St. Mary's Law Grad Displeased with Changes to His Letter to Editor on professors article

Fellow 2008 St. Mary's law graduate Jason Petty isn't too thrilled with the changes to his letter to the editor that the Express-News ran today. Jason was responding to the E-N's story on St. Mary's law students protesting the dismissal of two law professors. Here's his response when I asked him what happened:

Mack,

Forgive my fantastical ego trip. Below is the original letter I emailed to the Express-News in response to the April 25th report on the student protest:

Dear Editors, I am a very recent St. Mary's Law alumnus. (Disclosure: I passed the bar, got a legal job, and love St. Mary's.) Your decision to frame the article "Students protest 2 St. Mary's law profs [sic] terminations" (Apr. 25, Metro p.3) as an expose on race and sex discrimination at St. Mary's confused me. Why does this paper insist on giving credit to a few students' claims of discrimination when none of the terminated professors/instructors/ administrators are making those claims themselves? There are only two possible outcomes of this publication decision on your part: one, a venerable San Antonio institution has its reputation lowered because it cannot defend itself against the accusations of students who are unable to distinguish correlation and causation; or two, these women, a few of whom I count among good friends, have their professional reputations tarnished because the university is forced to justify its decision to terminate them by making statements like "Not all minorities, even in a national context of pervasive if somewhat unconscious racism and sexism, are qualified.”

Not well done at all, Express-News. St. Mary, pray for us.

Jason C. Petty, J.D., St. Mary's, 2008

Here is what they put on their website:

A hit on St. Mary's

I'm a recent St. Mary's Law School alumnus. I was confused by your decision to frame your April 25 report, “St. Mary's students protest 2 law professor terminations,” as an exposé on race and sex discrimination there.

Why did the newspaper give credence to a few students' claims of discrimination when neither of the terminated professors/instructors/ administrators made such claims themselves?

Two possible reasons:

• A venerable law school has its reputation lowered because it cannot defend itself against accusations by students who are unable to distinguish correlation and causation, or;

• These women, a few of whom I count among good friends, have their professional reputations tarnished because the university is forced to justify its decision to terminate them.

Not well done at all, Express-News. St. Mary, pray for us.

- Jason C. Petty, J.D., Alexandria, La.

My original beef, motivated by my love of the school, is that the article doesn't give any information about credible allegations of sex or gender discrimination by St. Mary's against the professors themselves. All the article gives us is the students' suggestive protest. Yet at most all we have is a throwaway argument of retaliation for defense of other minorities in the EEOC complaint made by the beloved Instructor Piatt. Is Professor George alleging actual discrimination, or just saying that she, personally, felt uncomfortable at St. Mary's? We don't know. That's all the article gives us. In other words, where's the discrimination?

My new, entirely personal beef is that the change in my letter switches "two possible outcomes" of the report to "two possible reasons" for it, which would have me be some sort of crystal-ball wielding apologist for the reporter's insinuations. Are
cause and effect wholly obliterated in our post-metaphysical world? And then they don't change the grammatical construct of the two items they bullet, which would make sense if I were providing hypothetical effects rather than the causes they suggest. That just makes me look dumb and, I believe, undercuts any argument I might have. (Sort of like the comment box below the online version of the article, where one commenter self-identified as a "Steller Law Student.")

I loathed that April 25th report: no one comes out a winner. The school looks bad and the professors look bad.

jcp

I know what Jason means about the online comments to that article. I look at some of the spelling and grammar mistakes from supposedly educated people--not to mention the attitudes of some who posted--and I wince.

Disclosure: Jason and I worked on the St. Mary's Law Journal during our second year of law school.