Letter to the editor:<\/p>\n
Tom Jones\u2019 letter to the editor on April 3rd<\/sup> exemplifies the willful ignorance and even thuggish attitude of those who seek to protect the TTU administration in the wake of the TTU\/Fitzgerald Glider Kit (FGK) research scandal and the ensuing investigation.\u00a0 Jones, the Chairman of TTU\u2019s governing Board of Trustees, singles out for condemnation and threats those TTU faculty who have \u2018passed judgment\u2019 on the widely criticized research report, suggesting that their opinions are flawed since they have \u2018no access\u2019 to the full report.\u00a0 In this regard, Jones walks in lock step with TTU President Phil Oldham who has used the fact that Fitzgerald owns the research and has thus far failed to disclose the entire \u2018report\u2019 as a tiny, insufficient fig leaf to attempt to hide what is clearly administrative indiscretion.\u00a0 Moreover, Jones walks in lock step with FGK\u2019s thuggish legal maneuvers when Jones asserts that faculty may have \u2018violated policy\u2019 by critiquing the research.<\/p>\n Whatever critiques of the TTU\/Fitzgerald research that TTU faculty and others such as myself have made are based entirely on what IS KNOWN and is part of an expanding public record; a record that was developed by experts in environmental testing and law and based on the existing report and follow up interviews with the non-credentialed TTU administrator\u2014Associate Vice President Tom Brewer–who carried out the research and wrote the now infamous report.\u00a0\u00a0 The public record cited by faculty is clear, unambiguous, and uniformly scathing in its account of the failings of the TTU research.\u00a0 In addition, the two TTU administrators who are directly involved in this mess\u2014Brewer and Vice President Bharat Soni–have already incriminated themselves in public statements made before the TTU Faculty Senate wherein they appeared to implicate themselves in a scheme of procedural malfeasance.<\/p>\n Both Jones and Oldham need to ask: if FGK \u2018owns\u2019 additional, non-disclosed data that would refute the current criticism of the existing report, why have they not released it?\u00a0 The fact that FGK has not released further data speaks volumes and tells us with near certainty that there is nothing more to learn that will reverse the conclusions already drawn. \u00a0\u00a0Considering all this, Jones\u2019 dismissals of, and threats toward, those speaking up about this scandal smack of, again, willful ignorance and thuggishness and suggest that the leadership of TTU\u2019s governing Board is failing miserably in its oversight role.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jon Jonakin, Emeritus Professor of Economics, TTU<\/p>\n 1345 Inglewood Drive, Cookeville<\/p>\n 526-3399<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Letter to the editor: Tom Jones\u2019 letter to the editor on April 3rd exemplifies the willful ignorance and even thuggish attitude of those who seek to protect the TTU administration in the wake of the TTU\/Fitzgerald Glider Kit (FGK) research scandal and the ensuing investigation.\u00a0 Jones, the Chairman of TTU\u2019s governing Board of Trustees, singles … Continue reading Jon Jonakin, letter to the editor (H-C), April 6<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/aaup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/aaup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/aaup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/aaup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/aaup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/aaup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/aaup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions\/152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/aaup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/aaup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.tntech.edu\/aaup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}