One More Update: Special “Oddyshoe” Edition

When I was an undergrad, I was the producer for an Intramural Play Competition, in which dorms and frats (and maybe a sorority… I don’t remember) competed in theatrical presentation. One entrant was a fraternity that collectively wrote their own piece, called The Oddyshoe, a comic take-off on The Odyssey in which our intrepid heroes go on a quest to figure out why there are shoes and boots raining from the heavens.

Throughout the play, there were references to a place called Vana (or perhaps Vahna). And, as they approach this place at which they hope to achieve enlightenment, one of the band says “this is near Vana.” (Get it? Enlightenment? Nirvana?) It’s hardly the cleverest joke in history, but it’s not unfunny, and it was probably hilarious when first uttered at the frat house, probably at 2:00 a.m. with chemical enhancements. Trouble is, the writers set up all the scaffolding about going to Vana and then… they forgot to include the joke itself.

Why I am reminded of this anecdote some 35+ years after the fact is that I just sort of did the same thing. In this morning’s update and sequel post, I managed to leave out the section on the one story I most wanted to talk about: the tale of Jammie Price and Appalachian State University. (At least I get to spend a little more time and space on it this way.)

It turns out that there was new information made available literally the day after I wrote my piece, which was entitled “Jammie Price and the Offensiveness of [the] Porn [Industry]” and was dated April 29, 2012. It concerned a sociology professor at Appalachian State University who was suspended (they called it something else), apparently for showing an explicit anti-porn documentary in her class.

The next day, Dr. Price posted the text of her letter of reprimand from the university to a Facebook page entitled “Academic Freedom and Due Process at Appstate.” It’s quite a read.

Remember, this is a faculty member who has tenure, has been on the job for several years, and who was promoted by the university. This is not the time to question teaching methods unless they are completely beyond the pale. Even if the worst possible spin were to be put on the allegations, and even if they were all true, this isn’t enough to suspend a tenured full professor. Not to grant tenure under these circumstances would be reasonable… that’s not to say whether it would be a good or bad decision, merely that consideration of pedagogical approaches would be relevant. In Dr. Price’s case, the university has already place its imprimatur on her teaching strategies.

In any case, Dr. Price was asked—to use the euphemistic term—to submit to a “professional development plan” that would be insulting to a first-year Assistant Professor: there are more “peer reviews” required of this senior faculty member in a two-year period than I have ever had of me in the 30+ years I’ve been in the classroom (yes, combined), including when I was a teaching assistant and when I was just starting out as a junior faculty member.

Also of particular note is point B:

Inclusion of best practices for teaching lower division courses, which should include at a minimum:

1. Attendance policy that requires attendance and specifies the method to take attendance during class.

2. Multiple assignments that provide students some form of graded feedback prior to the midterm period.

3. Individual class objectives which allow for framing conversations that deal with sensitive topics.

OK, what the hell does an attendance policy have to do with the allegations? “Graded feedback prior to the midterm period” is generally a good idea, especially in a lower-division course, but telling a full professor how to structure her course is unspeakably arrogant. I should also note that my Director (the equivalent of a department chair) will have had ample opportunity to review my syllabi over a number of years and to make comments or suggestions. I don’t imagine that App State is radically different in that regard. In other words, if there’s a problem in course structure, it should have been addressed long ago. And don’t get me started on the pseudo-educational jargon factory that produces such claptrap as “individual class objectives.”

One thing I’ve learned in 30+ years in the education business: if an administrator says “this requirement is not a ban on use of sensitive materials,” it means “this is a ban on use of sensitive materials.” As I said last time, I remain to be convinced that there is anything inherently wrong with allowing students to be shocked, appalled and horrified. Sometimes that’s the way the world is. Would I have done what Dr. Price did? No. Does that mean that what she did is censurable? No.

Anyway, I’m particularly pleased by the misplaced modifier in the closing paragraph: “Once developed collaboratively, you will be expected to comply with the conditions of the professional development plan.” Nothing says “we believe in education” quite as well as a sentence any high school kid should know is ungrammatical.

That same day, April 30, the Winston-Salem Journal published an article by Monte Mitchell about the fracas. In it, there’s a reference to a March 16 letter to Dr. Price. Let’s take the charges enumerated in the March 16 letter, as described by Mitchell, one by one. For the sake of argument, let’s say that everything alleged against Professor Price is true.

So… she “called ASU a racist, predominantly white institution.” “Racist” is in the eye of the beholder; “predominantly white” is a statement of fact. She “said student-athletes get special privileges.” Well, duh. She “spent most of a class talking about a student-led protest about sexual assault allegations against two football players.” As well she should, in a sociology class. She “showed a documentary on pornography without introducing it or telling members of the class it contained images that could be objectionable to some of them.” Yeah. And? I don’t see a there, there, completely apart from Price’s denial that she called the school racist or said football players get special privileges.

