usao uber alles

Title:

“USAO uber alles”:  A Leftist Professor’s Experience at a Bible Belt College
by Elson E. Boles, Ph.D.

Last fall, 2000, a law firm retained by the Oklahoma Federation of Teachers on my behalf informed John Feaver, the president of USAO since mid-2000, that if an agreement was not reached with me there existed several causes of action against the university and individual faculty and staff.  The causes centered on academic and political oppression and slander with the intent to have me dismissed in December 2000.  The law firm obtained letters from faculty who had already requested the ACLU's aid and who declared they would provide full support for me in court.  The firm also obtained letters and an affidavit from students exposing lies and slander spread by Dr. Huguenin and Dr. Shafer, and fabrications of student testimony by Mr. Terry Winn, Vice-President of Academic Affairs.  But last December, Feaver and I signed a written agreement that headed off lawsuits.  People should know what happened.

Community intolerance of political-academic freedom happens often in Bible Belt Oklahoma.  In a 1995 article published in Freethought Today, Professor William Zellner, formerly of East Central University, described intense institutional discrimination he and his family experienced in Ada, Oklahoma.  After it was revealed in a local newspaper that Zellner is an atheist, his car was vandalized, he began getting damning notes from students, threatening telephone calls at home, and an Apostolic church made buttons which read, I am praying for Dr. Zellner. Then the situation got worse: his two children, six and nine at the time, were shunned at school and beaten by Baptist kids. The family car was keyed daily and the family received threats of violence.

Intolerance within a public university may not be as vulgar as intolerance within a small community, but it is more ominous.  The closest my experience comes to Zellner’s is when some students vandalized a large sidewalk portrait of me.  Drawn by a progressive USAO art student for a contest with the caption, “Casualty of Academic Oppression,” the vandals painted horns, a long goatee and wrote “Satan” on it.   It would be funny if it did not reflect the possibility that some USAO students, like their counterparts at East Central, might actually believe I’m satanic because I am progressive.

Universities are intended to be special places that cultivate free thought and expression.  They are not to be run like corporations where individual freedom takes second place to maximizing cooperation among employees for increased profit.  Reducing or avoiding political-academic dispute among the faculty members of a university is not a goal.  In fact, it’s a bad idea.  Critique and disputation are what drive a good university’s research or teaching goals; they are also expressions of democracy and freedom of expression.  Like the institutions of a democratic state, as my colleague Professor Savage wrote, “conflict…is not to be avoided as something bad…democracies [are characterized] by the noise and activity of politics.”

Heated disputes over academic issues may become personal.  All disputes are personal in some sense, for to challenge an idea is to challenge a person’s idea.  Faculty members may respond with dissatisfaction, insecurity, or even hate.  However, personal animosities generated from political-academic disputes should never be reduced to issues of collegiality.  For if this happens and a colleague is pressured, censured, or dismissed, then collegiality is achieved by oppressing political and academic freedom.

This and worse happened at USAO.  Claims of non-collegiality by some faculty not only cloaked political suppression, but were based on lies and slander by a few disgruntled persons whose enmity arose precisely from academic challenges and political activism.  The mordant part of the title, "USAO uber alles," comes from an email that Dr. Paul Cherulnik, psychology, sent to faculty member Ingrid Shafer, an instructor here since the late 1960s.  She, along with young history instructor, Sanders Huguenin, was instrumental in having me fired.  Shafer’s reasons for my dismissal are transparently political.  She suggests that I’m an “anti-establishment revolutionary” and that my “dogma” is a threat to (her vision of) the university.  Shafer’s political diatribe against me (below) stemmed from my criticism of an Interdisciplinary Studies (IDS) class. 

