I Have Been Raped (Repeatedly) At Amarillo College!

I have taught at two-year colleges for more than three decades: Black Hawk College (public, Moline, IL, 1965-1967) and Amarillo College (public, Amarillo, TX, since 1972). In my first semester at Black Hawk College (Fall 1965)—sometime around mid-term—I was summoned to a meeting in the office of the Dean of Students. In attendance was the chair of the English Department; I was teaching history in the Department of Social Sciences. The chair of the Department of Social Sciences (for reasons not germane to me) was not present. The Dean of Students (Charles Carlsen, later President of Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, KS) opened the meeting by saying that numerous student complaints about my grading standards (too strict) had reached his office. I was a first-year teacher, fresh out of a master's program in history (Eastern New Mexico University). Ultimately, I was counseled to mend my ways. When the chair of the Department of Social Sciences learned of this meeting, he was incensed. Although I had no direct confirmation, I believe he told the Dean of Students that the matter was handled inappropriately. I heard no more from Dean Carlsen in the remainder of that year or the next. I left Black Hawk College to enter doctoral study at Texas Tech University in Fall 1967.

Flash forward through five (5) years of graduate study: including reading mastery in two (2) non-English languages, passing preliminary and qualifiying examinations in five (5) history fields and one (1) minor field. Upon earning a Ph.D. in history in Summer 1972, I joined the faculty of Amarillo College in Fall 1972. That first year, I was hired on a one-year, temporary appointment to teach in place of a tenured faculty member who had left for graduate study in political science. A fulltime position in history at Amarillo College was vacant (but unfilled at that time) because a longtime history teacher had retired in May 1972. Approximately midway through the Fall term, I was notified that I was being moved from a temporary appointment to a probationary, tenure-track position. I had forced the issue by notifying the chair of the Department of Social Sciences that I would need to travel to professional meetings to pursue employment when the temporary assignment ended. The chair of the Department of Social Sciences guarded the travel funds in the department budget very assiduously; she regularly consumed the entire travel budget to attend the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians. The chair never taught a course in U. S. history at Amarillo College in her entire tenure at Amarillo College (30+ years). So, I entered the tenure track at Amarillo College due to the mendacity of the chair of the Department of Social Sciences at Amarillo College.

Beginning in 1973, the rapes began. I was summoned to a meeting with the chair of the Department of Social Sciences in Spring 1974. She did not want to discuss travel. Instead, I was told that a student had complained about something or other I had said or done. I asked for the name of the complainant and I was told that the name was irrelevant. The meeting ended with an admonishment that I was not to transgress again.

Let me post the Amarillo College policy on Student Grievances (unchanged since I arrived at Amarillo College in 1972.):

The Amarillo College policy on student grievances [complaints about any aspect of an AC course] states:

GRIEVANCE PROCEDURE (STUDENTS)

Students who have a grievance concerning a course in which they are enrolled should appeal to the instructor of the course. If the students are not satisfied with the decision from the instructor, they may appeal the decision to the department chair and the division chair in that order. If a satisfactory resolution of the problem is still not achieved, the process may be repeated through the vice president/dean of instruction and the president.

Amarillo College Student Rights and Responsibilities, Fall 2001
and the Amarillo College Faculty Handbook

The final sentence should read: If a satisfactory resolution of the problem is still not achieved, the process may be repeated through the vice president/dean of instruction, the president, and the Board of Regents. Of course, it goes without saying that an aggrieved student can bring a lawsuit against Amarillo College if the Board of Regents do not rule in the student's favor. Conceivably, the case could go to the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

I add the following commentary on the College policy:

The greatest Teacher of all said, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If Dr. Sapper has a grievance with a student in one of his classes, he WILL NOT take the matter to that student's parents, spouse, employer, probation officer, friends, or other students in that course. In other words, it will be a private matter between Dr. Sapper and the student. Similarly, Dr. Sapper has zero tolerance for student complaints lodged against him in violation of Amarillo College policy. That means any grievance or complaint that has not been filed with Dr. Sapper before the matter is carried elsewhere is in violation of College policy. Violators of Amarillo College policy engage in such behavior at their own risk.

In 32 years at Amarillo College, a student has NEVER been referred back to me—in compliance with Amarillo College policy—after lodging a grievance against me with a succession of chairs,deans, and presidents at Amarillo College. In ALL INSTANCES, the grievance was entertained and I was expected—after the fact—to provide an explanation or a defense.

