"Things are really stacked against students, against victims"

Sent: Friday, May 25, 2012, 11:12 AM

To: McNeill, Clarence L [...]

Subject: FW: academic advisement; may I ask if all is well for my degree?

From: Christopher K. Philippo [...]

Sent: Saturday, May 19, 2012 4:04 AM

To: Jennifer Stromer-Galley

Subject: academic advisement; may I ask if all is well for my degree? [...]

I think a degree from UA is a sort of badge of shame (party school; Kegs and Eggs; department cuts; near loss of flagship status), and a Communication degree from UA I fear may be or may become even moreso (though for the sake of the good COM professors, it should not). If only I'd taken Prof. Hobson's advice to be a Women's Studies major. Or English, suggested to me by someone (possibly the English chair?) after my Undergraduate Research Conference presentation. Or dropped COM and kept Art History. Or did the student-initiated Film Studies major. Or Documentary Studies. Or anything. It becomes too expensive and time consuming to switch, impossible really.

I'd have transferred out if I hadn't felt overwhelmed by everything that would entail. I had actually wanted Prof. Zahavi to give me an F in his class, so that I wouldn't have to have a UA degree. I'd submitted a haiku to him, which I think went something like:

Fs, they are honest

the sound of a diploma

fed to a shredder

You'd have to see if he still has it for the exact wording. He wouldn't let me, though, and I didn't like to disappoint him because he really is one of UA's best, so I turned in my final paper. A lot of time and money went into this ridiculous thing, more than for the average student.

Chief Wiley replied that he had no knowledge of the cease and desist order that I'd been told [by Clarence L. McNeill] had been cc'd to him and that UPD was enforcing. Fancy that.

It all gets worse from here for me, I'm sure, but I do have a sort of "acceptance" of that (I still don't entirely understand what you meant by that). It would have been nice if you'd supplied more context to UPD when you'd called them, in particular mentioning that you'd speculated to me that [Michael W. Barberich] may be pandering to the worst elements in class in order to be liked, that [Michael W. Barberich] may feel intellectually threatened, and you had warned me [Michael W. Barberich] might do anything to keep his job. It would be nice if I were not (apparently) alone in this. [...]

One doesn't know how many hurdles there are until one gets running. The Registrar's Office first told me that Student Files can't be copied, because they're the property of the university and they're copyrighted. Then I was told that was wrong, and that they can't be released because FERPA prohibits that. However, the NYS Dep't of State Committee on Open Government says that's wrong. Some other reason might be supplied to me next.

A counselor at the downtown UA Psychological and Career Services Center told me she'd been bullied by a professor at UA, but she couldn't bring herself to report it. A counselor! I may have mentioned a campus activist at UA who'd been sexually harassed by a professor, and despite being an activist publicly butting heads on large issues she did not feel safe reporting her own personal one.

Things are really stacked against students, against victims. I even know a professor in the area who has not reported the sexual harassment she was subjected to by a colleague, for fear that it would endanger her career. In 2012. That is so, so wrong, and so very tragic.

But we'll see. Maybe UA can get this all straightened out the right way. That would be something. I hope so.

Thanks,

Chris

UA's only gotten worse since. Jeanette Altarriba, Sue Faerman, Christine Bouchard, Clarence L. McNeill, J. "Frank" Wiley and his crew of dirty cops, and on and on - they all do what they can to maintain a climate of fear on campus, to maintain a rape culture, to help sex offenders get off (in more ways than one) and fuck over victims, witnesses, whistleblowers. It's not limited to UA, of course. Nancy Zimpher as Chancellor of SUNY, George Randolph Hearst III as President of the Board of Directors of the UAlbany Foundation, and others don't care about safety and security. They care about the almighty dollar, and there's far more money in backing sociopaths like Barberich (particularly given that his wife is CSEA Capital District Threat-Maker Therese Assalian - associate of convicted bomber and CSEA Union President Steven Raucci), or gang-raping UAlbany football players, or idiot children of major donors, than in doing the right thing.