FemSex at Marquette on Breitbart

Right here.

The photo with the story isn’t from Marquette, and may not even be from a FexSex workshop.

But it’s the kind of silly stuff that would happen.

Marquette Pulls Support of Bawdy FemSex Workshop

Kudos to former Marquette College Republican president Ethan Hollenberger for demanding some response from Marquette about the FemSex workshop that we blogged about right here. On February 17, he wrote several people in the Administration (including Father Pilarz) and asked them to respond to the following questions:

During the opening of the Gender and Sexuality center, you said the center will “create a community rounded in personality and will delve into issues of gender and sexuality with respect, sensitivity, academic rigor, and a concern for social justice.” As a supporter of the center, do you support the FemSex workshop as written?

If you were advising a Catholic student who was saving herself for marriage, would you recommend this workshop?

Can you defend the discussions on safer sex, masturbation, sexual desire, or the use of the “cunt coloring book”?

Reading the syllabus of the workshop, the premise of the workshop is understanding the body. Giving into sexual desires and lust are both expressly regarded as sin. Do you defend FemSex as consistant with Jesuit and Catholic teachings?

What do you see as the purpose of this course? Why is it written with vivid sexual overtones?

Marquette is often criticized for not providing contraception (as it shouldn’t) in student health services, largely because abstinence is key to the Catholic feelings on pre-marital sex. Do you see Marquette moving away from that policy?

Why isn’t the Center teaching Catholic traditions on sex and marriage in a seminar?

The University’s mission reads, “Marquette University is a Catholic, Jesuit university dedicated to serving God by serving our students and contributing to the advancement of knowledge. Our mission, therefore, is the search for truth, the discovery and sharing of knowledge, the fostering of personal and professional excellence, the promotion of a life of faith, and the development of leadership expressed in service to others. All this we pursue for the greater glory of God and the common benefit of the human community.” Where does this workshop fit into that?

Lastly, what is your response to a donor who may stop giving to the University because of this course?

Having gotten no response, he wrote again three days later, noting “I am still seeking comment from the President’s office regarding the Gender and Sexuality Center’s FemSex workshop.” He further observed that “Historically and culturally, Marquette is a Catholic university. Seemingly, by hosting this workshop Marquette is caving to current cultural pressures.”

Finally, later that afternoon (yesterday afternoon) Provost John Pauly responded:

Dear Mr. Hollenberger

In response to your inquiry to the President’s office, I wanted to provide some additional information.

We recently became aware of the student-led Female Sexuality program. After reviewing its content, we found that aspects of the program did not fulfill the expectations set out in the charter of the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center. Because of this, the center is no longer sponsoring the program. To be clear, this was not an academic course and was not led by faculty. It was student programming that took place outside of the classroom.

We support the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center and the goals set forth in the center’s charter, and have done so since its inception. The center plays an important role within the university, allowing us to delve into issues of gender and sexuality with respect, sensitivity, academic rigor and concern for social justice. It also provides educational programming related to sexual violence, harassment and discrimination, better equipping our students to be able to respond society’s complex cultural issues.

Sincerely,

John Pauly

Provost

Marquette University

Translation: the workshop had created a firestorm of criticism after local conservative talk radio publicized it in the wake of our blog post. One could say we are thankful that Marquette finally “saw the light.” But that would misrepresent what happened. In this issue, as was the case with the aggressive lesbian Arts and Sciences Dean candidate that Marquette was about to hire, but then declined to hire under pressure from local Catholics, Marquette caved in. A genuinely Catholic university would not need to cave in to pressure on an issue like this, because they would not approve something like this to begin with.

The Gender and Sexuality Resource Center was set up precisely as a sop to gay student and faculty activists and their liberal allies. It was entirely predictable that it would do something like this. In fact, many of their other activities have had a similar politically correct focus, including a discussion of a feminist screed that demonizes males and Christians, and publicizing the appearance of lesbian comedienne Julie Goldman at UWM.

If the University really minded stuff like this, they would never institutionalize the worldview that produces it. But the trouble is that they don’t really mind it.

The workshop, Pauly made clear, can continue to meet as a purely unofficial group of students. And of course, if any group of female students wants to get together for a bawdy hen party and talk about sex, that’s their right. But the University should never endorse or officially condone a program whose express purpose is to oppose Catholic teachings on sexuality.

But given the nature of the Marquette administration, look for such programs to happen again with regularity.

Marquette Warrior Harassed Over Debunking of Bogus Feminist Rape Claims: More

We’ve blogged about the fact that one student on our fall American Politics class complained about “sexual harassment” because we, in class, debunked bogus statistics about date rape on campus.

Marquette Provost John Pauly insisted that the complaint be followed up, which resulted in our being summoned into the office of political science chair Barry McCormick to explain what we had said in class.

It was a clear violation of academic freedom, since the complaint didn’t allege we did anything more than debunk statistics that we judge to be bogus. The student who complained didn’t think such statistics should be debunked, apparently since campus rape is a serious problem (and therefore inflating the scope of the problem serves a good purpose).

This past Monday (January 30) McCormick came into our office, and explained that he and Pauly had decided that we were within our rights to say what we said.

So far, so good, it might seem. But not really.

No Written Explanation

McCormick informed us that Pauly was not willing to give us a written explanation of the case, or of the decision. That Marquette would not be willing to put the resolution of the case in writing raises the suspicion that campus bureaucrats might want to revive it in the future, or perhaps fear that it would create a precedent in favor of academic freedom that they might want to ignore at some future date.

Complaint Should Have Been Dropped

We told McCormick that the case should never have been pursued, since if the complaint was taken absolutely at face value, no sexual harassment happened. McCormick replied that he informed us during the office meeting why the case needed to be pursued. We asked him to repeat what his explanation was, and he refused.

In fact, he gave no such explanation. During the office meeting, he explained that perhaps a professor might ask a female student to take all her clothes off, and this would clearly need to be dealt with. But nobody accused us of that. All we were accused of was debunking bogus statistics that feminists produce, and our comments were not even directed at a particular student.