In the mid-1990s, a student sent me an anonymous e-mail message that was hostile and threatening. On my own, I discovered the identity of the Internet Service Provider (ISP)—but not the account name—of the sender. I notified the ISP administrator and triggered a crisis. It seems the PC from which the hostile e-mail was sent was the personal, desktop machine of the majority owner of the ISP! All hell broke loose. An internal investigation revealed that the hostile e-mail was sent by the wife of a key employee of the ISP-owner! The employee was suspended—pending an investigation—and the wife/e-mail sender filed a grievance against ME for causing her husband's employment problem. The grievance was filed with the vice president/dean of instruction at Amarillo College. The student demanded the print copy of the e-mail message. At that time, my classes used an e-mail service hosted by an educational support service in Alpharetta, GA. I had the sole copy of the e-mail message. I was summoned to a meeting in the office of the vice president/dean of instruction (with the chair of the division in attendance—a witness for the prosecution?) to submit to an administrative directive that I surrender the -mail to the student so that her spouse's employment would be restored (and the College would avoid a lawsuit?). Instead of attending that meeting, I went downtown to the offices of the owner of the ISP (and other telecommunications enterprises in Amarillo). We talked about the matter. I explained what had happened to me. The employer asked to see the message. I gave him the print copy. After reading it, he called the vice president/dean of instruction's on the telephone. Instead of meeting with me, the vice president/dean of instruction was treated to a good 15 or 20-minute lecture on student propriety. The line I will always remember: If I were the dean of that college, that young woman would be expelled! To this day, I have never received any acknowledgment that I was wronged. No apology. Nothing.

Last fall, a student dropped one of my history courses. At no time did I have a conversation with this student. The student wrote a letter to the dean of students alleging that my course was without any redeeming value. The dean sent a copy of this trash to two Business Office employees and authorized full refund of the student's tuition for the history course. Again, I was informed of all of this business after the fact.

Finally (and I have glossed over case after case after case) we arrive at the cause célèbre of Fall 2003. At mid-October, I had a case of suspected cheating between two students sharing a pencil (explicitly forbidden in my classroom policies) during a pop quiz. I was so angered by this Grade 13 behavior that I was struggling for self-control. Ultimately, I dismissed class (with the two cheaters included). I had no contact with anyone about this incident. I did not report it. The following class meeting, that class had the second major test of the term. My major tests consist of two (2) parts: Part I (60% of the test grade) is a number of objective questions that are scored on a test scanning device; Part II (40% of the test grade) requires the students to write essays in response to any two of the 4 or 5 essay questions posited. The afternoon of that test, I received a call from one of my best friends at Amarillo College—a counselor in the Advising & Counseling Center—reporting that an irate student had come into the Center ranting and raving about my history class. My friend reported that the student was referred—by another counselor—to the chair of the division.

I did not read the essays on the set of tests for the class in question until Sunday afternoon. When I arrived at the essay written by a male, older-than-average student. It was a hateful, threatening, invective-filled diatribe against my teaching, my methods, and the like.

I assumed the student had dropped the course. However, when I returned to the classroom after a trip to my campus mailbox, the aggrieved student was seated in his usual seat: closer to me than any other student. I expressed suprise at seeing him and further I expressed my regret that he had wasted 40% of the test grade. I received a snarl to the effect that it was his problem. Throughout the class meeting (75 minutes), this student muttered under his breath (inaudibly) after every statement I made to the class. I decided then and there that I was at risk. The daily news over the past several years has been rife with campus/classroom violence.

As I left campus (shaken), I encountered both counselors (the referring person and my friend who called me with a head's up). I told both that I wanted this student OUT of my class. I even offered to refund—at my expense—the tuition for the history class to that student. I urged both to contact the chair of the division and resolve this matter.

The next class meeting rolled around and when I returned to the classroom, the aggrieved student was still sitting in close proximity to my area. I turned on my heel and went back to the Advising & Counseling Center. The referring counselor disclaimed any responsibility in the matter. Her snide, parting words? I'm sorry. I snarled over my shoulder, Yes, indeed, you are sorry! I encountered my counselor-friend and told him that I was not returning to the classroom as long as the student representing a threat was present. My friend went to the classroom and asked the student out into the hall. My friend is partially sightless and physically handicapped (resulting from a stroke more than a year ago) and took it upon himself to represent Amarillo College while those with an administrative stake chose to avoid the issue.

