Institutionalized Fraud
Exposé on Academic Corruption and Denial of Human Rights
at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY and University of Washington, Seattle, WA.
Compromised principles for personal gain and academic advantage without merit.
Traditionally, the public has responded to exposé about academic corruption by treating the wrongdoing as isolated instances instead of considering it as part of the everyday fabric of campus life. They have virtually no idea of the bizarre behavior that commonly exists. Most people do not realize that they support widespread corruption by paying exorbitant tuition and taxes. Usually, they do not rationally make a connection between academic totalitarianism (cultism) and the lifetime financial and tax expenditures to which they commit themselves.
Mutually ordained charlatans continually strive to keep parents, students, and taxpayers, who fund their academic trickery and deceit, totally unaware of the truth. They ignore them as "clients" and treat them as a resource to be exploited for personal gain and security.
Carol Poster, University of Northern Iowa, responded to a previous article (1994). Poster said she believed that abuses existed in the academe and that they needed correction. However, she felt that any remedial action should come from "rigorous self-evaluation." Apparently, she supported the status quo which evades public disclosure by investigative reporters of unpleasant facts about corrupt practices. Campus administrators call it “risk management”.
Poster conveniently ignored the fact that the academic self-evaluative process creates an environment that condones corruption. The attendant conspiracies of silence, the wrongdoing, and the constant misuse of tenure, spawn the evils of cultism rife in the academe. Processes of academic self-evaluation only give the appearance of propriety: they reveal nothing.
Ashamed . . . men endeavor to hide . . . the true motives of their hearts in the specious cloak of [collegiality] . . . in hopes of concealing their filthy appetites and the deformity of their desires.
Poster worries about damaging the profession; however, the profession has already become irrevocably damaged. The way to avoid further negation of the academic ethic rests with continued and independent inquiry by journalists and others outside the academe, not the phony processes of self-evaluation and accreditation that presently exist within it.
As long as conspiracies of silence exist, then the reputation of the whole institution must suffer. Unfortunately, when matters do eventually become public many people identify the innocent with the guilty. [Conspiracy of Silence]
To maintain one's innocence, must one overlook the abuse of a whole system by the few to give the appearance of propriety?
or,
Should one reveal what one knows in an endeavor to expose and correct the inherent problems?
Rensselaer provides an example of circumstances that exist in many institutions. Frequently, student and faculty victims, controlled by cult-like cabals, fear to speak out because of recrimination and blackballing. Administrators frequently cover up unethical and dubious research practices and ignore faculty members or students who confront or report other people who have engaged in malpractice.
Many "whistle-blowers" have their careers ruined because administrators evade their collective responsibility to behave ethically. Academic culture stresses collegial governance. However, current surveys show that a striking discrepancy exists between what faculty members and students feel they ought to do about corruption and what they actually do about it. The majority abdicate their responsibilities for fear of retaliation.
R. Byron Pipes, President, Rensselaer (1994), and his Provost, Gary Judd, by their silence, condoned the corruption within their own institution. Their ombudsman, Alan S. Meltzer, helped the presidential cover-up of malfeasance. He failed to take any ameliorating action, colluded with perpetrators, and released confidential information to them to help them cover up. This collusion enabled them to protect themselves against indictment.
Meltzer neglected to initiate arbitration proceedings by non-interested, non-involved third parties: an action required by his mandate as ombudsman and by the Rensselaer student judicial codes. Such behavior at the highest levels not only condoned but also encouraged the bizarre situation that existed in Department of Language, Literature, and Communication (LL&C), which has seriously affected the careers of many PhD candidates.
This recapitulation describes the extent of the public and academic fraud extant at Rensselaer (1994) that successive presidents have yet to address (2004). The account relates to one doctoral student's experience: a firsthand, documented account of almost twenty years of retaliation, blackballing, and career destruction. This retribution resulted from disclosure, by S. Michael Halloran, then LL&C chair, of a confidential report.
The report, submitted by the candidate, contained documented evidence of academic fraud and forgery by faculty members. Subsequently, other faculty members and administrators covered up many other illegal and unethical activities. This points to an urgent need for criminal indictment of these individuals for the massive public and academic fraud that they perpetrated. Many similar stories exist.
They recount the experiences of other students in LL&C/Rensselaer. However, the victims have remained silent to protect themselves from vicious retribution by Merrill D. Whitburn who succeeded S. Michael Halloran as chairperson. His faculty members, and the international network of professional blackballing that they have created, have become formidable totalitarian influences with which most of their victims cannot contend. This writer's account:
Credentials
Rensselaer denied re-registration rights to a non-traditional, doctoral candidate in H&SS/LL&C. He needed to complete the PhD degree to continue working as a professor. He had 47 years (1994) industrial, academic, and journalistic experience in technical and graphic communication. He previously held, among other appointments, positions as corporate chief executive officer of publishing companies, associate professor of communication at a California university, adjunct professor at Rensselaer, and associate editor of an IEEE academic journal. He also held elected fellowships in two international institutions. He had credentials and experience in technical and graphic communication superior to the credentials and experience of any faculty member in H&SS/LL&C.
History
Until 1985, this student’s employment as a professor depended upon his accredited, European, terminal master's degree equivalency. He held that qualification for many years. During the early 1980s, many United States universities changed their policies and required a PhD from non-traditional faculty members who already held academic positions. Consequently, an MS degree remained terminal in this professor's discipline but became inadequate for him to gain promotion. Rensselaer offered him the opportunity to obtain a PhD degree in his discipline. In good faith, he paid full tuition (at one of the highest rates in the US) and entered H&SS/LL&C doctoral program in the fall of 1985. Subsequently, Rensselaer appointed him lecturer to teach a graduate program at IBM.
