cb.blog

Author: Chip Bennett

  • Vote: No Confidence

    The Rose-Hulman faculty pass a resolution of no-confidence in President Jack Midgley, 82-47.

    By a vote of 87-42, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology faculty passed a resolution saying they have no confidence in President Jack Midgley.

    The vote, which occurred by secret ballot, came during a special faculty meeting Tuesday that lasted more than two hours.

    By all accounts, not good news:

    Right after the meeting, Grigg went to Midgley’s office to inform him. He also planned to contact representatives of the board of trustees.

    Asked if he believed the vote would carry a lot of weight with trustees, Grigg said, “It would be very hard to imagine otherwise.”

    However, as the article notes, the faculty are merely advisory, and the vote is not binding on the Board of Trustees. The initial response from the Board may be essentially a non-comment, or it could be indicative of the weight the Board will place on the vote:

    Board of trustee chairman Clyde Willian issued a statement through Dave Piker, vice president for public relations.

    “President Midgley has assured the board of trustees that he is absolutely committed to working with the faculty to resolve the concerns that are being discussed,” Willian said. “The board is fully aware of the issues presented by the faculty and others.

    Based on prevailing sentiment, the result of the vote does not surprise; however, the overwhelming outcome is enlightening. A vote of no-confidence is no trivial matter. For nearly two-thirds of the faculty to vote in favor indicates just how deep the rift has been driven.

    I hope Dr. Midgley can recover and repair the obvious wounds created on campus. I truly believe the vision he has shared with the alumni with respect to the future ofRose-Hulman is positive. Perhaps it is not yet too late. But a no-confidence vote affirmed by two-thirds of the faculty sends a very loud, very clear signal.

    UPDATE: Coverage from the Indy Star. Interesting note at the end of the article:

    Votes of no confidence on university leaders are unusual, but some presidents do survive them. In October 2002, the majority of the faculty of Indiana State University voted against President Lloyd Benjamin after a two-year tenure. The board took no action and he remains president.

  • Congratulatins, Eric

    The Shelbyville News announces the engagement of Michelle Copple and Eric Haehl. Eric went to high school with me, and graduated a year ahead of me.

  • Pardon the Dust

    The conversion to WordPress is nearly complete. The main page is rendering and acting correctly; I’m working on the template/theme changes for the meta-pages (comments, etc.). Let me know if you find any oddities or broken links.

  • Pardon the Construction

    I’m converting everything over to WordPress. All the posts have been imported; now I’m just working on the template. All comments (all 3 of them) have been preserved, and since I have no trackback pings/links yet, I should be able to make the transition smoothly. Once everything is done, I’ll migrate back here.

    NOTE: All posts from this point forward will be in WordPress. Use the link above, until you see this notice disappear.

  • Critical Crossroads?

    The Terre Haute Tribune Star reports on the on-going controversy surrounding Rose-Hulman President Jack Midgley:

    Normally, the tight-knit Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology community tries to settle its differences and controversies in-house and out of the public eye.

    These aren’t normal times, however.

    Many faculty, staff, students and alumni are frustrated and angered that the board of trustees is not addressing long-simmering concerns about Rose-Hulman President Jack Midgley, who has held the post since July 1.

    I still have yet to hear any real evidence of anything Midgley has done. Several hot-button issues have been brought up, including: Ventures, the Homework Hotline, and the departure of several Vice Presidents since Midgley’s arrival. Still, I’ve yet to see much real, hard evidence, besides “intimidation” and “threats”. Several times I’ve heard or read that Midgley has “lied”, or “said one thing to one person, and the opposite thing to another,” but I have yet to hear of a specific instance of either allegation.

    Take, for instance, the Homework Hotline. A picture caption in the Trib Star article reads as follows:

    Hard facts: Mike Lindley a Rose-Human senior from Robinson, Ill., states his case for saving the Homework Hotline during a rally Friday calling for the removal of Rose President Jack Midgley. Some fear the Homework Hotline may be in jeopardy.

    “Some fear…”? Taking a look over on AboutMidgley.com sheds some light about these “fears”. According to Institute meeting minutes (available on-campus only), the current grant for the Homework Hotline will end June 2005. During this meeting, a report was given that the school was in discussion with tutor.com to transition the Homework Hotline to tutor.com, and also that a propasal was to be prepared for a transition grant through a Lilly endowment to cover an additional year for the Homework hotline.