That afternoon, I encountered the chair of the division in a campus parking lot. I asked if he understood the situation in my class. He responded that he did. I asked, then, why the student had returned to my class. After a lot of hemming and hawing, he acknowledged that a settlement was proving difficult. The student was demanding that he remain in the class due to financial aid requirements. I responded Even if the student does not attend class and takes my final exam, I am not grading it. The chair asked what I would do and I replied that I would give the student an A in the course on the condition that he never utter my name again. If I heard anything connecting me with that student, I would go and effect a grade-change to an F. We parted company on that note. Over this past weekend, I came to the conclusion that IF I gave this aggrieved student an A, I must give an unearned A to EVERY student in that class. Further, I wanted to hear nothing about the adademic intergrity of Amarillo College. There is none.

Unknown to me, the vice president/dean of instruction, dean of students (where did HE come from), and chair of the division met with my partially-sighted, physically-impaired counselor-friend about ME. Was I invited to this meeting? If I was, the invitation was lost in the mail.

This morning, I received an e-mail message from the chair of the division inviting me to schedule a meeting within 24 hours to discuss: the student in this class AND matters best discussed devoid of administration AND that it would be in my best interest to attend such a meeting. There has been an exchange of e-mail messages with my final reply (to date) summarizing my position:

I still request a full disclosure of "matters best discussed devoid of administration" and what makes our discussion "in my best interest"? Again, I am dissatisfied with the responses I have received to date. What "matters" and why is my "best interest" at stake? I cannot make myself any clearer on this matter. I am not interested in walking into some Star Chamber proceeding.

And so, the rape of Neil Sapper by Amarillo College continues. If this be (fair & balanced) outrage, so be it!

Iraq=Vietnam? Not!

Damn, just when I was convinced—in my simplistic thinking—that Iraq was Vietnam Redux, I have to go and read an article written by an Indochina expert. His point that U. S. withdrawal from Vietnam pacified the region is well taken. Of course, at the time, withdrawal from Vietnam was unthinkable because it meant Viet Cong in Malibu a day later. The Cong would have been in Amarillo next. Why? Because we're the center of the universe. If this be (fair & balanced) revisionism, so be it.

Many US analysts have compared the current conflict in Iraq to the Vietnam War, citing similar trends - lack of support from allies, initial domestic support followed by growing doubt, and faulty intelligence. But, says Indochina expert William S. Turley, the two countries and their respective conflicts are strikingly different, making comparisons to Vietnam quite un-useful in analyses of the Iraq conflict. In Vietnam, for instance, the anti-colonial insurgents were bolstered by a strong nationalism that united the country. Iraqi nationalism, meanwhile, is “a thin film stretched over deep divisions between the three main ethno-religious groups,” which will make post-conflict governance far more difficult. Without the context of a global Cold War between nations, Turley argues, Iraqi insurgents also lack the support of international superpowers, an element that aided Vietnamese guerilla fighters. And whereas US withdrawal from Vietnam had a pacifying effect on the region, a premature American withdrawal from Iraq would create chaos. While the Bush Administration's foreign policy may be extremely misguided, Turley concludes, Iraq is no Vietnam. - YaleGlobal Editors

[x YaleGlobal]
Apples and Oranges Are Both Fruit, But...,Think twice before calling Iraq "Another Vietnam"
by
William S. Turley

Unlike the bombers-for-hire in Iraq, guerilla fighters in Vietnam enjoyed a good deal of local sympathy.

CARBONDALE, USA: It's commonplace in the US media and in some policy circles to hear the conflict in Iraq described as "Another Vietnam." As an academic who has done extensive research on Vietnam, including its wars, I recoil from the phrase. Popular as a polemical device, it flunks as an analytical tool. Comparison of different cases is sometimes helpful; glossing over complex differences with a label never is.

