To My Colleagues at Santa Rosa Junior College:

I've done my hypothetical "kill the president" email assignment for quite some time. Probably over 1,000 students have been involved over the years with no problem or confusion about content or context. So why now?

The short answer is because of the mounting stress and tension our country is under. Who or what caused this stress and who or what benefits is beside the point of this short essay. In any case, one young student reacted in fear; the adult student acted in defiance.

The longer answer is because of the handling of this by our college administration, the FBI's agent and the Secret Service. Add to that the media's own agenda and the Press Democrat, subsidiary of the New York Times and what do you get?......a serious farce.

One student of mine, (a fourteen-year-old as it turns out), told his parents about my assignment and they called the FBI. The FBI did a threat assessment through the school's detective (yes, we have a school detective) and the matter was dropped. The second problem came up two days later when I learned of an actual email sent to a local Congressman.

But here's the problem and I believe "the lesson":

The Monday of the first incident, I told Doug Garrison, Dean of the Petaluma Campus, that I was not in an adversarial role with administration and that I wanted to "work with them". I also told him that I wanted to take this to the media, and asked him to talk to his fellow administrators as to their feelings and advice about this. I held off; I was the team player. Two days later I'm interviewed by the Secret Service and have a reporter and camera in my face five minutes before class. Three hours before going on CNN, I read in the Press Democrat Dr. Agrella's condemnation of me. At no time did he talk to me; at no time did the Administration coordinate with me. In short, I was betrayed and scapegoated.

Something happened in those crucial two days between Doug Garrison's handling of this incident and Dr. Agrella's intervention. You should all know that it was Dr. Agrella's office who called in the media. Their defense is that the media knew anyway. That's not good enough. Agrella had control over the timing and it was the Press Democrat who showed up first. Santa Rosa Junior College had the opportunity to get ahead of this and plant the spin they wanted. Instead, it's blown up in everyone's face. And I blame this squarely on Dr. Agrella and his attack-mode predisposition.

They could have worked with me. At the very least we could have come to some agreement and coordinated our messages. They could have given me some advice on handling the media. I was a babe in the woods and I mostly squandered my opportunity in the major media to spin a message of importance to everyone. But they didn't, or more specifically Agrella didn't. Instead, he placed me in a defensive position. Then the media gave me a "bully pulpit" and I took it. Now I know that many of you think in terms of hierarchical social and political structures, but that's not really how life works in the long run. My friends, the actions of a lowly adjunct brought the campus to national attention and not in a good way. It didn't have to happen this way. Don't you see that we are all ultimately in the same boat?

And for those of you who think this is about protecting the safety of the real President: If tracking the words "kill the president" is the issue, didn't the Secret Service just make their job harder by publicizing this? Check the web. "Kill the president" is all over the place. There's even a KillthePresident.org. This illustrates again the law of unintended consequences and "blow back".

There are more lessons here of course. I stumbled into this, but it's turning out to be a fascinating and meaty social science event.


Cordially,

Michael Ballou
Political Science Instructor

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