Appalachian State history professor Shelia Phipps puts it well: “I started to list all of the things about history that I teach that are disturbing. History is about human behavior and a lot of it has to do with bad things humans do to each other. I don't warn students about difficult topics, which is one of the things the faculty member was accused of.” I concur. Events are sometimes shocking. Maybe post-adolescents ought to know that.

I did suggest last month that there’s likely more here than meets the eye. Price herself blames the trouble on the “poker club” that she says really runs things at ASU. Conversely, Mike Adams, a self-styled “not politically correct” professor of criminology at UNC-Wilmington suggests that:

Price arguably should have been suspended by UNCW back in March of 2003 when she cancelled all of her classes for an entire week in order to protest the Iraq War. Her unprofessionalism was compounded when she offered extra credit – but only to those who would join her in protesting the war. Predictably, a student complained and Price was reprimanded.

Adams provides further details of Price’s professional life which, if true, are problematic. That said, all that stuff is ancient history. The statute of limitations on those crimes officially expired with the granting of tenure.

In any case, Price emerged from her meeting with administration officials with this to say:

The university finds that I create a hostile teaching environment in my classroom and that, subsequently, I need to go through lessons and [“on”?] how to teach better. I will be provided a teaching mentor and I will be watched closely from here on out—basically put on teaching probation. I have not accepted these terms.

Good for her. If nothing else, this case appears to be a due process nightmare. And remember how I said I thought it interesting that FIRE wasn’t more involved? They’re baaaaaack. Here’s a lengthy and lawyerly take-down of the university’s position. It was met with a predictably non-responsive response: yet another “we can’t talk about private personnel matters” dodge which, though probably true, doesn’t help anyone’s cause or allay anyone’s fears.

Just yesterday, the Appalachian State Faculty Senate unanimously passed two resolutions: making it clear that “administrative leave” differs from suspension only in terminology, and that due process really ought to happen, even in Boone, NC. Plus, the case has gone from barely on FIRE’s radar to top billing on their “Top Cases” page.

I wrote a few weeks ago that:

Dr. Price’s actions may have reached to the level of inappropriate, although I’m not willing to go even that far without considerable trepidation. To say that they merited suspension, or administrative leave, or whatever euphemistic term the administration chooses to apply, is laughable: or, rather, it would be if the stakes weren’t so high. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, there is no reasonable conclusion other than that the administration are, collectively, at least one of the following: sexist, stupid, craven, pompous, anti-intellectual, vindictive, or just plain incompetent. Come to think of it, probably at least three or four off that list…

I might add “terminally constipated” to the list, but otherwise I stand by my earlier comments. All told, it’s a good day not to be at Appalachian State University.

Jammie Price and the Offensiveness of [the] Porn [Industry]

Sometimes the best thing that can happen to you is that you don’t get what you want. I applied for a job at Appalachian State University a few years ago. I didn’t get as much as an acknowledgment letter. In retrospect, that’s looking more and more like a good thing.

According to articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education and elsewhere, tenured full professor Jammie Price of ASU’s Sociology Department was “placed on administrative leave following complaints last month from four students about her ‘inappropriate speech and conduct in the classroom,’ including showing a movie about pornography.”

As is the case with many such incidents, it’s difficult to determine what the university’s real motives are. Are they really all that concerned with three students who didn’t think they were sufficiently warned about the fact that the film “The Price of Pleasure,” a scathing critique of the pornography industry which Dr. Price showed in class, has some pretty explicit scenes in it? I’m betting not, although the concept of the idiot administrator would hardly be novel.

More likely, Dr. Price is a pain in the university’s collective ass for other reasons—she’s also charged with saying disparaging things about athletes and telling students she doesn’t like working at App State. Professor Price told the Chronicle’s Robin Wilson that:

the administration is punishing her because she has spoken out about things on the campus, including what she describes as a male-only poker club that includes administrators and faculty members. “Men in the poker club gain more power, privileges, and income than others on the campus, and protection from student charges,” she said. “Since I started speaking out about this poker club, I have been bullied and harassed.”

But whether the showing of the film was the real problem or simply an excuse for administrators to exact vengeance on Dr. Price, it appears that showing the film was somewhere on the spectrum from cause to catalyst to last straw.

“The Price of Pleasure” (IMDB page here; film website here) is a 2008 documentary by Chyng Sun and Miguel Picker. It is sufficiently well-known in the academic community that I, who am not a social scientist, know of it. (I’ve never seen it, but I’ve seen other, earlier, variations on the theme.) It is, apparently, not infrequently used in classes similar to Dr. Price’s: in “hundreds of classes across the country,” according to one source. For her class, Price showed the copy owned by the university library.

I am ill-equipped to determine whether or not the film is a useful teaching tool. Critic Stuart Henderson calls the documentary’s approach “brainless”; a more scholarly review in the journal Gender and Education [note: sorry if the link doesn’t work: I needed a password to access the article; you might, too] describes the reactions of seven academics: “we were concerned both with the film’s failure to sustain an argument and the amount of time devoted to replaying pornographic images. We connected these to the lack of research presented in the film.”

