UAlbany's Department of Ill Communication: "Cause you can't, you won't, and you don't stop"

"I want to say a little something that's long overdue/The disrespect to women has got to be through"

From: “Bourassa, Debbie A”

Subject: RE: DARS exceptions

Date: October 6, 2011 11:43:28 AM EDT

To: “Philippo, Chris K”

Your request for a DARS exception for COM 265 is DENIED. If you have any questions/concerns, you can make an appointment with our department chair, Dr. Jeanette Altarriba – her e-mail address is jaltarriba@albany.edu

A Degree Audit Reporting System (DARS) exception, I've been told, is sometimes had just for the asking - without any reason necessary. I'd provided several reasons: the instructor's ethical failings that included his permitting students to openly cheat on the daily quizzes, the fact that I'd taken an upper-level COM theory course and received an A in it. Inexplicably, only COM 265 Intro to COM Theory could fulfill the theory requirement for the major, not any of the other COM theory courses. Subjecting people to Michael W. Barberich is evidently a sort of horrific COM department hazing ritual.

That the UAlbany Communication department under Jeanette Altarriba and secretary Bourassa didn't care about faculty ethics violations, academic dishonesty by a professor in the department, teaching assistants (TAs) in the department, or students in the department, ought to be a matter of some concern - one would hope, at least. At UA, however, it seems it's pretty much business as usual. (There are exceptions, naturally; there are some very good people at UAlbany, but unfortunately they seem to be limited to positions which lack any standing that would enable them to clean up the widespread, open corruption there.)

At the time I'd written I hadn't realized that the lectures and lecture notes were not in fact Michael W. Barberich's (I'd mistakenly referred to them as "his" since he'd continually represented them as his own work in class and online) but in fact had been prepared by his TAs. I didn't learn that until the BA-candidate TAs revealed that during the particularly poorly-attended study sessions they ran (the MA and PhD candidate TAs didn't attend the study sessions, much less lead them), and when Barberich was essentially required to admit it in class on two occasions.

The first occasion had been when one of Barberich's MA-candidate TAs had (mistakenly?) left her name on a PowerPoint slide. That slide hung on the screen for some time before Barberich finally acknowledged it, stating that the TA had written the lecture and quickly stating mumble, mumble, mumble had written the mumble, mumble, mumble lectures he'd presented [as his own work] in previous weeks. Any students who might have missed that class would have missed the too-late credit Barberich gave to the real authors of the work he'd presented as his own, and Barberich returned to presenting his TAs' lectures and lecture notes as his own work in class and online thereafter. Not one of his five(!) TAs made the mistake of having one of their own names on their own work again.

That same PowerPoint had a slide with an apparently forged citation, shown below in low-resolution:

There's no such source as "Merriam & Webster" and any Merriam-Webster dictionary would be a poor choice when the OED or a discipline-specialized dictionary is available. A galling choice even when the course was an "Information Literacy" general education class. "The art or study of using language effectively and persuasively" is not from any Merriam-Webster dictionary that I can identify, but rather it's from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (I checked the 4th ed.). One finds the definition from the American Heritage Dictionary attributed to Merriam-Webster on garbage webpages like http://www.bignerds.com/papers/18393/Homopathy/: "The definition of rhetoric is the art or study of using language effectively and persuasively (Merriam Webster)." Had the TA plagiarized such a website?

The second occasion had been the last of the only three times I dared raise my hand in that class, when the conversation with the Barberich went something like this:

Me: The diagram on the last slide [which had a font which was small and very hard to read] isn't in the textbook. Is it from the work of the theorist Ting-Toomey [Professor of Human Communication Studies at California State University, Fullerton] the slide was about?

Barberich: No, it's based on her work.

Me: Oh. It didn't cite a source, so did you create the diagram?

Barberich: No.

Me: Well, who made the diagram then?

Barberich: That's a good question.

Me: This is a class that fulfills the general education requirement for information literacy, right? [It's supposed to teach students to "learn to evaluate the quality of information, to use information ethically and professionally" and to be a resource "for students needing additional orientation to academic integrity"to help them avoid plagiarism.]

Barberich: Yes, it is a class that fulfills the general education requirement for information literacy.

Me: Oh. Well, you should know who created the diagram, right? Because you created the lecture...? You didn't say one of your TAs wrote it. [I suspected one of them might have, or that he'd blame them.]

