Today in Good Trouble: Melissa Calhoun

When educational policy is in the hands of dominionist jackasses Republican politicians (or their minions), bad things are likely to happen.  There’s the recent case in Idaho that Curmie wrote about a couple of weeks ago in which a poster reading “everyone is welcome here” was deemed political in nature.  (There’s a shocking but not surprising update on that story, by the way). 

There’s the ongoing attempt to require that public schools in Oklahoma teach the Bible; that one is currently “stayed” but not shot down by the state Supreme Court. 

There’s the attempt in Texas to give parents taxpayer-funded vouchers to pay for private school tuition (or to homeschool!), decreasing funding for public school in the process.  This should be unconstitutional, but isn’t, because the conservative majority on SCOTUS care more about ideology than about the Constitution want to pander to rich Christians think denying public funding for religious education is somehow a violation of the First Amendment.

But today, Gentle Reader, Curmie wants to write about a case in Florida, in which Melissa Calhoun (photo above), a high school English teacher at an arts magnet school in Brevard County since 2019, was de facto fired (she will not be re-hired for the next academic year) for violating an absurd law that prohibits teachers from addressing students by their preferred name.  This is all in the pursuit of “parents’ rights,” which is a catchy if deceitful term for denying students’ rights.

As Curmie wrote two years ago

The seemingly innocuous provisions of the [federal] Parental Bill of Rights actually provide a de facto open invitation for every homophobe, Christian nationalist, racist, or garden variety anti-intellectual within hailing distance to remove any topics of discussion, course materials, library books, or whatever else that might disrupt their myopic and theocratic view of the world. What purports to be an exercise in ideological balance and freedom of expression, therefore, is precisely the opposite.

In terms of what is immediately relevant in this case, which appears to be the first of its kind anywhere in the country, what is at stake is students’ rights to define themselves and to be treated with respect.  There are all sorts of problems with the law, not least of which is that no teacher worthy of the name would fail to call students what they want to be called, except in cases of something objectively offensive.  By “objectively” here, Curmie means a term that would clearly be offensive irrespective of questions of race, gender, religion.

Once again, Curmie quotes himself:

The laws in question, of course, are a paean to cis-gendering at the expense of individual liberty. What passes for the argument suggests that insisting on parental control over what a child can be called will somehow preserve that kid’s retention in the ranks of the cis-gendered. It won’t, of course; it will only add another layer of stress to a young citizen trying to figure things out.

Also, of course, there are some asshole parents out there who think they’re being cute by naming their kid something weird.  (Curmie once had Spring Day and Justin Case in the same class.)  Some poor kid named “Fauntleroy” or, God forbid, “X Æ A-12” or “Techno Mechanicus” is flat-out gonna get teased.  And whereas Muskian spawn are unlikely to venture into a public school, Daddy is a big enough asshole to refuse, on a whim, to let them go by “Bud” or “TM” or whatever. 

Think that couldn’t happen?  Curmie’s standard practice was to call roll on the first day of class by reading the surname and asking the students to tell him what they’d like to be called.  Some wanted to be known by their middle name or surname; some went by initials; a couple went by “Bud” or J.R. (for “Junior”); some used a standard nickname.  One young man said he’d like to be called Bob.  OK, Bob, no problem.  But he came up to me after class and said that if I ever had occasion to talk to his parents, I should always refer to him as Robert or he’d get in trouble.  Yes, really.  The lad was 19!

As Curmie wrote a couple of years ago, 

... if young Dana (to pick one of more than a few names that could refer to a boy or a girl) wants to be Daniel or Danielle (or Dan or Danny, or Dani…), and the parents object… THEY’RE THE PROBLEM. Curmie shudders to contemplate the fate of children who cannot trust their parents to support them as they work through questions of identity. And now, the state wants to take away their sanctuary: adults who see them as they believe themselves to be instead of what the parents want them to be.

The corollary to this is that if I’m in a class with my friend who wants to be called “Stephanie,” I’m gonna call her (or him) Stephanie, regardless of what their name was last year, or even last week.  And every kid in the class is going to follow suit.  So the teacher who submits to the absurd law that says that child must be called “Jacob” alienates not only Stephanie, but every other kid in the class… or, at the very least, all of Stephanie’s friends.  This does not create a positive learning environment.  Of course, the overwhelming majority of GOP pols aren’t actually interested in actual education, like knowing that the Civil War was about slavery or that there are millions of people alive today who remember when segregation was a thing.

