Sunday in town will be sunny with a high of fifty-four. Sunrise is 6:38 and sunset 4:38, for 9h 59m 49s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 8.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
The United States presidential election of 1864 was the 20th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 1864. Incumbent president, RepublicanAbraham Lincoln, was running for re-election against Democratic candidate George B. McClellan, who ran as the “peace candidate” without personally believing in his party’s platform.
Presidential election results map. Red denotes states won by Lincoln/Johnson, blue denotes those won by McClellan/Pendleton, andbrown denotes Confederate states; two Confederate states were controlled by the Union by 1864 and held elections (although their electors were not ultimately counted). Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state.
On this date Increase Lapham recorded the first published national weather forecast, calling for “high winds and falling temperatures for Chicago, Detroit and the Eastern cities.” [Source: History Just Ahead: A Guide to Wisconsin’s Historical Markers edited by Sarah Davis McBride]
At WISC-TV Channel 3000 there is a published report this afternoon on the death of UW-Whitewater’s dean of students, Mary Beth Mackin. The story includes a statement from UW-Whitewater’s chancellor.
The two, separate federal complaints that sexual assault survivors have filed against UW-Whitewater are complaints against that institution for the failure to comply with lawful requirements for handling these alleged survivors’ claims (regardless of the underlying facts in any given claimant’s case).
(That’s why, when Title IX complainants seek federal recourse, they say that they have been assaulted twice – once from an assailant, and a second time when they feel they have been denied the required Title IX support from their own campuses. A federal Title IX complaint is against a school for failing to respond as required to the request for local assistance.)
These complainants allege that, apart from the underlying facts of each assault, UW-Whitewater and one of her principal administrators failed to provide the standard of care and responsiveness that the law requires. Both women allege not merely that UW-Whitewater’s Dean of Students, Mary Beth Mackin, was deficient in her response, but that she was unlawfully so. The second complaint, pointedly, claims that UW-Whitewater acted in a sexually discriminatory way, itself an additional violation of the law.
More seriously, these two women allege that UW-Whitewater has actually and effectually obstructed the required processing of their complaints.
The inescapable legal issue here is how UW-Whitewater processes complaints, and whether that institution has done so as the law requires. The practical issue is that failure to treat all complaints as the law requires will dissuade future sexual assault survivors from coming forward.
If officials oppose applicable federal laws, the legitimate response is to petition for an amendment or repeal of those laws.
No one employed at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, regardless of his or her role, has a right to disregard existing legal requirements. It does not matter how much those in the administration might wish to balance the law against other (often self-interested and self-protective) reputational considerations.
The law does not allow that balancing. No official is above – nor any individual below – the law. It does not matter how important officials believe they are, how much other work they feel has gone well, etc.
The legal question is how public officials, receiving public funds, bound by federal law, complied with that federal law (regardless of the underlying facts in any given claimant’s case). There is neither a legal (nor an ethical) escape from this fundamental question.
Practically, the most important question is what actually happened to sexual assault survivors, and the well-being of those survivors and future ones.
The nature of these Title IX complaints, as matters under law, concerns how an institution has addressed the requests for assistance that it received from those within its care.
Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of forty-eight. Sunrise is 6:37 and sunset 6:39, for 10h 02m 12s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 15.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
So a squirrel climbs twenty-one floors up a building, and then leaps…
The October Revolution … officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution … tr.Velikaya Oktyabr’skaya sotsialisticheskaya revolyutsiya), and commonly referred to as Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a seizure of state power instrumental in the larger Russian Revolution of 1917. It took place with an armed insurrection in Petrograd traditionally dated to 25 October 1917 (by the Julian or Old Stylecalendar, which corresponds to 7 November 1917 in the Gregorian or New Style calendar).
It followed and capitalized on the February Revolution of the same year, which overthrew the Tsarist autocracy and established a provisional governmentcomposed predominantly of former nobles and aristocrats.[citation needed] During this time, urban workers began to organize into councils (Russian: Soviet) wherein revolutionaries criticized the provisional government and its actions. The October Revolution in Petrograd overthrew the provisional government and gave the power to the local soviets. The Bolshevik party was heavily supported by the soviets. After the Congress of Soviets, now the governing body, had its second session, it elected members of the Bolsheviks and other leftist groups such as the Left Socialist Revolutionaries to key positions within the new state of affairs. This immediately initiated the establishment of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the world’s first self-proclaimed socialist state.