Barberich: No, actually my TA [X] wrote it. [The TA was present, but evidently did not have the information as to where he'd...appropriated?...the diagram.]

Me: Oh. Well, that would have been good to acknowledge at the beginning of the lecture, wouldn't it have been?

Barberich: Yes.

I dropped the line of questioning at that point. Barberich had admitted (though it had been like pulling teeth with him) to personally committing academic dishonesty, and that his TA had committed academic dishonesty as well with his full knowledge, in front of over 100 undergraduate students (mostly teenaged freshmen and sophomores who may not have fully understood the significance of the exchange, if they were paying attention at all).

In Barberich's false police report, he claimed I'd been "disrupting his class by challenging his teaching abilities and methods throughout the semester" (evidently he felt engaging in faculty ethics violations, academic dishonesty, sexual harassment, etc. were his legal right and something the corrupt and incompetent UAlbany police were obliged to help him continue to do). He'd never made that claim that I'd been disrupting his class throughout the semester to me. I'd raised my hand in class only three times, and he called on me each time. UAlbany has policies on classroom disruption that he could have followed if I had actually been disruptive (I had not been). Barberich's own behavior and the behavior he permitted from other students were exceptionally disruptive (perhaps following his example: "Serve as a role model for the conduct you expect" http://www.albany.edu/cas/assets/2013-chairs-manual.doc‎), but my reporting that disruptive behavior of his and of students in class never put an end to it - it continued to the very end. Jeanette Altarriba the department chair was perfectly willing to let—and even help—Barberich continue in whatever self-gratifying way he pleased, as was Clarence McNeill, as was Sue Faerman, etc.

I'm not, by nature, very confrontational. I have relatively little experience with confrontations, don't consider myself particularly good at them, don't enjoy them, and would avoid them if I could. That exchange had been very difficult, scary even, but it had seemed absolutely necessary and that is what had made it possible. My hand was trembling as I tried taking notes as the lecture his TA had written for him resumed. Another uncredited diagram showed up in the same presentation in a later slide, which he acknowledged, unprompted, should have been cited. I suspected that he had not ever looked at the PowerPoint or the printout of the slides that he was lecturing from prior to their being projected on the screen in class that day. Soon thereafter he cut the lecture short and ended the class period quite early. There was some unfortunate dark humor in the fact that the lecture involved the topic of "face-saving."

After class, I had gone to meet with a member of the department, and I stopped by the department office to speak to Ms. Bourassa. Prefacing it by saying I was sure there was no point in telling her (since she and Altarriba had been permitting, even enabling, Barberich to be unethical all semester long), I repeated the above exchange we'd had. She laughed when I got to the point where Barberich said "that's a good question" in response to my having asked him the source of material in what was supposedly his own lecture. When I got to the end, it turned out that I was right that there was no point to telling Ms. Bourassa (or anyone at UAlbany): academic dishonesty is AOK there. An individual professor may handle academic dishonesty appropriately, but once it goes to McNeill, Faerman, Bouchard, Phillips, etc.— athletes, legacies, donors' offspring, perhaps even the average student, might find they have no worries.

Aside from many other instances of academic dishonesty throughout the semester by Barberich, by at least some of his TAs, by many of the students in class (though not all of them), by the chair, etc. there was also the sexual harassment and retaliation for having reported these things and others... it was quite the nightmare. (On top of all that, I also got audited by mail by the IRS, among other things... joy.)

Anyhow, what the initial DARS exception request had been that was "DENIED," to get to it finally, is below. In posting online to a blog, various formatting changes, etc.

From: Christopher K. Philippo

Sent: Thursday, October 06, 2011 11:11 AM

To: Bourassa, Debbie A

Subject: DARS exceptions

Importance: High

Good morning!

I think the problem with getting a DARS exception for the Documentary Film class I am taking that the Registrar does not currently recognize as a Film Studies class is going to be resolved. The Film Studies chair said the Art History chair can give the exception to me. I hope she’s right. So that’s some potentially happy news. The below, I must apologize for this, is less so.

I was wondering if a DARS exception could be given for the Theory requirement for the Communication major. I think I had asked about this before and the answer was no, but I nevertheless wanted to try.

I have taken an upper-level theory course, ACOM 367 Theory of Interpersonal Communication. Introduction to Communication Theory was not a prerequisite for it, nor is it a prerequisite for any other COM course as far as I know. Nor is it important or useful for success in other COM courses at UA, as Prof. Barberich claims, as evidenced by its being the last COM course I am taking, and my A average in all my COM courses. One would think, yes, that it would be integral, but reality indicates otherwise.

