Sunday, February 15, 2009

Anti-Obama E-Mail Draws a Reprimand in Pennsylvania

Apparently it is perfectly fine to use a work computer at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) for transmitting a racist e-mail that mocks President Barack Obama and other prominent Democrats.

But officials in Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, take a dim view of such activity.

Jeri Minnick-Dukes, an administrative secretary in the police department in Mifflin County, received a written reprimand for sending the e-mail "Night Befo Crizzmus" to a co-worker.

The reprimand is expected to be the only punishment in the Pennsylvania case. But not everyone is happy about that. Bernard Chapman, an African-American who used to work as a police trooper in Pennsylvania, said Minnick-Dukes should lose her job.

“To only place a letter of reprimand in her file is not sufficient. To demean the President-elect of the United States solely because he is African-American is an egregious violation of protocol here,” Chapman said.

In the UAB case, financial associate Ashla Jana' Campbell used state-owned equipment to send the same poem. UAB president Carol Garrison has failed to respond to interview requests, and it remains unclear if Campbell has received any discipline at all.

A source told Legal Schnauzer that UAB officials have known that Campbell sent the racist e-mail since early January.

I have to give the folks in Pennsylvania credit. They have been upfront about the issue, while UAB leaders have gone into hiding.

Interesting that a small community in Pennsylvania can react to a problem with honesty and openness while leaders at major public university stick their heads in a hole.

Of course, UAB officials don't want to touch this subject because they know they fired an employee, me, simply for expressing progressive views--on my own time. Meanwhile, they have employees actually violating university policy by sending racist and homophobic messages on state-owned equipment, and nothing much happens to them.

No wonder UAB officials go into hiding when such issues surface.

2 comments:

Matt Osborne said...

Southern culture has a small-town mindset at its core. In the small, southern town, social order is maintained through elaborate fictions. To expose any one fiction is to threaten the entire social order. Thus, the critic -- no matter how correct their criticism -- is the one held responsible for any corporate embarrassment. I will guarantee that the person responsible for unmasking the emailer will be the one to suffer most in the exchange.

Anonymous said...

or is this a ploy/conspiracy to deter a wistelbower in a un related senario execteptfor the fact that bushco has damaged many the average joe aborhantly