College officials erred in Boychuk tenure case

To the Editor:

There’s no doubt in my mind that Professor Terry Boychuk has been treated egregiously by Macalester's administration and Board of Trustees. Their actions threaten potentially ruinous consequences to his future, to the integrity of our harassment procedures and to the quality of academic freedom at the College. Here’s why I believe this:

Our harassment procedures are designed to apply to the most powerful Full Professors at Macalester no less than to anyone else-coaches, Deans, clerical staff, and junior faculty like Professor Boychuk. Macalester does believe in “equal protection,” right?

If so, the (according to published sources,) indisputably hearsay allegations presented against Dr. Boychuk should have been investigated rigorously and completely, but only after the Board had moved to confirm his tenure. After all, according to published accounts, NO substantial case of harassment based on first-hand evidence was pending against Professor Boychuk when the Board was considering his case. Once tenure had been granted, the same procedures would still have applied to him as a college employee that would apply to me as a Professor with 33 years of full time teaching. Such would equally be the case were I a coach, a Dean, a member of the clerical staff, or a student charged with harassment. If Dr. Boychuk has committed harassment, then the procedures would dispense an appropriate penalty for him, just as in any of these hypothetical cases. “Equal protection,” correct?

Wrong! Instead of “equal protection” (which is what the harassment procedures stress on anonymity is designed to insure) the Trustees’ action stripped Professor Boychuk of all guarantees against prejudicial public judgement based on admitted hearsay. With no disrespect intended toward those charged with administering our harassment procedures, the claim that somehow the confidentiality of those same procedures will, in the aftermath of all this perverse exposure, insure his future state of “innocence” unless proven “guilty” is transparently false. Professor Boychuk’s career was deeply, perhaps irretrievably damaged the moment the Trustees took the action they did, and once the president had reported to the community that this is what had transpired. What happened as a result of our now-compromised “procedures” can in no way repair the damage already done. (By the way, the Weekly should not be criticized for reporting what transpired. News is news, and it’s good thing that we know it publicly from one common source, since otherwise the same news would have spread even more detrimentally via our well-developed and always destructive gossip networks.)

Thus, in my view, the only just course open at this point would be for the Board of Trustees to award Professor Boychuk tenure at once. Whether or not Professor Boychuk’s reputation could then be repaired, the degree of alleged transgressions justly determined and dealt with, and the viability of our harassment procedures restored remains to be seen. But unless at least this is done, “equal protection” will remain the naked fiction at the college that it has just now become.

James B. Stewart
James Wallace Professor of History

Boychuk deserves due process

To the Editor:

On Broadway they’ve revived Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, and for good reason: some lessons need to be learned again and again. The play recalls the hysteria surrounding the Salem witch hunts to expose the operations of McCarthyism. Today we worry about sexual predation a lot more than about communist sedition, but the danger remains the same: a paranoiac atmosphere where the mere FEAR of being accused can poison our communal life.

As a member of the Faculty Personnel Committee I can attest that, based on the evidence in his file, a group of professionals deemed Terry Boychuk worthy of a tenured place on the Macalester faculty. The fact that Terry is undergoing tenure review has been known for at least seven months, and no use has been made of our sexual harassment grievance procedure. So what does the brutal timing of the charges against him say about our community and about those willing to destroy someone on hearsay evidence? I believe we need to be protected FROM and not BY such moral crusaders. If we deserve to call ourselves the Macalester “community,” then everyone deserves due process, and especially in the case of a sexual harassment charge, where already the accusation is a conviction. Even if one is “cleared,” the stigma lingers. We do not need to know Terry (I don’t know him), or to like him (obviously somebody doesn’t like him). But we ALL need to know we could BE him. And we ALL will pay the price if he or anyone else is burned at the stake.

Linda Schulte-Sasse
Professor of German and Cultural Studies

New look at African American studies conference

To the Editor:

I would like to commend Ms. Laura Renee Chandler and Mr. Erik Slivken on their response to my article to the Weekly. They and Professor Rachleff were quite right to point out that I did not have the aid of the videotape when writing my piece. Unfortunately, at the time of my writing, Media Services did not yet have the tapes of the conference. The immediacy of the issue caused me to write the article and paraphrase as best I could what went on at the conference. Having had a chance to review the tape and read Professor Rachleff’s article, I have to concede that my paraphrase of his original question was inaccurate. My memory was colored by my anger at the comments and discussion that followed. It was never my intention to misrepresent anyone, and I do sincerely apologize to Professor Rachleff for this error on my part.

