FREE WHITEWATER

Official Misconduct

Cameras, Not Committees

Recent protests across America against excessive and biased use of police force began after ordinary people in those communities recorded official (to the point of murderous) actions, and then shared their recordings with others. It was not government – local, state, or federal – that promptly shared these recordings of excessive force; it was ordinary…

Trump’s Condition: Unfit by Many Standards

It’s enough, as an indictment of Trump, to see and then reject his role on purely political grounds: a bigoted autocrat of limited knowledge & reasoning ability with a love of foreign dictators and contempt for American liberal democracy.  One doesn’t need a training in medicine to reject Trump. There are, however, compelling critiques of…

For UW-Whitewater’s Administration, Talking Points Won’t Be Enough

Yesterday, I posted on The Marketing of Misinformation: UW-Whitewater’s Use of a Counterfeit ‘Campus Safety’ Study. Today, here is a look at some of the university administration’s talking points in response to long-standing acts of sexual harassment and assault on campus.  (They’re from the new university chancellor’s recorded interview with a local newspaper.) From the video…

Act Utilitarianism Isn’t Merely a National Scourge

Trump justifies his treatment of Christine Blasey Ford by the outcome of the Kavanaugh hearings: “It doesn’t matter. We won.”

One wouldn’t have to go to Washington, or wait for Trump to speak, to find this sort of act utilitarianism. Long before Trump’s 2016 campaign, officials and self-described community leaders in small towns across America shared a similar calculus. For the sake of some imagined overall gain, individual injuries and injustices have been swept aside.

And so, and so — officials justify financial and personal injuries to individuals on behalf of the supposed greater good of being ‘community-minded,’ of defending the ‘university family,’ or some such collective claim.

Trump’s act utilitarianism did not begin with Trump: it grew in cities and towns in which factions decided they’d take what they want, and conveniently sweep aside others by use of nebulous ‘community’ principles. (In the video above, Trump betrays his amorality early on, as he shrugs his shoulders when part of Christine Blasey Ford’s injury is recounted to him.)

In most of these cases of supposed collective gain, of course, it turns out to be a particular politician, particular businessman, or particular university official who reaps the most at the expense of ordinary individuals, but these community leaders would prefer one didn’t look too closely into that selfish benefit, thank you kindly.

Whether a highly-placed person’s selfish gain, or community’s supposed overall gain, the disregard for individual rights reveals a dark, calculating amorality.

Chancellor Kopper’s Belated Statement on Another Federal Complaint

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…

A Second Sex-Assault Survivor Files Federal Complaint Against UW-Whitewater

Raechel Liska, aged 22.  Photo from Channel 3000. Link to Ms. Liska’s video interview, available online.  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…

Budget Problems as a Mask for Internal Problems

There are significant shortfalls for K-12 funding and state funding for the UW System. These shortfalls involve hundreds of millions, and that alters the landscape at public institutions (at some more than others). Still, It won’t be true, because it cannot be true, that every problem one might encounter will be the consequence of fiscal…

If Universities Want Federal Money…

If universities want federal money (and they want as much as they can get), then it’s wrong for them to shirk federal legal standards for reporting assault and for proper treatment of those alleging assault.  (Make no mistake: I’d contend that universities have a duty to manage campuses well and fairly even if there were…

UW-Madison Now Joins UW-Whitewater Under Federal Title IX Investigation

In the Wisconsin State Journal this morning, one reads that a second Wisconsin school is under investigation for its handling of sexual assault complaints.  Dan Simmons writes that UW-Madison is now the second university in the state to be included in a growing probe of possible violations of federal law over the handling of sexual…

The Hunting Ground

Academy-award nominated filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering have a new film now in limited-release, entitled, The Hunting Ground, about campus sexual assault.  The film addresses violence, institutional cover-ups, and the damage done to victims & families from both assault and subsequent, institutional misconduct.  The official trailer for the film is embedded above.  (The same…

Local Policing and Point-of-View Cameras

There’s a story about my town’s (Whitewater, Wisconsin’s) decision to equip its on-patrol officers with point-of-view cameras. A small video camera will record officer interactions with residents. Reportedly, all interactions will be recorded, and at the end of each shift, officers [will] download all videos into a general file that would get deleted automatically after…

The Disgrace that is the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation

Sometimes one would prefer to be wrong, rather than right. The waste, errors, exaggerations, and lies of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation are such a case: Madison — Three Senate Democrats asked Wednesday [6.12] for a criminal investigation of Gov. Scott Walker’s signature job creation agency. The request comes after an audit last month found…

The (Also Bad) Alternatives to Concealment

Suppose the owner of a mansion awakes to discover that his many precious paintings have disappeared from the estate’s gallery. Consider a few, alternative scenarios: In the first, he walks through empty hallways, all his collection now gone. He finds no one else in the house, and no trace of an intruder. Someone took the…