Today, only after publication of an account of a second Title IX complaint against UW-Whitewater from a second sexual assault survivor, Chancellor Kopper finally chose to issue a statement in her own words (assuming that she wrote it). I have published that statement in full, at the bottom of this post. (For the story on this second complaint, see, Sex assault survivor claims discrimination by university @ Channel 3000, WISC-TV.)
There is no reasonable person who contends that being “committed” is a statement. It’s an action.
And yet, and yet, even the statement finally issued under Chancellor Kopper’s own name reveals the indifference of her prior efforts – she now feels it necessary to begin her second paragraph with the tired phrase, “let me be clear…”
If Kopper had been clear, even in prior words alone, she would not need to remind readers of her self-professed clarity of views.
To those in the university’s Media Relations group – either your chancellor cannot issue a statement without revealing her past indifference, or you cannot draft one for her.
There should be – and so there will be – no end of effort until the institutional misconduct that has failed two women (and perhaps more men and women) ends.
One sees, also, that Kopper falsely professes to avoid speaking about this pending complaint, but simultaneously declares that “[a]ll complaints are reviewed with respect and compassion for all involved.”
No, and no again: that’s the very question at issue here. By asserting that all complaints have been reviewed with “respect and compassion” Kopper most certainly does address the allegations in this pending investigation, by categorically denying their possibility of being true.
A future assault survivor will read Kopper’s words and recognize that past survivors’ claims have been categorically denied. This is an assurance of a chilling effect against future reporting.
Why can she not see this? Honest to goodness, is there no one in her office who can think matters through?
Thus she hides behind a pending investigation selectively, contending that she cannot speak only when it suits her.
In any event, a statement will not suffice. A change of institutional conduct – and removal of those culpable of misconduct – is needed here.
See, please, the It’s On Us Campaign and Not Alone, a site for those who have experienced sexual assault with resources of support.
You may be aware through media reports that a second complaint has been filed with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights alleging that UW-Whitewater may have violated Title IX. Because of the ongoing investigation, I am not in a position to discuss specifics. Our campus will cooperate fully with the Office for Civil Rights as it investigates.
Let me be clear, UW-Whitewater has been and remains committed to raising awareness about the impact of sexual violence and taking steps toward preventing any occurrence of sexual violence on our campus. All complaints are reviewed with respect and compassion for all involved.
I know that all across campus there are faculty, staff and students who are engaged in efforts to help promote a campus climate that is free from violence and discrimination, and I applaud those efforts. As a community, we pride ourselves on being a safe and welcoming place for all.
Please understand that if you have been the victim of a sexual assault, you are not alone. There are people within the UW-Whitewater community here to support you. Retaliation for reporting is strictly prohibited. We encourage you to report sexual assault to UW-Whitewater Police at 262-472-4660 or the Dean of Students office at 262-472-1533.
The campus website offers many resources to help keep you safe: http://www.uww.edu/sexual-misconduct-information/keeping-safe
Raechel Liska, aged 22, an honors student and Army ROTC candidate at UW-Whitewater, has filed a sexual discrimination action with the U.S. Department of Education, Civil Rights Division, against our local university.
This is the second federal action that a sexual assault survivor has filed against the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in the last eighteen months.
Ms. Liska was violently assaulted, but when she sought recourse – as federal law (and mere humanity) – requires, she met with a further tragedy:
“I got assaulted twice,” Liska said. “Once by my attacker, which was the traumatic, horrific part, but again by the school, which was the betrayal.”
Liska said UWW Dean of Students Mary Beth Mackin violated her civil rights by refusing to interview two witnesses and by not accepting either the police report or her medical records stemming from the incident. She also asserts Mackin did not issue a no-contact order against her alleged attacker, even as he retaliated and intimidated her after she spoke to authorities. Further, it was the Army that stepped in and removed her assailant from her classes three months after the incident in question, even after she’d asked the university to do the same multiple times, only to be rebuffed.
“The reason I filed my complaint is because something here needs to change,” she said. “I thought the dean of students would be protecting the students, protecting me. She’s the dean of students. I thought I’d be her priority, but I walked out feeling like protecting the school was her top priority.”
Dean of Students Mary Beth Mackin’s gross misconduct
Ms. Liska accomplished much, and loved the university, but that university treated her injuriously and shamefully:
She also asserts that Mackin never informed her of her Title IX rights after she made her initial report and did not provide her with a sexual assault advocate on campus. Liska remains on campus now studying to become a high school history teacher. She said she’s coming forward now because she doesn’t want any other UWW students to experience what she’s gone through.
