Typical Case of an American University Student Complaint Against an American University Faculty Member.

September 13, 2005

From: Dr. Gregory B. Lush, UT El Paso Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

To: Dr. Mimi Gladstein, UT El Paso Professor of English and Theatre Arts.

Re: Student Complaint Submitted to Student Welfare and Grievance Committee.

Dear Dr. Gladstein,

Mr. Dennis P. Morony has filed a complaint against you with the Student Welfare and Grievance Committee regarding his grade in ENGL 4319 American Fiction Since 1945, taken during the Summer 2004 semester. A copy of his complaint is attached.

In accordance with the procedures which govern the operation of the Committee, you have the right to respond to the complaint in writing, but are not required to do so. A member of the Student Welfare and Grievance Committee will be appointed as conciliator in this case. The conciliator will be in contact with you and Mr. Morony soon to gather more information and to attempt to reconcile the problem.

I am the outgoing chair of this committee so I will not be handling this case any more after this, but you may feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

[Scribbled signature]

Dr. Gregory B. Lush

(915) 747-6632; (915) 747-7871 (FAX); (email: lush@ece.utep.edu )

Cc: P. Arenaz, Vice Provost; D. Morony (student) [ My own student's copy in Dr. Lush's envelope included whole shebang, too! Dennis ]

[Dennis' Complaint Summary]

Please be sure to specifically state what you want as an outcome of these proceedings.

"What I want as an outcome of these proceedings is poetic in its simplicity: the letter grade of A. I fairly earned it by acing both the midterm exam and the final exam of the indicated course, thus giving me the legitimately earned so-called institutional average of 3.90 for my past 30 credit hours, not a 3.80!"

It is my sincere belief that this grade was based, in whole or in part, on:

Bias: etc.
Arbitrariness: etc.
Caprice: etc.
Impermissible Discrimination: etc.

So on and so forth, signed, dated and etcera!

Morony, Dennis P. 1-800-xyz Additional Pages 1-4

"A summary of this complaint now follows, but first I should like to point out that while Dr. Gladstein's email to me of Tuesday, 3/8/2005 gives her position thusly, The syllabus clearly states how the semester grade will be calculated, I either didn't get a copy of it, or I did -- and then misplaced it. In either case I concede to Dr. Gladstein up front that what she says is so. Nor do I feel it necessary to illustrate Impermissible Discrimination by citing how, when she was a Dean of Liberal Arts, Dr. Gladstein marked Condition A on my Petition for Reinstatement, which I signed on May 14, 2001. She could have allowed me Condition C -- Student must choose Option 2, as Dean Myron Nadel allowed me to do in April of 2003.

"Instead, I'm going to show that Dr. Gladstein's particular use of her pop quizzes -- however described, that she used for one-third of our final grade in English 4319, Prefix 31821, Summer II of 2004 satisfies all the requirements for these elements: Bias, Arbitrariness, Caprice and Impermissible Discrimination -- whether applied individually, or indiscriminately toward the entire class. Further, that the ways and means used in giving these quizzes clearly indicated that their primary purpose was to provide Dr. Gladstein herself an effective means of psychological domination, intimidation and control -- presumably for some desired ideological or political agenda of her own; an agenda, further, that may have entailed the projection of an anti-Hispanic bias, among other things, especially focused upon the female class members.

"To better situate this perception of classroom reality, I believe it only fair to Dr. Gladstein to add this, as well: I personally, belong to that growing group of students, staff and faculty who have long been convinced that the University of Texas at El Paso is, overall, the academic equivalent of an Enron-styple continuing criminal enterprise. Why? Because 95% of [r]egistered students fail to complete a basic degree in four years and 73% when this is extended to six years. Then, too, in the latter case, given the data published recently by the financial aid office, this failure to complete a four-year degree in a six year period adds up to a net financial loss to those 57% who have borrowed an average of $11,900 apiece in student loans of a staggering total of $89,000,000 dollars. This in turn is well within the Enron range, however calculated!

"And, so that we can see the academic culture in which she functions, let us continue with Dr. Gladstein. For the sake of brevity I will now limit this entire case to just one(1) incident as representative of the whole.

"While she ably manifests all the qualities associated with an excellent instructor when so inclined, it is my considered belief, intellectually speaking, that Dr. Mimi Reisel Gladstein lacks the [..] emotional detachment and self-control necessary for the maintenance of even a minimum degree of academic credibility in the classroom when confronted with issues related to the class material that reflects ill on a Marxist-Leninist world view. This is manifested in the abrupt and often contradictory ways she strove to pit student against student when giving the little quizzes, trying desperately to maintain psychological ascendancy, custody and control over the class as a whole using standard Marxist-Leninist techniques. Her irruption into one of her Latina-bashing temper tantrums one morning while we were briefly discussing Helen María Viramontes' short story, Cariboo Café, on Friday, July 23, 2004 is a case in point.