 Huguenin likewise spread lies about me – that I suffer from “episodic paranoia,” that I threw a podium in a class, that I was “heavy-handed” with students.  Huguenin’s animosity, which grew from our petty academic disputes while team teaching in Spring 2000, motivated him to recklessly distribute slander which he posed as fact.  He helped organize students to make complaints about me, however downright false or trivial, in order to convince others that I should be dismissed (below).  Shafer and Huguenin even went so far as to get David Newcomb, the sociology instructor I replaced, to join their efforts.

Cherulnik summed up the purge this way: “Dr. Boles has been the victim of a backstage attack by some of his colleagues, led by Dr. Ingrid Shafer and Dr. Sandy Huguenin and abetted by some administrators whose responsibilities do not include academics, some faculty who hardly know Dr. Boles, and, apparently, one ex-faculty member, Dr. David Newcomb. Dr. Boles’ leftist politics are one reason, as Dr. Savage pointed out.  But more important is Dr. Boles attempt to influence the content of the IDS courses he has team-taught with Dr. Shafer and Dr. Huguenin.”

HUGUENIN TO SAVAGE: THE PURGE "HAS TO COME FROM BELOW"

By “leftist politics” Dr. Savage referred to the importance of the administration’s role in the purge.  President Feaver received phone call(s) of complaint by local officials after I joined a student protest downtown on August 1, 2000 against the arrest and handcuffing of elementary kids for minor infractions.  The children of three of my students had been victims. 

The day after Feaver received the phone call(s), news spread on campus that the administration was furious; a professional staff member told Savage this as well.

The next evening, on Aug. 3, Dr. Savage overheard part of a conversation between David Mayes, the Director of Student Services and Huguenin while walking past Huguenin’s office.  Apparently they were talking about plans for my dismissal.  When they saw Savage pass by they stopped talking abruptly.

When Huguenin approached Savage on the first day that classes began in Fall 2000, as walked office to office soliciting faculty support for my purge, Savage refused and said he was concerned about administration involvement.  Huguenin blurted out, "Oh no, they told us it has to come from below. Mayes isn’t out to get Boles."

That was a revealing comment because Mayes was not mentioned in the conversation to that point.  By referring to Mayes out of the blue, Huguenin implied that Savage did hear too much of the conversation between himself and Mayes.  And by clarifying that he was advised by the administration that the purge should “come from below,” Huguenin implied that the administration wished to avoid exposing its own political motivations.  Thus Savage wrote in the campus paper, “Supposedly he will not be fired because local community leaders were angry about the protest and are pressuring the Administration.”  Those political motivations also stemmed from the complaint I made to Feaver regarding the involvement of David Mayes and Frank Ohletoint, Huguenin’s student and then-Vice-President of the Student Senate (below).

RESISTANCE TO CHANGE

David Newcomb left suddenly in mid-1999 to teach at a military academy in New Mexico and I was hired to replace him.  After returning to the US with my partner and our child after six years of research in Japan and Hong Kong, I took the first offer that came along -- USAO.  That year, campus politics became lively after a critical mass of progressive professors was hired -- inadvertently it seems.  Savage, Long (economics) and myself (sociology), joined Cherulnik and about twenty or so active students.  

Conservative students, faculty, and administrators fought the new faculty and student activism at every step, restricting academic freedom on more occasions than we care to remember, and doling out excuses like free candy.  The struggle between progressive and conservative students began when Zack Roper (Republican) President of the Student Senate, and Ohletoint, opposed sociology students’ request to create a democracy board.  Conservative faculty, including Ingrid Shafer, also opposed the democracy board.

In mid-October 2000, Roper and Frank Ohletoint ousted left political groups from the Student Senate while the administration began to censor campus email to prevent anonymous complaints from students to faculty.  There had been no abuse of the faculty list serve.   We asked ourselves, “What is the administration protecting us faculty from?”

This semester, when students requested to print a notice about Sodexho-Marriott, the campus food service provider, in a paid-for space in the campus newspaper, the paper’s Advisor, Randy Talley, refused to print it.  I called Randy to confirm this, and he did, stating that the university could be sued -- an outrageous excuse.

