2008 Woodie Awards
Innacuracies in "No Confidence" story
Tom Jones
Issue date: 3/5/08 Section: Letters to the Editor
Dear Editor,
Contrary to the Lumberjack's article, "Vote of no confidence takes another first step" (2/20/08), regarding my 'complaint' I did NOT "request the ad hoc committee to 'develop formal agreements to resolve the issues in the approved Bill of Particulars to the benefit of those concerned parties.'"
Developing those agreements was the task assigned by the Dec. 4 resolutions to the Academic Senate to undertake upon approval of the Bill of Particulars. In fact, ever since Dec. 4, I have been 100 percent opposed to the idea of developing such agreements at this late date. My 'complaint' was instead over the president's abuse of Professor Brusca, and my 'request' (published in my Feb. 13 Forum piece) was that it be included in the Bill of Particulars.
That complaint is further misrepresented as my having said, "The primary reason for my lack of confidence in President Rollin Richmond is the indifference to fine teaching, the contempt for students and faculty." But as is clear from its syntax, this is an incomplete sentence that makes no sense as it stands and that stops short of identifying the actual reason, as the rest of the sentence makes perfectly clear: "…and arrogance of power displayed in the particulars of Richmond's unconscionable treatment of former physics professor Stone Brusca, Outstanding Professor for 2005."
And between these two misleading quotations is a third that reads, "…Jones is asking that the Senate require that Richmond 'call a public convocation for the purpose of presenting a detailed, itemized apology' for his actions to the community, faculty, and students." But the direct quote from my written request contained in this passage breaks off at the word 'apology,' and what follows it misidentifies the subject of that apology: namely, the president's abusive treatment of Professor Brusca to the detailing of which the complaint had devoted some 390 words.
These quotations not only leave me advocating measures to which I am entirely opposed, but completely obscure the fact that both my complaint and request were specifically and exclusively about the president's abuse of Professor Brusca, whose name appears nowhere in the article.
Tom Jones,
Professor of European Cultural History
Contrary to the Lumberjack's article, "Vote of no confidence takes another first step" (2/20/08), regarding my 'complaint' I did NOT "request the ad hoc committee to 'develop formal agreements to resolve the issues in the approved Bill of Particulars to the benefit of those concerned parties.'"
Developing those agreements was the task assigned by the Dec. 4 resolutions to the Academic Senate to undertake upon approval of the Bill of Particulars. In fact, ever since Dec. 4, I have been 100 percent opposed to the idea of developing such agreements at this late date. My 'complaint' was instead over the president's abuse of Professor Brusca, and my 'request' (published in my Feb. 13 Forum piece) was that it be included in the Bill of Particulars.
That complaint is further misrepresented as my having said, "The primary reason for my lack of confidence in President Rollin Richmond is the indifference to fine teaching, the contempt for students and faculty." But as is clear from its syntax, this is an incomplete sentence that makes no sense as it stands and that stops short of identifying the actual reason, as the rest of the sentence makes perfectly clear: "…and arrogance of power displayed in the particulars of Richmond's unconscionable treatment of former physics professor Stone Brusca, Outstanding Professor for 2005."
And between these two misleading quotations is a third that reads, "…Jones is asking that the Senate require that Richmond 'call a public convocation for the purpose of presenting a detailed, itemized apology' for his actions to the community, faculty, and students." But the direct quote from my written request contained in this passage breaks off at the word 'apology,' and what follows it misidentifies the subject of that apology: namely, the president's abusive treatment of Professor Brusca to the detailing of which the complaint had devoted some 390 words.
These quotations not only leave me advocating measures to which I am entirely opposed, but completely obscure the fact that both my complaint and request were specifically and exclusively about the president's abuse of Professor Brusca, whose name appears nowhere in the article.
Tom Jones,
Professor of European Cultural History
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