Student files complaint; investigation in progress
by Clayton Woullard
The Metropolitan
Oneida Meranto
Metro Political Science professor
While the Metro administration has yet to announce its decision regarding
a complaint filed against a professor, a top Metro administrator said
the administration would support faculty members in their academic freedom.
Metro interim Vice President of Academic Affairs and Provost Joan Foster
sent an e-mail memo to faculty members Sept. 28 in which she responded
to concerns about faculty members and academic freedom in regard to “recent
events.” Metro freshman Bill Pierce filed a complaint the first
week of the semester against Metro political science professor Oneida
Meranto, a tenured professor, in which he accused her of political bias
in the classroom.
“Complaints solely based on the grounds that the professor has
offered a view that the student considers offensive or biased have been
and will be dismissed by the College,” Foster wrote.
She went on to say that students and faculty members have told her that
discussion about such complaints against teachers and proposed legislation
have created a climate of fear on campus.
“If this climate is allowed to develop and exist,” she wrote,
“it will impede and discourage the rich discourse of divergent views
that is essential to education.”
Foster also wrote that instructors are protected under academic freedom,
which she wrote the Metro Board of Trustees defines as: “freedom
to discuss an academic subject fully, freedom to engage in research and
to publish the results of research, and freedom to write or speak as citizens
without fear of institutional censorship or discipline provided individuals
do not represent themselves as speaking for the institution.”
Metro General Counsel Lee Combs said Tuesday the investigation into Pierce’s
complaint was ongoing and would not say when an announcement would be
made.
“Until a decision is announced, you can assume the inquiry is not
complete,” Combs said.
Pierce said he takes Foster’s comments to mean in part that a decision
has already been made. He said if his complaint is dismissed, he will
consider transferring out of Metro because, he said, not properly handling
this situation hurts the credibility of the college.
“Dr. Meranto has a continued history of doing this stuff…and
this is going to happen again,” he said. “This is something
the administration is going to have to deal with sooner or later.”
Meranto said Tuesday that based on what she’s heard, the investigation
is over and she expects Metro interim President Ray Kieft to make an announcement
on the administration’s decision within the week. She said she thinks
the decision will come out in her favor, partly based upon what Foster
wrote in the e-mail, and because she said her tape recording of the class
and interviews with students from the class do not support Pierce’s
statements.
Pierce filed the complaint against Meranto Aug. 25, a day after the first
day of her American National Government class, in which he said he felt
hostility from Meranto toward Republicans and thus would not be graded
fairly in the class as a conservative student. He said she offered the
question, “Why is it that most of us in the academic world tend
to liberal?” and answered with, “The reason most of us in
the academic world are liberal is because those of us that are liberal
or on the left are those that are capable of thinking critically.”
He said he took exception to the comment and tried to offer a rebuttal,
but Meranto did not allow him to speak.
“You can’t say that only those on the left are capable of
thinking critically; that’s not a right statement to say,”
he said.
She then told the class that anyone who can’t think critically should
not stay in the class, Pierce said. He said at that point he no longer
felt he would be graded fairly.
“It’s hard to believe I’m going to get a fair shake
when she figures out that I am a conservative,” he said. “I
felt at that point I would not be judged fairly based on my academic performance
within the class.”
Later that day, after the class was over, Pierce said he wrote an e-mail
to Metro student Brian Glotzbach, a former member of the Auraria College
Republicans and current Student Government Assembly Vice President for
Student Fees. Pierce wrote in the e-mail about his experience in Meranto’s
class and asked for advice on what he should do next. He said he never
received a response.
Glotzbach said he did respond to Pierce’s e-mail and suggested he
forward his complaint to SGA Vice President for Academic Affairs Jessica
Greiner and talk to Metro Political Science Chair Dr. Robert Hazan.
Pierce said he dropped Meranto’s class the morning of Aug. 24,
mainly because he was concerned about how it would impact his GPA and
his academic record as well as not being refunded for the class.
“I had such a visceral reaction to everything that had happened
I just wanted out of that class,” he said. “I had never experienced
anything like it in my life.”
He said he was then contacted by Metro student George Culpepper, who
filed a complaint last year against Meranto also accusing her of political
bias in the classroom. Pierce said Culpepper suggested he file a complaint
against Meranto. After that, Pierce sent his complaint letter to Metro
Equal Opportunity Officer Percy Morehouse.
