What Goes Around . . .
Thomas Phelan, an Irish Catholic priest, posed as dean for 22 years
without earning a graduate degree.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. [1]
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Rensselaer defrauded graduate and doctoral students under the auspices of a totally corrupt and unqualified dean. Thomas Phelan, an Irish Catholic priest, acted as H&SS dean for 22 years without earning a graduate degree. A search of the archives at College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA, revealed a transcript that shows Phelan graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (04 Mar 45). He ranked 23 in a class of 79. Yet, he claimed at Rensselaer that he had earned a Master of Arts (English) from the same college on the same date.
An exhaustive search of the archives at Theological College of the Catholic University of America (CUA), Washington, DC and interviews with registration officials, revealed that CUA did not grant Phelan any academic degrees. The search revealed an unsigned, undated original of a handwritten STL transcript (00 Jun 51) that had every indication of forgery. Phelan must have kept his fingers tightly crossed behind his back when they ordained him later that year.
That document purported to grant him a Licentiate in Sacred Theology (STL) which he later passed off as a doctoral equivalency. Evidently nobody at RPI questioned him about it. STL at that time represented nothing more than a license to preach in the Catholic church and had no academic significance.
Interesting under the circumstances, Phelan’s partner in the destruction of valid credentials and careers of other people, S. Michael Halloran, graduated with a BA Holy Cross (1960) and obtained a PhD Rensselaer (1973) under the auspices of Phelan who became dean the previous year (1972).
Phelan could not give a eulogy in an educated way let alone hold ultimate responsibility for a faculty teaching epideictic rhetoric. He could not, or would not, meet or discourse with anyone without absolute control. He prepared a confirmation letter of what he intended to say before he said it, read it aloud, then refused to listen to any response. When he died, President Shirley Ann Jackson published a travesty of false adulation in a letter to the RPI community.
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Thomas Phelan, |
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Big Mama and her Leprechauns at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute hold ultimate responsibility for multiple violation of civil and human rights. |
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Jackson claimed that: “Dean Phelan was an extraordinary person. He was a professor, dean, historian, and wise counselor. Above all, he was a builder of community who also realized the value of understanding and documenting our rich history. The legacy he has left behind is as grand as the life he lived”.
H&SS Dean John P. Harrington also issued a series of misleading statements after Phelan’s death, probably to try to bury his corruption with him. The extent of Phelan's cunning, corruption, and deceit constituted the only thing extraordinary about him and his pandering leprechaun, former LL&C Chair, S. Michael Halloran. [Halloran]
Virtually unpublished, Phelan had others write a book about Hudson Valley history which he had published under his own name. A Troy citizen with a lifetime of experience claims that the ghostwritten book distorts fact. The Dutch founded Troy. Van Rensselaer owned most of Rensselaer County and leased out parcels of land to tenants. Stephen Van Rensselaer later founded the Institute. George Cluett (Cluett and Peabody), an Englishman, became a primary force in the introduction of manufacturing. At that time, Troy had English (Victorian) architecture and Protestant churches. A flood of immigrants arrived to work in the mills and other manufacturing. The Irish, who arrived later as a result of the potato famine (1840), at first found themselves ethnically excluded. So much for Jackson’s accolades, Harrington’s propaganda, and Phelan’s historical distortion. [Propaganda]
The current LL&C department chair, Cheryl Geisler and other faculty members, keep their silence on the massive deceit and corruption in their department, much of which Geisler knowingly inherited, and collectively they neglect to address issues. [Geisler]
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Harrington, one of Big Mama’s principal leprechauns, has repeatedly acted as a flak to honor people guilty of gross criminal misconduct. While he attempts to whitewash past behavior, RPI employs a team of debt collectors to harass the victims who refused to pay invoices when they found RPI in breach of their contracts. Those collectors unlawfully harass not only the victims but also their friends and acquaintances.
Under Provost Gary Judd, Phelan developed an ethnically oriented, racist constituency of “plastic paddies” to do his bidding - a practice that apparently continues to this day. Phelan would certainly not have admitted Big Mama Jackson if she had applied for a job in H&SS.
At that time, an LL&C professor openly announced: “If you want a doctorate from H&SS then you had better behave like a nigger applying for membership in a Jewish country club.” The records over two decades prove that analogy also that doctoral students who fornicated with their department professors assured themselves a PhD.
No people of color gained admission into LL&C and people with mixed marriages suffered castigation. However, a majority of people in RPI publicity material suddenly developed suntans when Jackson arrived on campus.
TECHWR-L has served as an Internet forum for technical communicators for more than a decade. Riddled with political correctness by academicians trying to cover up fraud and incompetence on university campuses, it eventually developed a core element of professionals that rebelled against crass protectionism.