“It doesn’t matter to me specifically what their opinions are of the assault itself. What matters to me is how people feel I was treated by the institution I trusted most,” she said. “I want my face and my name attached to this story. I want it to be personal. I want people to take it personally and I want there to be change out of it.”
After Raechel Liska was assaulted, and after her mistreatment from one of the university’s leading administrators, the university still used Ms. Liska’s picture to promote UW-Whitewater as a safe and welcoming place:
The university is currently distributing a pamphlet to new and prospective students that prominently features Liska in uniform on a page titled, “Leaders and Mentors.”
“I am really bothered that the university still uses me as an exemplary image but is so resistant to helping me at my most vulnerable time,” she said.
Raped, ignored and mistreated by her university, and yet used as a public-relations pawn by that same university.
What would be worse: that this university media-relations team is so obtuse that they cannot see the injury use of Ms. Liska’s promotional picture represents, that they are so indifferent they simply do not care, that they are so parsimonious that they will use the picture rather than publish a new one, or that they manipulatively thinkuse of the picture would somehow impress Ms. Liska?
So let us hope, Dieu aidant, that we should never become so contemptible as officials of this ilk.
Chancellor Beverly Kopper hides behind her spokeswoman
Astonishingly, Chancellor Beverly Kopper cannot be troubled to respond to these allegations in her own voice. Instead, she hides behind a spokeswoman’s dull, stale statement:
“UW-Whitewater Chancellor Beverly Kopper believes that providing a safe environment for students, faculty and staff is her first priority,” wrote Sara Kuhl, UWW’s director of marketing and media relations, in a statement to News 3. “UW-Whitewater has been and remains committed to raising awareness about the existence and impact of sexual violence and taking active steps toward preventing the occurrence of sexual violence on campus. UW-Whitewater takes all complaints very seriously and every complaint is handled with care and compassion for all parties involved.”
Scripture records that God spoke thorough Moses, and Moses spoke through Aaron, but I am quite convinced that Beverly Kopper is neither Creator nor Prophet – it is a measure of either profound ignorance or arrogance that Kopper would not speak in her own words.
This is the second accusation that directly and specifically names Mary Beth Mackin:
The first Title IX complaint against the school was filed in January 2014. The survivor in that case alleged that UWW administrators, specifically Mackin, missed appointments, hurried conversations and failed to interview key witnesses to her claims. Federal investigators have been on campus interviewing students and administrators about those allegations.
Previously, see How UW-Whitewater Treated a Sexual Assault Victim (referring to a story, also from Adam Schrager at WISC-TV, on another assault survivor’s gross mistreatment while at UW-Whitewater).
There will be more to publish on this matter, and updates as developments warrant.
One assault survivor abused was too many; two similarly abused are a grave offense against individual dignity, common morality, and American standards of justice and fairness.
See, also, the It’s On Us Campaign and Not Alone, a site for those who have experienced sexual assault with resources of support.
We’ll have a partly cloudy Friday in Whitewater, with a high of fifty-two. Sunrise is 6:36 and sunset 4:40, for 10h 04m 38s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 22.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
A note on posting: I posted last night on a second sex assault survivor who has filed a federal complaint against UW-Whitewater, following a news report from WISC-TV, Channel 3000. I’ll move that post forward, and it will become today’s main post. There will be no Friday Poll and no Friday Catblogging this week. There’s not the slightest chance that I would make the mistake of publishing on a light subject rather than this serious one.
There will also be posts on Saturday and Sunday considering aspects of the UW-Whitewater administration’s ongoing, evident misconduct, and the role of a few in encouraging subject-changing through lightweight stories rather than addressing an ongoing, aberrant situation in this city. UW-Whitewater’s situation is, sadly, far worse than many other campuses in Wisconsin or across America; few schools have a single federal complaint of this kind, let alone two pending ones. Sexual assault is a crime and wrong anywhere, but local handling of complainants’ requests is below any normal or average standard.
A reasonable person is, under these circumstances, called to greater scrutiny, not less; to more effort, not less.
