Forwarded on behalf of Bill Lavender and as requested by Anny Ballardini.
 Please read and please contact the President and Provost of UNO to protest
this shocking treatment of Bill Lavender.

President Peter Fos,  [log in to unmask]
Provost Louis Paradis, [log in to unmask]

Marthe Reed

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Anny Ballardini <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 4:45 PM
Subject: Bill Lavender
To: [log in to unmask], Susan E Krantz <[log in to unmask]>, [log in to unmask],
[log in to unmask]


An open letter to
Fredrick Barton, Director of Creative Writing, [log in to unmask]
Susan Krantz, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts,  [log in to unmask]
University of New Orleans

Cc: President, Peter Fos
      Provost, Louis Paradise

From: Students of the Low Residency MFA Program

We are now in receipt of Rick Barton's communication to the UNO on-campus
MFA community notifying students that Bill Lavender's position has fallen
victim to the "draconian budget cuts" of the Jindal administration and
thanking him for his service at UNO. The message was forwarded to us by a
concerned on-campus student, for Bill Lavender's reputation is not limited
to the low res program. If you have not seen this email, please see it
pasted below this message.

While we can appreciate this, virtually the only recognition Bill has
received for his 15 years of selfless service to UNO, we will not stand by
and see his dismissal blamed on "budget cuts." You, Barton and Krantz, know
that his dismissal was plotted by you in advance; the "budget cuts" were
merely a convenient screen to hide your true motives.

This is proven by several facts, the most damning of which is the fact the
Barton was actually in San Miguel de Allende at the time Bill's dismissal
was announced, planning to move the study-abroad program there. It is
obvious, then, that Bill's dismissal was a pre-ordained fact, that Barton
was assuming he would no longer be a part of the program at the time he
bought his tickets. Rick Barton, would you like to produce the receipt that
shows the date of purchase of your tickets?

The dishonesty of blaming this unconscionable take-over on budget cuts by
the Jindal administration, while cast as a polite, white lie, perhaps even
as a kind gesture to spare Bill's feelings and ease the enormous emotional
loss that this must be for him, it is in fact the lowest form of
capitulation. The Jindal administration, and the national cartel of
corporations from which he draws his support and his policy, have set their
sights on nothing less than the destruction of public education. When you
lie and blame his dismissal on "budget cuts" you are in fact supporting
this policy, acting as Jindal's emissaries on campus, plotting the
destruction of the very thing you purport to save.

Everyone, of course, in privileged America and Europe, plays the role of
assassin's assistant to one degree or another. We shop at Wal-Mart; we pay
our bills to AT&T; our retirement funds are all invested in the very
corporations which, through ALEC and the other conservative think tanks,
are now writing education policy for conservative politicians. But today we
ask you to give the devil his due, to pull down your masks and tell the
truth.
So now, right now, you two, for the record, in front of all the writing
students at UNO, CWW and low res alike, in front of these alumni, in front
of all these faculty at UNO and all the visiting faculty who have taught
online and in the abroad programs Bill led, faculty at universities all
over the US and Europe, in front of your Provost, President, and Governor,
in front of all the authors Bill published at UNO Press, writers and poets
from America, Italy, Japan, Spain, Ecuador, Zimbabwe, Brazil, England,
France, Algeria, Venezuela, in front, too, of posterity, those who will
come after us seeking truth the way we did when we first came to the
university, having faith that it would be found, in front of all those who
will look back at you and know that you held the keys to knowledge, to
truth, in your time, in front, in short, of the whole world, please tell us
why, after fifteen years of service during which Bill Lavender created and
gave to UNO a degree program of national prominence and high profitability,
generating millions of dollars in tuition that would not have been there
otherwise, and built a press of international distinction that is now in
the unheard-of position of being self-supporting, he has been dismissed
with less notice than is normally afforded to a janitor, and four
professors who were hired less than a year ago have been retained.


-- 
Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.lulu.com/content/5806078
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
star!
Friedrich Nietzsche

« Stulta est clementia, cum tot ubique
vatibus occurras, periturae parcere chartae »
Giovenale




-- 
Marthe Reed
Director of Creative Writing
Assistant Professor
English Department
UL Lafayette
337-482-5503
[log in to unmask]

http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~mxr5675/home.html

http://www.blackradishbooks.org/Reed.html
_____________________________________
*
Poetry is made in a bed like love*
*Its rumpled sheets are the dawn of things*
*Poetry is made in the woods*

--Andre Breton, "On the road to San Romano"