Moreover, literally any deviation from the name at birth is verboten.  So if Susan wants to be called Suzy, there’s a form for that.  And when she’s in middle school and wants to be Suzi with a heart instead of a dot over the “i,” it’s another form.  And when she gets to high school and wants to be Sue, it’s another form.  And what happens if she still gets called Suzy by a teacher who goes to her church and has known her all her life?  Can that teacher get fired for the slip-up?  Can that teacher still call her Suzy outside of school?

Want to go by your middle name?  Get Mom and Dad to sign the form.  Curmie is so old that he remembers when Republicans were opposed to bureaucratic administrivia.

But revenons à nos moutons.  Is it reasonable that Calhoun should be out of a job for the transgression (get it? transgression) of acknowledging the right of a student to self-identify?  Well, as Curmie was notorious for saying in his Asian theatre classes, yes and no.  On the one hand, even stupid laws are laws, and disobeying them will inevitably have consequences.  She knew the risk.  On the other, willingness to stand against cruelty and stupidity ought to be applauded, not censured.  She did what she believes was right.  Curmie concurs with her assessment.  So, apparently, do her students and their parents.

The district bosses, having either made the announcement or confirmed its accuracy, are in a no-win situation.  They can’t follow through without being hammered by anyone with the slightest hint of empathy.  But they can’t back down without incurring the wrath of Ron (he’s an adult so we can call him that without a note from his mom) DeSantis and his merry band of howling banshees.

The best solution for Calhoun is to finish out the school year and head for a state that is a little more willing to face 21st century than Florida seems to be.  She could teach… or go on the lecture circuit for, probably, more money.  The best solution for the district is to concentrate on real problems, like the principal and teacher busted for partying with a couple hundred kids with alcohol, drugs, and weapons present.  Up until this week, nearly three months after the incident, those actual (alleged) criminals were on paid leave.  Oh, and the response from school board president Gene Trent?  “When we have thousands of employees, things happen.” 

La la how the life goes on.

Ah, Florida...

Curmie had a post underway, then postponed it because something else came along, and now he’s putting that project on the back burner because of this.  I first read about this story on Salon.com, but that’s an extremely left-leaning site, so I looked for other sources, because it couldn’t be this bad, right?  Right?

Well, Business Insider, that bastion of Commie propaganda, says pretty much the same thing in their story.  Florida is once again making its pitch to be the principal laughingstock of the nation.  I wish they’d stop, not because their idiocy affects me directly, but the Texas legislature really resents being out-stupided, and they’ll develop a scheme even more hare-brained (and repressive) than this. 

Governor Ron DeSantis
Censorious Asshat

Governor Ron DeSantis this week signed into law that requires the state’s public universities to survey their faculty, staff, and students about their political beliefs.  The Florida GOP wants to ensure an environment in which “competing ideas and perspectives are presented.”  

This is an absolute lie, of course.  All you have to do is look at the rhetoric of House Speaker Chris Sprowls, who may be even more reprehensible than DeSantis; he argues that Florida’s students need to be taught “about loving America” and “what our real history is and what our legacy is.” 

Well, our “real history” includes slavery; lies and broken promises to First Nations people; internment camps for Japanese-Americans; discrimination against Jews, Catholics, Muslims, women, homosexuals; the use of atomic weapons on civilians… the list goes on.  That’s not all our history is about, of course.  There were, and are, ways in which this truly is the greatest country in the world.  But we’re talking about university students here: they’re old enough and mature enough to know that George Washington didn’t admit to chopping down the cherry tree with his little hatchet.

A nation that can recognize and confront its failures to deliver the “liberty and justice for all” its rhetoric promises is inherently stronger than one which hides away its darker moments like crazy Uncle Elmo whom we never let out of the attic.  Sometimes the only way to disinfect the wound is to rip off the scab.  By the way, apparently Sprowls (and DeSantis, and most of the rest of the Florida GOP) believes that “loving America” is ideology-free.  Uh… no.