On this day in 1860, Abraham Lincoln wins election as to become president if the United States:
On November 6, 1860, Lincoln was elected the 16th president of the United States, beating Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, John C. Breckinridge of the Southern Democrats, and John Bell of the new Constitutional Union Party. He was the first president from the Republican Party. His victory was entirely due to the strength of his support in the North and West; no ballots were cast for him in 10 of the 15 Southern slave states, and he won only two of 996 counties in all the Southern states.[160]
Lincoln received 1,866,452 votes, Douglas 1,376,957 votes, Breckinridge 849,781 votes, and Bell 588,789 votes. Turnout was 82.2 percent, with Lincoln winning the free Northern states, as well as California and Oregon. Douglas won Missouri, and split New Jersey with Lincoln.[161] Bell won Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, and Breckinridge won the rest of the South.[162]
Although Lincoln won only a plurality of the popular vote, his victory in the electoral college was decisive: Lincoln had 180 and his opponents added together had only 123. There were fusion tickets in which all of Lincoln’s opponents combined to support the same slate of Electors in New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, but even if the anti-Lincoln vote had been combined in every state, Lincoln still would have won a majority in the Electoral College.[163]
1837 – Burlington, Iowa Selected as Temporary Capital
On this date Burlington, Iowa was chosen as a temporary capital of the Wisconsin Territory. A year earlier, legislators offered a bill making Madison the capital with a temporary capital in Dubuque until which time a permanent building could be constructed in Madison. Legislators also proposed the City of Belmont as a temporary capital. One month later, on December 12th, a fire destroyed the two-story temporary capital in Burlington. The new legislature moved its headquarters to the Webber and Remey’s store in Burlington where they conducted government affairs until June 1838.[Source: State of Wisconsin Blue Book]
Here’s the final Puzzability game in this week’s All Is Lost series:
This Week’s Game — November 2-6
All Is Lost
This is a week of all or nothing. For each day, we started with a word containing the letter chunk ALL and removed that chunk to get a new word or phrase. The answer phrase, described by each day’s clue, is the longer ALL word followed by the shorter word.
Example:
Young, inexperienced Holstein
Answer:
Callow cow
What to Submit:
Submit the two-word phrase, with the longer one first (as “Callow cow” in the example), for your answer.
Thursday brings morning clouds, but afternoon sunshine, to the Whippet City. We’ll have a high of sixty-eight. Sunrise is 6:34 and sunset 4:41, for 10h 07m 05s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 31.2% of the its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1968, Richard Nixon is elected president of the United States. The next day, the New York Timesreported his victory:
Nixon Wins By A Thin Margin, Pleads For Reunited Nation
Elector Vote 287
Lead in Popular Tally May Be Smaller Than Kennedy’s in ’60
Nixon Wins Presidency by Margin Probably Smaller Than That of Kennedy in ’60
WALLACE’S EFFECT HARD TO PIN POINT
Alabamian Believed to Have Helped Humphrey in Some States, Nixon in Others
By MAX FRANKEL
Richard Milhous Nixon emerged the victor yesterday in one of the closest and most tumultuous Presidential campaigns in history and set himself the task of reuniting the nation.
Elected over Hubert H. Humphrey by the barest of margins–only four one-hundredths of a percentage point in the popular vote–and confronted by a Congress in control of the Democrats, the President-elect said it “will be the great objective of this Administration at the outset to bring the American people together.”
He pledged, as the 37th President, to form “an open Administration, open to new ideas, open to men and women of both parties, open to critics as well as those who support us” so as to bridge the gap between the generations and the races.
On this day in 1912, Wisconsin men reject giving Wisconsin women the right to vote:
1912 – Women’s Suffrage Referendum
On this date Wisconsin voters (all male) considered a proposal to allow women to vote. When the referendum was over, Wisconsin men voted women’s suffrage down by a margin of 63 to 37 percent. The referendum’s defeat could be traced to multiple causes, but the two most widely cited reasons were schisms within the women’s movement itself and a perceived link between suffragists and temperance that antagonized many German American voters. Although women were granted the vote in 1920 by the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Wisconsin’s own constitution continued to define voters as male until 1934. [Source: Turning Points in Wisconsin History]
Here’s the Thursday game in this week’s Puzzability series, All is Lost:
This Week’s Game — November 2-6
All Is Lost
This is a week of all or nothing. For each day, we started with a word containing the letter chunk ALL and removed that chunk to get a new word or phrase. The answer phrase, described by each day’s clue, is the longer ALL word followed by the shorter word.
Example:
Young, inexperienced Holstein
Answer:
Callow cow
What to Submit:
Submit the two-word phrase, with the longer one first (as “Callow cow” in the example), for your answer.
