words of wisdom from one of my imaginary personal heros

"...The stroller caught something and began to fold. The boy began to cry. The driver opened the door and shouted angrily, 'You gonna get off lady? I got traffic here.'

The woman was magnificent. She adjusted her coat and gloves before doing anything else. Then she righted the stroller. Then she picked up the boy. She adjusted her purse on her shoulder. Then she picked up the stroller. Then, very deliberately, holding traffic up all over Manhattan, she lowered herself and her things down the steps, pausing before stepping down onto the curb. As the bus pulled away, Rosie looked back and saw the woman serenely strap the boy, who was no longer crying, into the stroller, then hand him a banana from her purse, then begin her promenade down the sidewalk. It was a riveting sight. She said to Mary, 'Did you see that?'

'What?' replied Mary.

'That woman.'

'God she was rude,' said Mary.

And from that Rosalind knew that Mary would live the rest of her life in the Midwest, which she did.

Rosalind saw that, if you had enough self-possession, you could reconnoiter, plan ahead, take your time. It went beyond being careful. Being careful was something you did if you were in a rush. If you were self-possessed, you never had to be in a rush.

And so Rosalind had cultivated her self-possession at Smith College, at Mademoiselle magazine, working as an intern, at Conde Nast Traveller, working as an editor, and in Westchester County, as the wife of Alexander P. Maybrick and the stepmother of his three children, who didn't especially like her but admired her capacity for resisting their father" (Jane Smiley, Horse Heavan, 30).

hallowe'en bestie

via: der Spiegel: Picture This

Stop the bullying at the University of Memphis!

I want to bring your attention to bullying happening at the college level at the University of Memphis.

I've become a victim to this and I know it's not just me as another young woman in my program got bullied by our department's administration. The interim chair, Sandra Sarkela, told this woman's adviser, David Appleby, that she wanted the woman "out of the program". Then Sarkela had the woman's graduate assistantship supervisor, Katherine Hendrix, assign the woman last minute "work" on a Saturday. Their tactics worked, the young woman dropped out of her assistantship credits and Sarkela's class.

Another young woman in the program was barred from taking certain classes when younger, Caucasian students were allowed. She was also treated differently than these others in terms of grading. When she brought this up to Sandra Sarkela, she was discriminated against and retaliated against.

I, too, have been treated in this manner by Sandra Sarkela and our department administration and even by the university administration and Shirley Raine's office. I have a ADA medical condition that was ignored by the Affirmative Action Officer, Michelle Banks. I was put in a work condition (noisy public computer lab, no air conditioning, no water, being surveillanced) that caused my anxiety problems to worsen.

I complained about discrimination to Sandra Sarkela, who then had me terminated, hence attempting to destroy my academic and work credibility when I have an unblemished record. After figuring out that was a federal crime, the university reinstated me, but since then has retaliated against me at every turn to try to make me leave "voluntarily" like the first young woman.

When I turned in my work, they ignored my sources and called me a plagiarist in an email, again attempting to undermine my academic and work future. They also refused to fill out an incident report for a work injury I had and threatened via email with an "If/Then" statement to stop paying me. This was by university counsel Sheryl Lipman. I am a minority female who moved from California to get a PhD and become part of this community. Now, the university has put a condition on my assistantship that I sign over a full psychiatric examination (fitness for duty) for just working by myself with books- over to them. This is not right.

I would like to share with you and our community the atrocities that are going on in higher education at The University of Memphis.

More info at: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/7/stop-the-bullying-at-the-university-of-memphis/

King's College London: Support Virginia Jibowu

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Sign the online petition at:
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/38617.html
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I am a 26 year old female of Nigerian-Welsh origin. I was a full-time undergraduate student on the Defendant’s Extended Medical Degree Programme (EMDP) from September 2002 until December 2008. On 20 October 2008 I was injured by a porter driving a wheelchair into the back of my leg whilst I was on my clinical attachment at King’s College Hospital. As a result of my injury, Professor Greenough (Head of the medical School) removed me from my programme. I am currently unemployed and suffer from reduced mobility as a result of the injury sustained.

King’s College London medical School is called Guy’s King’s and St Thomas’ School of Medicine (GKT). KCL is in partnership with Guy’s, King’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust Hospitals. The Institute of Psychiatry (IOP) became a school of King’s College London in August 1997. The King’s College Hospital is further affiliated with the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust. KCL also has various alliances with South London G. P. Practices within Lambeth and other Primary Care Trusts. The General Medical Council and the South Thames Foundation Schools are also closely linked with KCL.

Whilst at King’s College London (KCL) I was subjected to disability discrimination preventing me from taking up the F1 post I had secured with the Wales Foundation School. I suffer from severe incapacitating dysmenorrhoea. This is a debilitating condition which prevents me from carrying on my normal day to day activities for at least 2 days every month (I refer to the letter dated 6 August 2001 from Anne Giwa-Amu to the Health Authority (marked exhibit 1), with the response dated 17 August 2001 (marked exhibit 2), and also the letter dated 10 August 2001 from Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital confirming my referral to the Pain Management Centre (marked exhibit 3).

