quote:

---

Originally posted by: Neumann
"I'll take all bets that the public club that Shelby has been so desirous to beat Stringer & Glamser with is a claim of internet porn on university computers.

Anyone with a USM e-mail account is bombarded with the crap, and half of it reads, "you are receiving this because you subscribed to this service." "

---

Non-Issue!

We ALL have Spam, and nobody wants it.

Say what you want, but this line of thought leads nowhere.

Look elsewhere for evil doing.

You are not on the right track here. Otherwise, every single person I know, inside and outside of USM, would be suspected.

quote:

---

Originally posted by: Otherside
" Probably true. But the point is they can use this against any and all they need to get. Otherside "

---

Exactly right. Of course everyone on campus gets unwanted ads and I am sure there are folks who dip into a porn site now and then. Or think of the poor overworked faculty member who doesn't have time to go shopping but decides to go online to buy his wife something from Victoria's Secret online . . . .

The point of the alcohol policy and the computer policy isn't to prosecute everyone -- it is to use these things to prosecute selectively when they can. The fact the everyone does it only makes it more certain that if they can't find anything substantial to use against you they can always find these other things to prove you are "violating" policy. Think the way the Feds use the RICO law. Think of the way the government used the porn thing against the Islamic Army Chaplain.

They don't have even have to prove you did anything really illegal. All they need to do is ruin a few reputations -- that will scare people into compliance more than any laws they can make. The fear of embarrassment is the best form of social control.  How many of us want to be humiliated by having our shuttles on the internet made public? How many of us do private email from work (cause some of us never get home?)

quote:

---

Originally posted by: lddad
"if this is the issue, then there is precedence at this university.  a complaint was raised about 4 years ago by a secretary who claimed that a faculty member used her computer to go to porno sites.  and he did--claiming he had a "sexual dysfunction" issue.  the faculty member hired a member of the adelman firm.  a hearing was convened. i think the faculty member won.  "

---

Iddad -- this is interesting but I think not quite the same as what I had in mind.

I am thinking of a situation in which managers create a network of regulations that are so invasive that it is nearly impossible not to find something to trip workers up. Since most folks know they are probably violating something (or might be unknowingly violating something because the network of regulations is so vast)  they keep their heads low. Managers only go after people who make trouble -- and they only have to to it often enough to remind workers that they can.

I believe this is exactly what we have been facing here. The administration has created so much change in so many places, rewriting handbooks, protocols, and regulations over such a broad field and in so many obscure places that we have been blitzed -- nearly unable to keep up. And of course, as new faculty and mid-level administrators are hired, they come in already internalizing the new regime -- they either don't know any differently or sign on the dotted line because they need a job. How many people would have signed permission to allow themselves to be randomly tested for drugs and alcohol at the point of hire? My guess is most people. So as those of us with a memory retire or leave, we are replaced by people who have internalized the social control the administration has erected.

I'm actually not paranoid here -- this is a pretty classic technique and I think the administration damn near got away with it. One reason why they needed to get rid of so many mid level administrators from Andy Griffith on down to the Deans and as many chairs as possible.

quote:

---

Originally posted by: lddad
"well, if it doesn't fit.  so be it.  however, such a hearing has happened here."

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by: BogusBoy
"Non-Issue!
We ALL have Spam, and nobody wants it.
Say what you want, but this line of thought leads nowhere.
Look elsewhere for evil doing.
You are not on the right track here. Otherwise, every single person I know, inside and outside of USM, would be suspected.
 
 "

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by: BogusBoy
" My point is that, with literally thousands of people getting such ads and emails courtesy of the campus email server, the admin couldn't point to one person among thousands and say that ONE person is doing something wrong. I mean, they "could," but it would backfire instantly. (As this whole Stringer/Glamser debacle may soon do too!) One could easily establish that, "Hey, my Yahoo account doesn't send me porn messages... just my campus account - the UNIVERSITY is responsible for funnelling porn to me!" (and one really cannot escape having a campus email account, right?, so you are one of a large captive audience) Tables could be turned rather easily, in my view."