"While one reviewer of this same story, Deborah Owen Moore, (Studies in Short Fiction, http://www.gale.com 6/22/98 ) albeit while incorrectly naming the country as El Salvador, explains a situation whereby ...a woman in [obviously Nicaragua] has lost her son to the secret police who snatch children suspected of aiding the contras ...., is making a simple comment from within the context of Viramontes' story itself; at least three(3) of us (two women, one man) set off an emotional tirade by Dr. Gladstein by simply echoing similar statements. And this included a related passage referring to an eight or nine-year old, cigarette smoking [presumably Sandinista] 'guard.' That little boy is nothing. He's just a little boy!, dutifully screeches in rage the UTEP [D]epartment Chairperson of Theatre Arts. Nearly all [of] us are taken aback! What's all this, for pity's sake?

"Is she suffering from some borderline personality disorder? The effects of a developing dependency on legally prescribed psycho-active or psycho-tropic drugs masquerading as 'medications,' or what?

"Excuse, me, professor! Aren't we forgetting something here? You proudly tell us that you're an immigrant from somewhere. You're a little reluctant to say where, for all you seem to know German rather well. You proudly tell us that the 4th of July is special to you, too! Yet you begin to make us wonder. By simple process of elimination based on your emotional explosion over the Viramontes story we can quickly narrow it down to a 90% probability that you emigrated from one of three countries: Soviet-occupied Austria (up to the early 1950's), Soviet Czechoslovakia, or East Germany (last two Soviet occupied up to at least 1990). So why all the hysterics? I mean:

"Simon Wiesenthal, NAZI-hunter, talking about Communist East Germany, and the secret police, the Stasi: The Stasi was much, much worse than the [NAZI] Gestapo, if you consider only the oppression of its own people, the Gestapo had 40,000 officials watching a country of 80 million, while the [Communist East German] Stasi employed 102,000 to control only 17 million. As author John O. Koehler comments further in his book, Stassi, when we add the Stassi's informers, or Spitzel, of whom some were as young as twelve years, to the Communist secret police total the ratio became one informer per 6.5 [East German] citizens.

"So, then, what about Viramontes' story, of Nicaraguan children snatched by secret police for aiding the [US-backed} Contras? And of guards barely eight years old? Just why is it necessary that we students here at the UTEP English Department are obliged to put up with borderline verbal abuse such as this, when the East German Communist secret service archives are nowadays an open book, and have been for nearly fifteen years?

"The Nicaraguan Sandinista Secret Police were called the Nicaraguan General Directorate of State Security (DGSE) and they were trained ... oh, no! What's this: Oh, my goodness! By the East German Communist Secret Police, no less! As Koehler dryly points out: In line with [Stasi Colonel-General] Mielke's edict that the Sandinista secret police recruit informers, in-country schools taught the Nicaraguans how to cope with dissidents and Counterrevolutionaries, [Like bad little boys posting pro-Contra propoganda, maybe? Oh, my!] The instructors applied Stassi directives I/79 and II/79 to the letter. [applied within East Germany itself by Stassi]. These secret directives set forth the methods employed in recruting informers in such masses that the hydra of the DGSE would reach into all strata of society.

"And to help the Nicaraguan secret police as they were being trained by their East German Communist comrades, [in Wiesenthal's words] worse than the NAZI Gestapo? Why, the Czechoslovakian and Bulgarian comrades, of course! As Koehler tells us, by May 1980, the Czechs and Bulgarians reported that they had already sent aid to Managua [Nicaragua], including a total of 1,500 sub-machine guns, 50 light machine guns, 12,000 pistols, 8,000 rubber truncheons [emhasis added, as the old-time NAZI Gestapo just loved rubber truncheons, they helped people remember things!], and 18,000 lightweight uniforms and shoes. Ammunition shipments totaled 2,000,000 rounds.

"Still anxious to please, the Bulgarians added that they had also pledged an immediate shipment of two field hospitals and 500 field telephones with ten switch-boards and sixty miles of cable.

"In conclusion, well frankly, I could care personally less what Dr. Gladstein's views are as to exactly why East Germany's plan to help install a post-Hitlerian People's Paradise in Nicaragua went down in flames, as did [E]ast germany itself, along with the Soviet Union, etc. As far as I am concerned, that is all her business.

"But!

"When Dr. Gladstein sets out to destroy classroom harmony for some lunatic agenda of her own, and uses a basically perverted system of testing as a means of psychological control and manipulaton backed up by outbursts of borderline verbal abuse, and then says my acing both the essay mid-term and essay final count for so much zip -- well, then! That's another thing altogther! Because every question asked by myself or my classmates to clarify answers given on a little quiz by those with whom we had exchanged papers for grading afterwards set off yet other tirades. More, this abusive pattern on the part of Dr. Gladstein, had, by Friday, July 23, 2004, long been set: Bias, Arbitrariness, Caprice, Impermissible Discrimination. We respectfully submit that they are all here,

"A series of copies of emails, etcetera, follows these four(4) additonal pages. Thank you!"

[ This case was due to drag on through February 2006! ]

Semper fi, all! Dennis Paul Morony