And so it is with Vietnam and Iraq. On the level of generalities there are similarities, of course. The parallels most often cited in the US are on the domestic front: fear of gathering threats (communism, terrorism) justify an anticipatory response; initial optimism; faulty intelligence, including ignorance of the potential for nationalist backlash; lack of support from allies; growing casualties; declining military morale; sinking presidential popularity; and rising popular frustration. Such are the parallels, always carefully selected, that come most easily to people for whom "Vietnam" was a street riot or a policy debate. When it comes to the wars on the ground, the tendency is to see a similarity in the frame of guerrilla war, as Orville Schell has done in YaleGlobal (See "Is Iraq Becoming a New Vietnam? - Part One").The polemical objective is to show that the Iraq conflict is like "Vietnam" (whatever that is) and therefore we should expect catastrophe.

I do not see things this way. Sure, there are similarities, and they are worth thinking about. But the differences between the two cases strike me as more likely to affect outcomes.

Start with the difference of histories, societies, and cultures. One does not have to be deeply knowledgeable about either country to know that nationalism has played a different role in each. While Vietnamese quarreled over how to respond to colonial rule, there was never any doubt among them that they were one people. The Communists owed their success partly to their winning of nationalist legitimacy, which solidified around them the more the French and then the Americans tried to prop up putative "nationalist" alternatives.

While an Iraqi nationalism exists, it is by comparison a thin film stretched over deep divisions between the three main ethno-religious groups. Vietnam's regional tensions are trifling compared with the antagonism between Iraqi Kurdish, Sunni, and Shia communities. Nationalism in Iraq also has a pan-Arab dimension that has no parallel in Vietnam. Moreover, deep distrust between Iraqi families and clans, which causes nearly half of all marriages to be between first cousins, is a huge impediment to civic engagement and national allegiance. Comparison of these differences suggests to me that Iraq, easy to conquer, may be much harder than Vietnam for anyone to govern in the post-war, not that the two situations are somehow the same.

Next, consider the strategic context. The Vietnam War was a revolutionary and civil conflict in a divided country, on which the Cold War was superimposed. There is no comparable situation in Iraq or in the world today. When the US intervened in Vietnam, the Soviet Union and China poured arms and supplies into the North, which supplied weapons, equipment, and reinforcements to forces in the South. To be sure, communist forces in the South obtained some of their recruits and supplies locally, but it is doubtful that they could have prevailed without the support only a great power ally could provide. In Iraq, the Baathist remnants and bombers-for-hire attacking American troops are totally isolated from such support. If there is a Southeast Asian analogue, it is not Vietnam; it is the communist insurgencies in Malaysia and Thailand that collapsed once China pulled the plug.

The stakes and therefore the significance of winning and losing are different, too. Southeast Asia was a backwater in the larger currents of global power and interest. Withdrawal from Vietnam lightly dented American prestige and allowed the US to refocus attention and resources on areas of more vital interest, including the Middle East. Apart from Cambodia, Southeast Asia remained at peace and most of it enjoyed an economic boom. In Iraq, however, the consequences of an abrupt withdrawal would carry a high likelihood of chaos, civil war, and intervention by Turkey, Iran, and Syria. The US cannot let this happen, even if it was itself the prime cause of the mess.

As for the prospect of guerrilla warfare and the images of entrapment and quagmire that go with it, the Vietnamese, if they haven't forgotten their own lessons, must be laughing up their sleeves. Guerrillas in Vietnam were one of three categories of armed forces on the communist side, the others being regional and regular main forces that fought mostly in a conventional mode. While the American military wrongly derided guerrillas as fleas, they would not have existed at all if they had not enjoyed a sympathetic environment, created for them by the political agitation and organizational work of local party organs.

Guerrilla warfare is not limited to hit-and-run tactics. It is, rather, a strategy that, to be successful, requires voluntary contributions of food, intelligence, and recruits from the civilian population, and the coordination of forces by a higher politico-military command, usually over a long period of time. At least that is what guerrilla warfare was all about in Vietnam, and this says nothing about the unique economic and political grievances that helped it work there by pushing peasants into communist ranks. None of these conditions are met in Iraq. This is not to dismiss the threat from extremists inside Iraq and Jihadis from outside (who really are fleas by comparison with Vietnam's guerrillas), nor does it rule out the much more ominous threat that could emerge from the Shia militias. But these threats are more like those the US faced in Somalia than like guerrilla war in Vietnam.