Of course, the entire idea of threatening to withhold funding from universities which might have disproportionately large numbers of (gasp!) Democrats is both sinister and doomed to failure.  Let’s face it, people will lie if their livelihood is on the line.  (There is, by the way, no guarantee of anonymity for those answering the survey.) 

And it is certainly true that universities (in certain departments at certain schools, at least) are indeed primarily staffed by folks who are more likely to be liberal.  The average university professor (if Curmie does say so himself) tends to be well above average in intellect and possessed of a good work ethic.  Such a person could make more money developing a new marketing campaign for Amalgamated WidgetCorp.  Crude but not altogether inaccurate generalization: capitalists tend to prefer money; socialists are more likely to seek to benefit the society at large.  Curiously, the former like their government-funded infrastructure and the latter would willingly be paid more.

More to the point, my politics are none of the state’s damned business.  That’s why we have secret ballots, after all.  If, and only if, my political stance shuts off legitimate debate, then that’s a problem.  But the presumption must be that I am operating in good faith until it is proved conclusively that I am not.  Forces on both sides of the political divide would rather make us prove innocence.  That is un-American. 

Ah, but Governor DeSantis has heard fears from “a lot of parents” that their offspring are being “indoctrinated.”  1). That’s because DeSantis and his cronies are screaming such nonsense from the rooftops.  2). What’s happening more likely than not is that the indoctrination happened when little Johnny or Suzy was growing up, and that what happens in the college classroom is in fact a challenge to that pre-existing indoctrination.

This is not to suggest, of course, that all faculty are blameless, or indeed that there aren’t threats to freedom of expression emanating from the left.  Of course, there are.  They’re real, and no one who’s been paying attention thinks otherwise.  But this bill is using an assault rifle to kill a guppy.  It can only lead to an increasingly high stakes battle with both sides moving away from the real issue for the sake of winning the argument rather than improving education.

It is also true that on Curmie’s campus, there are some faculty far further to the right than Curmie’s most liberal colleague is to the left.  One professor at this state university gave students extra credit for memorizing Bible verses (needless to say, this wasn’t a course in comparative religion).  The administration loved him. 

Moreover, this effort demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of the way universities work.  Diversity of perspective doesn’t require hiring both liberals and conservatives; it requires faculty who know what the hell they’re doing.  Curmie has taught plays that are very Catholic, very Jewish, very Buddhist, very Hindu, very atheist; he’s taught plays that advocate for monarchy, for democracy, for socialism, for capitalism, for anarchy.  Do I really need to tell you, Gentle Reader, that I’m not an adherent to all of these philosophies?

The same is true for the history part of my courses: I suppose that Curmie’s dislike for blowing up innocent people, or slaughtering them, or starving them to death… this could be taken as a political stance, but it would be kind of a stretch to call that a comprehensive philosophy, wouldn’t it? 

And whereas, as noted in a piece I wrote a month or so ago, students will know something of my politics when I refer to them by their preferred pronouns or suggest that part of choosing a theatre season is ensuring that there are qualitatively good and quantitatively enough roles for actors of different demographic profiles, that doesn’t mean they know where I stand on any particular issue except in the most general terms (cops killing civilians is sometimes but not always justified; what about this particular case?).  To the best of my knowledge, no current student even knows of the existence of this blog.

There’s also the matter of academic freedom.  Especially but not exclusively tenured faculty are, and should be, granted the ability to determine the content and structure of their courses.  The Florida GOP stratagem, of course, represents the first step toward subjecting higher education to the censorial powers of whoever happens to have the political advantage at a given moment.  Given the splintering of the American electorate and the intransigent extremism of both sides, that’s a terrifying prospect in the short term, and it won’t get any better if the blues instead of the reds are in power.

Finally, one is tempted to wonder at the rationale for requiring students to acquiesce to this violation of their privacy.  At least the desire to suppress the rights of faculty makes sense in amoral, utilitarian terms.  But the only possibility for studying the student body is to track changes over time, looking for the “gotcha” moment when the senior class is marginally more liberal than they were as freshmen.

