By Professor Doom
The kangaroo
campus court system is doing a fine job of wrecking lives; it has way too much
power, and is devoid of anything resembling the checks and balances system
necessary to anything resembling justice. Instead, our campus courts are merely
reinforcing the totalitarian infantilism that has become the trademark of many
of our universities.
Thanks to endless
indoctrination in our public schools, our high school graduates grossly
overrate going to college and getting a degree. Outside of sportsball players,
a life can hardly be ruined by leaving college, and we have plenty of tales of
lives horribly damaged by staying in college. Despite this evidence, our
students can hardly be blamed for thinking college is everything—they’ve been
told as much since birth, or nearly so. There are quite a few kids who, coming
out of high school, can feel positively suicidal if they’re denied college, and
even more suicidal if they’re kicked out of college. So, you want to have a
good reason for removing a student from academia (you know, for something
academic, maybe)…our kangaroo system doesn’t care about such things, however.
Allow me to give
a very quick summary of one of the latest kangaroo court outrages: there was an
incident in class between two students. The kangaroo campus court convened, and
kicked one of the students out of the class; there was no violence, or
shouting, or anything like that. The removed student was so distraught that he
killed himself. The father is suing the university over it.
There are two
sides to every story, but the above is agreed upon by both parties. Let’s hear
what the campus paper had to say:
--he’s also
suing the other student involved.
Here’s the
paper’s quick summary:
Klocke was
removed from a summer 2016 Organizational Strategy course after alumnus
Nicholas Watson filed a complaint accusing Klocke of sexual harassment or sexual
violence
--emphasis
added. Which was it? Why add the option of violence when a simple question could have ruled that possibility out?
Isn’t it neat
that even the most egregious acts of cheating by students won’t merit removal
of the student from the classroom, but an accusation of sexual harassment is
more than enough? Cheating goes to a different court system, though both are
controlled by admin. As soon as there’s a complaint of a sexual nature, a
particular type of kangaroo court is set up, as per our federal Title IX rules.
Title IX,
particularly the kangaroo aspect of it, has only been controlled by admin. So,
the kid makes a complaint, and administrator starts the process:
Heather
Snow, associate vice president for Student Affairs and dean of students, helped
Watson write a complaint against Klocke…
Gee whiz, what a
nice title, associate vice president for Student Affairs and dean of students.
There’s no “or” here, so I guess I can read it as two different titles Hey, the
first title alone is twice as long as Heather Snow’s name. I maintain that if
we ever do decide to bring higher education back to sanity, we’ll need to
simply eliminate all positions whose titles are more than twice as long as the
title-holder’s name. It’s a silly rule, I admit, but compared to all the other
silly rules I work under, it has the advantage that it would improve education.
And Klocke would
likely not have killed himself.
Anyway, the
associate vice president for Student Affairs and dean of students helps write
up the complaint and passes it off to another administrator:
…instructed
Daniel Moore, Academic Integrity associate director, in the handling of the
case’s investigation, according to the suit.
I ask the gentle
reader to note that the title of Academic Integrity associate director is yet
again twice as long as the holder’s name. Our campuses are drowning in
functionaries like this, they really need these huge titles to distinguish
themselves from each other.
How did the
complaint start? Here goes:
The lawsuit
states that Watson made unwanted sexual advances toward Klocke during class on
May 19, and that after denying those advances,
Watson, a gay
male, allegedly made sexual advances towards Klocke, who rejected the
advances…but Klocke was removed from the class. How demented has our system
become that rejecting a homosexual’s advances is a punishable offense? Ok, this
is just what the lawsuit alleges but…it’s consistent with Watson’s complaint
about being spurned.
The paper then
spends a few paragraphs on Watson’s version of events…it’s all hearsay and
there is in fact no evidence provided either way (and, again, no assertion of
physical violence, or threat of physical violence, or witnesses of anything
between the two persons involved).
Anyway, why is
the Academic Integrity associate director involved? There’s nothing about this
case even remotely relevant to academic integrity. And here’s the paper’s
explanation:
Moore
testified he was often involved with disciplinary proceedings involving
academics, according to the suit, but harassment allegations were usually
presided over by Community Standards director Charity Stutzman
Wow, the title of Community Standards
director is just barely not twice the length of Charity Stutzman’s name (if I
put “The” in front of the title, the position ca be safely closed. I wonder how
many Community Standards directors the campus has…), so I’ll give her a pass.
Besides, she’s on maternity leave.
The paper mentions
Klocke was charged with violations, but doesn’t mention the punishment or
anything else. Was Klocke’s removal from class strictly based on hearsay
determination from some guy who’s just standing in for the job? Imagine if you
went to court and the janitor hears the case because the judge called in sick
that day…honest, these are well described as kangaroo courts.
Now, I’ve
mentioned before that admin has taken a page from the Left’s playbook and
subverted the campus newspapers. Don’t get me wrong, I know
everything is going to have a bias, but people don’t understand that what I’m
quoting above is simply administrative propaganda. Luckily, the school paper
allows comments (and, gentle reader, be very suspicious of news sources that
don’t allow comments from readers correcting lies/inaccuracies). In this case,
the comments section shoots up many red flags that something’s not right about
how the paper presents what’s going on here:
A lot of
people are complaining about this article being one-sided, yet they fail to
realize both "reporters" failed to interview anyone from either side.
Thomas Klock's family, Heather Snow, Nick Watson, or even the school.
Absolutely terrible journalism, and from the news editor and editor-in-chief.
Granted, it’s a
school paper, so you rather expect second-rate work, and that’s all this
complaint alleges. That said, CNN also often gives “news” that can only be generously
described as second-rate. In any event, there’s more here than meets the eye.
Another comment:
Wow this
article is horrible. How much did the administration pay you to write it this
way? Biased completely.
Now, just one guy
complaining like this doesn’t mean much…you can’t please everyone, after all.
There are a dozen comments, however, and all of them are complaining to some
extent about the poor journalism here.
Everyone who
knows something about this case knows there’s more to it than what the school
paper is saying…can we honestly believe nobody at the paper knows they’re just
printing administrative propaganda?
Of course not, a
little digging will show that the paper has a vice president of Journalistic
Integrity and Diversity to make sure the paper doesn’t print any heresy, but I’ve
covered the like before so back to today’s issue.
A young man
killed himself. This is a horrible tragedy, and even though he ultimately is
responsible for his actions, out of respect for his death I feel the need to
give a more fair presentation of what happened in this kangaroo court system.
Next time.
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