Yesterday I posted a "counseling" letter sent by Macomb Community College Provost Rosa Bellanca to John Bonnell, the English professor MCC administrators love to hate--or at least to punish. In that letter, Bellanca "counseled" Bonnell about the inappropriateness of his pedagogical ways, citing out of context words and anecdotes students allege he has uttered in class as examples of how he has used his classroom to create a hostile environment for women. Though Bellanca failed to note--or, it seems, to ascertain--the context in which Bonnell's graphic language and explicit anecdotage occurred, she argues that none of it was "germane" to course content, and that therefore Bonnell is in violation of both his contractual duties as a teacher and the school's policy on the use of profane language in the classroom. There was a certain creepy brilliance to it: asserting that the offending usages were not germane by ignoring the context that would enable their germanity, or lack thereof, to be judged, Bellanca produced on paper the effect of shocking irrelevance that she argues Bonnell created in class. The portrait of Bonnell that emerged was one of a dirty old man who is far more interested in inflicting his sexual fantasies on students than he is in teaching, one who has decided that his greatest service to his students is not to teach them to read carefully, think critically, and write clearly, but to act as their self-appointed sexual shock therapist.

I've gotten email from some readers who accept this portrait at face value, and wonder why I would ever defend someone like Bonnell (implicit in this line of questioning is the assumption that as a woman, I should be more alive to the damage words can do--as Bellanca's letter observes, an unspecified but very small number of students have claimed that Bonnell's X-rated asides made them feel "sexually violated" and "verbally raped"). But the simple fact is that I don't buy this portrait of Bonnell. I think he is a teacher, not a pervert. I think it is up to him to decide what vocabulary and what style work best for him and his students. And I think it is up to Bonnell's students to make intelligent, mature decisions about whether, and on what terms, they choose to take his courses: if they truly cannot deal with him, they can take another course; if they want to be in the course but they find Bonnell's language a bit too racy, they should take their concerns to him, not file harassment claims as a cowardly first line of protest. The vast majority of Bonnell's students appreciate his intellect and his teaching technique; some even say they feel more respected by him than by many of their other professors at MCC (you can read some testimonials here, and more at the bottom of this page). Bonnell's response to Bellanca's letter gives some indication of why that would be. In both tone and content, it is a powerful refutation of Bellanca's charges and of her picture of Bonnell as an irresponsible and unwell man who lacks judgement and who has failed miserably to do his job. I reprint it here in full:

TO: Rose B. Bellanca

FROM: John Bonnell

DATE: January 3, 2002

RE: Your "Counseling Memorandum" of Dec. 14, 2001

Once again, for the record, I must respond to your various allegations and assumptions by offering appropriate denials and assertions of actual fact.

You claim that "[s]tudents report" that I do not use "these words (you cite a list of words that you, and apparently some students, regard as "profane, vulgar or obscene;" but you do not state the basis for your belief or the students' apparent belief) in an effort to explain a concept being portrayed in an assigned text .Ö" But this is false. All language used by me in a classroom fits the sense limned in Swank v. Smart (7th Cir. 1990): "[t]he purpose of the free-speech clause . . . is to protect the market in ideas, broadly understood as the public expression of ideas, narratives, concepts, imagery, opinions--scientific, political, aesthetic--to an audience whom the speaker seeks to inform, edify, or entertain." This ruling, as Cohen v. California (S.Ct. 1970) before it, recognizes the necessity of protecting "cultural expression" in a world where people have differing values and opinions, in a world where "one man's vulgarity may be another man's lyric." Neither the government, nor any governmental agency, should be in the business of coercing conformity to its notions of orthodoxy, no matter how exigent the squeamishness or the prudishness of some governmental agents. Moreover, the list of proscribed words which you advance grows with your every recitation. No speaker, no teacher, can guess what new entries you will devise, nor be certain of what punishments you will arrange for newly discovered or invented infractions. (I note with satisfaction that you have repented driving the word "violence" from this campus, at least as it was used by three English teachers in the title of an annual conference which they sponsored. Perhaps you will also think better of freighting other terms with subjective onus, lyrical terms you now style "profane, vulgar or obscene.")