---

As I have said previously -- it isn't about winning a case. It is about destroying credibility and generally undermining the integrity of anyone who is a target. The public, living as it does in a realm in which it is offered a continuous string of half truths, tends to too easily take the "where there's smoke there is fire" way out. The second issue is intimidation. Most people don't like to have the least savory aspects of their personal lives paraded before the public -- most of us wil go to great lengths to keep those parts of ourselves hidden. Society collaborates in this as a mechanism of social survival -- one very good reason why the "gossip" culture of today is far more dangerous than most people understand. If I watch another professor's vices (or proclaimed vices) being trotted out to the public, I am a lot less likely to put myself in the gunsights of the administration by "rocking the boat."

Intimidation in this country is really as much a facet of manipulating perception as it is reality.

quote:

---

Originally posted by: Otherside
"I heard this discussed on campus. The possibility reminds me of the O.J. Simpson case because questions will arise about evidence planting, since the security of the hard drives would need to be documented. I suppose we could take the "risk manager's" word that there was no tampering with the hard drives."

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by: present professor
"  "

---

Incidently, all of you are skirting around the issue on computer use. Where there is a computer some people will use it to do things that might be questionable: likr placing a sports bet and yes, accessing porn. I am not condoning this, understand -- but some folks are going to do it even on a casual basis. I don't really give a damn, nor should the university, if it doesn't affect a faculty member's effectiveness. Not every faculty member or grad student is above this. My point is that these are pretty minor things that no one would pay any attention to UNLESS my computer is seized and they can't find anything else to get me on.

This is just another variation of the zero tolerance alcohol policy. Most of us would probably fail it at one time or another because ZERO is pretty difficult to achieve -- a nearly impossible standard. So it only comes into play when the reason they want to get you is not because you are a blind, staggering drunk who mumbles through lectures -- but because the rules are so impossibly perfect that being charged is about the same as being guilty. I wonder, if the new policy has been passed, how many of us troublemakers would find ourselves pretty quickly hit up with "random" tests.

Classic social control.

quote:

---

Originally posted by:
" It boils down to one common theme: finding ways to fire targeted faculty. What was the faculty's concern when Shelby hired "risk manager" Jack Hanbury?  That he was searching for a way to legally fire (tenured) faculty. What was the faculty's concern when Shelby and Jack Hanbury developed the computer-seizure policy?  That Shelby would utilize the policy to fire faculty. What was the faculty's concern when Shelby and Hanbury developed the draconian zero tolerance alcohol/drug policy? That Shelby would utilize the policy to fire targeted faculty. It's casting a broad net that is designed to ensnare every faculty member at some point in time. "

---

BINGO FS!

And don't forget staff (I'm including grad students in staff and teaching as well) and middle level administrators.

Well said.

Another aspect of this issue I can speak to is the fact that the "rules" in question are painfully similar to standard policies in most corporations.  I've written Internet usage policies for several companies, and in each case I've been told this or that usage "is just a way to get people we want to get rid of."  My posting to this site could, with Thames as a CEO, get me fired.  As a former student and former part-time faculty member at USM, I'm saddened that things can get so "corporate."  This is what happens when a University is "run like a business"; there are examples across the country.  Run into the ground, is more like it.

Even sadder is the fact that I'd still take a (small) cut in pay to return to USM as a full-time, tenure-track professor.  Once you teach well, it's in your blood.  But not only are there no openings in what would be my department (at least none advertised), I'd have an uphill battle keeping students from looking over their own shoulders.

pd

Glad Grad:

How long did it take you to come up with such a stupid question?

it wasn't clear to me.  8-10 years after h.s. is good.  yes, anything less than that is suspect.

quote:

---

Originally posted by: educator
"Glad Grad: How long did it take you to come up with such a stupid question?"

---