Meanwhile, servile faculty barnacles proclaimed that “USAO couldn’t be more open,” that “expelling a few students for obstructing university business while protesting does not necessarily mean that freedom is being repressed,” and that USAO “tolerates a wide variety of unconventional activity,” as Professor Darryel Reigh stated in a campus paper article.

Another example of USAO “tolerance”: a female drama student complained about the Victorian-like censorship by the administration of the word "Vagina" (reduced to “V”) on the main campus marquee and direction posters that were supposed to advertise the “The Vagina Monologues.”  The dark irony is that the conspicuous title was intended to bring attention to a play designed to raise awareness of patriarchy and women’s issues.  Then numerous people witnessed Randy Talley chastising the student for her complaint which was written into the play program.  Equally ironic, that week Darryel Reigh exclaimed to all faculty by email how great the play was, as if to confirm his statement about USAO openness.  But of course, he made no mention of the censorship of the play’s title.

The administration’s bias in favor of servile Student Senate leaders became obvious and blatant.  Immediately after progressive students informed the Vice-President of Academic Affairs, Terry Winn, that they were gathering signatures to impeach Roper, he made numerous phone calls throughout the campus in search of Roper and left messages to warn him.  Students charged that Roper and Ohletoint had disregarded procedures; that they failed to hold elections for positions, did not follow election procedures for office positions, and did not make copies of the constitution available for students to check if procedures were being followed.  The constitution “was lost”, Roper claimed.  The Administration said it found nothing awry.  And then administrators threatened progressive students with expulsion for protesting against corruption and favoritism in student government.

Progressive faculty took these developments seriously.  Dr. Savage suggested that the Administration should “submit to an external investigation into whether they actively aid one student faction (the servile one)” (Trend, Nov. 3, 2000).  Professor Long sent a faculty-wide email with an attached petition and explained that, “We are concerned about the allegations surrounding the Student Association and feel the faculty has a responsibility to see that the charges are thoroughly investigated.”  Both were bold moves and not taken lightly, as neither faculty member has tenure.  Finally, Dr. Cherulnik and other faculty members wrote to the ACLU for legal aid for the students.

David Mayes told the students that if they did not file a lawsuit he would ensure that they would be recognized by the Student Senate and invited to join numerous committees.  Mayes, Huguenin (a faculty sponsor of the senate), Roper, Ohletoint, suddenly found a copy of the constitution and made about thirty copies.  Ohletoint announced his resignation, but administration and faculty supporters encouraged him to renege, to claim he did nothing wrong, and so he remained vice president until the next elections.

"NOT ON MY WATCH"

My purge unfolded in this political context.  After Huguenin tried to solicit Savage, Savage informed me.  Had he not, I would never have known about the purge until December.  Other than Huguenin and Mayes, we didn’t know precisely who was involved.  Savage and I requested to talk with the complainants who conveniently hid behind a veil of anonymity.  Communicating through division chair Miller, they refused.

It was impossible to defend myself against allegations that I was not allowed to know in full.  In fact, at no time prior to calling for my dismissal in September 2000 did any of the complainants ever suggest to me they had a serious problem.  In view of the fact that I suggested to Huguenin on at least four occasions during the Spring 2000 that we should organize our differences for a more constructive classroom experience, which he never agreed to do, I now believe that the refusal to discuss matters by he and the others was to avoid a questioning of their reasons by myself and Savage, to avoid scrutinizing their evidence, and to avoid exposing their personal-political motivations.

When Savage and I talked with President Feaver, we were struck at how he went out of his way to raise the issue of academic freedom at the very beginning of our meeting with him. "That won’t happen on my watch," he boasted. When we talked with Bernard next, he did the same, claiming that the President was a defender of free speech despite complaints from downtown officials.  Oops.  By raising the implication of the calls from downtown, Feaver and Bernard had anticipated, and unintentionally opened our eyes to, the significance of the protest I had joined in August, 2000.