Protect Academic Freedom in the Future

Marquette needs to provide a clear policy that complaints of sexual harassment will not be used in a way that infringes upon academic freedom. Simply saying something, relevant to the course material, that some feminist doesn’t want to hear is clearly protected by academic freedom. Pauly, and Marquette, are unwilling to provide any such statement, something that clearly implies they want to keep open the option of using “sexual harassment” in the future as a pretext to shut up faculty speech that the politically correct crowd does not like.

They doubtless find this option very desirable, especially for use against some faculty member less combative than we are.

Scurrilous Semi-Accusation

Finally, McCormick made a rather scurrilous semi-accusation. He suggested that perhaps we criticized feminists in an “uncivil” way in class. What evidence did he have of that? First, he said we “accused feminists of lying” in our office meeting. What we actually said was that feminists lie about the incidence of rape. That’s a much more limited (and entirely accurate) statement. Secondly, he took exception to the fact that we characterized the person who brought the complaint as a “prissy little feminist” and said that in a properly run university, “some administrator would sit this prissy little feminist down and explain to her ‘this is a university, you are going to hear things you disagree with. Live with it.’”

Of course, we said nothing remotely uncivil in class, and the student didn’t claim that we did.

Liberals, of course, have all kinds of tactics for shutting up speech they don’t like, and if they aren’t willing to escalate to shouting “racist!” or “sexist!” or “homophobe!” will invoke “civility.” McCormick, who is extremely liberal and quite politically correct, seems excessively sensitive to unkind things said about his ideological cohorts.

Conclusion

So it seems that a faculty member can be called into the office of an administrator and required to explain his or her speech, even when nobody has claimed that the faculty member did more than say things that a politically correct student didn’t want to hear.

And while somebody who is willing to make an issue of it (as we were) can prevail, Marquette refuses to renounce the sort of attack on academic freedom.

After all, it’s often prudent for administrators to pander to politically correct faculty, given that they are very numerous, and very vociferous in wanting to shut up speech they dislike.

Thus nothing has been settled, and academic freedom remains in huge danger from Marquette officials.

Foundation for Individual Rights in Education Takes Note of Harassment of Marquette Warrior

From the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education: an article on the fact that Marquette has “investigated” a complaint from a student who accused us of sexual harassment based on gender for our debunking of feminists’ bogus statistics on campus rape.

FIRE notes that the incident:

. . . provides a good example of how unwarranted investigations of campus speech can cause a deeply problematic “chilling effect” at a university. Universities must not pursue investigations of protected expression just because someone submits a complaint; as soon as it is clear that the expression in question is protected speech, the inquiry must end, even if there are other factual disputes. Prolonging the investigation tells everyone on campus that the university will pursue charges against you no matter how frivolous or malicious the complaint. The likely result is that people self-censor and keep their mouths shut rather than risk such investigation and a possible punishment.

Of course, for the politically correct types on campus, this is the point. They are deeply hostile to free and open debate.

FIRE goes on the quote Marquette’s own Student Handbook on the legitimacy of differences of opinion:

It is clearly inevitable, and indeed essential, that the spirit of inquiry and challenge that the university seeks to encourage will produce many conflicts of ideas, opinions and proposals for action.

Of course, Marquette’s Student Handbook also includes several very dangerous and over-broad statements that could be used to stifle speech. For example:

Harassment is defined as verbal, written or physical conduct directed at a person or a group based on color, race, national origin, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation where the offensive behavior is intimidating, hostile or demeaning, or which could or does result in mental, emotional or physical discomfort, embarrassment, ridicule or harm.

Read at face value, this could mean that if a frank discussion of ghetto crime makes a black student feel “discomfort” that could be harassment. Of course, a feminist talking about the evils of male sexism could make a male student feel uncomfortable, but the odds of anybody seeing any problem with that are nil.

FIRE concludes:

Yet by pursuing this investigation, Marquette is letting a single student entangle a professor in disciplinary proceedings simply due to protected classroom expression. How many professors at Marquette are now going to steer clear of sensitive topics just to avoid an Ethics Point investigation?

The truth, of course, is that even without this kind of inquisition, any prudent junior faculty member, wanting to get tenure, better stifle any urge to say anything politically incorrect. And a lot of tenured people, not wanting to “make waves” or generate hostility, tend to “lay low” and keep their opinions to themselves.

Welcome to the modern politically correct university.

Marquette Warrior Harassed by University Over Debunking of Bogus Feminist Rape Claims

Week before last, we dropped in to speak with Political Science Department Chairman Barry McCormick about a different matter, and were told he had something unpleasant to discuss.

It seems that Marquette has a whistle blowing website (Ethics Point) designed mostly to let employees rat out people who have been stealing money from Marquette, and such.

But somebody had complained that we said something that was “demeaning to rape victims.”

What in the world could be the basis of this?

What do we say about rape in our classes?

Debunking Feminist Rape Claims

We deal with the issue in our introductory American Politics class in the context of media bias, and how one can recognize media bias when the media accept bogus and inflated numbers as factual. This was the case in the 1970s with regard to the number of combat divisions the Warsaw Pact had threatening Western Europe, and in the 1980s with the number of homeless people in the U.S.

Then we get to a more contemporary example: one that the students have almost certainly been subjected to as part of their university indoctrination: the idea that 25% of all college women are victims of “date rape.”

The number is absurdly inflated. We point out that in the study most widely quoted (the Koss study) 73% of the women categorized as having been “raped” by a feminist researcher didn’t interpret what happened to them as rape. Indeed, 42% had intercourse again with the guy who supposedly raped them.

(Our analysis of another campus rape study is here.)

What is happening here? Feminists are defining rape far too broadly. Ambiguous sexual encounters, often fueled by alcohol, are defined as “rape” by feminist researchers, but not defined that way by purported victims.

We point out that feminists insist that if a woman consents to sex under the influence of alcohol, she has been raped.

(Feminists have gotten this definition written into law, a fact that helps women not at all, since these kinds of sexual encounters are virtually never reported to police and even less frequently prosecuted.)