Thursday, November 5
Tool for sweeping up after Cinderella and the other guests have left
Most choices for government, such as an option between Policy Choice A or Policy Choice B, involve choices of ordinary outcomes. One option may be more efficient than the other, or one more aesthetically pleasing than an alternative, but either would be considered a normal, reasonable policy outcome.
Preferences of the Right or Left, of Republican or Democrat, especially for local government, are mostly like this: people may prefer one outcome over another, but few think a community’s future will be damaged significantly and irremediably with the selection of either Choice A or Choice B.
In a well-ordered local politics, there should be few – if any – choices that are not like choices between A and B.
A policy choice that leads one to a wrong outcome – that is an outcome that’s unethical or injurious – should be almost unknown to a community.
There are dozens of ways to build a park, or design a public market, and not one of these would be wrong, not one that would be unethical or gravely injurious.
Most actions of Whitewater’s city government, school district, or university are like the ordinary choices between A and B : perhaps offering advantages one way or another but involving nothing of ethics or injury.
Sadly, there are a small number of policy actions in Whitewater that are extraordinary, and simply wrong. We should not have any; an inferior local politics, beneath the standard that an American community deserves, afflicts us.
Some few actions start out conventionally, but descend into the wrong through exaggeration that becomes mendacity. Whitewater’s town squires have the habit of boosting the town in ways that begin as ordinary (if poorly expressed) public relations, slip into unjustified boasting, and end as outright lies.
There is a second, small class of actions that are, truly, far worse. In this small class, actions begin with indifference to individuals, often with an insistence that the reputations of institutions matter more than the lives of their ordinary members. Whitewater’s worst leaders have an act utilitarianism in them. (These leaders justify their actions as an institutional defense, but that defense against individual rights is objectionable as made, and mostly an effort at their own self-interest in any event.)
Like most communities, we have mostly conventional choices before us. Sadly, unlike many communities, we have some policymakers who have slipped beneath the conventional, into actions that are both unethical and gravely injurious.
Most policy choices are conventional; a few are far less, and far worse, than that.
Our midweek in town will be cloudy in the morning, but sunny in the afternoon, with a daytime high of sixty-eight. Sunrise is 6:33 and sunset 4:43, for 10h 09m 33s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 40.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
Weird Al, one of America’s most perceptive artists, once again proves worthy of that praise, with his depiction of Every Post-Game Press Conference:
Student followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini send shock waves across America when they storm the U.S. embassy in Tehran. The radical Islamic fundamentalists took 90 hostages. The students were enraged that the deposed Shah had been allowed to enter the United States for medical treatment and they threatened to murder hostages if any rescue was attempted. Days later, Iran’s provincial leader resigned, and the Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran’s fundamentalist revolutionaries, took full control of the country—and the fate of the hostages.
Two weeks after the storming of the embassy, the Ayatollah began to release all non-U.S. captives, and all female and minority Americans, citing these groups as among the people oppressed by the United States government. The remaining 52 captives were left at the mercy of the Ayatollah for the next 14 months.
President Jimmy Carter was unable to diplomatically resolve the crisis, and on April 24, 1980, he ordered a disastrous rescue mission in which eight U.S. military personnel were killed and no hostages rescued. Three months later, the former shah died of cancer in Egypt, but the crisis continued. In November 1980, Carter lost the presidential election to Republican Ronald Reagan. Soon after, with the assistance of Algerian intermediaries, successful negotiations finally began between the United States and Iran.
On January 20, 1981—the day of Reagan’s inauguration—the United States freed almost $3 billion in frozen Iranian assets and promised $5 billion more in financial aid. Minutes after Reagan was sworn in, the hostages flew out of Iran on an Algerian airliner, ending their 444-day ordeal. The next day, Jimmy Carter flew to West Germany to greet them on their way home.
On this date the first class of Beloit College assembled. [Source: History Just Ahead: A Guide to Wisconsin’s Historical Markers edited by Sarah Davis McBride]
This is a week of all or nothing. For each day, we started with a word containing the letter chunk ALL and removed that chunk to get a new word or phrase. The answer phrase, described by each day’s clue, is the longer ALL word followed by the shorter word.
Example:
Young, inexperienced Holstein
Answer:
Callow cow
What to Submit:
Submit the two-word phrase, with the longer one first (as “Callow cow” in the example), for your answer.
Wednesday, November 4
Stall for getting clean that’s not as deep as the next one