With regard to the specific examples of "Smuckers" and "Busch," your citation is erroneous as to material fact, and wholly distorted as to the context in which these names were broached. The same applies to the absurd allegation that I yelled "fuck." The College is altogether too eager to embrace - as factual - numerous untested, unchallenged defamations of my character and my speech or conduct. At the same time, the College religiously ignores the scores of letters and testimonials offered by concerned students, students who understand that censoring a professor constitutes an assault on their rights as auditors. (I note, in passing, that the College, in its various pronouncements, briefs, and warnings, has used the words "pussy" and "cunt" far more often than I have in my entire career. Some subtle dynamic must be at work here. If these words were "regular" in my presentation, they doubtless would have been included in some actual student's complaint made to the College. Such is not the case.)

The second paragraph of page 2 is rife with innuendo and misleading characterization. I have said that the entire English language is potentially available for utilization in my classes, as I would hope it would be in any English teacher's class. When I am attempting to communicate, which is the case in all my classes when I speak or write on the chalkboard, every word that I emit is germane and fits the context, otherwise it would not occur to me to utter it. Your exceptional phrase: "regardless of the context in which the word is used" has no meaning, unless you are referring to some deliberate prevarication you imagine I stoop to. That is, if a student asked me my name and I said "I am John Luther;" or if a student asked who wrote a given text and I wrote "James Joyce" on the board when I knew it was D. H. Lawrence, I would be using words and names inappropriate to a classroom context, where the truth is presumed and I have a duty to speak it. If you have some other reservation(s) as to context, you have yet to make it (them) clear.

Your assertion further on that my "use of vulgar words is appropriate because it prevents [me] from being boring" is a wholly new attribution, as are the items which follow. I have never said that "vulgar language" reflects who I am; that "vulgar language" is acceptable for perverts in residence (if any such there could possibly be); that every student should literally have one "raunchy" English teacher (the recognition of irony is the mark of intelligence; ditto for hyperbole); or that "there are no boundaries concerning what may be discussed in class"--of course there are. Finally, the concluding sentence of this second paragraph is singularly false and slanderous. I am amazed that you printed it.

Your concluding paragraph on page 2 and all the particulars which fill page 3 are baseless or grievously distorted as to material fact; they are also baseless or grievously distorted as to relevant context. I am surprised that you would predicate a process as serious as this on "material" so untested, so dubious, as that.

The "note" attributed to me in the first paragraph on page 4 is distorted and false.

As for the second paragraph on page 4, my demeanor within and outside of class has ever evinced the values recommended by the AAUP. If there is any subversion of that venerable organization's principles at large on our campus, it must be the College's relentless attack on that professional entity's raison d'etre. That is, the AAUP's chief historical contribution has been the conception, formulation, and advancement of "academic freedom" as applied to the professoriate. Yet, this College has vigorously argued that such "freedom" is misbegotten, and ought be aborted forthwith. The organization, then, would find your appeal to their authority as either ironic or hypocritical, were they to learn of it.

Further, on page 4, paragraph 3, it is inaccurate to say that I reported that I "once traumatized a student so severely that she bit her hand hard enough to draw blood." Whatever trauma the student may have suffered cannot "reasonably" be attributed to anything I said in her presence--at least not in a society that truly believes in free speech. Your presumptions and conclusions fit nicely with other college agents who have punished professors who uttered "niggardly" (in a Chaucer class in Wisconsin) or "pusillanimous" (in a political science class in New Jersey). The propensity to take offense, or to suffer the rigors of logophobia, must defer to the ascendancy of vigorous free speech, lest we fall in step with, say, Talibandits who know how to inflict real harm in pursuit of ideal conformity.

The rest of this paragraph (# 3) clashes mightily with the tradition of "academic freedom" and with the Collective Bargaining Agreement, Article V. A. 1.--"The teacher shall be entitled to freedom of discussion within the classroom on all matters which he considers relevant to the subject matter under discussion." Your unilateral arrogation of whatever you deem qualifies as a "sensitive subject" may not meet with the same receptivity that the MCCFO leadership accorded, in 1999, your notions of "vulgarity." Moreover, as I pointed out in Virginia, Shakespeare is regarded as the greatest, the most insightful, psychologist who ever lived. According to your dangerous innovation, only trained psychologists should be deemed competent to comment on Shakespeare, on his "sensitive" and therefore "dangerous" formulations, such as: "Th'expense of spirit in a waste of shame is lust in action," or: "The strongest oaths are straw to the fire I' the blood."