Well, duh.  At least in certain ways, of course they are.  The classroom isn’t the only place that learning takes place.  Curmie had a couple of gay friends in high school, but they weren’t out to him at the time.  In college, I “knowingly knew” gay friends.  And there were more people of different races, religions, and, yes, political philosophies.  In the classroom, I learned some facts that challenged my beliefs and some that bolstered them.  That is what is supposed to happen.

Curmie emerged from college more liberal in some ways, more conservative in others, and certainly more skeptical of all pronouncements from either side.  This, too, is what is supposed to happen. 

It is only a matter of time before Governor DeSantis, Representative Sprowls, or one of their cohort declares the imminent arrival of Shari’a Law on American shores.  Newsflash: such enforced orthodoxy is already here; it’s manifested in this legislation.

Melissa Howard and the Diploma That Wasn't

There are a couple of stories about primary elections in the American southeast that have caught Curmie’s attention this week. One is serious, and plays into larger issues of securing the electoral process. I might get to writing about that sometime soon, but that’s a complex and frankly rather terrifying issue. Sometimes, you just need a story best accompanied by raised eyebrows and an ample supply of popcorn.

Melissa Howard and her fake diploma.
That’s probably her real mom, though.

And that is why, Gentle Reader, the gods have provided us with Melissa Howard, an erstwhile candidate to represent the 73rd district in the Florida House.  A little over a week ago, FLA News Online reported that Howard’s claim to have graduated from Miami University in Ohio couldn’t be corroborated. The National Student Clearinghouse lists Ms. Howard, maiden name Melissa Marie Fox, as having attended Miami in the early 1990s, but not as having received a degree.

On the one hand, it is passing strange that a political candidate would lie about something so easily proved one way or the other, but it’s just as odd that a news agency would pay to verify so pedestrian a credential: a BS in Marketing isn’t exactly going to make an otherwise reluctant voter to suddenly take an interest in a candidate. It is true, of course, that FLA News is a conservative site, and Howard’s opponent in the Republican primary, Tommy Gregory, is a more loyal minion of the NRA and in general the more frothing-at-the-mouth reactionary of the two candidates to replace current Representative Joe Gruters, who decided to seek a seat in the State Senate rather than run for re-election to the House.

Anyway, when the story broke, Ms. Howard, of course, denied it. According to the FLA News article,

She offered to send yearbook pictures and even provided a picture of her at a graduation ceremony. When FLA News asked for the one document that would verify graduation–a diploma–Howard promised to send an electronic copy but did not. She claimed it was in her mother’s storage unit in Ohio. Her campaign consultant later said Howard did not graduate in 1994, she was one credit short and later completed it in 1996. However, the campaign was unable to provide a copy of her diploma, despite four days of repeated requests.

Still, there’s not really a story yet. Getting a copy of a transcript can take a few days, and FLA News may well have been less than an honest broker in the proceedings.

But the campaign completely overplayed its hand, as with this preposterous claim:

This is just another attempt by our desperate opponent, Tommy Gregory to lie about Melissa Howard. He lied about her being a Democrat in Ohio, which the Supervisor of Elections refuted. There’s nothing he won’t do or say to hurt Melissa or her reputation within the community. It’s shameful. Melissa graduated with a degree in marketing and we have requested her transcripts from the University and have been told they take 4-6 weeks to arrive.

Anyone who knows anything whatsoever about the process of getting a transcript can tell you that whereas three or four days might be a bit short (although Curmie was e-mailed an electronic copy of his grad school transcript in a matter of hours a couple of years ago), 4-6 weeks is ridiculously long. One week, maybe. Four to six weeks (oh, so conveniently enough time to get past the primary in a safe GOP district), not a chance.  Of course, that’s for a transcript as opposed to a diploma, but a transcript would certainly have served the purpose.

Former President Obama showed a prescience one might wish had been more on display during his actual term in office, in a speech in Johannesburg at a celebration in honor of Nelson Mandela’s 100th birthday.  He said:

We see the utter loss of shame among political leaders, where they’re caught in a lie, and they just double down and they lie some more…. Let me say, politicians have always lied, but it used to be if you caught ‘em lying, they’d be like, “aw, man…” Now they just keep on lying.

