Yeah, I'm Back In Maryland
Back in 2004 when I first moved to Maryland, I was well aware of its blue state reputation; Virginia was much more of a red or at least purple state. I had wanted to commute from Virginia, but my contractor job was at National Archives in College Park inside the Northwest region of the infamous Beltway. They had employees commuting from Northern Virginia but the traffic can be ridiculous (I once did a commute when traffic was stop-and-go on the Beltway at 5:45 AM.) I had a former boss whose company was located in DC but his home was in Maryland--and he was one of the few , Republicans I ever met in the state (he may have been in local leadership). I think there were 2 GOP Congressmen when I moved to the state, down to 1 now.I decided to check out a supermarket chain store near the Interstate. I have a companion nutrition blog; I have focused since 2003 on a lower-carb lifestyle, based on advice from a project DBA I had met in Chicago and had lost something like 85 lbs. on an Atkins diet. If you recall 2004, low carb became the fad thing for a while; bakeries went through hard times. In a brief summary, you can think of 3 primary nutrients: proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. There are essential amino acids (proteins) and fats, but not carbs. One normally think of the white foods on carbs, which correlate with blood sugar levels: potatoes, rice, bread, sugar. Also one normally wants to normalize/minimize the Omega 6 to Omega 3 fat ratios in the diet. Conventionally meats are finished with grains which aren't metabolized well; the Omega-6 counts for grain-finished meat are up to 10 times higher, while Omega 3's rapidly erode with tenure on the feedlot. (There are other important nutrients like CLA associated with grass-fed products.) So, in addition to wild-caught, younger oily fish (like salmon, mackerel, sardines, etc.), I look at grass-fed/finished meats, including a variety of sources: beef, venison, bison, lamb, etc. Some basic guidance: there are American sources (e.g., bison) where they'll finish on grains; generally speaking, Australian or New Zealand beef and lamb are grass-fed/finished, and at least one dairy brand, KerryGold, has grass-fed sourced butter and cheeses.
I've done a lot of grocery shopping at WalMart and/or Sam's Club. Usually you can get grass-fed ground beef at WalMart and other major supermarkets. I've occasionally found roasts, stew meat, and steaks there, but it seems to differ by market. At Sam's Club, I've seen availability of lamb, butter, and cheeses. This market near the Interstate offers a more comprehensive selection of items across the board. For example, I've found certain varieties of KerryGold cheese I've never seen elsewhere, and they have very competitive prices on bison (I expect it to start at $10/lb based on Trader Joe's and another supermarket chain), although I'm disappointed to learn grain finished. I also noted there was a section in fresh chicken part which promoted "air-chilled" parts; I had discovered SmartChicken years back, maybe at a Safeway, which specifically promoted its chickens as being air-chilled (as in Europe). You can really taste the difference, although I bought the whole bird vs. parts. (My big chicken thing now is heritage birds, which can be hard to find.
All of this leads to interesting, but not remarkable, conversations in line waiting to be checked out Sunday. One guy notices the shirt I'm wearing from my former employer while in Arizona, a major defense contractor. It turns out he lived in the same area of Arizona for some 16 years, I don't think with my company. And he then proudly identifies himself as a Teamster. Now I'm in favor of voluntary associations of all kinds, but I would say that I've had my fair share of disagreements with or about organized government employees. Thankfully the conversation ended as he had to unload his cart at the cash register.
But then I overheard a more worrisome conversation between the customer preceding me and the checkout clerk. Maybe they knew each other (as activist Democrats?), except I don't know how in small talk they start talking about 'poor' Bernie Sanders getting screwed over by the Clinton campaign. I remember biting my tongue, not wanting to share what I really think of Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton. I studiously avoided small talk, but I did notice while he was ringing up my purchase, he mentioned how he would like to eat at my house. (Among other things, they had a coupon special on a limited quantity of strip, T-bone or porterhouse steaks at under $6/lb.) I'm thinking, "I bet you would" (i.e., Politics of Envy).