The Iraq conflict has been lumped with Vietnam as an unorthodox war, another example of category stretching to fit dissimilar realities. Although one may question the wisdom of the objective in Iraq, it is, unlike in Vietnam, clearly defined - to replace the Baathist regime with one that is compliant with UN resolutions, democratic, and at peace with its neighbors. Moreover, unlike the open-ended war in Vietnam, in Iraq the US has an exit strategy. In fact, it has exit strategy options. One is what the Bush Administration is currently attempting to do and could modify as events unfold. This strategy envisions transferring authority and responsibility from Americans to Iraqis and can be accelerated, as Timothy Carney has suggested (See "Iraq Becoming a New Vietnam? - Part Two"). If a more abrupt exit becomes necessary, the US can transfer authority to the United Nations, while accelerating the development of Iraqi security forces and thinning out the American military presence, as just about everyone outside the Bush Administration would like the US to do. No such option was imaginable in Vietnam, thanks to the Cold War.

History is a treacherous guide to action. People disagree honestly over what it means, policy elites sometimes learn its reputed lessons too well, and generals are famous for preparing to fight the last war. There are many good reasons to question the Bush Administration's conduct of the Iraq war. "Vietnam" is not one of them.

William S. Turley is professor of political science at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and the author of The Second Indochina War.

Copyright © 2003 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization

Richard E. Neustadt, RIP

Neustadt was the greatest public historian of his generation. His work was closer to political science than narrative history, but his clarity of analysis was unsurpassed in any discipline. I wonder what he thought of W? If this be (fair & balanced) speculation, so be it.

[x NYTimes]
November 3, 2003
Richard E. Neustadt, Historian Who Advised Three Presidents, Dies at 84
By THOMAS J. LUECK

Richard E. Neustadt, the White House adviser, historian and authority on presidential power, died on Friday in England. He was 84.

His death was reported by a spokesman for the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, for which Mr. Neustadt was a founding faculty member and had served as professor emeritus since 1989, The Associated Press reported.

Mr. Neustadt was an adviser to Presidents Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, and wrote many books on the presidency. His scholarship became a staple of research for several decades for students of government and even some elected officials.

"Professor Neustadt spent a lifetime advancing the public understanding of the American presidency," former President Bill Clinton said in a statement. "I am grateful for the friendship and wise counsel he gave to me."

Mr. Neustadt's most influential work on the presidency was first published in 1960 under the title "Presidential Power," and periodically revised over the years until it was published in 1990 as "Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership From Roosevelt to Reagan."

His work was widely celebrated by scholars as a modern version of Machiavelli's Renaissance study of power, "The Prince." Mr. Neustadt said his intent was to explore "the classic problem of the man on the top," that of "how to be on top in fact as well as in name."

"Presidential power is the power to persuade," he said.

As a body of work, his books on the presidency analyzed the decisions of presidents over more than a generation, and explored episodes of political turmoil ranging from Johnson's handling of the Vietnam War to the Iran-Contra affair under President Ronald Reagan.

"Mr. Neustadt's texts are intended to be analyses of exercises in power," Christopher Lehmann-Haupt wrote in 1990 in a review in The New York Times, "and as such they are acute and informative whether comparing Truman's Korea with Johnson's Vietnam, or figuring out why Kennedy was able to overcome the Bay of Pigs fiasco."

Mr. Neustadt was born on June 26, 1919, in New York City. He attended the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard and earned his doctorate from Harvard in 1951.

He was a consultant to several presidents, beginning with Truman in 1950, and also was an adviser to several federal agencies and legislative panels in the 1960's.

He became an associate professor of government at Harvard in 1965, and went on to join three other prominent scholars — the economist Thomas Schelling, the statistician Frederick Mosteller and the decision theorist Howard Raiffa — in a group that was called the "founding fathers" because of their role in transforming the Graduate School of Public Administration at Harvard into the Kennedy School of Government.

"He was certainly one of our most valuable emeritus professors," the Kennedy school dean, Joseph Nye, said.

"He provided students with an understanding of the American presidency, greater than any other faculty member could have, from his direct experience and from his books," Mr. Nye said.

Mr. Neustadt had a home on Cape Cod but lived in England most of the year with his wife, Shirley Williams, the leader of the Social Democratic Party in the British House of Lords, The Associated Press reported.

Information on other survivors was not immediately available.

Copyright © 2003 The New York Times Company