University bars student from class over poem

[wicket]

http://www.boston.com/news/local/connecticut/articles/2005/04/25/university_bars_student_from_class_over_poem/

Southern Connecticut State University barred a student from a poetry class after his professor said a poem he submitted contained veiled threats to sexually assault her and her 3-year-old daughter.

The student, Edward Bolles, said his poem entitled "Professor White," was meant to be a satirical piece about globalization. In it, a Mexican student named Juan has a sexual encounter with the daughter of his white professor.

Bolles' professor, Kelly Ritter, found the poem "disturbing," according to an April 8 campus police report, and said she believed the poem was a threat. University officials prohibited Bolles, who is Mexican, from attending his poetry class while he was investigated.

Bolles, a 36-year-old married father of two, said he and Ritter have had political disagreements in class. Bolles, a conservative, said he has disagreed with some of the liberal political themes in Ritter's poetry selections.

[Fenris]

1. That seems lenient for that creep.

[rfranklin]

2. This guy is a sick a-hole...

The usual response of a "conservative" Focus on the Family father...spare the "rod" and spoil the child.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Right-wing personalities are simply too rigid, too self-absorbed,

too over-focused to be of any use teaching anything which is not mechanical. My God.

From the article:

"As a result of the investigation, I wish to inform you that no formal disciplinary charges will be filed on behalf of the university and you are permitted to return to your English 202, Section 1, course, Introduction to Poetry," Christopher Piscitelli, director of judicial affairs, wrote.

University spokesman Patrick Dilger said the matter was handled like any other. He said students are often held out of classes when a professor raises these types of concerns.

In her police report, Ritter asked the university to require Bolles to get a psychiatric evaluation. The school did not require that, Dilger said.
(snip)

Thank God the idiots haven't claimed ALL the personel at Southern Connecticut State University.

[Supersedeas]

25. When Conservative Ideology gets personal...watch your kids, too.

[BiggJawn]

4. Whorowitz put him up to it?

Another Conservative college "kid", being forced to "Suffer for his beliefs"....
:puke:

[ProgressiveConn]

5. I'm in New Haven.

Maybe I'll use my lunch on wed to show up outside that class and protest his ass. =)

Maybe with a sign that says "Real Men don't threaten women and children. Threaten me instead Ed."

[HockeyMom]

7. Went back to college at 46

After sitting in class listening to some of these jerk "conservative" professors, I started standing up in class and blasting them. Hell, what are they going to do? Call MY parents? ROFL Don't tell me about this shit, you whipper snapper. I have seen more Presidents come and go then YOU. I LIVED THROUGH THEM. I didn't read about it in a text book.

I found out once I started getting up and challenging them, the other "old folks", and even the 20 somethings stood up too.

Challenge them. They FOLD when you challenge them.

Plus remember this, the administration on campuses LOVE their adult students. We are FOOTING the bills ourselves.

[ProgressiveConn]

14. That is fantastic.

It takes a lot of courage to go back to school like that.

I've had both good and bad conservative professors. Hell I had a ethics professor ask flat as a right/wrong answer if homosexuality was unethical on a midterm.* I mean c'mon now. =) But I've also had conservative professors be upfront and say that they disagreed with me but my arguments were solid so they rewarded me for the argument not the ideology.

I don't really challenge professors in front of the class like that though. I can recall sitting in a political economy class as a freshman and listening to a half a dozen Darwinian-trickle-down followers attack my Rhodes scholar professor over and over with nonsensical arguments. I guess I just fear coming off like they did.

*My reply was to write exactly what he wanted to hear and then in the last sentence say something like. "I don't believe any of this crap but that is what you were looking for as an answer." =)

[Merope215]

8. Me too!

I'll come with you, if I'm done with my final (on globalization! :P) by then.

[ProgressiveConn]

15. Nice little protest we got going.

Gonna see what I can find out about this mess tomorrow. Maybe the professor just wants to drop it. It is very possible that she over reacted even if the guy is the dick he probably is. Even liberals do that sometimes, myself included. Maybe I can track down a copy of the essay that caused all this. =)

Good luck on that globalization final. =)

[Pacifist Patriot]

6. I'll admit it.

I want to read the entire poem.

[Voltaire99]

17. You're right: we can't tell without reading the poem.

No point rushing to judgment on the basis of a slipshod AP story, no matter how much one reviles right wingers (in my case, considerably).

I wouldn't say, based on scant evidence, that it's looking very good for the prof. But let's see the poem, first.

[Democat]

9. A conservative wrote a poem about raping a 3 year old?

If that's the case, it should be interesting to hear right wingers defend him.

Will right wingers rally to the support of someone who may have written a poem about raping a child?

[seriousstan]

10. There was no poem about raping a 3 year old. Try reading the article.

I hate to do the "right wingers" light work, but this looks like a paranoid teacher who is playing the victim card.