    So, without getting into the merits of the plan, it seems that Dr. Midgley is trying to find a way to preserve the Homework Hotline beyond its current grant, and yet his detractors count it against him.

    Speaking of the aboutmidgley.com web site: the Trib Star references the site forum (in fact, the article quotes my post on the forum, as well as a follow-up phone interview by the author, Sue Loughlin, who contacted me through my post on the forum). However, this same forum, that positions itself ostensibly as “a conversation about our president” with the following criteria stated:

    This site hopes to provide the following:

    • A public forum to allow us to discuss Midgley and his actions (anonymously if desired)
    • News articles relating to Midgley and our campus

    The site, however, will not provide the following:

    • A means for simply bashing Midgley (any discussion topics must be of intellectual value)
    • An unfair picture of Midgley (post your positive experiences as well)

    Hit The Road, Jack T-ShirtYet this same site, with this stated purpose, both unequivocably supports an online petition to ouster Midgley, and blatantly sponsors anti-Midgley rhetoric, as with this rally in support of a faculty meeting to hold a no-confidence vote – going so far as to sell “Hit The Road, Jack” T-Shirts directly from the web site. While the web site may have been started with objectivity in mind, it no longer maintains any credibility in that regard.

    Back to the article: without any apparent evidence of deleterious changes made by Midgley, the focus is instead on the more abstract “way he treats people” and questions of character. However, no specific instances are referenced, and the rhetoric among the “Hit The Road, Jack” crowd has elevated to hysteria:

    1993 Rose-Hulman graduate and current Ventures employee Brian C.] Dougherty further says that Midgley “is destroying Rose-Hulman at a pace that I would have never believed attainable ? Rose-Hulman has suffered damage to its reputation that will take 20 years to repair.”

    Rose-Hulman is “at a critical crossroads,” [Assistant Dean of Faculty Dan Moore] said. If Midgley stays on as president, “I don’t think the 2015 conversation [about the college’s future] will be relevant. We’ll be lucky to still be operating.”

    [Former Board of Trustees member Scott A. Jones] resigned from the board in mid-February “because I could not get other trustees to listen to my concerns or to take any reasonable action to save Rose-Hulman from Midgley before it is too late.”

    Jones believes “the future of Rose-Hulman is at stake.”

    Even should the allegations prove to be all true, Rose-Hulman has survived disastrous administrations before, and it will do so again in the future. I certainly understand and appreciate the passionate concern for the Institute; I share that same concern. But so far, I still believe this issue is really a matter of conjecture, rumor, change-resistance/post-Hulbert fear that have all blown out of any reasonable proportion.

  • Stadium wins, 108-36

    Good news for the Colts. The Stadium funding bill passed, 108-36

    After four months of sometimes angry debate, the General Assembly took a crucial step toward solidifying the city’s NFL future Friday night by easily approving a financing plan for a new Colts stadium and expanded Indiana Convention Center.

    Ground-breaking for the new, retractable-roof stadium is scheduled for August 1, with completion of the stadium scheduled for 2008. The convention center expansion is slated to begin at that time, with a projected completion of 2010.

    Colts new stadium, artist renditionA lot of controversy – mostly local politics and questions of who should bear the tax burden for the new stadium – has surrounded this project, but in the end, getting this deal done – at almost any cost – is a long-term boon for both the Colts and the city of Indianapolis.

  • More Reuters Bush Bashing

    Vyvoda asks what “Bush supporters” have to say about this Reuters article, which in typical roto-Reuters fashion is headlined World Terror Attacks Tripled in 2004 by U.S. Count:

    The U.S. count of major world terrorist attacks more than tripled in 2004, a rise that may revive debate on whether the Bush administration is winning the war on terrorism, congressional aides said on Tuesday.

    The number of “significant” international terrorist attacks rose to about 650 last year from about 175 in 2003, according to congressional aides briefed on the numbers by State Department and intelligence officials on Monday.

    Sounds pretty bad for the Bush Doctrine, and the Global War on Terror, no? Oh, but wait; let’s dig a bit deeper, shall we? Elsewhere in the article, we find:

    Waxman’s letter said that of the about 650 significant attacks last year, about 300 reflected violence in India and Pakistan, leaving some 350 attacks elsewhere in the world — double the total 2003 count.