However, there is a deeper problem than that. Prof. Barberich simply does not teach the class well; arguably he does not teach the class at all. I was disgusted in 2009 when first trying to take the class that he’d selected a textbook that said on the cover under the header “Intended Audience”: “This volume is designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in communication theory.” Had he not read it prior to selecting it? From what I understand, he continued to use that textbook up to the current semester, when he finally picked a more appropriate one. I was told that students had been complaining about how inappropriate the previous textbook was all along, and that he finally picked a new one in response to the complaints, suggesting he continued to fail to realize of his own accord how inappropriate the prior one was, despite the authors themselves saying it was. And then as now his lectures are primarily read from his PowerPoints. Not very engaging, and since he posts his own notes from his PowerPoints, in 2009 many students stopped coming to class, or if they do, they don’t have to pay attention, and many don’t.

He is also one of those professors who on the first day of class briefly describes the class, hands out the syllabus, then dismisses everybody after less than thirty minutes. For people who live off-campus such as myself, we’ve spent twice as long traveling to and from campus as that. It is supposed to be a 3 credit hour class, but professors like that begin chipping it down to a 2 credit hour class from the first day. However, students do not get a portion of their money refunded, and these professors presumably represent to their departments and the university that they are teaching for the entire period. I don’t think that’s ethical at all.

On the topic of ethics, when we reached that point in class, he literally laughingly said we’d skip over ethics, which we did. This, like dismissing class early, or his perennially being late to arrive for class, sets and absolutely terrible example. Most of the 150 or so students arrive before he does. No wonder so many students feel free to cheat at UA.

On the subject of cheating, he’s elected to have iClicker quizzes in class. Primarily iClickers are a $40 attendance device, a poorly-designed remote that can’t be used for anything else. Simply using the iClicker at all gives us our participation credit for class. Answering the questions correctly gives us extra credit points. Neither he nor the TAs have said anything about putting books or notes away during the quiz questions, and the class is not monitored during them; you can imagine how that goes. Also, while the iClickers are registered to each student individually, it would be very easy for somebody to give their iClicker to someone else to use in addition to their own. Whether that happens, I don’t know, but it would not surprise me.

Getting the points on the questions when one has read the material, or if one is cheating, is not necessarily a given. He typically introduces the questions with laughing comments about how poorly they’re written, or how they’ve been put into his PowerPoint in the wrong spot, or how he hasn’t read them yet! These comments are usually directed at his TAs, to whom he is presumably trying to deflect the blame. The answers increasingly are resulting in objections from the class.

One of the TAs said to me he accidentally mixes up his materials from other classes. In fact, some of the pages on Blackboard 9 still have not been updated, displaying old dates. It does not appear he took any instruction in how to use Blackboard 9, as it took him quite a long time to get our grades for the first exam posted, or to have the iClicker grades display correctly. Rather than post the grades with student ID numbers as a document on Blackboard, or on a Discussion Board, or via Blackboard Mail, etc. (all of which I suggested) we simply had to continue waiting. While waiting, the appearance and data on the grade page kept changing without improving.

Grades did finally get posted. In 2009 and this semester as well, prior to the exam, he had talked about how much he loves bell curves and how happy he is when results resemble a bell curve. That mechanical approach to exams is rather detached and dehumanizing and doesn’t indicate any desire to actually further students’ understanding of the material. He was pleased to report after the exam that along with the curve the results fell into the bell curve, so he was happy. He was also very happy with an average of about 70%, which I found appalling. (Not that I’d want artificially inflated grades, just a professor who works and students who work.)

What is particularly aggravating is something he’s (somewhat) acknowledged: how poorly-written the quiz and exam questions are. Some of the answers he says are correct are simply 100% wrong according to the textbook and his own lectures, but he stubbornly insists on them being correct. His attempts at defending his answers and at ruling out the correct answers are so rambling, useless, and odd that they are quite uncomfortable to sit through. He claimed that “family and close friends” are people that we are comfortable in the proxemics zone of intimate distance (0-18 inches). The textbook says that intimate partners correspond to intimate distance, and that family and friends correspond to personal distance (18 inches to four feet). When I silently pointed to the definition in the textbook, his response was to grin and say something like “so what?” And then he asked me to define “close friends.” The textbook and his lecture do not define that word, and it is at any rate irrelevant. Close friends are not intimate partners, nor are family members intimate partners (at least among law-abiding, moral people). I objected to how he continually tries to spin his errors as being correct. He responded by spinning even more, saying something like “we’re seeing how people define things differently and the weaknesses in the theories.” He failed to see that he was providing further ammunition for the arguments that his questions and answers are poorly designed, that his response to problems is to deny them by spinning, and that insisting on his answer being the correct one when he’s saying everything is vague, weak, and personally-defined is indefensible.