On Witch Hunts
If you're a long-time reader of the blog, I may be largely repeating an experience I had as an assistant MIS professor at UWM some years back that I've discussed in part before. The reason I'm reprising the discussion is because of my concern over the Mueller investigation, which seems to be including certain business transactions with Russian groups back in 2008 (when Trump was a registered Democrat). One "progressive" troll suggest Mueller was looking at alleged money laundering charges. (I responded to the effect that allegations of that nature should be addressed at the corporate level, but not in the investigation of Russia's alleged intervention in the 2016 election.) This idea of throwing a ton of charges at someone with the hope something will stick is grossly unfair: for instance, convicting someone on a technicality vs. a substantive charge (e.g., Martha Stewart's insider trading kerfuffle).In my second year of a 3-year UWM contract, I knew that my second 3-year contract would be coming up. [Typically you go up for tenure, usually but not always, permanent job status, in your seventh year; so your 2 3-year contracts are your years for building a case for tenure. Some go up earlier.] (The idea is that if you don't win a contract extension or tenure--the third step--they give you a year on contract for you to land a follow-up appointment.)
I had already decided to leave UWM because of an incident my first semester, where the lead MIS professor (we didn't have a department structure in the School of Business, so it was more of an informal process) threatened my prospective tenure because I had criticized his student's frozen dissertation proposal. (Basically for a period of 2 weeks before a defense, the proposal is frozen while faculty can check out copies to review it.) I had befriended the student, but he had been evading multiple attempts to discuss the proposal with me--apparently under instruction from my colleague, his dissertation chair. When I checked it out, I found out that the proposal lacked substance and specificity. Basically, his chair was hoping to convince his Baby Bell managerial contact to do a field test using company employees (which I can tell you was NEVER going to happen). His backup plan was to use captive student subjects. But he had not really fleshed out his variables, measures, materials, statistics, questions of statistical power, validation issues (notorious for using students as surrogates for IT managers, etc.) I don't like to get in the weeds for a general blog post, but I love research and wanted to give a taste.
Long story short, I found myself catching a ride home from a Wisconsin Bell tour with his chair. My colleague mentioned that his student had discussed my feedback and quickly paid lip service that the student needed to address my points. But he then went on to say that he was bringing in a couple of research hired gun researchers to take me out if I uttered a word at the student's defense, and "by the way, do you realize that you have no vote in your own tenure process?" Whoa! What the hell just happened? It went beyond a breach of professional ethics. [Oh, I was not afraid of debating other academics; there had been a rumor of that happening at my dissertation defense, and I had responded, "Bring it on!"] In this case, the fact that this piece of work had to threaten me was an implicit acknowledgment the proposal was a pile of dung. If I had wanted to sabotage the student, I wouldn't have played my hand prior to the defense. I had done my due diligence; if his committee accepted the proposal, it was on their consciences.
By the way, why was the student rushing his proposal? Because he wanted to go on the academic job market, and without a defended proposal, he had no chance at an interview.
So I had already made up my mind that tenure was dubious (did I really want to spend the rest of my career with someone who threatened me my first semester?) and I wanted out on my schedule, which a contract renewal would give me. In my third year, I eventually chose UTEP, also a mistake, but it was the only offer on the table at the time. They were up for first-time AACSB accreditation, and I had a decent publication record. I might have had better opportunities a year later.
I had volunteered to teach an undergrad core COBOL course in my second year. Initially the administration was wildly happy about this, apparently the first time a professor decided to cover the course. But I wanted to use a compiler version with then new ANSI structured language support. UWM licensed Microsoft COBOL, which had not released a version with the new language constructs. I chose a textbook which came bundled with a relevant compiler.
The administration and fellow area professors were livid that I wasn't using the licensed COBOL compilers. And, of course, student assistants to help students in the various computer labs weren't familiar with the new syntax. This was like a train wreck waiting to happen. Why did I do it? Nearly all of us who taught computer programming taught a structured programming paradigm. The new structured constructs in COBOL were implemented for a reason. In fact, I had checked with Microsoft and dealt with a lying sales guy who assured me the new standards were already in release.