Whores of Academe captures the essence of what transpired more than a decade ago and shows how successive RPI presidents have not addressed serious complaints brought to their attention. Moreover, two H&SS deans have neglected to redress many grievances.
Julie A. Byrne, PhD. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Mathematics 2000) wrote: "RPI administrators never truly supported any of the H&SS programs. These departments don't bring enough money or student interest to RPI. The only reason that the administration seemed to support H&SS at all is that it "looked good" to prospective undergraduate students and their parents that RPI is a "balanced" technological university, not a "techy" school. This is all marketing, and it's obvious from the amount, type, and quality of courses that have been offered, as well as the lack of quality professors in the department, that no student is getting a "balanced" education".
Byrne later placed responsibility for gullible undergraduates firmly on the shoulders of parents who buy into RPI propaganda. She recently wrote: "It is very important that parents and students take an active role in the selection of courses during the high school years. Course selections should be based on a student's interests, abilities, and future career goals".
The following discussion resulted from one of the TECHWR-L rebellions. These excerpts from previous discourse remain as true today as they did at the time of writing. To one of the false and misleading puffs that H&SS/LL&C introduced into the TECHWR-L list and the hankering of a sycophantic LL&C doctoral student, Dale Sullivan, the author responded:
Paul Trummel (23 Aug 93)
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and University of Washington
The RPI program contains virtually no elements that relate to technical communication and most of the faculty have no qualifications or experience in the field. [Not only do they have no experience in the field, they disdain anyone who does]. If potential students will carefully examine this program then they will probably discover the faculty corruption, substance abuse, and academic fraud that I have found to exist. Such an appraisal will provide them with a true understanding of the program and give them the opportunity to make an informed decision on whether to participate.
Stuart A. Selber (23 Aug 93) [Selber]
Michigan Technological University now Associate Professor, The Pennsylvania State University
Paul's comment clearly reflects a challenge facing those of us interested in technical communication and in technical communication pedagogy. How do we decide what constitutes appropriate instruction for students, and from what fields do we draw when framing this instruction?
I've always felt that interdisciplinary work is important, particularly for students to learn a technical specialty such as computer science or biology. But even within the humanities there seems to be a wide range of work particularly useful to professional writers (rhetoric; composition/writing; critical/social theories; educational theory - to name a few). In fact, I've often wondered what technical communicators can claim as “their own”.
In other words, what are the boundaries between technical communication and, say, rhetoric, for example. I wonder if Paul might be willing to talk a bit more about the "elements" in RPI's program that don't relate or are not useful to technical communication. Although I know little about the program there, I have a hard time imagining that a background in rhetorical theory, their general focus, would not be at least somewhat useful to technical communicators.
Paul Trummel (24 Aug 93)
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and University of Washington
Technical communicators need to expand rhetoric to encompass the requirements of a modern technological society. They need to explore how they can widen the scope of rhetorical theory and to suggest ways by which they can construct visible and kinetographic (verbal/visible) language theories that support communication in new technological environments. They need to recognize and explore non-traditional communication procedures and practices when dealing with the electronic dissemination of information concurrently with learning the techniques associated with new computerized tools.
Heretofore, rhetoricians have restricted themselves to forms of classical oral and verbal rhetoric that do not take into consideration visible language. Consequently, kinetography (verbal/visible rhetoric) performs an important role in technical communication because it comprises both verbal and visible elements. Kinetography becomes a means to communicate information that emanates from interdisciplinary activity to specific audiences. This information results from the interaction of two or more disciplines that function as significant units: significant because they evoke an aesthetic response or ethos that precedes the conveyance of meaning (the coordinated function that creates communication). This contrasts with multidisciplinary means of communication that combine many disciplines and methods (a complex organization of the content of communication) without necessarily improving the information transfer.
The answer to Selber's question on what technical communicators can claim as "their own" probably amounts to nothing. Like rhetoric, technical communication comprises an art and also a craft/technique that supports communication in a variety of disciplines. Its practice requires aesthetic appreciation and many skills. Consequently, it defies politically correct pedagogical concepts and instead requires curricula that develop the learning process.
Approximately 50 programs exist in the United States that advertise technical communication content. About 80% of these programs (including some of those recently mentioned in TECHWR-L correspondence) do not provide anything like a well-rounded education in the field. Most do not employ professionals on their faculties (an essential to teaching any craft) and rely on outmoded theories that relate to either individual experience or departmental politics. These programs rely for their economic survival upon offering an education that they cannot provide. This constitutes fraud.
Selber has requested that I write more about the "elements" in RPI's program that do not relate to technical communication. My short answer: the RPI curriculum relates to the history of classical rhetoric and very little contained in the courses relates to technical communication. Like the programs at a number of other universities, most LLC/RPI faculty members have no professional or academic qualifications and no experience in the field.