Fraud
Since then, H&SS/LL&C has stonewalled to prevent him from both forming a doctoral committee and defending his dissertation. Concurrently, they have willfully caused him to lose his position as an associate professor at San Jose State University, California, and his tenure appointment and retirement benefits. They also refused to supply information about his academic progress to some universities and distributed false information to others. This precipitated removal of his name from professorial candidate lists. These combined actions have caused him to remain unemployed as a professor for a period in excess of twenty-two years. Subsequently, Rensselaer administrators forged academic transcripts and falsified other academic files in attempts to cover up their previous actions and extended their activity to University of Washington to provoke a similar situation.
Scenario
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PhD candidate earned an additional MS degree (Communication and Rhetoric from Rensselaer) as part of his doctoral program. He continued his work toward his PhD and completed a draft dissertation. During a three-month period, that commenced only nine months after Rensselaer granted the MS degree, H&SS/LL&C took the following actions that the provost, Gary Judd condoned:
1. Rubens, his former advisor at Rensselaer provided a positive statement of satisfactory progress to the department chair to enable re-registration. [Rubens]
2. Whitburn denied that the statement existed. Subsequently, Whitburn mounted a campaign of terror against Rubens because he would not revise his statements or alter his position.
3. Judd refused re-registration by falsely representing that the candidate had "not made satisfactory progress”.
4. Judd arbitrarily expelled the candidate from the university after nine years of documented satisfactory progress towards a PhD.
5. The candidate wrote to Rensselaer to request a review of the expulsion and consideration under published student judicial procedures.
6. William D. Winn, the candidate's academic advisor at the University of Washington provided a glowing second statement of satisfactory progress toward a second PhD at that institution. [Winn]
7. The candidate traveled to Troy, New York, from Seattle, Washington, where he then resided, for an appointment to appeal his expulsion and to mitigate the damage caused by Whitburn and Judd.
8. On the instructions of Judd and Whitburn, the Rensselaer police ambushed and arrested him on false charges of violence to prevent him from discussing his case with administrators and kept him under house arrest for four days while on campus.
9. Contra Cabal, an electronic magazine containing exposé and satire - probably one of the first to appear on the web - has now published for almost fifteen years. Prior to that it published as email for six years. The hits/month now range between 100,000 and 150,000 with more than 1.5 million hits during the past twelve months.
The description of this professor's experience typically represents the behavior of H&SS/LL&C. Faculty members acted arbitrarily and maliciously. They violate the Rensselaer Student Bill of Rights with impunity. They refuse to give a warning of expulsion, define the term "satisfactory progress," provide the names of the "graduate committee" responsible for the expulsion, provide a copy of the minutes of their kangaroo courts, or, give a satisfactory reason for expulsion from the graduate school. [Impunity]
H&SS/LL&C frequently held kangaroo courts - faculty committee meetings convened in absentia to evade established legal procedure and impose a totalitarian ideology. They discriminated against students because of age, gender, superior professional and academic experience, or whatever suited their ulterior political agenda at any given time.
Rensselaer has expelled the candidate twice, both times for notifying the administration about the criminal practices extant in H&SS/LL&C. He has made several documented representations that include forgery, manipulation of federal and state funds, and the cover-up of other criminal activity. In retaliation, the perpetrators denied him re-registration and expelled him from the graduate school without cause and without due process of law.
Lawrence Katzenstein, Bucknell University, made an empathic response when he read a previous story about the situation at Rensselaer. He found the information:
. . . quite disturbing precisely because it reflects a great deal of human suffering . . . 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 human terms I think a colleague who is $1 million in debt, in his fifties [sic], 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 old universities are simply too entrenched as medieval institutions to respond quickly.
On the merits of having something like this on the Internet:
It gives some real insight into the costs of protracted conflicts.
It tells us something about what can go wrong so that we can work to reform institutions.
It affords a forum for somebody without resources.
It could allow the list to degenerate into another type of enterprise if done too frequently.
In any event, whether [this candidates'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.
Many other readers wrote privately in similar terms. Dr. Katzenstein, a professor of political science, deserves commendation for his courage to speak out in public and with empathy. Rensselaer has done absolutely nothing in two decades to mitigate the damage caused by its employees. Instead, administrators continue to cover up the circumstances by disseminating false information to media when reporters request credential evaluation.
When one closely examines the academic credentials and political affiliations of many administrators, one discovers total misrepresentation and usurped, undeserved authority. The public has virtually no idea of the bizarre circumstances that exist and the cultist behavior that they support by paying exorbitant tuition and taxes.
People do not make a connection between the average of $82,000 per annum (1994) salary paid to a tenured professor and their own expenditure. They remain unaware of the bizarre, cultist behavior and the lifetime expenditures in tuition and taxes to which they commit themselves. Therefore, they take no action and the corruption continues unabated.
The self-evaluative processes that Poster suggests, the attendant conspiracies of silence, and the mutual condonation of wrongdoing, form a basis for the corruption itself. Then, the granting of tenure seals the pact among the conspirators.
Such self-evaluative processes only give the appearance of propriety: they disclose nothing and perpetuate the problem. Must one overlook the abuse of a system by the few to give an appearance of propriety? Or, should one reveal what one knows in an endeavor to correct the inherent problem and give others the opportunity to avoid similar experiences?
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© Copyright 1994 by Paul Trummel |
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