In hindsight, I should have fully understood the political ramifications. It quickly manifested itself soon after I released my first assignment. The first due date was still over 2 weeks off, but I had a handful of students visit my office. They demanded an extension of the first assignment due date "OR ELSE". I did not want to set a precedent, particularly on the first assignment; I had planned to assign 4 evenly over the semester. I said, "Look, I'm available during office hours and appointments, but it's too early to be discussing extensions." They repeated their threat and moved on.
As the semester progressed, the students had completed their first assignment, there had been no follow-up threats, etc. I had largely forgotten about it when I went to my office that evening to work on my next day's lecture notes the night before my contract hearing. I found a manila file shoved under my door with anonymous student submissions into my committee contract folder. It was an absurd personal attack urging the committee to kill my renewal. To give a real example, one student wrote that my chalkboard behavior was so atrocious, he was going to scream if he had to put up with it even one day longer. Not one comment involved course content or assignments, my grading fairness, or other things most people would regard as salient.
This surprise attack of course left me no time to respond. I also deeply suspected faculty and/or administrators had coached the malcontents. Why? One telling example: a student complained, without further explanation, that I was not teaching on a "structured gradient". I understood what the student was getting at (and it was a bogus charge), but I've talked with hundreds of students and scores of profs, had taken a course in college teaching at the University of Texas, had read thousands of education and psychology research articles and never once encountered that term. I don't think most students could spell it, never mind understand what it means.
There were some obvious due process issues, and there is a lot more to this soap opera (the hearing and its aftermath); let's just say I was more interested in defending my reputation than in fighting to stay in UWM hell. I did have a contact in the business school administration who told me that the Dean of Students office was getting one student visit a day complaining about me, rotating from the same handful of students.
So how did this end in a witch hunt? I suspected that the students who had threatened me and delivered on their threat weren't finished with me yet. I was convinced that one or more students would launch a frivolous grade appeal. (I don't recall if there was a leak or a rumor going around but enough to check with the administration multiple times before the last filing date.) In effect, I (recognizing the last-minute timing of the sabotage of my renewal contract) literally checked one hour before the policy deadline to file with the administration office and nothing. I was assured that if an appeal was made, I would be given a full copy of all relevant materials, etc. (They would subsequently renege on that promise as well.) Indeed, something was submitted literally in the last 10 minutes. And by college policy, I would have only been allowed those same 10 minutes to respond on the record; allowing me to respond would be "unfair" to the student troll. When I complained that the process did not allow me to file a response, they told me I would have time to make my case at the relevant hearing.
Now there are policies on grade appeals, and the cardinal rule is, paraphrased: "You cannot appeal a grade for subjective reasons, like you think he didn't like you. You need to make a case based on facts (like marking a correct test answer wrong, inconsistent grading standards, etc.)" The business school, as I mentioned above, refused to make a copy because "there is too much evidence". They would only let me access the student's materials under observation over fears I would "destroy" the "evidence". And what did the student say? "I think Dr. Guillemette found out about my involvement in those events last fall and lowered my grade as a reprisal." HE DID NOT MAKE A SINGLE SPECIFIC ALLEGATION THAT ANY EXAM OR ASSIGNMENT HAD BEEN MARKED INCORRECTLY OR THAT HIS ASSIGNED GRADE WAS INCONSISTENT WITH THE POLICY STATED IN MY COURSE SYLLABUS! The School of Business allowed this appeal to proceed although it flatly contradicted explicit policy on grade appeals. Oh, and what was this mountain of "evidence"? No, not statements from a psychologist validating his groundless paranoia: he had literally collected every scrap of paper from the course: computer outputs, class notes, etc. Nothing organized, cross-referenced. It was a bunch of crap.
We'll get to the hearing momentarily. But I wanted to make a specific point over this "evidence". One of the people on the committee was a fellow, more recently hired MIS junior professor. So one day I approached him, and he was gun-shy about my talking to him other than at a hearing, But I persisted. "But you look at this evidence?" "No." "Dude, how are you going to judge this if you haven't even looked at the purported evidence?" "There's just too much of it. Where there's smoke, there' fire." Like the nature of dog poo changes if there's more of it... It was like "Dude, you aren't even doing your job, your due diligence, and you're basically smearing me in the process."