"The same is true of the Bolles' poetic character, who pledges to "turn the tables" on his professor and has a tryst with her college-age daughter."

Bolles said the poem's interracial affair symbolizes white America's feeling that Mexicans are corrupting their culture. The encounter is not violent, and the professor's daughter brings Juan home to meet her disapproving mother.


I will withhold additional judgment until I have read the poem, if I can find it.

[Democat]

18. If the ACLU was defending the poem writer, right wingers would say

that the ACLU was defending the rape of a child.

We need to learn to frame issues if we are going to win.

If right wingers don't like the ACLU defending free speech, then how can they support free speech for a conservative who has allegedly written a poem about raping a child?

[seriousstan]

19. Frame issues, but base them in truth. There were no 3 yr olds in the poem.

An argument based on an easily demonstrable false assertion only makes the person proposing it look silly.

I will not base my arguments and ideas based on what I "assume" the right wingers might do.

[Judi Lynn]

11. This IS a wierd one. I read it too fast the first time and got it wrong

Walked off believing the teacher was the conservative. It seemed so likely to me that a conservative would be racially biased, and taking shots at someone who believed her prejuidice was getting in the way of communication.

I've been looking for any view of the poem in question but I've got zip. The Washington Post ran the same article but included this photo of the "kid:"

Edward Bolles, a graduate student at Southern
Connecticut State University, pposes for a
photo in New Haven, Conn., Monday, April
25, 2005. The school barred a student from a
poetry class after his professor said a poem he
submitted contained veiled threats to sexually
assault her and her 3-year-old daughter. (AP
Photo/Michelle McLoughlin) (Michelle
Mcloughlin - AP)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/25/AR2005042501103.html

Truly a puzzler.

[mondo joe]

12. I'd say by making her such a personal focus he went too far.

She might have overreacted, but I think he opened the door for it.

[w4rma]

13. Bolles, a "conservative", authored the rape poem. Ritter banned him.

Dr. Kelly Ritter is the progressive professor.

And this article is written in order to be confusing to read and understand, probably because it's a conservative who is in trouble with rape threats.

[PATRICK]

16. Off topic just a bit

but I was just wondering today if there are ANY reputable poets who support conservatism. I mean in the hoary past(which the professor probably clings to)you could name Milton and Ezra Pound even served time for fascist activities. A lot of ego rant poets had some fascist romanticism about things. This and quality seems to have vanished from the dumbed down decadent conservatism.

Looking at the overwhelming outpouring on Poets a Against the War it seems the Professor is haplessly out of human mainstream of poetry, the personal issue of this incident aside.

[ProgressiveConn]

21. Uhhh reread the article. nt

[6000eliot]

22. Milton was a radical!

He supported the Commonwealth against the monarchy, and he wrote one of the most eloquent, and still relevant, defenses of the free press ever written. Pound was just nuts. Wordsworth turned Tory at the end of his career.

[PATRICK]

23. I knew Milton was a tough example but

the company he kept was religious fanaticism as a core for a populist dictator crueler than most monarchs to date with organized pogroms and massacres of the Irish catholic population. I am sure Milton was not directly involved in Fearless Leader's penchant for tyranny but the shift from one tyrant to another who allowed tractarian freedoms for obvious benefits to his propaganda machine is more a warning than a shining example.

The wars of religion era was undoubtedly one of the worst, most sordidly mixed bag periods of Western history with nary a pure conscience unscathed. In such a context I do admit Milton, a bit starchy, fares pretty well. But being Irish myself I'll save my sympathy for the Irish poets slaughtered for keeping the Celtic tradition alive.

Most of poetry and the best of it(with the exception of fawning epics) upholds what is human, cultural, reform minded and true. Truth and beauty cannot mix well with human evil. Even the Dark Romantics assailed the tyranny of the state. The tyranny that hides behind the mask of public order and established religion has been opposed by many good writers who preferred atheism or Satan to the gilded lie. It untwists the insanity of the deepest moral corruption by breaking the myth and the language on the wheels of the Muse's chariot.

[Hand]

24. Mark Helprin is one

I think he's now on the Weekly Standard or the WSJ or one or the other of those shitpiles. He helped write Bob Dole's acceptance speech in 1996, then stomped off in a hissy fit after his portions were heavily revised.

I've never read any of his work, however, so can't say if it's worth the effort. Frankly, I find the vast bulk of current poetry unreadable, whatever the author's political stance (or absence of same).
:boring:

[ProgressiveConn]

20. So I've got the lowdown.

I went to visit a professor at southern today as an excuse to find out a little bit about this. Apparently Bolles has filed a lawsuit against the professor and she cant comment on anything. Apparently though the student body doesn't care or doesn't know a thing about it. A shame really.