On the other hand, one of the essential tenets of academic freedom is that faculty, especially tenured faculty, get to choose what works and what doesn’t. Other sociologists use the film in their classrooms, and one described disciplining Price as “ludicrous.” More to the point, Dr. Price’s credentials as a sociologist and as a teacher thereof (she’s a full professor, after all) far outstrip mine, so I’m not going to criticize the choice of material, especially since it appears to be widely used.

The furor, of course, seems not to be centered so much on the choice of film, but on the lack of warning to students that what was going to be shown includes graphic content and could be considered objectionable. This is the tack taken by John DeLameter, a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin, who uses the film in his own classes. Mitch Smith of Inside Higher Ed writes that DeLameter argues that “professors have a duty to inform students ahead of time when a movie is graphic and to allow those students to leave without any repercussions.” Gail Dines of Wheelock College agrees. Apparently Price issued no warning but said students could have excused themselves without negative repercussions.

Hmmm… I don’t know. Really, I’m not sure whether this is even an appropriate standard. The impact of explicit scenes—however we define “explicit”—is inevitably going to be diminished, or at least altered, if we know they’re coming. It always makes me crazy to fill out the “content advisory” form for shows I’m directing. Yes, I get it, some people will be offended if we say this or do that, and (generally) we don’t want that to happen. But the vast majority of the prospective audience won’t be offended, and we just told them something that will quite likely give away a plot point or have the spectators waiting to hear that word or watch that moment instead of engaging with the rest of the play.

More to the point, there will be those who remain in the class who will be made uneasy by the film’s content: that’s the point, after all. If the film is worth seeing, worth showing in class, it’s worth making everyone watch it whether their delicate sensibilities are offended or not. I don’t care if those sensibilities are cultural, political, aesthetic, or whatever: what we’re doing in class today is watching the film, and you’re either going to watch it or you get an unexcused absence. Next.

Still, a little courtesy is appropriate, and unless the documentary really does rely on surprise as part of its effectiveness, it’s a good idea to tell students that they’re about to get uncomfortable. Moreover, if the statements that the film advances a particular philosophical/political stance are accurate, and I suspect that they are, then it becomes incumbent on Dr. Price to contextualize, to critique, to keep the class from becoming a platform rather than a dialectic. She may well not have done that. That’s a criticism of her teaching. It is not grounds to suspend a full professor.

That, really is the central issue here. Dr. Price may have made a mistake in judgment, but here’s the evidence for her alleged misconduct: three students complained. How many does leave who didn’t? (There are 60 students just in that section.) She’s been teaching at Appalachian for a decade, has been tenured for at least half of that time, and is quite likely to have used the same or similar classroom materials repeatedly in the past. That he suspended a senior faculty member for this tells me one thing above all else about Vice Provost Anthony Gene Carey (the actual Provost couldn’t be bothered to write the letter?): I’m glad he’s not my boss.

Robin Wilson writes, also, that:

The American Association of University Professors wrote a letter to the university's chancellor this month, saying that, in Ms. Price's case, the consequences of the paid leave were the same as a suspension. It also said AAUP guidelines say professors should be suspended “only if immediate harm to the faculty member or others is threatened”—something it said wasn't evident in Ms. Price's case.

Not only that, but Professor Price was denied a hearing by the administration, barred from campus, forced to turn in her keys, and (get this!) forbidden to discuss the case with colleagues or students.

Not surprisingly, not just the AAUP, but also FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) got involved. Mitch Smith writes:

Adam Kissel, a vice president at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, criticized Appalachian State for instructing Price to not discuss her situation with students or fellow faculty members while the case is pending. While colleges have the right to investigate faculty members in some cases, Kissel said telling them to cut off communication with those on campus can prevent them from contacting potential witnesses for their defense.

Curiously, however, with the exception of a link to Smith’s article in Inside Higher Ed, FIRE’s website is strangely devoid of content on this case. It isn’t even included on the “All FIRE’s Cases” page. I'm not sure what’s up with that, although FIRE tends to lean a little to the right and to support students against faculty: this might account for their procedural but not substantive objections.

Anyway, here’s what we come down to: Dr. Price’s actions may have reached to the level of inappropriate, although I’m not willing to go even that far without considerable trepidation. To say that they merited suspension, or administrative leave, or whatever euphemistic term the administration chooses to apply, is laughable: or, rather, it would be if the stakes weren’t so high. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, there is no reasonable conclusion other than that the administration are, collectively, at least one of the following: sexist, stupid, craven, pompous, anti-intellectual, vindictive, or just plain incompetent. Come to think of it, probably at least three or four off that list…

This one, whatever we think of Dr. Price’s classroom tactics, is an easy call. She should be restored to full faculty status and issued a public apology. The administration? Well, they’re Curmie contenders. That will have to be their consolation.