World Class Hide Your Face

President Rawlins’ decision to go for the minimum action against a faculty member should be no surprise. He’s following the path of least resistance and trying not to complicate the search for his successor. Welcome to bureaucracy in its most craven form. The administration is banking on the students leaving and the issue dying before it has to be dealt with in a serious manner.

The “World Class” and “Face to Face” tagline elements take on a whole new meaning in light of this incident. The world can reference WSU as the premiere example or cream of the class when it comes to selling out its students and the public while protecting cowardly, self interested administrators and worse than worthless faculty. Face to Face can now be understood to mean “two faced” as they employ two separate standards for behavior, based primarily upon political heat. The students have no real heat. The faculty threatens to use theirs and the politically correct crowd has already fired up the torches. The “investigator” has played the race card as a joker. Since the victims were not part of a protected class, it was used as a weapon for rather than a shield against bigotry and hatred.

If you ever care to see the system change, you will have to pick up the torch and hold it to the administration’s feet. The students are leaving. Only the community can give this issue legs. Arguably, we have a far greater stake in the issue. We are the ones that have to live with this kind of behavior in our community long after the directly involved parties are gone. Yell, scream, get mad as hell and write letters to the editor. Only don’t waste your time on the local papers. Everyone here already knows about this. Drag it back through the Seattle Times, Spokesman Review, Tri-Cities Herald and other publications serving the wider community. Hit ‘em where they live. Hit them where the students come from and where their parents (and donors) read the paper.