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_______________HELLO OPRAH, GOOD-BYE CONSTITUTION BY LORI LEIBOVICH (12/04/98)
	The most ridiculous thing about bringing convicted perjurers in to testify was there was absolutely no parallel to the president's case. The perjurers were convicted of lying under oath about having sex with the people they were on trial for having sex with. They were not convicted of lying about extramarital affairs having nothing to do with the crime of which they were accused. I believe if their cases actually did parallel the president's, then their convictions should be overturned and their cases thrown out. Extramarital dalliance and sexual harassment are apples and oranges. Therefore, much as I would like to see more sexual harassers convicted, the reality is that we cannot allow extramarital affairs with consenting adults as evidence in sexual harassment trials. In this light, the perjury charge against the president lacks the standard of being material to the case, and should have been thrown out long ago. -- Maggie Bryan
_______________HELL NO! WE WON'T GRADE! BY SEAN McMEEKIN (11/30/98)
	Sean McMeekin used my name and words without my consent or knowledge. The meeting between graduate students in UC-Berkeley's History Department and Chancellor Berdahl, described by McMeekin, was not public. It was not open to the press. It was not a rally, a conference or any other kind of public event. While McMeekin was entitled to attend this meeting as a graduate student in our department, he did not announce then or at any other time that he was writing an article which would draw heavily on the words of those participating. I am not a public figure. While I am a member of the Association of Graduate Student Employees (AGSE), I am not nor have I ever been an organizer, executive or spokesperson for the union. My comments were made to what I believed to be a private gathering of my colleagues. Had McMeekin approached me after the meeting, explained his intentions, and asked for an interview, I would have cooperated readily in the interests of presenting an important and complicated issue to a wider audience. My objection thus is not the specific quotations themselves. Rather, it is to McMeekin's disregard of professional journalistic and academic ethics. Quoting people without their knowledge or permission suggests that McMeekin has an underdeveloped sense of his journalistic responsibility to provide editors and readers with reliable, clear information. Moreover, the unauthorized use of my name and words, and the publication of what everyone else present understood to be off-the-record, unofficial statements, constitute a violation of the collegiality, trust and mutual respect that are essential to the functioning of an academic community. McMeekin has the right to hold, and publish, any opinions he possesses on the subjects of the current strike, AGSE, graduate student unionization or anything else under the sun. However, he has no right to use the names and words of private individuals without their permission. He has no right to publicize his colleagues' conversation without first ensuring that all present understand that their statements may become grist for the journalist's mill. As McMeekin himself pointed out, these are difficult days for academic job seekers. I admire his initiative in building the foundation for an alternative career, but I wish that he had not done so by exploiting the trust of his fellow graduate students. -- Monica Rico Ph.D. candidate Department of History, UC-Berkeley - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Sean McMeekin responds: I have spoken to Monica Rico in private about her complaint, and expressed regret that her name was used without her permission. I quoted her simply because she offered her name at the Berdahl meeting and expressed, very succinctly, the views of a number of her colleagues about TAs' need for collective bargaining recognition. I did not ask Rico for an interview, because she had already expressed herself clearly, and there seemed no need for clarification. Had I known she would object to her name being used in this way, I would certainly have consulted her for permission, or quoted without attribution. No harm was intended, and I have apologized to her personally for any emotional distress the attributions may have caused. I find it puzzling, however, that Rico has no objections to the "specific quotations themselves" and that she would gladly have "cooperated readily in the interests of presenting an important and complicated issue to a wider audience" had I asked to interview her. What, then, is the problem? Either way, her name would have appeared in print, in all probability in attribution to the same, or very similar, quotes. If she felt, on the other hand, that my depiction of her own and AGSE's views did not in fact do justice to them, or that my description of what took place at the Berdahl meeting was inaccurate or misleading, then surely she could have set the record straight in her letter, but she has declined to do so. I disagree, moreover, with the premise of her letter about the exclusively "private" nature of the meeting in question. While it is true that neither Rico nor her colleagues are "public figures," it is also true that the chance to meet with Berdahl was openly advertised and promoted by AGSE members as a chance for Berkeley's history grads to speak for all the graduate student employees of the University of California in their drive for recognition as a public employee union. The history grads' e-mail list is owned by a public university, and is often used as a public forum, as when AGSE uses it to recruit new public employee members and to broadcast AGSE's very public message. When AGSE speaks, it speaks publicly, and I fail to believe that most union members are as averse to publicity of AGSE's stated views as Monica Rico. Had my article presented a glowing endorsement of the strike and its aims, I have little doubt it would have been proudly excerpted and placed alongside the other favorable news clippings on AGSE's very public Web site. As to Rico's allegation that I have violated the "collegiality, trust and mutual respect" of an academic community, I understand her to mean that graduate students might be more wary of speaking up at various meetings if they knew that their remarks could become part of the public record. In response, I can only say that education, especially at a publicly funded university, is a public trust, and those who teach there, or attempt to unionize teachers, are engaging in very public business. If my article has made some graduate students more thoughtfully circumspect in expressing their views about this public trust, if some graduate union members have second thoughts before speaking in the name of all graduate students, with or without consulting them, well, I cannot apologize for that. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Although I agree with Sean McMeekin on most counts, I found his description that TAs (grad students) are a "luxury" to be a little confusing. This may be the case in the "social" sciences (although I have my doubts), but research in the so-called "hard" sciences (chemistry, physics and biology) would be next to impossible without grad students. With the increasing requirements for full faculty to "chase money" (whether government or corporate), accomplish administrative tasks that increase as the number of full-time faculty decreases and the usual teaching requirements, there is little (or no) time left for "at the bench" research. Most labs (in biology) would require at least two or three grad students, while larger labs (with larger grants) would require more, along with technicians and/or post-docs. I highly doubt that natural science faculty within a university would see a drop in grad student enrollment as "cost-saving," but rather as the end of their research projects. -- Bruce R. Wolff, Ph.D. Chief Technician, Department of Biology Wilfrid Laurier University Waterloo, Ontario SALON | Dec. 9, 1998

R E C E N T L Y+| SPIN SISTERS BY JANELLE BROWN

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