My column consists of satire, based in fact, that exposes malpractice extant in technical communication programs. Several RPI administrators and members of the faculty of the Department of Language, Literature, and Communication chose to identify themselves with the fictitious characters named in my column. They then made many attempts to precensor and censor my writings and to have me removed from the Internet. By their actions they implicitly support my contention that the program at RPI contains virtually no elements that relate to technical communication and have endeavored to cover-up the fact.
Paul Trummel (28 Aug 93)
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and University of Washington
I shall respond generally to the many TECHWR-L messages on the degree program topic. After personally experiencing the corruption and fraud that exists in the Department of Language, Literature, and Communication at Rensselaer Polytechnic for a period of eight years, I cannot accept many of the points of view.
I believe that technical communication defines the field of which technical writing forms a significant part. Therefore, programs that only relate to technical writing should carry an accurate title and description. Many of the programs described as technical communication have no graphics component or media instruction and, therefore, I consider them misnamed. If departments deliberately misname programs in order to attract students then I consider that they perpetrate fraud.
I expose these frauds as the result of researched and documented proof in an attempt to counsel students (especially mature professional students) who could waste their time with programs such as the one that exists at RPI.
It constantly surprises me that many graduate students and working professionals accept the humiliation, manipulation, and abuse meted to them by faculty members and supervisors. I believe that these individuals probably exist in one of the following states:
1. Cloned: a state of acceptance of humiliation and abuse as normal. Acquiescence in an apathetic or lethargic state.
2. Psychological inhibition: a state of absolute denial.
3. Naivety.
4. Exasperation: nobody will listen.
Several correspondents have used the words libel and slander. However, reports that contain documented truth and expose criminal activity do not construe as either libel or slander. Of course, there exists a minority of caring, considerate, and competent professors in the LLC program (Rubens, Search, and maybe one or two others with whom I have not had contact). However, they have set their price and, for whatever reason, they have decided to accede to the machinations of a cabal. Consequently, they must, unfortunately, accept the joint and several liability for all department activity.
I received many courteous messages, both pro and con. I endeavor to respond individually to each of these correspondents. This week I have heard from several ethical and probably "apolitically correct" TECHWR-L readers, both professional and academic, using reasoned discourse.
I will conclude by saying that the politically correct individuals who hate and, as a result, fear the social results of statements that they find odious have the ability to refute them, to state what they believe to be true, and to express their reactions. However, in attempts to silence criticism, many of these individuals employ tactics that Orwell (1946) described as "the big lie". Such tactics become doomed to failure because "any writer who adopts the totalitarian outlook, who finds excuses for persecution and the falsification of reality, thereby destroys himself as a writer."
The need to pander to cultural fashions and political pressures or grovel before power exist as realities. Many students and professionals quickly become astutely aware of such misuse of power and accede to the abuse. However, every time they pander and accept the control of others they diminish themselves and undermine their academic or professional community. I still consider technical and graphic communication a worthwhile and honest profession and will continue to protect it from charlatans.
A shill for Department of Language, Literature, and Communication (LL&C), School of Humanities and Social Sciences (H&SS), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) lauded the LL&C technical communication program on the web. Many unsuspecting students bought the spin and paid probably the highest tuition in the US for a virtually non-existent program.
Michael Sean Coffey (12 Sep 98)
Language, Literature, and Communication, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
I have Merrill Whitburn as a professor for one of my classes this semester. I have nothing but respect for him inside and outside of the class. I do not know why I received this mailing, but please do not send me any more.
Editor. The attitude that you have toward the Weasel prevails among cloned students subjected to his messianic charisma. Beware! Understand that for more than a decade an average of only three out of an annual intake of fifteen PhD students in LL&C graduated. Whitburn and his Cabal have deliberately engineered this situation. Two of those graduations resulted from sexual liaison. Grice graduated (with an appalling dissertation and defense) as the result of a lucrative deal between RPI and IBM. The remainder (except for Harris, Raven, and two or three others) graduated by playing and winning a game called "kiss the Weasel's ass." LL&C had the lowest graduation rate in the US for the discipline. You sound like one of H&SS/LL&C Easy Riders.
Dale Lee Sullivan (09 Feb 94)
University of Nebraska, Kearney now North Dakota State University
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. . . I have just been forwarded your attack on RPI. I must tell you, my experience there was much different than yours, evidently. Do you realize that your attack of the school where I spent thousands of my own dollars (still paying off) and where I put my family (wife and 4 children) through 3 years of tough poverty - do you understand that you are now destroying or attempting to destroy the value of my degree and the degree of many others.
