Dear Chancellor Lombardi,
This Andrew Card fiasco is really beginning to get on my nerves. I've had to spend the last couple of weeks attending meetings and rallies, as well as signing petitions to try to convince you that your decision (rather, your recommendation to the Board of Trustees) to award a prominent war criminal an honorary degree was "wrong." I have schoolwork to do, I have a new baby son I should be spending time with, but instead I have to waste my time making a public case that you - as an intelligent and supposedly moral man - have made a very bad mistake in giving an honorary degree to a very bad man.
You have claimed that the administration should stand by its offer, because this is not a "political" decision. That is such a tremendous load of bull that it almost doesn't deserve comment. Neither I, nor do the majority of students, staff and faculty who are appalled by this University's offer, believe that giving an honorary degree to George W. Bush's right-hand man is anything but political. Card was the Chief of Staff for the Bush administration, one of the primary actors in the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), which sold the war and invasion of Iraq to the American people, and was implicitly involved in the manipulation of such evidence. As the "gatekeeper" to Bush, he certainly had a part to play in the criminally negligent response to Hurricane Katrina, as well as the reports from the intelligence agencies before 9/11.
We don't care if Mr. Card is credited with helping you appropriate some funding for UMass projects - we don't care if tomorrow he were to dig into his own personal bank account and give a billion dollars to UMass. Getting money for this cash-strapped school does not wash off the blood of hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of people from his hands. Furthermore, we should not prostitute ourselves and our dignity by bestowing degrees upon those who have clearly made no real contributions to academia.
But you have a long history of not listening to what people want - people who study, teach and work here. Two years ago, you rejected a majority of the recommendations of the Campus Commission on Diversity - after you had promised them you'd implement them all. Last year, you claimed that implementing the "Faculty 250 Plan" was your "number one" priority, yet you've cut the number of faculty to be hired through that plan in half and unilaterally funneled off the rest of the money into other projects. You've been complaining about the lack of money for this school since you've been here, but in the last two years you've increased the salaries of administrators - not student workers, staff nor faculty - by nearly 50 percent. And, despite your failures, and your cries of poverty, you took a $100,000 raise last fall, bringing your total salary to over $349,000 (more than twice as much as the governor's own $141,000 salary).
What is most striking to me over your tenure here in the last few years is the lack of any democratic process and any accountability. The SGA, GSS (Graduate Student Senate), GEO (graduate student union) and the MSP (the faculty union) have all passed motions (some unanimously) condemning both the process by which this award was given and the man to whom it is being awarded. Next week, the faculty, through the Faculty Senate, will very likely pass a similar motion. If the undergraduate students, the graduate students, the folks that work here, the faculty and even some administrators are vehemently opposed to Card being granted this honorary degree, what does it say about the people that run our school?
Instead of having a nice, pleasant commencement for graduate students, you and the Board of Trustees decided to embarrass this school by making it overtly political. No one, particularly those graduating students, wants to spend time and energy to demonstrate at what is supposed to be a day of congratulations and achievement. But you (and the Board of Trustees) are giving an award to a man who has been involved in some of the greatest crimes and travesties of our generation - most significantly the greatest crime of all: the international crime of aggression (illegal invasion).
I'm telling you that students and faculty are drawing the line. Tomorrow, an even greater crowd of students and faculty will gather at the ramp at Whitmore at 12:30 p.m., and we will again demonstrate our opposition to this dishonorable man being given the highest honor our University can offer.
We hope that the voices and actions of the people for whom this school exists resonate across this state, this country, and the world.
Jeff Napolitano can be reached at jjnapoli@lrrc.umass.edu.
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