To me, this was an assault on my professional integrity. I've been scrupulously fair in my evaluations of students, even rank-ordering open-ended/essay question responses before assigning a grade. I can only recall one test question in 8 years that students argued with--I had gotten from an instructor test bank vs. my own--and I had already thrown that question out in assigning an exam curve. I once told a student that I would fail my own mother if she failed to perform on an exam. I've given A's to people I didn't like, and I've failed students I do like personally. (In the latter case, I would have given all the help he needed to prepare for the exam, but he simply didn't make the effort. I'm not in the business of giving a passing grade: he needs to earn it.)
So, the hearing starts with 3 faculty, 2 of them non-MIS. I basically make a motion for summary judgment based on the fact that the student's appeal flatly contradicts specific written grade appeal criteria. The 3 faculty members basically laugh at me: "That's not going to happen."
The student begins basically with a long bitch session directed at me, emphasizing his paranoid point of view. He starts off with this discussion about the fact it snowed two feet on the last day of the semester which I had given them to turn in their final computer assignment. I immediately object; I point out that I had personally walked to campus to address students' concerns and left a note on my office door, explaining I was extending the deadline by 3 days. Not only that, but the student had taken advantage of the grace period. What was his point? That I had power over or knowledge of bad weather and sent a snowstorm just to mess with him? He wasn't arguing that I had docked his assignment grade. All I got from the committee was a reprimand over interrupting the student's meandering, pointless rant.
The student then complains that I didn't release test data for programs weeks in advance. In fact, even if that was true, it was irrelevant; a programmer prepares his own test data. It's not an excuse to wait on development for someone else to come up with test data. This was a rare occasion when the junior MIS professor pointed out what I was saying was true, that students are expected to test their programs with their own data; the other two promptly reprimanded him for "siding with [me]".
This might as well as taken place in Australia (i.e., kangaroo court). The student was allowed to interrupt me at will with his absurd lies and gripes. At no time during this entire proceeding was there any allegation of a grading impropriety. My own colleagues were participating in a political lynching of sorts; I had no idea why they wanted to establish such a precedent; but for the grace of God, they might be next. Still, I hypothesized that maybe they felt that letting the student vent at me would give him satisfaction.
But they refused to make a decision They issued a demand for any copies of exams I had to be turned over--never mind the fact that the student didn't make a single allegation over an exam. This boxed me in--because, if I refused, it would look as if I were trying to hide wrongdoing. I've already explained that I scrupulously grade exams. But the purpose of the committee was to judge on the merits of the student's case; it was his burden to prove his case, not their job to prosecute a frivolous case against me. It was at that one of my few faculty friends in the School of Business came to me and said that he was speaking for a number of faculty, alarmed over how this committee was operating and told me to refuse the committee's request. It wasn't so much they were concerned about me, but they felt the committee's witch hunt was setting a bad precedent that could one day turn against them.
I wrote back the committee and said that they needed to judge the case on the basis of the evidence. And, oh, by the way, if they make a decision that I consider to be libelous or slanderous, I will consider my legal options.
They quickly backed down, saying they were simply doing due diligence and due process on behalf of the student. (It is always possible the business school quietly did something unethical behind my back, but if the idea was to make a public example of me, it failed in the end.) As I pointed out already, as for "due diligence", ignoring written policy and the purported evidence corrupted the whole process. I'm aware that some people thought somehow "I got away with it", that the student would not have filed a charge if something bad hadn't happened. Of course, they probably thought the somehow I was to blame for the sabotage of my contract renewal, too.
So I know what it's like to be the target of a witch hunt, to be subjected to arbitrary, discriminatory rules. As much as I dislike Trump personally, he deserves due process under the rule of law. Mueller needs to stick with the allegation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, not to throw everything in sight at him and hope something sticks.