When I went over the exam during one of the TAs office hours, the problem reared its head again. I did make some stupid mistakes; I’m by no means immune to that. However, they were outnumbered by the problematic questions, ones where his supposed correct answer did not seem justified by the lectures and textbook whereas mine did. Or at best, they both might have been acceptable answers, neither better than the other.

Going over the exam with the TA was a pretty horrible experience, but that’s less directly related to the Professor except insofar as he did [sic] evidently did not prepare his TAs to go over the exams or be able to explain why certain answers were right or wrong. I can expand on this if you wish, but briefly: she didn’t even have copies of his PowerPoints. There was only one questions she was willing to admit he’d gotten completely wrong, and she said “I wonder how he’ll handle that?” Really? Other professors would acknowledge the mistake in class and award the points for the question correctly. However, her condition of doubt did not last long. “I’m sure he realized the key was wrong, and discounted the question or made up for it with the curve.” What reason would there be to believe that? And even if that unlikely possibility were true, how ethical would it be to silently conceal an error on the key without telling the class?

I realize as an undergraduate student without a degree I’m hardly in much of a position to offer advice, but I would really advise that Prof. Barberich never teach Introduction to Communication Theory again. Whether he is any better with any of his other classes, I couldn’t say, but I am at least skeptical about the possibility. : (

Chris

“I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.” —Jorge Luis Borges

Altarriba's response to my having subsequently reported, among other things, that Barberich had continued to permit students to openly cheat all semester long, that Barberich had joked about hooking up one of his TAs to electrodes and shocking her until she screams (the only TA out of his five who might not have been writing his lectures and lecture notes for him that he was presenting as his own work):

"Good morning, Chris,

As Chair of the Department of Communication, I do not take lightly any comments or reports from in-class behaviors that offend students or otherwise make them uncomfortable. As you brought issues to my attention, they have been addressed through internal mechanisms to do so. I wish you a restful break and a successful end to your semester.

Dr. Jeanette Altarriba.

She does take it lightly, though—just as many other UAlbany administrators do. I asked her what "internal mechanisms" she'd used and how it was that she'd "addressed" issues when they kept getting worse all semester long, but of course she didn't reply. Her comment about wishing me a "restful break" was not appreciated; my stress (if that was what she was referencing) was in part due to her forcing me, over my objections, to remain in the class of an "instructor" I'd reported for academic dishonesty, sexual harassment, etc. By making my receiving my degree in Communication, graduating, etc. conditioned upon being further subjected to Michael W. Barberich's highly offensive and even alarming behavior, behavior that Altarriba herself had acknowledged was offensive, Ms. Altarriba was engaging in quid pro quo sexual harassment and hazing. If not, what was going on in her head, what was she doing?

When I'd reported Barberich's first instance of sexual harassment, Altarriba had expressed serious concern and acknowledged he'd done wrong. At the same time she excused his academic dishonesty (as had Debbie Bourassa's e-mail on Altarriba's behalf) and Altarriba mistakenly believed that Barberich's class was required in order to matriculate into the major. The form indicating that COM265 is not is always right outside the department office's door, among other places: http://www.albany.edu/communication/files/Communication_Major.pdf. It's COM100 (logically enough) and a "Statistics or Logic" course that are the admission requirements.

More couch potato than a chair,

to be so very unaware.

She didn't think I had standing to report Michael W. Barberich's sexual harassment (McNeill later ignorantly claimed something to the same effect). Barberich had made an inappropriate sexual innuendo joke about sexual penetration, something UAlbany identifies as a form of sexual harassment (which in turn UAlbany identifies as a form of sexual assaut) and she took the position that his sexual harassment had been directed at women only, perhaps only specific women at that. According to her, no women had ever reported Barberich for sexual harassment. In fact, he'd directed it at the whole class, and a male professor is perfectly capable of engaging in sexual harassment with not just women but also men, of directing an inappropriate sexual innuendo joke about sexual penetration at men and women alike. Somehow that was lost on her.