Often, some guy who hasn’t yet learned that, in academia, he’s not supposed to question any feminist claim, will raise his hand in our class and ask “suppose the guy has been drinking too? Why didn’t she rape him?”

We always respond, sarcastically “you’ve got to look at this from the feminist point of view. Males are the oppressor class, and women the victim class. So of course the guy is responsible.”

We typically add “if you wake up in the morning and ask ‘what in the world did I do?’ you haven’t been raped. If you’ve been raped you feel violated. If it requires a feminist political activist to explain to you how what happened was rape, you weren’t raped.”

This past semester we piled on a bit by pointing out to our class that “this is yet another issue, like abortion, where academic feminists simply don’t think like real women in the real world.”

Marquette Responds

Upon hearing from McCormick about the charges, we contacted a lawyer we know – one who loves to sue Marquette – and were advised that we had a right to see the precise charges against us. We conveyed this to McCormick, and just yesterday he got back to us with this:

[T]he Provost [John Pauly] . . . presses me to move forward on the response to the Ethics Point complaint in a timely manner. University Counsel has determined that you may read the text of the complaint, but that I should not give a copy of the complaint to you.

So we meet with McCormick at 2:00 p.m. today. We will report on how the meeting goes.

That we should ever be required to defend to university bureaucrats what we say in class is a gross violation of academic freedom. Faculty have a right to disagree with any political movement – including feminists. And social science faculty have a right to debunk bogus social science statistics.

But this is Marquette in 2011. Timid bureaucrats are unwilling to defend the notion that faculty have a right to say things that feminists don’t like.

[Later, after the 2:00 p.m. meeting]

The meeting was a bit dull, with McCormick insisting that the only purpose was to get our story on what happened. This was simple, since our blog post contained everything we say about rape in class, virtually verbatim.

We did get to look at the student’s complaint, and it roughly accurately recounted what we said, then went into a rant about how rape is a serious problem on campus, and thus we were engaging in “harassment based on gender.” Apparently, in the mind of this feminist, you are “harassing” women if you refuse to accept bogus and inflated statistics on rape. She rhapsodized about a dorm that put out blue ribbons to oppose rape, but didn’t explain how that justifies lying about the incidence of rape.

McCormick admitted that this Ethics Point site had never been used before to register a complaint about what a professor said in class. In essence, the university is making this up as it goes along.

But the complaint should have been dismissed immediately. Taking the complaint absolutely at face value, we did nothing but disagree with feminist claims about date rape, something clearly protected by the canons of academic freedom.

We will, of course, say exactly the same things about rape when we teach the same class next semester.

In a properly run university, some administrator would sit this prissy little feminist down and explain to her “this is a university, you are going to hear things you disagree with. Live with it.” But a timid administration, used to genuflecting to all the demands of political correctness, will never do that.

Marquette Warrior Blogger Threatened, Bullied by Provost, Dean and Department Chair

We just got out of a meeting with Provost John Pauly, Interim Arts & Sciences Dean Rev. Philip J. Rossi, and Political Science Department Chair Barrett L. McCormick.

This was the meeting we were summoned to by Pauly.

Pauly, in an e-mail to us, said the meeting was about “some of the ongoing potential conflicts between your role as Marquette professor and employee, and independent blogger-journalist.”

The bottom line: all three – Pauly, Rossi and McCormick – want us to entirely stop blogging about student organizations. Well . . . not entirely. Pauly made it clear that it is fine with him if we commend student organizations. That’s right: a former journalism instructor is demanding biased journalism!

Pauly claimed to have no problem with our blogging about faculty and administrators, but claimed our blogging about student affairs has been out of line. How much of this was a genuine concern (some of it probably was) and how much was the result of an ideological bias from liberal administrators toward a conservative blogger (there was almost certainly some of that too) we can’t say.

Two specific instances were mentioned. First, we called the listed home number of a student, talked to (apparently) her father and left a polite message asking for a return call, explaining that we were working on a blog post about The Vagina Monologues (the student was listed as the Marquette contact on vday.org). Apparently, the student’s parents freaked. All three administrators (Pauly, Rossi and McCormick) condemned the call saying that faculty should never call the parents of students. They said that the parents should have been in Fr. Wild’s office loudly complaining about it.

We replied that we were calling the listed number of the student (and had no way of knowing that she was living with her parents), and that it’s standard practice for a journalist to call a potential source at home. But Pauly, Rossi and McCormick explicitly stated that we should somehow have known that the parents would freak. We were accused of merely offering “rationalizations.”

All thee insisted that we don’t have any of the prerogatives of a journalist, since the role of a professor trumps that of a faculty blogger.

The other issue raised was the fact that we had mentioned a student’s research paper, and were accused of “criticizing” it. In reality, we did not mention the student’s name, and the point of the blog post was that “‘gender studies’ has been added to ‘women’s studies’ [which] signals a move toward a homosexual emphasis, as shown by one of the papers completed by a WGST fellow this summer . . . .” The blog post was, quite simply, a comment on the fact that the Women’s and Gender Studies program has begun to slip “queer studies” into the university.

Pauly, Rossi and McCormick lamely replied that people could find the name of the student (we included the title of the paper, which could be googled), and that some people knew that we had supposedly “criticized the student.” In fact, nothing was said that was favorable or unfavorable about the student.

A Sandbox?

McCormick, using a metaphor that was supremely insulting to students, insisted that student activities are a “sandbox,” and that faculty should never comment on what student organizations do.

We pointed out that, in the issues they brought up, Marquette as an institution had been the issue. The Vagina Monologues will be sponsored by Social and Cultural Sciences, and the post that “criticized student research” was about the Women’s and Gender Studies Program.

We further pointed out that when students do high-profile public things, there is a legitimate news interest in what they do. In fact, it serves students well to learn that when they do highly visible controversial public things in some official role, they might get criticized.

Further, what student organizations do has consequences for the University. When Fr. Wild announced that Marquette is going to provide domestic partner benefits for gay and lesbian couples, he explicitly cited a resolution calling for that from Marquette University Student Government. If student organizations can affect Marquette University policy, it’s hard to see how they should be exempt from scrutiny.