Moving on to page 4's final paragraph, yo misrepresent my behavior and attitude once again when you ascribe some "exclusionary approach" to me, or state that I "force" students to drop from my classes. The traditional consideration afforded students--permitting them to drop or add courses according to their interests or desires--is one you may alter or abolish at any time, as that is properly part of the College's "academic freedom." (Students drop classes for many reasons, and among such students are the 21 out of 24 who dropped a class I was scheduled to teach this past autumn. That is more than drop out of my aggregate classes in any two year span. I have not heard that you have instituted an investigation of such wholesale disaffection, which is particularly remarkable as the class in question is sophomore level, and thus terminal for many students.) It is dishonest and defamatory to assert that I have an "exclusionary approach," that I "harm" students, that I prefer the approach "of forcing students out of" my classes. Unless you institute inquiries of every instance of any student's dropping any class,your singling me out is at once hostile and discriminatory.

The argument on page 5 is contorted and unsupportable. You claim that language you regard as "vulgar" creates a "hostile environment" for students "even if the speech is not targeted at any one person or does not directly refer to the individual's protected characteristic." You then appeal to the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Association of University Professors as support for your contention, but neither of these organizations regard mere speech--speech not clearly intended to insult, demean, berate or humiliate--as constitutive of hostility. You then cite the Sixth Circuit's ruling (Bonnell v. Lorenzo, 2001) as though it warrants your conclusion, but you miss the import of such courtly terms as "sexually harass" (at no time a credible feature of Bonnell versus MCC) or "racially or sexually derogatory epithets." (There has never been any charge against me that I used racial or sexual "epithets," or that I "abuse" students in any except the College's imaginary sense.) It is amazing, no less, that an English professor continues to be harassed by persons who do such violence to the native language.

Under the rubric "Discouragement of Complaints" (page 6), the so-called "information" that the College believes it has received, asserting that I "actively discourage students from complaining about" my classroom speech (miscalled "behavior" by the College) is distorted and false. This unsupported allegation was a slander when first proffered in 1998 and it remains so to this day. All of the accusations in the first three paragraphs of page 6, in fact, are distortions or falsehoods. The allegations of some illusionary "fuck it" attitude attributed to me are peculiarly fanciful and vicious. And, had I realized in 1990 (?) how seriously committed the College is to censorship, how vigorously it would shield and vet novice censors, I would not have shared an informal note with an associate Dean wherein I facetiously suggested that he tell inchoate censors, when all appeals to reason had failed, to "kiss" his "ass." (Of course, on analogy with the current Johnny Morton-Jay Leno contretemps, I meant "kiss" his "donkey." But I never for a moment believed Dean David Feighan would bring his "donkey" to the campus and urge some student to "kiss" it. Associate Deans do not normally take direction from faculty, as far as I know.)

As for my grading policy, I am not aware that the College denies students the flexibility of accelerating their performance, both to demonstrate proficiency and to garner an appropriate grade. The College, after all, offers two-week, six-week, and eight-week "compressions" of courses in an apparent acknowledgment that some students, indeed, can intensify their academic function. My grading practices, known by the College for over thirty years, merely incorporates this option for students who are capable. (The "report" that my grading policy is "lenient" is another bit of amorphous subjectivity. I have had "reports" that are precisely opposed. Moreover, I do not know how the College reconciles the contradictory "reports" that, on the one hand, I hope to entice students with leniency just so that I can then smash them with a "fuck it" mauling. Such schizoid behavior could scarcely flourish or go undetected for thirty weeks, much less a third of a century.)

As for earning a "passing grade without ever submitting written work"--no student in my entire career has earned a "C" grade or higher in that fashion. Possibly as many as two students (out of approximately four thousand, over the past dozen years) were granted a "D" for extraordinary performance with regard to class attendance and classroom participation. I had no compelling reason to regard these very rare anomalies as inducement to revise my highly progressive and fair grading practices. However, if the College continues to be exercised by this concern, a slight adjustment can close off even this miniscule variance.