    He suggested this reflected enhanced U.S. efforts to monitor media reports of violence, thereby leading to the identification of “many more attacks in India and Pakistan related to Kashmir.”

    Okay, stop right here. Which is it? Terrorist attacks tripled, or we just weren’t counting them in the first place? Is it even plausible that the number of terrorist attacks in Kashmir alone is double the total number of terrorist attacks in the entire world just a year prior? Obviously, this year’s count reflects better information/intelligence gathering with respect to world terror. So, this story is really a non-story, right? Oh, no – Reuters can’t end it without letting some Democrat hack take a cheap shot at Bush:

    “What it effectively means is that the Bush administration and the CIA haven’t been putting the staff resources necessary and have missed 80 percent of the world’s terrorist incidents” in past years, said a Democratic congressional aide. “How can you have an effective counterterrorism policy from that?”

    So, it’s Bush’s fault! Of course! But, wait; a little earlier in the article we read:

    It later said the number killed and injured in 2003 was more than double its original count and said “significant” terrorist attacks — those that kill or seriously injure someone, cause more than $10,000 in damage or attempt to do either of those things — rose to a 20-year high of 175.

    (Emphasis added)

    So what’s the implication? Roto-reuters would have you believe 1) Bush’s counterterrorism policy has been an abject failure due to its inability to count terrorist attacks accurately, and 2) Bush’s counterterrorism policy has been an abject failure due to its inability to prevent terrorism from spiraling to more than three times its 20 year high.

    So what’s the truth?

    Congressional aides said about 10 full-time employees worked on the 2004 count, up from about three in past years, and that this produced a more complete count.

    So, Bush put together the Department of Homeland Security, has made a good-faith effort to enact intelligence changes proposed by Congress, and is generally putting significantly more resources into HumInt than previous administrations (“previous administrations”, referring directly to Clinton, is the correct translation of Reuters’ misleading “past years”) – and Roto-reuters manages to blame him at every turn.

    A better analysis of this information is that world terrorism was higher all along, and the Bush administration should be praised for dedicating the manpower to track and count terrorist acts more accurately and completely.

  • Absolutely Fascinating

    Samir with captured dictator Saddam HusseinWhile I don’t often agree with their politics, I generally enjoy reading the sub-/counter-culture weekly Riverfront Times. It usually has well-written articles of local interest, like this one, which ConservativeDialysis found and wrote about. (Ditto the caveat: RFT doesn’t fall under “family-friendly” in the language department.)

    Some choice nuggets:

    Samir says a soldier fired several blank rounds into the bunker’s exposed opening, and a man’s voice cried out from the spider hole, pleading for his life.

    “He said, ‘Don’t shoot. Don’t kill me,'” recounts Samir.

    How appropriate. The last, defiant words uttered in freedom by the murderous tyrant were a plea for mercy. Mercy, I might add, he would never have dreamed of giving anyone.

    Later, when the world’s most wanted man was whisked onto an awaiting helicopter, Samir remembers Saddam muttering to himself in English, asking the same question again and again: “America, why? America, why?”

    And the cries continue to rise from the mass graves, filled with those killed by the Saddam regime, the silent din crying out in unison: “Why, Saddam?”, “Why, Saddam?”

    Samir was a twenty-year-old college student living in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah when he joined a civilian uprising against Saddam. It was 1991, and U.S. and coalition fighters had just declared a ceasefire after liberating Kuwait.

    Encouraged by the Republican Guard’s swift defeat, Samir grabbed the family AK-47 and joined thousands of southern Shiites organizing a massive rebellion. In hindsight, Samir says, the revolution was doomed from the start.

    The ceasefire allowed Saddam to regroup and launch a counterattack against his own people. It soon became clear that the United States never planned to assist the Shiites with any tactical support. The failure of the U.S. government to provide military assistance during the uprising still strikes a sour chord with Samir and countless other Shiites.

    “We were defenseless,” fumes Samir. “Saddam began a retaliation campaign with tanks and helicopters. Our guns were useless.”

    George Bush Senior’s worst mistake: not finishing what he started. How long did it take Coalition forces to rebuild the trust lost by this perceived betrayal?