As the meeting moved on, Rossi and McCormick became more ad hominem, Rossi accusing us of having a “blind spot,” and McCormick asserting that nobody he knew felt that our blogging about student organizations was acceptable. Since we’ve gotten multiple supporting e-mails, that says more about McCormick’s circle of friends than about what “everybody believes.”

All three implied (and sometimes stated) that we had been guilty of some violation of professional ethics, but could not explain what that would be, beyond McCormick’s “sandbox” metaphor, and the general notion that faculty should never publicly say anything negative about a student, even a student in a very public role doing something controversial.

We were willing to make only one concession: we assured the group that we would be more careful in the future about mentioning student’s names. (It typically isn’t that significant who the student is anyway.) But that wasn’t enough.

They hung tough with the position that we should never comment on student affairs, and we were threatened by both Pauly and McCormick saying that we would “be here [in a meeting like this] again” if we persisted in blogging about the activities of student groups.

Needless to say, we will continue to blog about activities on campus, and when the actions of student organizations have substantial news interest, we will report them. And we will be critical when appropriate.

Marquette Warrior Blogger Harassed by Provost John Pauly

We’ve been pretty critical of various Marquette officials on this blog, so it wouldn’t be surprising to get some pushback. We’ve particularly been critical of Provost John Pauly.

Pauly was the key figure behind the attempt to hire activist lesbian dean candidate Jodi O’Brien. But even worse is the fact that Pauly initiated a policy of putting more classes at 8:00 a.m. This was vastly unpopular with both students and faculty, but Pauly claimed that was necessary to better utilize Marquette’s physical plant, and claimed that the choice was between offering more 8:00 a.m. classes and building new buildings.

We showed that this claim was bogus. A little research turned up the fact that there were plenty of classrooms available at 9:00 a.m. and 9:30 a.m., and this without any pressure to move classes to 8:00 a.m.

When our blog post circulated around the campus, Pauly simply doubled down on his plan, producing a PowerPoint presentation that supposedly showed our data were wrong, and surreptitiously showed it to deans and department chairs.

We got wind of this, and did a new analysis, taking into account all the claims that Pauly had made about our initial analysis, and continued to find many available classrooms at more desirable times. Eventually, Pauly had to cave, and in what must have been a humiliating retreat, rescinded the 8:00 a.m. mandate.

Pushback From Pauly

Thus we were not entirely surprised when we got the following e-mail from Pauly.

Hi, John,

I have asked my assistant, Kim Newman, to set up a meeting between you, me, Barry McCormick, and Phil Rossi. My concern is that the recent case of Anahi Sanchez illustrates some of the ongoing potential conflicts between your role as Marquette professor and employee, and independent blogger-journalist. My hope is that our conversation might clarify some of those role expectations going forward. A half hour should do the trick.

Best wishes!
John Pauly
Provost

The Pretext

So just what was the deal with Anahi Sanchez?

Back in February, we learned that “The Vagina Monologues” is to be performed on campus. A source tipped us off that Marquette performances were listed on the vday.com website. We checked that out, and found that feminist activist Anahí Sánchez was listed as the Marquette contact.

A link on the vday.org website led to her e-mail. So we sent her an e-mail, asking for confirmation, and especially under what auspices the play would be performed. This was an issue in 2007, when Student Affairs refused to let a student group sponsor the play (which is wildly at odds with Catholic teaching about sexuality). But academic units are free to mount whatever programs then want, and thus the Honors Program was the sponsor.

Here is our e-mail:

Sent: Friday, February 18, 2011 9:24 AM

To: Sanchez, Anahi

According to the Vagina Monologues website, there are going to be performances on campus, and you are the contact.

Can you confirm that this is the case?

Under what auspices will the performance be staged (a student organization, Honors Program, etc.)?

Any information you can give me will be appreciated. If you want to call me at 288-3425, I’d be happy to talk.

John McAdams

Department of Political Science
Marquette Warrior Blog

When we hadn’t heard from her in a few hours, we found her home phone number at Peoplefinders.com, and called it. A fellow, sounding to be middle-aged (her father, perhaps) answered and we left a message asking her to call us. We shortly got an e-mail from her:

The Vagina Monologues will be performed on campus through the women of Empowerment.

If you would like to know more feel free to ask me through email or if you feel the need to call me please do so on my cell phone (414) [redacted]. I know you called my home earlier today. I don’t recall putting that information up on the website but if I did that is not correct, so I apologize for that.

Anahí Sánchez

National M.E.Ch.A. Co-chair

Marquette University ‘11

We, of course, were happy with this response, since it clearly implied that she was willing to share information. But we had no information yet, and so put up a post with the information we had.

After learning that Social and Cultural Sciences would sponsor the event, we learned that it had been removed from the vday.com website. So we wrote her again on February 28.

Hi, Anahi,

Could you tell me what the current deal with The Vagina Monologues is? . . . The Marquette performance is not now listed on the Vday website. I’m just trying to do an update on this, and wondering what the deal is.

John McAdams

We got no response. We tried calling her cell phone three (if memory serves) times, but it rang off the hook. So we gave up.

On March 9, we finally got around to putting up another blog post on the event, with the time and date having been gotten from Special Events. But Sánchez appears to have somehow felt aggrieved, since she complained to university officials (and eventually to Pauly), not that she has been harassed, but that she did not know whether we were trying to contact her in our role as a faculty member or our role as a blogger!

Given the innocuous nature of the information we were asking for, a stray person off the street had the right to e-mail her (again her e-mail was listed on the vday.org website). This, it seems, was a sufficient pretext for Pauly to summon us, Political Science Chair Barry McCormick and Interim Arts & Sciences Dean Phil Rossi to his office. The meeting is set up for this Friday, and we will report on it here.

Pauly Is Badly Compromised in Dealing With This

We sent Pauly this e-mail on Monday (2/28) explaining the problem he has:

John,

The problem is that you are badly compromised in dealing with this issue, since I’ve been quite critical of you on my blog. So when this breaks it will look for all the world like you are seizing on some trivial issue as a form of “payback” for the tough time I’ve given you.