I was also subjected to ‘continuing acts’ of racial segregation, racial discrimination, harassment, bullying and institutional racism from 2002-2009. In summary:

a) I was racially discriminated against during the recruitment and selection process and racially segregated onto the EMDP course which I had not applied for.

b) Despite my protests, I was kept on the EMDP course from 2002-2008/9.

c) The EMDP course is a 6 year programme whilst the standard MBBS is a 5 year programme. Therefore, being placed on the EMDP course subjected me an additional year at university during which time I could have been employed.

d) I was compelled to wear a badge from 2002-2008/9 marking me out as one of the EMDP students. As the course was advertised as being designed to bring in more students from socially deprived ethnic minority backgrounds this was a humiliating experience for me.

e) I was compelled to participate in various research projects without my knowledge and consent. This included social research, psychological research and IQ tests from 2002 -2008/9.

f) I was covertly monitored without good reason over a period of time whilst on the EMDP course.

g) My complaints of racial harassment and bullying by fellow students were not investigated but I was ‘watched’ because I had made those complaints.

h) I was subjected to ‘institutional victimisation’ because of my complaints by members of the management team who orchestrated a campaign to discredit me.

i) Following my injury whilst on clinical attachment at King’s College Hospital, management refused to investigate my complaints and continued to spread false and defamatory statements about my mental health.

Further details are provided below.

Due to my complaints of racial segregation, racial discrimination, harassment, bullying and institutional racism, I suffered victimisation from members of the management team. My protected acts are as follows:

a) In 2002 I protested to Gavin Brown that my application for the MBBS 5 had been rejected in order to channel me onto the experimental EMDP course.

b) In 2002-2003 I made complaints to Dr Pamela Garlick and Professor Standring about the segregated nature of the EMDP course and asked to be transferred to the MBBS5 course.

c) In 2005 I made a complaint to the college of harassment and bullying by Richard Pinder who was my clinical partner at the time. I asked to be moved away from him.

d) On 2 December 2006, I submitted a written complaint of harassment and bullying against Emily Bowen, Steve Dixon and Simon Hill. I made a verbal complaint to staff indicating that the harassment was racially motivated.

e) On 19 September 2007 I made a complaint to the Dean of Victoria Hospital (St Lucia), and the Elective Coordinator against Alexis Johnson, Johanne Adley, Jaskiren Kaur, Emon Malik and Sivathatishana Meinerikandathevan for assault, bullying, harassment and breach of contract.

f) On 9 September 2007, I sent Emon Malik a ‘letter of claim’.

g) 24 September 2008, I submitted a claim at the Employment Tribunal.

h) 21 November 2008, I submitted a claim for discrimination at the Central London County Court (8CL09060) which was lost on the court system.

i) 23 December 2008, I submitted a replacement claim at the Central London County Court (which was returned as permission was needed to serve on the defendant’s Solicitor)

j) On 28 January 2008, I submitted the claim for racial discrimination at the Central London County Court.

More information at: http://www.virginiajibowu.co.uk

a sudden bout of melancholia, in honour of Lauren Leaving Day

My awesome friend Lauren is off to Tanzania today to do the kind of amazing and necessary work of which the world needs more.

This girl's blog must be mined for content like the Romantic primary text it surely is.

...

“Artworks,” says Adorno, 
“have the immanent character of 
being an act, even if they 
are carved in stone, and this endows them 
with the quality of being something 
momentary and sudden.”

The unkindly art of mobbing - in Academia

At a practical level, every professor should be aware of conditions that increase vulnerability to mobbing in academe. Here are five:

• Foreign birth and upbringing, especially as signaled by a foreign accent.
• Being different from most colleagues in an elemental way (by sex, for instance, sexual orientation, skin color, ethnicity, class
origin, or credentials).
• Belonging to a discipline with ambiguous standards and objectives, especially those (like music or literature) most affected by
post-modern scholarship.
• Working under a dean or other administrator in whom, as Nietzsche put it, “the impulse to punish is powerful”.
• An actual or contrived financial crunch in one’s academic unit (According to an African proverb, when the watering hole gets
smaller, the animals get meaner).

Other conditions that heighten the risk of being mobbed are more directly under a prospective target’s control. Five major ones are:

• Having opposed the candidate who ends up winning appointmentn as one’s dean or chair (thereby looking stupid, wicked, or crazy in the latter’s eyes)
• Being a rate buster—achieving so much success in teaching or research that colleagues’ envy is aroused.
• Publicly dissenting from politically correct ideas (meaning those held sacred by campus elites).
• Defending a pariah in campus politics or the larger cultural arena.
• Blowing the whistle on, or even having knowledge of serious wrongdoing by, locally powerful workmates.

The upshot of available research is that no professor needs to worry much about being mobbed, even when in a generally vulnerable condition, so long as he or she does not rock the local academic boat. The secret is to show deference to colleagues and administrators—to be the kind of scholar they want to keep around as a way of making themselves look good. Jung said that “a man’s hatred is always concentrated on that which makes him conscious of his bad qualities.”

By Professor Kenneth Westhues