots of schools fine for lots of reasons. Most of them are completely uneffective and frequently institutionalize class privilege in a way that LC has always found (as far as I can tell) kind of loathsome. I’m sad we’re moving away from being philosophically consistent and true to our values.

Good job on listening to student input as to number and location of smoking shelters. Not so good on the enforcement and punishment aspects.

A real post about smoking, not centered around phallic photos, will be up later today.

Wow. Just wow.

Thanks

I’d love to be a regular/semi-regular poster. Great/amazing/remarkable blog! Allah Bless.

E