That, at least, is the appearance, and appearances matter.

You might also ask yourself whether this would look to anybody like any kind of substantial issue. What you have is one . . . young lady who complains that she didn’t know whether I was making an inquiry as a professor or a blogger. But that didn’t matter. I had a right to ask in either role. Indeed, since she was listed at the Marquette contact for the Vagina Monologues on the vday.com website, a stray person off the street had every right to contact her and ask innocuous questions about the forthcoming performance.

So that’s going to look like a pretext, rather than a problem of any sort.

Clearly you should recuse yourself from this “issue.” If you really think it is an issue, kick it down to Barry and Phil.

You should also call one or two of your former colleagues in journalism, and ask them whether they see any issue here.

Given that you could have simply called me, and we could have talked about this, your e-mails, involving Barry and Phil looks for all the world like harassment.

And if you insist on summoning me over to talk to you three, I can only interpret that as further harassment.

You could just let this drop, or you could just call me, and I’ll be happy to listen to any concerns you have.

Please think about this. Just trying to give some friendly advice.

John

Pauly hung tough, and insisted on a meeting with us, McCormick and Rossi. Remember, on the 8:00 a.m. class issue, Pauly hung tough on an untenable position.

But of course, we don’t know what his position is here. At one point in the e-mail exchange, he implied that our signing the initial e-mail “Department of Political Science/Marquette Warrior Blog” was the issue. Is it all this trivial?

Clearly, blogging is an academic activity, protected by the canons of academic freedom. Many academics have blogs, including those in the Marquette Law School, Mark Johnson in Theology, Matt Wion in Philosophy, and Steve Byers in Journalism. National blogs run by academics include Althouse, and The Volokh Conspiracy.

Virtually all academics have a legitimate interest in public affairs, including the internal politics of the institutions where they work. And blogging is a form of publication, although admittedly more like a newspaper op-ed that an article in a scholarly journal. But academics have a right to academic freedom in writing op-eds and articles for the popular press, as Marquette’s heretical theologian Dan Maguire demonstrates with great frequency.

But university bureaucrats don’t like being criticized, and especially don’t like being criticized by those supposedly “below” them in the hierarchy. We’ll find out, soon enough, what Pauly’s position is.

Provost Pauly Caves, Rescinds 8:00 a.m. Class Mandate

Below is an e-mail, sent to various University offices by Anne Deahl, a staffer in the office of Provost John Pauly.

It’s inconceivable that she had the authority to do this by herself, so Pauly is obviously hiding behind one of his employees.

The Backstory

We blogged on this issue back in February. Provost John Pauly required that all departments increase the number of classes offered at 8:00 a.m. We showed that plenty of empty rooms were available at 9:00 a.m. (or 9:30 a.m. Tuesday-Thursday).

Pauly and the Registrar (Georgia McRae) surreptitiously briefed various administrators on the issue, disputing our analysis. Of course, neither Pauly nor McRae bothered to share their claims with us — obviously knowing that they could not withstand the scrutiny we would give them.

We found out about this, and did a new analysis dealing with all the issues they raised. We found empty classrooms to be plentiful at 9:00 a.m. (9:30 a.m on Tuesday-Thursday) and at 1:00 p.m. (12:30 p.m. on Tuesday-Thursday).

Pauly promised to raise the issue with McRae, and to respond to our new analysis, but failed to do so.

The E-Mail

Colleagues,

This is a follow-up to my previous email and subsequent discussion at CAPS regarding the revision of the Course Scheduling policy. I have discussed this critical issue at length with the registrar, vice provosts and the provost. We have heard your comments and taken into consideration all of the needs expressed, as well as each college’s unique scheduling issues.

Upon further review, given your feedback, we have determined that the proposal many of you recently requested to maintain the 9% maximum in each time block and eliminate the 7% requirement at 8am is a viable solution.

Some background here may prove helpful. Several years ago when this 9% metric was our guideline, we did not strictly enforce this as a policy, nor did we require courses to be offered in approved time blocks. As classroom capacity became a concern two years ago, the guidelines became policy. There had also been a provost initiative at the time to more evenly spread courses throughout the day and the week to benefit students. Given these factors, we implemented a scheduling policy that included required 8am courses, and was conservative, to ensure adequate classroom space to meet our current and potential future needs for growth.

Having considered your input over the past year, we realize that while teaching more 8am sections does help distribute courses more evenly throughout the week, this may not outweigh the challenges it presents to both faculty and students. Your willingness to work within the 9%, and to work together in schedule-building, both within and across colleges has allowed for greater efficiency in scheduling as well. Eliminating an 8am teaching requirement will, however, mean some flexibility on your part and we would ask your continued collaboration and the following:

1. There is a limited number of particular types of classrooms available in each time block; therefore, staff in the Office of the Registrar may come to you at times and ask that a course be moved into another time block, or, if this is not an option, then it could mean that the class will be assigned into a classroom that does not meet 100% of the pedagogical needs of the instructor. We would ask your forbearance and accommodation during these times.

2. When there are ADA issues that must be addressed, we may need to move more than just that one class, as has been our practice in the last year, to accommodate those needs. As more of our classrooms become accessible, we expect this issue to diminish over time.

3. Your understanding that these recommendations continue to be predicated on several assumptions:

a. The total number of course sections will remain relatively consistent (i.e., no college/school designs major structural course changes that would reduce class size, but double the number of sections needed, etc.)

b. We will retain the current inventory of General Pool Classrooms (121), or its equivalent.

c. Some colleges/schools will continue to teach some courses at the 8:00am hour by choice, as they did prior to the implementation of the 8:00am requirement.

d. Your continued cooperation to work across colleges/departments to maximize the use of each time block.

With this change and your help, the Office of the Registrar will make every effort to keep the commitments made earlier:

1. Priority in scheduling a classroom is given to faculty who have a specific piece of equipment/software installed in a classroom that is needed for a particular class.

2. Priority in scheduling classrooms in the building in which a college/school/department resides is given to the faculty in those colleges/schools/departments.

