by Richard M. Berthold
Daily Lobo Columnist
Lost amidst the furor stirred up by my intemperate remark last fall was the fact that I was at the same time charged by a female in my Western Civilization with "creating a hostile classroom environment."
This was essentially a charge of sexual harassment, since the complaint focused on statements about sex made in my lectures, and a formal charge was filed with the Office of Equal Opportunity.
The charge was nonsense, inasmuch as with one exception every detail in the complaint concerned course material on Greek sexuality. The exception was a complaint about "grabbing my crotch," which in fact I did do, part of a routine about male obsession with weapons and machismo that most students found amusing.
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Nevertheless, the OEO spent six months investigating the affair and apparently interviewed dozens of people before coming to the conclusion that the charge was insubstantial, something any normal person could have concluded within 24 hours.
The woman who filed the charge subsequently appeared at a press conference given by several legislators who wanted me hanged for the Sept. 11 comment, suggesting that she might simply be a cat's paw for politicians who wanted to demonstrate that I was a sexual pervert as well as a traitor. Assuming she was actually offended, however, underscores a belief many on the faculty share: we are increasingly admitting children to the University. They may be 18-years-old biologically, but in terms of education and emotional maturity clearly many are closer to 12. My lifelong assumption that the University was for adults is apparently incorrect, and I now put warnings on my course syllabi, advising students that the class involves adult material.
The Office of Equal Opportunity is another of those well-intentioned liberal inventions that has turned out to have a serious negative impact on the University. Its core mission is to protect those on the campus who feel discriminated against, most especially ethnic minorities and women. Virtually every arrangement regarding personnel that a department might seek must be approved by the OEO to insure lack of bias. Guarding against discrimination is certainly a laudable goal, but in actuality the OEO is an academic version of the Spanish Inquisition, chilling free speech on campus and terrorizing faculty and staff on the basis of the most insubstantial charges.
I was constantly told by my inquisitors that they made no pre-judgments, but there was a clear presumption of guilt from the start, an impression supported by the dozen or so faculty and staff I spoke with who had gone through this process. They all in fact recommended that I hire an attorney, despite the obviously bogus nature of the charges. The two women who questioned me were very polite and, I expect, nice people, but I was clearly being interrogated. And I was being interrogated about my course material by two people who knew nothing about Greek history, who were manifestly not my peers and who were not even academics.
Protecting members of the University community from discrimination is of course important, but there are other campus mechanisms, and the net impact of the OEO, most especially in the critical area of free speech, is clearly negative. They are here, incidentally because any university that does not set up such an Office of Inquisition and Political Virtue loses federal funding, a no-brainer choice for most university administrations, which would probably consider public executions of faculty if necessary to keep the cash flowing. And we are now in the process of hiring a new director for our OEO, some academic Torquemada who will be paid more than the average faculty member.
Because of the federal funding issue, UNM must accommodate this pernicious organization, but there is no reason why the faculty should (the staff are in a more ticklish position regarding job security). If everyone on the faculty simply paid no attention to these people, they would become irrelevant, inasmuch as they have no real power other than that given them by those who cooperate. Fear is the basis of their authority; ignore them and they are powerless.
Meanwhile, students: want to hassle that teacher who gave you a bad grade or expected you to do some work? File a complaint with the OEO! Just make something up! No matter how silly, they'll investigate it and scare the hell out of that unsympathetic professor.