Further, the implied defense of my participation in the protest contradicted comments from USAO employees.  One professional staff member told Savage the day after the protest that the administration “was furious with Boles.”  He was quite serious.  The atmosphere on campus became uneasy.  Word spread quickly in mid-September that some faculty and administration members were seeking my dismissal and that people should support the administration and stay clear of me.  One day that week the above staff member was about to sit for lunch.  The moment he noticed me eating with Savage, he stopped dead in his tracks at the chair he was about to sit in, turned around, and sat at another table.

Another faculty member, the Faculty sponsor of the Young Republicans, Stuart Meltzer, began walking up to faculty members and questioning them if I had requested a letter of support.  It was a form of intimidation.  And another professional staff member complained to me that his/her superior had advised against writing a letter of support for me if I were to ask for one.

USAO UBER ALLES!

A number of conservative faculty besides Meltzer openly opposed my participation in the protest downtown and my politics.  Besides Larry Magrath (biology), who wrote a letter of sympathy to Assistant D.A. Robert Beal (!), Ingrid Shafer sent an email to all faculty members criticizing me for protesting, and for criticizing Robert Beal.  Echoing what seemed to be the administration’s view, on 9-16-00 she wrote: "I don't want to sabotage our efforts by provoking the ones in power …I love USAO, and will do my best to neutralize any action that might be perceived as reflecting negatively on USAO."

She meant neutralize me, not just my actions, for she wrote this precisely two days after sending a letter to Dr. Miller calling for my dismissal.  According to my lawyer, Shafer could hardly be more clear about suppressing political and academic freedom than by stating that she would "neutralize" a colleague over a political dispute.  But that was just a teaser.

Shafer had the temerity to write to me that she wished I had discouraged students from protesting on my behalf against her efforts to have me fired.  She rationalized it this way: "it does not help make students in general feel more secure. In addition, it provides one more opportunity for polarization and detracts from the ONE thing they should be concerned about -- their academic work" (email: 9-30-00).  Intolerance of outspoken criticism is a pattern with Shafer.  She openly opposed the creation of the USAO democracy board by sociology students because it is “divisive” and because “it implies that USAO isn’t already democratic.”

But the clearest evidence of Shafer’s political intolerance is her letter to Miller calling for my dismissal by December.  For instance, citing a part of a lecture note from my website on Talcott Parsons, she stated, based on this evidence, that I demonized other views. However, in portraying me, in her written words, as a "romantic," "dogmatic," "anti-establishment revolutionary," and in claiming that the content of my lectures is "controversial," to support her call for my dismissal, Shafer herself is has demonized and oppressed academic freedom.

Shafer was motivated to launch this attack in part because of the lies she was fed by Huguenin, and because I took a critical approach to the World Thought and Culture III class, which she designed years ago.  My approach was the opposite of the courses point as it was to be taught that summer.  Huguenin, who was the only other team instructor until I was notified two days before class began, had chosen to only use Classics of Western Thought.  I critiqued the Eurocentric assumptions of the course and proposed to explain to students the unequal social context and relations behind the so-called great achievements of European elites.

Shafer was appalled that someone might disagree with the way she envisioned “her”course.  She opposed alternative approaches in meetings, according to Dr. Lewis, the former-director of the Interdisciplinary Studies program (IDS).  Consequently, she aggressively attacked me the very first week that I lectured.  One student, who I never had in any class before, became so upset by Shafer’s strong remarks that she wrote a two-page letter of complaint to Dr. Lewis, which included the following:

“My objection here is not necessarily the content of the discussion. It was in Professor Shafer’s mannerism, being so adamant in a hostile, even accusatory tone of voice! It was as if she was attacking him.  Professor Boles, appeared visibly shocked at this manner of interrogation, but managed to very eloquently inform us and her, that he would, in fact, provide empirical evidence in today’s lecture and future lectures throughout this course to substantiate this area of study. Unfortunately that was not good enough for Professor Shafer, who snaps back, ‘Let’s hear your empirical evidence!’ (I swear, this is the only time I have ever seen a college professor heckled in a lecture. That it was done by a colleague seemed absolutely ridiculous!)”