3. Priority in scheduling a classroom within the same building is given to faculty who teach back-to-back classes.

4. Priority in scheduling a classroom that meets the enrollment and pedagogical needs of the class.

5. The University’s commitment to follow the ADA regulations and move those classes with students/faculty with ADA issues to an appropriate classroom.

Knowing many of you are beginning work on your fall 2011 schedules, we will implement this policy now and you may follow it for fall 2011 schedule building. It is our hope that this change will be amenable to you and meet as many of your needs as we can reasonably meet. Please share with me any comments or questions you might have.

Thank you.

Anne Deahl

Associate Vice Provost for Academic Support Programs and Retention
Marquette University
Zilber Hall 454 C
P.O. Box 1881
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53201-1881

It’s easy to understand why campus scuttlebutt holds that Pauly will occupy the Provost’s office for only a “decent interval” before being given the axe. The most important piece of baggage he has is his central role in the attempt to hire a lesbian dean candidate who was outspoken in her opposition to Catholic teaching on sexuality.

The current fiasco goes beyond showing bad judgment in pushing a policy that was both unneeded and anathema to the vast majority of students and faculty. Pauly defended the policy with bogus data, and when challenged stonewalled for six months.

Our initial suspicion was that Pauly was simply bamboozled by Registrar Georgia McRae, and would relent in the face of good information. But instead, we found that Pauly was responsible, and was rigidly attached to the policy.

Provost John Pauly Stonewalls On Use of Bogus Data to Support 8:00 a.m. Class Mandate

Back in February, we learned that Provost John Pauly and Registrar Georgia McRae were demanding that more classes be offered at 8:00 a.m.

Since neither students nor faculty like 8:00 a.m. classes, this was not good news.

But, we wondered, was there any need to demand more 8:00 a.m. classes, or was this the sort of bureaucratic silliness that is very common at Marquette.

With a little research, we found that there were plenty of empty classrooms at 9:00 a.m. So why force anybody to take an 8:00 a.m. class when 9:00 a.m classrooms (and presumably rooms at other times) were readily available?

Our blog post got some serious attention from the Provost Pauly, who had staffer Anne Deahl research the issue. Georgia McRae insisted that all the 25 classrooms was had identified in preliminary data we had given to the Arts & Sciences Dean were really in use.

(In reality, we had found 44 free classrooms at MWF 9:00 a.m., and 34 free classrooms at TTh 9:30.)

This claim was not shared with us, but was surreptitiously shared with administrators (including department chairs) around the University, complete with an elaborate PowerPoint presentation. In effect, they were claiming that “McAdams is wrong,” without ever giving us a chance to respond.

A Second Cut at the Data

Of course, we found out about this, and asked Pauly for the data that supposedly refuted our data.

He gave us a response, which we posted, claiming that (1.) some of the rooms we had counted as “open” were labs, (2.) some had fixed seats, (3.) some are occupied only one day a week due to discussion sections, (4.) some are scheduled by departments, and not by the Registrar, and (5.) two lack acceptable video equipment.

Knowing this analysis was bogus, we did a new one, that took into account the issues Pauly raised.

We found that Pauly’s claims were simply baseless.

Our data are found in a spreadsheet here.

We identified available classrooms as follows:

• MWF 9:00 a.m. – 39
• MWF 1:00 p.m. - 48
• TTh 9:30 a.m. - 19
• TTh 12:30 p.m. - 21

We did not survey literally every building where a class might be held, but only the ones with the largest number of classrooms. Thus the actual number of available classrooms is almost certainly a bit larger.

And quite obviously, there are lots of classrooms available at times we did not survey.

With only two partial exceptions, the classrooms we listed as “available” are scheduled by the Registrar, and not by any department. Only one is a “lab,” and it is configured so it could easily be used as a classroom if not in use as a lab (Cudahy 145). Further, all except three have video equipment. A large number have movable seats.

Unfortunately, our post on this was quickly overshadowed by the brouhaha over the attempt to hire lesbian Dean candidate Jodi O’Brien.

Asking Pauly For an Explanation

We wrote Pauly for an explanation of his assertion that Marquette was short on classrooms, and he put us off – at first reasonably. He wrote us on 4 May 2010, for example, explaining that Georgia McRae was tied up and that it would be “next week” before anything would be available.

We heard nothing for several weeks.

Then, in response to another prod from us, he wrote on 28 August saying:

Georgia tells me that she has, in fact, completed her classroom study and plans to share it with Anne Deahl and me next week. As soon as we look at the data, we’ll be able to answer your question.

We have still heard nothing.

It’s Been Pauly and Not McRae All Along

Pauly, while failing to provide any data showing a shortage of classrooms, did explain why he thinks that a mandate for 8:00 a.m. classes is necessary. In a 28 August e-mail he asserted:

My only position on all this has been clear from the beginning. The course schedule was getting bunched up at certain times of day in ways that were making it harder for the registrar to accommodate all courses and for students to design the schedules they needed. This has happened at many, many universities. Rather than spend money on just adding general classrooms every year or two, we needed to work harder to live with the classroom pool we currently have and spend new money on classrooms that better fit the new pedagogies faculty want to use.

I asked Georgia to reexamine this issue this summer because I wanted to know whether we are meeting those goals in a reasonable way. If faculty and deans agree to other ways to meet the goal that students might find acceptable—e.g., more evening classes and fewer 8 a.m. classes—then I am happy to consider the alternatives.

Pauly, in fact, is pretending that his initial claims of a classroom shortage are correct, while flatly refusing to deal with the actual data.

But notice the threat: we might consider letting faculty and students off the hook for 8:00 a.m. classes if they will accept night classes instead.

Pauly’s claim that “we needed to work harder to live with the classroom pool we currently have” is close to bizarre. In fact, we have been living with the classroom pool we currently have quite nicely, with several dozen empty rooms at 9:00 a.m. (MWF) and 9:30 a.m. (TTh) and 1:00 p.m. (MWF) and 12:30 p.m. (TTh).