I chose RPI because it was the best program in the nation; I could have settled for a lesser program, but I felt the sacrifice to go to the best was worth it. I still think RPI is the best program out there. Your attack on the
Editor. Sullivan writes out of context. Perhaps he should first explain how A Rhetoric of Children's Literature as Epideictic Discourse, his dissertation topic, has anything to do with technical communication. He has replied to an editorial response with an unwarranted personal attack similar to others that he has used to protect the easy-rider PhD that he obtained at RPI with S. Michael Halloran as his advisor (and drinking partner).
Sullivan seems to suffer from psychotic transference when he makes such paranoid comments. Perhaps his denial of reality and his RPI experience has caused him (who claims status as a man of the cloth) to indulge in some self-examination which has resulted in personal discomfort (sometimes called conscience). Perhaps he has just recognized truth.
The content of his message relates to an experience about which he obviously feels very deeply. His "best program in the nation" declarations provoke close scrutiny when one learns that his stay at RPI did not involve any technical communication. His protestations mimic the propaganda that LL&C/RPI consistently released to promote a virtually non-existent technical communication program to an unsuspecting graduate constituency. If Sullivan’s RPI/LL&C degree has such great value, then why has he spent almost two decades teaching English (not technical communication or rhetoric) at cow colleges?
Another post to a different list about related issues at Rensselaer:
Lawrence K. Katzenstein (03 Aug 94)
Bucknell University
I found the introduction by Paul Trummel to be quite disturbing precisely because it reflects a great deal of human suffering in a conflict for which I have no objective information. However, to discuss the case with respect to the purpose of the net as opposed to saving Trummel is just something I can't imagine doing. Like third world nations at the UN people often engage in open disclosure of their conflicts if they are on the weaker side of a power imbalance. In effect, Trummel is airing this in an attempt to look for allies, and admirably, to warn others.
In human terms I think a colleague who is $1 million in debt, in his fifties, and about to lose his job is a horror. I also think that it is fruitless in the short run for the conflict to continue or to have it enshrined in an email newsletter. Surely there must be somebody out there on the West Coast who knows this fellow well enough to find him another job and some adequate legal counsel. As things are going now he will merely add a defamation judgment to his debt and have nothing to show for it in terms of university reform. Old universities are simply too entrenched as medieval institutions to respond quickly.
On the merits of having something like this on the list:
1. It gives some real insight into the costs of protracted conflicts.
2. It tells us something about what can go wrong so that we can work to reform institutions.
3. It affords a forum for somebody without resources.
But,
4. It could allow the list to degenerate into another type of enterprise if done too frequently. I think that Trummel has taken precaution to prevent this by moving his argument out the door and to another list.
In any event, whether the Trummel's side of the story is the whole story or only part, it's clear that somebody should have intervened to produce a better result. Without knowing Trummel I wish him the best of luck. His situation sounds awful.
Thirteen Years Later - Postscript to Lawrence K. Katzenstein
Harrington has repeatedly acted as a flak to honor people guilty of gross criminal misconduct while he attempts to whitewash past behavior. Meanwhile, Rensselaer and University of Washington employ a team of debt collectors to harass the victims who refused to pay invoices when they found RPI and UW in breach of their contracts. Those collectors continue to harass not only the victims but also their friends and acquaintances despite a legal requirement for them not to do so.
Both RPI and UW have started an organized campaign of telephone harassment to attempt to recovery monies that they claim former students owe for tuition loans. A debt collector instructed by University of Washington and US Department of Education telephoned Emmert’s office about outstanding debts related to tuition. He had received a referral to Emmert from a debtor. The collector spoke with his executive assistant Carol Niccolls.
Niccolls, a former assistant attorney general, got her present job in an underhanded and probably illegal deal with previous provost and interim president Lee L. Huntsman. Following Niccolls conversation with the collector, he decided to reduce a social security pension by fifteen percent.
That pension totaled $422.00/month before the deduction. Having caused bankruptcy by preventing employment and denying human rights, university officials retaliated for exposing them by making deductions from a meager pension. The collection agency realized it could not recover its costs at $63.00/month and sold of the debt to another agency that follows a similar pattern of harassment.
The debt for tuition, interest, and penalties now exceeds $500,000. This does not include tens of thousands of dollars already paid in cash or loss of earnings (not including interest) estimated at $3.3 million. The $1 million debt mentioned by Katzenstein thirteen years ago now exceeds $4 million yet Jackson and Emmert still neglect to address the issues.
The reason for all this: many universities changed the rules that required terminal degrees for tenure-track professors in the 1980s to require them to earn a PhD despite possessing equivalencies. Some regressive individuals conveniently ignored the grandfather process that applied and maliciously used the new rule for their own career advancement.
Karr, Alphonse, Les Gyépes (6th series, 1859) p.305. The more things change, the more they are the same.
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© Copyright 1993 by Paul Trummel |
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