Hazan said the situation could have been dealt with better if Pierce
had approached Meranto and then Hazan about his concerns, rather than
take it straight to the administration.
“These are times when heightened emotions can lead to irrational
speech and irrational behavior,” Hazan said. “This is a serious
allegation that could damage an instructor at this juncture.”
He said while he is not faulting the instructor or the student, he feels
the situation should not have reached the level it has.
“It’s reached a level of inflammatory discourse,” he
said. “What we’re trying to do is establish standards of civility
in the classroom.”
Pierce said that in hindsight, he wishes he had talked to Hazan first.
“I had no idea what big pile of crap I was stepping into,”
Pierce said. “I was clueless.”
Some have accused Pierce of being a plant, in part because of a comment
made by Culpepper on the online message board to Metro student activist
group Creative Resistance days before the semester began. He said on the
message board that he had asked students to enroll in Meranto’s
class to watch her. Pierce said those claims are untrue and that he never
knew of Culpepper or Meranto’s connection to the issue of academic
freedom.
“These claims that I am a plant are completely bogus,” he
said. “I can understand how people are getting that, but there’s
no factual basis to substantiate that I was a plant.”
Culpepper said in a previous issue of The Metropolitan that he made the
statements to get a reaction out of Meranto and members of Creative Resistance,
many of whom have publicly supported her.
Meranto said whether Pierce was a plant or not, she thinks he’s
being used to push the agenda of Republicans who support the Academic
Bill of Rights, a document that aims to ensure political diversity on
campus.
“He’s become a pawn in the whole thing,” Meranto said.
“You do not go up that ladder as quick as George did if you’re
not making deals with the devil.”
William Pierce
Metro student
As evidence of his quick rise within the local political community, she
pointed out how Pierce was a driver in President Bush’s motorcade
during his visit to Colorado the week of Sept. 13 and was interviewed
by local conservative radio talk-show host Mike Rosen a week later.
Pierce said everything he’s done, including testifying about his
experience in front of four of the state’s college presidents in
a hearing organized by Colorado Senate President John Andrews, R-Centennial
last month, have been his own decisions.
“I take responsibility for my own actions,” Pierce said.
“So she can believe I’m a pawn all she wants.”
Meranto said the complaint against her has caused some teachers to feel
they have to watch what they say in class or change the way they teach.
She said it’s non-tenured, part-time professors she’s more
worried about.
“I want to hope that I didn’t go through all of this for
nothing,” she said. “Metro has to be assertive. If I didn’t
have tenure…I would’ve been let go.”
She said her response has been to become a stronger lecturer rather than
water her lectures down like other professors.
Hazan said that a professor often can’t escape their biases and
shouldn’t necessarily try to do so.
“Controversiality cannot be disassociated from learning,”
he said. “Although we want to create a non-indoctrinating, non-discriminating,
learning-teaching environment, at times you cannot escape your biases.”
But Pierce said this isn’t an issue of free speech and that he’s
had many liberal professors at the Art Institute of Colorado, which he
attended for two years before he came to Metro this summer.
“This is about mutual respect in a classroom for conservatives
and people of all political creeds to have open, honest and respectful
conversations within a classroom,” he said.
But simply disagreeing with a professor or how that professor instructs
his or her class is not basis for discipline, which can include termination,
Combs said.
“Often, the most important right is to say when we are offended
and to offer our perspective on the issue that is under discussion,”
he said. “But asking the state—and the college is the state—to
punish people for what they say is not something we should do unless we
face extreme circumstances.”
Pierce said he’s leaving it up to the administration to decide
how to discipline Meranto, if they choose to do so, but that he wants
her held accountable so this doesn’t happen again.
“No other student should have to be put into a position where they
feel they have been intimidated by a professor and they seriously have
to ask themselves, ‘Can I be judged fairly in this class?’”
Pierce said.
Tara Tull, Metro interim Assistant Dean of the School of Letters, Arts
and Sciences, which includes the political science department, said it’s
hard to prove a student’s claims that he or she feels they won’t
be graded fairly without them first receiving a grade. She said that under
the college’s grade appeal policy, a student must prove they were
graded unfairly after the final grade is given in the class.
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