I don't know if they will print this, since I remain anonymous, but here it is for any of you who read their editorial today entitled "IHL on Target with Appointment." http://www.printz.usm.edu/ourview.html

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Editor, Student Printz:

In an April 6 editorial entitled “Our View: IHL on Target with Appointment,” you implied that my anti-Thames website was “under the misconception” that Jim Keith had been appointed by IHL to ensure fairness in the firing of professors Gary Stringer and Frank Glamser.  You hinted that I might have bought into some conspiracy theory and you outright stated that I had “already recognized and explained [my] error.”

That simply is NOT SO.  It is just this type of reportage that makes my website necessary during the current crisis. If you would have actually spent five minutes reading my response to the Clarion Ledger article about my website, you would have seen that my response was not an admission of error—I had made none—but a history of the evolution of Keith’s role in the past three weeks.

Here’s the deal: On March 18, Attorney General Jim Hood and IHL trustees appointed Jim Keith to work with professors Glamser and Stringer’s attorney Michael Adelman to “ensure fairness” in the termination procedure.  Protesters who attended the March 18 meeting left with a sentiment of optimism—they actually believed that Keith’s appointment was a good thing, that an outside, objective entity had been brought in to act as a liaison between the two sides. Your newspaper and others around the state told us that “outside counsel helps ensure fairness in trial.” 

Within a day of Keith’s appointment to “ensure fairness,” I began receiving email telling me that his firm, Adams and Reese, was already representing Shelby and Co. in other litigation.  I wrote an editorial—and I still stand by it—that under no circumstances could Keith “ensure fairness” when his firm was already representing Shelby and Co. in other CURRENT litigation. 

Within a week of Keith’s appointment, it became evident that supporters of Glamser and Stringer had been misled. Keith’s appointment was NOT to “ensure fairness” but to provide counsel to Shelby, at the taxpayers’ expense, to keep his ass out of ANOTHER lawsuit—something he seems to be prone to, considering there are currently six lawsuits by former faculty and students against him.

Within a week of the IHL meeting in March, Keith’s role had evolved in newspaper reports from monitor of fairness to counsel for Shelby.  Why hadn’t IHL just told the truth to begin with—that they had appointed a lawyer for Shelby, not to ensure fairness, but to represent him?   

I asked readers of the website to write IHL and demand the appointment of a true outside entity to monitor fairness in the hearing.  As we know, the board convened in an unscheduled meeting on April 1 and did just that.  Supporters of Glamser and Stringer are extremely satisfied that Hood and IHL appointed Reuben Anderson—he will “ensure fairness” as Keith never would have been able to.  If news about Keith’s firm representing Shelby and Co. in other current litigation had not emerged, there would be no Reuben Anderson appointed to truly ensure fairness. 

The problem with current reportage on the USM crisis is that there is little investigative work going on.  I dared to do just that.  But I don’t report “conspiracy theories.”  All of my assertions on the website are supported by documented evidence linked to the site.  

Here is a link to an academic website in which the author seems to have comprehended my conflict of interest assertion and my response to the Clarion Ledger much better than you did:  http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/4489.html

I was right on target about Keith.  I admit NO ERROR in my items about Jim Keith and Adams and Reese, and would appreciate you writing a correction to your editorial in which you stated that I did.  It is you who is in error.

I assume that you will print this letter from me, since you have trusted me, even though I remain anonymous, to answer interview questions for you for an upcoming article.

Regards,

Fire Shelby

www.geocities.com/fireshelby