I wish that I could also say that I found my interpretations of the comments and the tone of the discussion that followed to be invalid as well. That would certainly put this issue to bed, but my review of the tape has not changed my stance on either of those issues. The tone set propped up one discipline up at the expense of another, the very problem with which Professor Rachleff took issue. The fact is that the message I took away from the conference, and I was not alone in this thinking, was that a department and a professor had been unfairly represented, even though this was not the intention.

Brienne Callahan ‘03

Privilege: a response in kind

To the Editor:

A response to my critics (both of them) is in order before this pseudo-debate subsides. For apparently not having made an argument, I seem to have said an awful lot. Allow me to clear the fog of cant and untruth, and clarify my cautiously ambivalent statements.

Counter to my avowed intentions, my opinion has been twisted into a comment on inequality and racial privilege. I will gladly respond in kind. There are many answers to the question: What is privilege? Unfortunately, many of them, like Eric’s, beg questioning. Thus, we are told that privilege is this and that (any inequality or hierarchy for Eric), and this and that are supposed to be self-evident and self-explanatory phenomena. Things could not be more oversimplified and inaccurate. Studying Webster’s or The American Heritage Dictionary is at once purblind, inaccurate, and unhelpful. Both definitions from Eric’s dictionary, in fact, corroborate my view of privilege as something freely granted, a definition, moreover, that I proffered to get a better picture of the world by distinguishing and demarcating privilege from ideas like inequality, disadvantage and prejudice.

To spell out the point I was trying to make quite concretely with Samuel Johnson’s words: there is no purely privileged or unprivileged person. Most of us are privileged in some ways and not in others. In the main, not all minorities are beleaguered and not all non-minorities are privileged. For example, “affirmative action” does nothing for truly disadvantaged white people from rural America-the sort of people no one hesitates to call “rednecks.” Furthermore, I quite explicitly acknowledge the effect of various privileges on me. I just do not think that use of the word “privilege” without meticulous qualification is useful. The word “privilege” contributes to the regeneration and invisibility of the very thing (privilege) that we want to unmask, it veils its many facets-inequality, domination, racism, sexism, and so on-under an abstract name. If we reduce the enemy to “privilege,” we conjure up an invisible phantom force beyond the reach of any counterstrategy, for the invisible cannot be combated. Why should there be anything of the nature of a privilege, or white privilege? If we postulate such a notion, surely the institution which alone would answer to it is humanity.

Ilya Winham ’03

Sweatshop policy revisited

To the Editor:

Two years ago to the week, Macalester students took part in a 12 day sit-in of the Weyerhaeuser building. Their aim was to get the college to commit to signing off of an inadequate, corporate run association that was supposed to monitor labor standards in apparel factories and onto a student run, workers’ rights consortium. This goal was achieved. Out of these student demands, and Apparel Purchase Code of Conduct was also drafted by the Social Responsibility Committee (SRC). This document, written without the participation of the Student Labor Action Coalition (SLAC), is inadequate at ensuring that Macalester-licensed clothing not be made using sweatshop labor. We are requesting that President McPherson reopen discussion on this issue in order to address problems which we feel exist within the SRC version of the code.

A striking aspect of the SRC’s submitted code is the variability and weakness of language. Some important issues are omitted altogether. Our concerns include:

a) The code offers no definition of a sweatshop.

b) The code does not define “inordinate and unreasonable” working hours. Compensation for overtime is not mentioned.

c) The code discusses wages in relation to “local” standards. Given that many factories are located within Free Trade Zones, by meeting the “local” wage standard we are only upholding the status quo. We also feel that it is essential to define a living wage, i.e. it must meet basic needs including food, housing, medical care, potable water, clothing, and education.

d) Retaliation against union organizing is not mentioned.

e) The overwhelming majority of the apparel workforce is female, yet few concerns relevant to women are addressed.

This briefly highlights our concerns with the current Code of Conduct. We strongly encourage the Macalester community to voice their opinions on this issue.

Emily Davis ’04
Nell Hirschmann-Levy ’02
Megan Stevenson ’04