Addendum to Diversity Post...

HOSTILE’ GEORGE WASHINGTON
The New York Post

Walter Kehowski, a math professor at Glendale Community College in
Arizona’s Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD), wishes
he’d never e-mailed his fellow employees Thanksgiving greetings last
November.

While reading a Web log, Kehowski found George Washington’s
“Thanksgiving Day Proclamation of 1789″ and decided to send it along to
the Maricopa community the day before Thanksgiving, 2006. Using an
e-mail address commonly used to send out announcements, Kehowski
e-mailed the text of the proclamation - and a link to the Web page on
which he’d found it . . . on Pat Buchanan’s site.

Within weeks, five employees filed harassment charges against Kehowski,
claiming his message was “hostile” and “derogatory” because the link
he’d included also led to Buchanan’s comments about immigration.

A holiday greeting containing a link to a blog, which readers can either
visit or simply ignore, doesn’t fit any definition of harassment. Yet,
instead of dismissing the bogus allegations, the MCCCD administration
ruled that Kehowski had violated the district’s Equal Employment
Opportunity policy and technology policies that ban e-mails that are
unsolicited or not work-related.

Yet in a single month (March 2007) individuals used the same listserv to
send e-mails ads on how to purchase goats for Ugandan orphans and
reminders on the health benefits of bananas - hardly work-related info.
MCCCD Chancellor Rufus Glasper put Kehowski on paid administrative leave
and asked the district’s Governing Board that he be dismissed. Kehowski
has since appealed the decision, with a hearing set for June 5.

Until then, a professor teeters on the edge of being fired, all because
he sent out a Thanksgiving greeting written by the first U.S. president.

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