Another student in the class, Ms. Hill, wrote in a letter to Vice-President Bernard that, “It was no secret that Dr. Huguenin disagreed with most everything Dr. Boles said, and most students with which [sic.] I have spoken agreed that Dr. Huguenin’s dislike carried over into the personal realm.”  Professor Cherulnik commented in a campus-wide email: "New faculty who suggest that [courses] could be improved by introducing a more global and democratic analysis of ideas or more rigorous standards face the USAO equivalent of excommunication. That is what happened to Dr. Boles. It may cost him his job, as it has cost others tenure and promotion in the past" (11-27-00).

HUGUENIN'S LIES

Assistant Professor Huguenin did the leg-work organizing my purge. We had prior petty political-academic disputes in our American Civilization (US history) class in Spring 2000.  It was my worst teaching experience ever.  Toward the end of that semester, he sought out any critical comments or rumors from students and faculty that he could use to tarnish my image, however absurd or trivial, however outdated.  From his letter to Dr. Miller, here are the most damning lies:

1) Huguenin lied that I threw a podium in class.  Six reputable students in the class – those whom I was able to contact on short notice – including Sherry Borden, Johnna Kauffman-Evans, Barbara Henderson, Alexander J. Russell, Shana Bratcher, and Jessica Thomason – each wrote letters to the administration revealing that the allegation was fabricated.  The two students who made this claim, who sat in the back of the room and did poorly, told Huguenin and Shafer who were uninterested in verifying the claim.

2) Huguenin lied about my lectures as “incomprehensible,” “jargon,” “confused,” and “riddled with errors.”  Had such remarks not been made in a letter calling for my dismissal, they could simply be dismissed as academic and personal conflict.  But as reasons for my dismissal, these falsehoods constitute repression of academic freedom.

3) Huguenin lied about the "Jared Standridge situation."

Huguenin claims that I pressured Jared Standridge into dropping charges against another student. That student threatened Standridge for repeatedly harassing his wife Dava. When Standridge learned that Dava was filing sexual harassment charges, he wanted to make peace. They all came to my office and I helped them resolve their disputes. Standridge later wrote in a letter that I was “surprisingly impartial” and he expressed his appreciation for my help.  Had Jared felt that I’d pressured him as Huguenin wrote, then he certainly wouldn’t have enrolled in my Japanese language class this semester!

4) Huguenin slandered me and lied by stating that I “exhibit episodic paranoia”:
This claim was based on an incident involving Stephen Wilcox, sociology student.  Wilcox admitted in writing  that during fall 1999 he asked a friend to help him get me to visit his apartment to smoke marijuana. According to Wilcox’s friend, Wilcox intended to get dirt on me because I had dirt on him. The dirt was that Wilcox had told me that he had smoked pot with former sociology professor David Newcomb on several occasions. He told me this in order to convince me to sponsor a NORML speaker at USAO.

FORMER FACULTY NEWCOMB’S INVOLVEMENT

I could care less about Wilcox’s personal habits or Newcomb’s.  But I was shocked when I learned that he could conceive of such a plan and had encouraged his friend to participate.  I immediately called Shafer, who at the time seemed to be a friend, and I asked her for advice.  Shafer asked me to send an email to her about the incident, which I did.  But after I criticized the IDS program, she contacted David Newcomb and sent my email to him.  Newcomb subsequently called students who were involved in a petition effort on my behalf.  The evening before Newcomb called these students, Shafer confronted one of them in the Oval.  She became visibly upset when the student told her that over 100 signatures had been collected against her attempt to have me dismissed.  Was it a coincidence that Newcomb called the same student the next day and warned him to desist?