Pauly fired off another quick e-mail to us on 28 August, saying:

One quick point. Our freshman classes have increased the last few years. We have been aiming for about 1950 freshmen the last three years. Fall 2010 will likely end up between 1940 and 1950.

In spite of the claim that “our freshman classes have increased the last few years,” the enrollment at Marquette has increased only 2.6 percent between 2006 and 2010. And most of this increase happened before we found dozens of empty classrooms last spring.

In fact, Freshman enrollment actually declined a bit between 2008 and 2010.

It’s a Bureaucratic Thing

It’s obvious why Pauly and Georgia McRae will not deal with the issue of the empty classrooms.

Pauly cooked up the kind of “initiative” that bureaucrats love. It sounds so nice to say we are rationalizing things. That we are “fully utilizing our resources.”

Bureaucrats enamored with some pet initiative are unlikely to ask hard questions about whether the initiative is really needed.

Regardless of whether the issue is “diversity” or a soft drink monopoly or “outcomes assessment,” bureaucrats can convince themselves that it’s a great idea. And if they are isolated from faculty and students (which most bureaucrats at Marquette are) they can get away with being entirely heedless of the effect their initiatives have.

Most of the time, they face only minor grumbling. Most of the time, asymmetries of information mean that people will accept their claims — even if not happily.

But what happens if somebody (say, a faculty blogger) takes up the issue? What happens if just a bit of research shows the claims of a “need” for the initiative to be bogus.

The bureaucrat is likely to hunker down, stonewall, and hope the issue will go away.

The fact that Pauly finds himself in that position does not speak well for him.

University Officials Produce Bogus Data to Support Diktat on 8:00 a.m. Classes

The recent demand from the Registrar that more classes be offered at 8:00 a.m. was received by faculty with a decided lack of enthusiasm. It was obvious to all of us that there is no shortage of classrooms during the more desirable hours. To know this, one only needs to do what faculty regularly do (but university bureaucrats don’t) and walk down the halls of any academic building.

To be a little more systematic, we analyzed the availability of classrooms in seven buildings (Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Lalumiere, Engineering, Business and Math/Computer Science) during the 9:00 a.m hour on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and the 9:30 a.m. time slot on Tuesday and Thursday.

This is for the current (Spring) semester.

(Why not more buildings and more class times? We didn’t want to squander scarce research assistant time proving the obvious.)

We found 44 free classrooms at MWF 9:00 a.m., and 34 free classrooms at TTh 9:30.

Our post got a fair amount of attention among university officials, and the Registrar produced an elaborate PowerPoint presentation rebutting out post, which was shown to deans and department chairs.

The presentation was not shown to us, rather we learned out it third hand. We accosted Provost John Pauly about it, and he kindly sent us an e-mail explaining the response he and the Registrar made. We’ll quote it entire.

Below is an excerpt of the memo my office sent to the deans. Feel free to use as you like.

We examined the usage data for 41 classrooms. Professor McAdams had specified 25 classrooms where he thought there might be a problem; for our assessment we also added an additional 16 in Cudahy, to make sure we understood the full scale of the issue.

Here is the breakdown of what we found:

• Nine of the 41 classrooms are restricted or are laboratories, and thus not part of the common pool available for scheduling by the registrar.
• Twelve of the 41 are in fact being used, having a course scheduled or a discussion/quiz section at least one day per week.
• Of the remaining 20 classrooms, eleven (four of the 11 on MWF and 11 of the 11 on TTH at the times cited), are unused due to their characteristics. Three have capacity under 20 (most classrooms of that sort are typically used for graduate courses later in the day); five are large (70+) but have fixed layout and furniture that most faculty now find unacceptable, except for large lectures. One is large (60+) but even with its movable desks is not a classroom preferred by most faculty for average size classes. One room is not smart and one is very limited smart, and neither has proved very acceptable to most faculty.

Of the 41 classrooms cited, we found nine not being fully used in the timeslots mentioned. But only five of these are available in those timeslots on TTH, and seven on MWF. Given the size of the classroom pool, there is not enough capacity there to allow a significant variation from the scheduling grid.

As everyone knows, classroom scheduling is not an exact science, and each choice we make involves a trade-off between competing priorities. Our overarching goals are to meet faculty’s pedagogical needs, maximize use of available classrooms, and offer courses evenly enough throughout the day so that students can more effectively schedule required courses. To the extent possible, we have also tried to allow a small number of classrooms to remain “restricted” to accommodate use by the colleges or departments.

The classroom scheduling system uses the following purposeful priorities to guide classroom assignments:

• Allow faculty to express preferences with regard to the type of classroom they need, given their chosen teaching pedagogy. This involves not only smart classroom requests, but needs for certain room formats, such as movable desks/tables and chairs, etc.
  
• Give college faculty some priority in the assignment of classrooms in their building (e.g., business courses get scheduled first in all of the classrooms in their building, then other courses are filled-in for the remaining times).
  
• Allow for any faculty who teach back-to-back courses to be scheduled in the same building.
  
• Ensure some classrooms are reserved each term for changes that need to be made with regard to ADA compliance and last-minute changes to class size.
  
• Accommodate course formats that, by their nature, result in a vacant classroom one or more days a week, including:
  
  
  
  • Discussion or quiz sections that are not coordinated with those of other departments may use a room only one day a week, resulting in an empty room the other day(s) of the week.
    
  • Four-credit language courses that meet four days a week, leaving a room vacant the fifth day.
    
  • Large lecture courses that have been modified so that they meet two days per week rather than three (with an associated lab), leaving the classroom vacant the third day of the week.

This is a slightly more elaborated version of the information Georgia McRae provided you. Hope this helps you understand the parameters that affect how the registrar schedules classrooms. The registrar and provost’s office are continuing to work with deans to make the classroom scheduling grid manageable for faculty.

Best wishes!

John Pauly, Provost

We frankly did not believe these assertions, and asked Provost Pauly and Registrar McRae for the raw data that underlay the claims above, but our request was ignored.