    The next morning Samir hopped on a Humvee for the half-hour drive to his parents’ home. The entire neighborhood, some 700 residents, poured into the streets to greet him.”It was an awesome feeling,” he says. “I felt like I was coming with the U.S. forces to free my family. It was the best feeling of my life.”

    Not a bad homecoming, for someone who left in fear for his life – returning like the conquering hero from the Hollywood westerns he loved as a child.

    Samir is quick to anger when people dismiss the necessity of the U.S. invasion of Iraq — or, even worse, when they question the validity of Saddam’s capture.

    Not that they elaborated on this point, but kudos to RFT for even writing it; it pretty well flies in the face of the beliefs of most of their readership.

    Late last month Samir returned to Iraq for the third time since the fall of Saddam’s regime. This time he’s working not as a interpreter but as a political and cultural consultant in the U.S. government’s rebuilding efforts. The job can earn Samir in excess of $100,000 a year, though he says he’d do it for half as much.

    As to the risks of arbitrary suicide bombings, Samir says he’d rather die in Iraq than here in a car accident or from a heart attack.

    “Everyone dies one day,” he muses. “Dying with honor is better than dying with nothing. At least you’re going to be remembered.”

    And this man will be remembered well, of that I am quite sure.

  • Wittenberg Gate: Christian Carnival

    Wittenberg Gate hosts this week’s Christian Carnival:

    Posts are divided into the following categories: Apologetics, Bible Study, Books, Christian Living, Church Issues, Culture & Current Events, Family, Gospel, and Theology.

    Do you think anything I write is carnival-worthy?

  • Vote Fraud Theorists Battle Over Plausibility

    Stones Cry Out reports on much ado about nothing in the Washington Post:

    Yet there’s lots of chatter in the blogosphere, but little coverage in the mainstream media, of a study that suggests the early exit polls that showed Kerry beating Bush may have been accurate after all. The study, conducted on behalf of U.S. Count Votes, a non-partisan but left-leaning non-profit organization.

    Let’s have a look at their conclusions, shall we?

    But in some ways they seem to be playing a game, too, because the study clearly leaves the impression that the authors believe there was wholesale fraud in the 2004 presidential election.

    The methodology and math of the study are far too complicated to get into in detail here. But here is a link to the entire study for your reading pleasure.

    Among other things, the study reports that some of the largest discrepancies between exit polls and final vote tallies occurred inexplicably in battleground states.

    I’ll revisit this post after reading the report, but here are my initial thoughts:

    We have a case in which a sample varied significantly from the population. On the face, we are faced with three possibilities:

    1. The sample was accurate, but a statistical outlier
    2. The sample was accurate, and the population inaccurate
    3. The sample was inaccurate, and the population was accurate

    It appears that the first goal of this report is to rule out option #1. Fair enough; I’ll agree whole-heartedly with ruling out option #1. However, I suspect the report spends the rest of its pages supporting option #2 over option #3. To wit:

    Among other things, the study reports that some of the largest discrepancies between exit polls and final vote tallies occurred inexplicably in battleground states.

    “This discrepancy between exit polls and the official election results has triggered a controversy which has yet to be resolved,” according the report.

    If true, this analysis again has multiple explanations. The report chooses to favor option #2 (above), and probably goes to great length trying to support that conclusion. However, what the report implies as “wholesale vote fraud” I propose is actually “wholesale exit poll fraud”. Which is more plausible? Top-to-bottom coordination across state lines to throw the election to Bush through vote fraud, or misleading exit poll data?

    Looking at the 2000 election, incorrectly – and prematurely – calling Florida for Gore suppressed the Bush vote in the yet-to-close Florida panhandle precincts, and in a ripple effect suppressed the Bush vote across the rest of the country. Might it be plausible to think that someone concluded that a similar tactic could be used to “throw” the election for Kerry, by reporting biased exit poll data indicating a Kerry victory, with the assumption that such flawed data would become a self-fulfilling prophecy by once again suppressing the Bush vote across the country? If I recall correctly, the 2004 exit poll data over-sampled demographics that indicated biased results in favor of Kerry. (Which, if true, would really be more Option #1, with intentional, malicious intent.)

    More later…

    (Temporary: original Haloscan Comments – Comments)