THE TIES THAT BIND: OHLETOINT, MAYES, AND WINN'S ROLES

Huguenin communicated with his student Frank Ohletoint and Student Services Director David Mayes to “guide” conservative or unwitting students to take trivial complaints to Mayes and to Feaver.  He then told faculty members that they should speak with David Mayes about the “numerous” student complaints about me.   This is how the purge from below was organized.

Ohletoint’s involvement was initially puzzling since I had never met him.  Ohletoint was the vice-president of the Student Senate and in that capacity worked closely with Student Services Director David Mayes.  Roper and Ohletoint are also Huguenin's history students, and Huguenin is a faculty sponsor of the Student Senate.  Ohletoint and Roper also fought pitched political battles with left sociology students in the Student Senate beginning fall 1999.

When sociology majors and other students learned of the lies spread by Huguenin and Ohletoint, they began to write letters and petitions, which I’ve made available to all faculty members.  Frank Ohletoint took several students as a group to make complaints about me to Dr. Feaver, even though the remarks were groundless and frivolous, as Mayes himself admitted in writing.

One of these students informed me that she had been solicited by Ohletoint and taken by him to meet Feaver.   In an affidavit for courtroom purposes, she testified that Ohletoint said he got information about her complaint from Mayes, and that Mayes had leaked a confidential comment she made in passing to him during a regularly scheduled counseling meeting.  Ohletoint later admitted that he had asked Mayes for information about student complaints from Mayes.  Mayes denies giving Ohletoint the information.  Further, she testified that when Ohletoint approached her, he said that the purpose of the meeting was to “jeopardize Boles’ job.”  When asked about this again in the affidavit, she says states, “Yes. Mr. Mayes also told me this.  They told me that they don’t like Dr. Boles.”

Based on this student’s testimony, I requested that members of the grievance committee investigate the events.  I received no reply for over three weeks (a response is required in two).  I then went directly to Feaver to ask why I’d received no reply.  He advised that I not pursue the matter formally and offered to put Terry Winn in charge of investigating Mayes.  Winn told me emphatically before he began his investigation that he had hand-picked Mayes and couldn't believe the allegations were true, but he'd investigate.  (Is it also relevant to establishing their close ties, and therefore Winn’s bias, that both are good friends and attend services at the same church each Sunday?)

When the above student read Winn’s investigation report, she became so disturbed that she agreed to provide a legal affidavit.  She stated that Winn and Mayes “misinterpreted everything that I have told them for their own purposes.”  According to the affidavit Winn attributed statements to her that she did make.  Winn’s report was outright misinformation designed to shift attention from, and cover up, Mayes’ culpability.

The affidavit also reveals that Mayes never informed her of, or obtained her permission to write, a complaint about me on her behalf.  After Ohletoint’s meeting with Feaver, Mayes himself wrote the complaint and sent to Dr. Feaver as a “follow up.”  In doing this, Mayes broke USAO procedures.  Winn defended Mayes, stating that because there is no explicit statement in the grievance procedures prohibiting Mayes from not following the procedures, it was therefore okay for him to not follow the procedures.  Further, Winn found no problem with Ohletoint organizing other students to make complaints against me that were clearly politically motivated and when they were unfounded as Mayes himself admitted.

Is it any coincidence that Winn’s wife, Dr. Tina Winn (psychology), joined the posse in following weeks even though we had little, and only cordial and pleasant interaction, to that point, as she admitted in writing?  Is unquestioned loyalty a benefit of nepotism?  And what about Linda Crumb, business professor, who doesn’t even know me?  Was it unquestioned loyalty to the administration for career advancement perhaps?

I’m off to another campus, which is the opposite of USAO in almost every way, not least of which is a much higher salary and health insurance coverage for my family, and for this I’m fortunate.  Three other faculty have also left this year, and two more would have left if circumstances had permitted.  Perhaps within a year or two USAO will once again return to its quiet, self-contented, and stultified ways.  For that is what fits USAO.

Elson E. Boles
Assistant Professor, Historical Sociology