A New Analysis

Faced with the issues raised by the McRae/Pauly analysis, we did our own new analysis. This time, we use the classroom scheduling data in Checkmarq to confirm that classrooms we classify as “available” were in fact available for all three (MWF) or two (TTh) days of the week. We also added the 1:00 p.m. MWF hour, and the 12:30 TTh timeslot.

We still limit our analysis to the seven buildings listed above.

Our data are found in a spreadsheet here.

We identified available classrooms as follows:

• MWF 9:00 a.m. – 39
• MWF 1:00 p.m. - 48
• TTh 9:30 a.m. - 19
• TTh 12:30 p.m. - 21

With only two partial exceptions, the classrooms we listed as “available” are scheduled by the Registrar, and not by any department. Only one is a “lab,” and it is configured so it could easily be used as a classroom if not in use as a lab (Cudahy 145). Further, all except three have video equipment. A large number have movable seats.

And note that this is for this Spring semester. The diktat on 8:00 a.m. classes will create even more empty classrooms at 9:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m. and presumably other times too.

Now let’s review the statements we got from Provost Pauly.

We examined the usage data for 41 classrooms. Professor McAdams had specified 25 classrooms where he thought there might be a problem; for our assessment we also added an additional 16 in Cudahy, to make sure we understood the full scale of the issue.

Actually, we identified a total of 78 classrooms that appeared to be available at the 9:00 a.m. or 9:30 a.m hours. Apparently the number 41 came from partial data we supplied to the Dean of Arts and Sciences under time pressure before all the data were available.

Of the 41 classrooms cited, we found nine not being fully used in the timeslots mentioned. But only five of these are available in those timeslots on TTH, and seven on MWF. Given the size of the classroom pool, there is not enough capacity there to allow a significant variation from the scheduling grid.

This is a rather bizarre assertion. Since Pauly has failed to identify the 32 classrooms that he thinks are being “fully utilized” it’s difficult to know what he means by this, but there are vastly more than nine classrooms available in the timeslots we analyzed.

Nine of the 41 classrooms are restricted or are laboratories, and thus not part of the common pool available for scheduling by the registrar.

Again, the failure to identify which classrooms these are makes it hard to know what he’s talking about, but none of the classrooms in our new analysis is a lab (again, with one partial exception). All (with two minor exceptions) are assigned by the Registrar.

But note the irrelevance of the “scheduled by the Registrar” claim. If a particular classroom is scheduled by a particular department, that department should have the option of using it for a class that might otherwise meet at 8:00 a.m. An empty classroom is an empty classroom. Also, there will be no increase in classrooms controlled by departments this fall. So why won’t what has worked this spring work in the fall too?

Allow faculty to express preferences with regard to the type of classroom they need, given their chosen teaching pedagogy. This involves not only smart classroom requests, but needs for certain room formats, such as movable desks/tables and chairs, etc.

Likewise:

Give college faculty some priority in the assignment of classrooms in their building (e.g., business courses get scheduled first in all of the classrooms in their building, then other courses are filled-in for the remaining times).

It’s interesting that the Registrar is willing to accommodate faculty desires for movable chairs, or to teach in their own building but not desires to avoid 8:00 a.m. classes.

Perhaps faculty who want movable chairs or especially want to teach in their own buildings should be given the option of having what they want during an 8:00 a.m class, or a bit less than they want some other time. But in fact, there is no shortage of rooms in any of the buildings in our survey, and no shortage of rooms with movable chairs.

Twelve of the 41 are in fact being used, having a course scheduled or a discussion/quiz section at least one day per week.

In the first place, this is untrue – or at least irrelevant since our new analysis shows numerous classrooms available all week.

But note the bizarre logic here. A discussion or quiz section is allowed to be scheduled one day a week, pushing a class that meets three (or two) times a week to 8:00 a.m.! Why not put the discussion/quiz section at 8:00 a.m.? In reality, of course, there are plenty of classrooms available at later hours.

Finally, we have this:

Our overarching goals are to meet faculty’s pedagogical needs, maximize use of available classrooms, and offer courses evenly enough throughout the day so that students can more effectively schedule required courses.

The implication here is that the Registrar needs to protect the students from academic departments, which will (left to their own devices) oppress students by preventing them from taking classes at 8:00 a.m.

But departments have every incentive to accommodate student needs. Students don’t like 8:00 a.m. classes, as enrollments in these classes show. Departments have an incentive to increase their enrollments by offering classes when students want to take them, and by spreading classes throughout the day so that (for example) majors have no difficulty taking the classes they need to complete the major.

Bogus Data

What we have here is bogus data to support a policy that university officials somehow want, but which students and faculty don’t want.

Why would they do this?

Why are they so attached to a policy that faculty dislike, students dislike, and the data don’t support?

What we appear to have here, as with so much that happens at Marquette, is another of the sort of bureaucratic pathologies that we political scientists tell our classes about. The most revealing sentence in Pauly’s e-mail is the following:

Given the size of the classroom pool, there is not enough capacity there to allow a significant variation from the scheduling grid.

Note the reference to “the scheduling grid.” The Registrar’s software is based on a “grid,” and she and Pauly are attached to “the grid” regardless of what faculty and students think the schedule should look like.

This is known as “goal displacement:” Bureaucrats lose sight of their real goal, and become attached to the procedure they are using to (supposedly) promote the goal. When the procedure comes to conflict with the goal, the bureaucrats cling to the procedure and lose sight of the goal.

This is particularly disappointing in the case of Pauly, who has gotten high marks from the faculty. We have toyed with the idea that he has “gone native” in an administration which is dominated by the “business side” of the university to the detriment of the “academic side.”

In fact, we think this is mostly the result of inattention on his part. A Provost, who certainly has a lot of other things to worry about, has depended on the work of his staff which in turn has been based on information gotten from the Registrar. On this particular issue, he needs to be more assertive.

Most Recent Developments

We sent a copy of an earlier version of this data to both Registrar McRae and Provost Pauly this past Thursday, asking them to identify any mistakes they think should be corrected. We reached Provost Pauly this morning, and he forwarded our data to Registrar Georgia McRae, who promised to get around to reviewing it next week.

We will continue to report on this issue.

Developing . . . .