ARRESTED SIX TIMES, NINE CHARGES, ALL DISMISSED
Arrested in retaliation for protesting administration policies.
The official account, reported in the local papers, is that I was removed from my teaching post in October 2015, placed on medical leave, and sent home by the Provost, where I was ordered not to contact anyone at the university. According to this story, I was quite unhappy and resentful at not being allowed to teach. Indeed, the bitterness became so bad that it led to a complete transformation in my personality (and also made clear that I no longer suffered from depression, if anyone thought I had not recovered from it, because when I was depressed, I did not write anyone any emails).
According to press accounts, my anger in early 2016 and again in early 2017 caused me to send criminally threatening emails for which I was arrested. I was ultimately arrested six times and served 91 days in jail for those arrests, all of it simply waiting for bond. Press accounts were heavily shaped by, and in the case of the Virginia Gazette, written by, the Office of University Counsel at W&M. After my Jan 13, 2017 arrest, one reporter wrote that I had been arrested that night for sending "dozens and dozens of vulgar and obscene emails berating College officials." That claim and the exact line--complete with the term "berating"--was multiplied in subsequent articles. In April, "berating" made it into a headline that began like this:
W&M Professor Charged with Harassment by Computer and 'Berating' Officials...
All nine charges were tossed in the trash. Empty. But very useful, as observers are about to find out. ("Sweden email" analysis coming soon.)
This incredible personal transformation started less than four months after
I finished my year as President of the Faculty Assembly (2014-2015).
I had just taken responsibility for two new major projects on campus, which were added to a third major project I had taken on while FA president:
According to press accounts, my anger in early 2016 and again in early 2017 caused me to send criminally threatening emails for which I was arrested. I was ultimately arrested six times and served 91 days in jail for those arrests, all of it simply waiting for bond. Press accounts were heavily shaped by, and in the case of the Virginia Gazette, written by, the Office of University Counsel at W&M. After my Jan 13, 2017 arrest, one reporter wrote that I had been arrested that night for sending "dozens and dozens of vulgar and obscene emails berating College officials." That claim and the exact line--complete with the term "berating"--was multiplied in subsequent articles. In April, "berating" made it into a headline that began like this:
W&M Professor Charged with Harassment by Computer and 'Berating' Officials...
All nine charges were tossed in the trash. Empty. But very useful, as observers are about to find out. ("Sweden email" analysis coming soon.)
This incredible personal transformation started less than four months after
I finished my year as President of the Faculty Assembly (2014-2015).
I had just taken responsibility for two new major projects on campus, which were added to a third major project I had taken on while FA president:
- While FA president, with the approval of Provost Michael Halleran, I had informally assumed the leading faculty role in the College’s $1 billion Advancement campaign, which meant making sure the VP for Advancement had adequate faculty support;
- In September 2015, with the approval of VP Student Affairs Ginger Ambler, I launched the first faculty-led student mental health initiative in the United States, thus informally taking on the leading faculty role in student mental health issues on campus, and doing so in a way that would carry out the Board of Visitors’ April 2015 promise to students to “continue the conversation” about these issues;
- On October 6, 2015, I accepted what is formally the leading faculty role in the College’s strategic planning process, agreeing at the Provost’s request to serve as one of the two subcommittee chairs on the university’s Planning Steering Committee.
"THE SAME MAN, I ASSURE YOU."