Obama’s remarks were widely and no doubt accurately interpreted as a not so thinly veiled excoriation of President Trump, whose administration has indeed reached levels of mendacity hitherto undreamed of even by the most dishonest of pols. But those comments certainly apply, as well, to the likes of small-time prevaricators like Melissa Howard.

What’s important here is that her falsified credentials were completely unnecessary. Ms. Howard is a successful businesswoman, and coming up one or two courses short of graduation (which appears to have been the case) from a quite reputable university is not an insignificant achievement, and, as Zac Anderson of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune notes in a follow-up essay, “If Howard had been honest about not graduating, her academic credentials likely would never have been an issue in the race. There are other state lawmakers without college degrees.”

Indeed, it’s quite easy to imagine a scenario whereby an honest misunderstanding could have happened:

—Where’d you go to college?

—Miami of Ohio.

—What was your major?

—Marketing.

And we now have a completely accurate and perhaps even completely honest exchange which leads to a completely reasonable but completely erroneous conclusion. Well, except for the fact that Miami doesn’t have a Marketing major... more on that later.

Even after the story broke, if she’d apologized, said she had come very close to graduating but struggled with that one course (or whatever), blamed her campaign’s website’s false claim on a miscommunication with a staffer, the chances that she’d have lost more than a handful of votes are pretty slim.

But Howard, to use President Obama’s phrase, doubled down, with headline-making results. Let’s face it, she’s the best-known failed state representative candidate in the country. Why? Because of the lie? No, as President Obama said, politicians lie. It’s just that in true Watergate fashion, the cover-up was worse than the crime. Howard stalled, claimed she’d made up the missing credits two years after finishing her full-time studies, asserted that her diploma was in her mom’s storage facility, then posed with Mom and Diploma in a stratagem that was nothing if not audacious. It even worked, briefly. FLA News Online even rescinded (as opposed to “retracted”) its story.

But then university officials became pro-active. Miami, as noted above, doesn’t offer a BS in Marketing; marketing students would receive a BS in Business. But Howard didn’t, in fact, major in Marketing, but in Retailing (why would anyone sane lie about this?), which would have led to a degree in Family and Consumer Sciences... assuming she actually got a degree. Moreover, one of the signatures on the obviously fallacious diploma was that of Robert C. Johnson, who was, alas, the Dean of the Graduate School, not of Business nor of Education and Allied Professions. Oops.

Still, Howard persisted, briefly, before finally admitting she’d lied about the degree, claiming, “It was not [her] intent to deceive or mislead anyone.” Wow. She accused journalists, her primary opponent, and at least by implication her presumptive alma mater of lying about her; she staged a trip to Ohio to prove an innocence that never existed; she ultimately fabricated a fake diploma, even somehow convincing her mom to pose with it. Curmie wonders what one must do to qualify as being intentionally deceptive on Ms. Howard’s home planet.

And yet she announced she was staying in the race! Joe Gruters, the Howard campaign treasurer and presumably same person who is the incumbent in that House seat, came up with one of the great political quotes of all time. First, he said he’d urge her step aside if arrested (!), but followed it up with this gem: “in the meantime it’s a slippery slope when you start asking candidates who lie to remove themselves from the ballot.” How, exactly, is anyone to take the Florida GOP seriously after that?

But, as they say in the late-night infomercials, Wait! There’s more! Of course, she lied about staying in the race, too. (Well, to be fair, it wasn’t really a lie, as she might just have been crazy enough to believe her own rhetoric.) But before she dropped out we also have an unnamed Republican political consultant saying this:

Common sense and normal politics would say she can’t survive it but everything seems to be upside down…. I wonder if people don’t feel anesthetized or insensate from [President Trump]. He set the bar so high or so low, depending on your point of view, that the stuff that used to matter doesn’t seem to matter.

When your own party’s mouthpieces start saying outright that the POTUS has so degraded normal standards of integrity that they don’t even matter anymore, it might be a portent of some serious introspection on the part of the handful of remaining Trump supporters who are otherwise intelligent adults.

Meanwhile, it strikes Curmie that there are three lessons to be learned from the Melissa Howard affair:

1. Telling the truth is better than lying.
2. When the hole is too deep, stop digging.
3. If you need a diploma forged, don’t hire someone over Craigslist..