She did promise (perhaps falsely?) that she'd speak to him about it, and she repeatedly assured me that she wouldn't tell Barberich who reported him for academic dishonesty and sexual harassment. I repeatedly assured her that I was sure Barberich would know or suspect who reported him regardless of whether she told him that it had been me or not. Barberich persisted in academic dishonesty and sexual harassment even after Altarriba supposedly told him to stop. Michael W. Barberich's joking about torturing one of his TAs until she screamed came AFTER Altrarriba supposedly told him to stop engaging in sexual harassment. Of course Altarriba's first response to my reporting Barberich joking about torturing one of his minority TAs until she screamed was not to respond at all. Her response to my subsequent writing to her with my disappointment (to say the least!) at her total lack of concern about such things was her bullshit lying response "As you brought issues to my attention, they have been addressed through internal mechanisms to do so." One is forced to wonder what kind of human being she is and how many people she has traumatized for her own perverse reasons.

Nobody should have had to tell Barberich to stop, as Barberich should have known he was behaving like a sociopath. (Then again, sociopaths don't care about such things, do they?). Barberich's false police report makes it clear he did know that I'd reported him to Altarriba, whether she'd told him or not.

I didn't know at the time I'd sought her help (and never received it) that Altarriba was the chair of UAlbany's "Presidential Advisory Council for the Prevention of Sexual Assault." http://police.albany.edu/ASR.pdf Considering that she permitted an untenured visiting assistant professor to engage in faculty ethics violations, academic dishonesty, sexual harassment, etc. for an entire semester, that she permitted the professor to engage in retaliation, that she was kept in the loop on the retaliation by Clarence McNeill (if not by others as well), that she assisted in the retaliation herself, etc. one really has to wonder what the Department of Psychology and the Cognition and Language Laboratory under her hypocritical lead has been like.

Ms. Altarriba permitted a white male untenured visiting assistant professor who doesn't appear to publish or do research to engage in (among other things) sexual harassment—including his having made a joke about torturing his minority TA—and yet somehow Ms. Altarriba was "selected to receive the American Psychological Association’s 2012 Minority Fellowship Program’s Dalmas A. Taylor Award for her outstanding contributions to teaching and training ethnic minority psychologists." http://www.albany.edu/news/26543.php Maybe her outstanding contributions to undermining the teaching and training of minority communication students weren't considered a strike against her since it's a different field of study? And yet given all the coverage of the APA and torture (e.g. http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2006Aug10/0,4670,PsychologistsTorture,00.html http://www.democracynow.org/features/apa), one still would have thought the APA would have wanted to distance themselves, no?

One might call Altarriba (and Wulfert, Faerman, Phillips, Zimpher, etc.) patriarchal women: they've achieved much, and yet they wildly abuse their power just as McNeill, Wiley, Murphy, Reilly, Philip, Jones(?), McBride, McCall, King, Duncan, etc. also do. Their actions (and inaction) ensure that people are freer to engage in academic dishonesty, faculty ethics violations, sexual harassment, sexual assault, retaliation, etc.—and freer to get away with it for years or decades if not forever—than they otherwise might be if SUNY Albany were a place where the rule of law existed. Will it ever exist there?

"the State is not an insurer or guarantor of the safety of SUNYA students"

McEnaney v. State of New York, 267 AD 2d 748 - NY: Appellate Div., 3rd Dept. 1999. http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=14949034404515783354

"As one effectively and efficiently radicalized student at the University at Albany put it last January, 'A lot of people who are supposed to be protecting us aren’t doing that. So unless we turn a little wolfish on them, they’ll just eat the sheep.'"

Steffen, Heather. "How to Radicalize Graduate Students." Academe Online 97(4). July-August 2011. http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2011/JA/feat/stef.htm

What recourse do UAlbany's victims have but impotent righteous anger, dismissed to write blog posts nobody reads, left to file complaints with the US Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights that they likewise improperly dismiss and then refuse to answer questions about (when they claimed they would answer questions) while also refusing to reply to FOIA requests? https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/us-dept-of-ed-ualbany-communication-re-ocr-case-no-02-12-2157-4876/

UAlbany et al.: cease and desist facilitating and engaging in crimes, obstructing justice, lying, stonewalling, intimidating, threatening, harming.

In short: STOP.