Today’s News-Gazette¹ has an inter­est­ing arti­cle on Chan­cel­lor Wise’s refusal to have UIUC meet with the City of Urbana to dis­cuss UIUC’s part­ner­ships with Carle and how those part­ner­ships affect Carle’s law­suit with the State of Illi­nois and Urbana over Carle’s taxes.

So here’s the Gazette on the meet­ing of the Urbana mayor Lau­rel Pruss­ing with Wise to dis­cuss larger talks:

Pruss­ing met Fri­day with Chan­cel­lor Phyl­lis Wise and invited the UI to co-host a com­mu­nity forum on Carle, which is embroiled in a bat­tle with the city over tax exemp­tions. The chan­cel­lor declined.

“We appre­ci­ate Urbana’s sit­u­a­tion, but this dis­cus­sion should be led by Urbana, not the uni­ver­sity,” Wise said Mon­day through a spokeswoman.

Hmmm, how odd, it sounded as if UIUC wasn’t being asked to lead, sim­ply to com­mit to join­ing in a dis­cus­sion.  Again quot­ing from the Gazette article:

Pruss­ing sought the meet­ing with Wise, argu­ing that the impact of the tax­a­tion issue and ris­ing health insur­ance costs in the com­mu­nity go beyond Urbana’s bor­ders, affect­ing the uni­ver­sity, every local busi­ness and social ser­vice agen­cies. They also tie in to dis­cus­sions Wise con­vened two years ago about “micro-urban trans­for­ma­tional lead­er­ship” to improve the community’s future, she said.

Pruss­ing said she wasn’t sur­prised by Wise’s response.

“I’m not offended,” Pruss­ing said. “She’s got other things to deal with.”

The UI and Carle are part­ner­ing on a pro­posal to build a new engineering-based med­ical school in Urbana, with Carle pledg­ing $100 mil­lion toward the project.

 

 1. How could Chan­cel­lor Wise refuse Urbana’s offer of “Civil Dis­course” at its best?

Ms. Wise’s declin­ing the Urbana offer hardly seems an exam­ple of what the she seems to hold near and dear: “civil dis­course.”  So here’s an excerpt from Ms. Wise’s blog of 8–14-14 on the Salaita Affair:

The deci­sion regard­ing Prof. Salaita was not influ­enced in any way by his posi­tions on the con­flict in the Mid­dle East nor his crit­i­cism of Israel. Our uni­ver­sity is home to a wide diver­sity of opin­ions on issues of pol­i­tics and for­eign pol­icy. Some of our fac­ulty are crit­i­cal of Israel, while oth­ers are strong sup­port­ers. These debates make us stronger as an insti­tu­tion and force advo­cates of all view­points to con­front the argu­ments and per­spec­tives offered by oth­ers. We are a uni­ver­sity built on pre­cisely this type of dia­logue, dis­course and debate.²

“Dia­logue, dis­course and debate,” how eupho­niously allit­er­a­tive!  But … well, if dia­logue & dis­course & debate are really these crit­i­cal prin­ci­ples, wouldn’t you think UIUC would be eager to engage in dia­logue & dis­course & debate over what it has going on behind closed doors with Carle?

After all, as far as I can tell, dia­logue & dis­course & debate all take at least two par­ties; and as much as Clint East­wood impressed with the empty chair on the stage, it would be infi­nitely bet­ter if the dis­cus­sion Urbana wants to have about UIUC’s com­mu­nity involve­ment took place with UIUC actu­ally there on the plat­form.

 

 2. A DDoS-FOIA oppor­tu­nity — let’s put the Mar­vel Fam­ily to work.

There are lots of other things I could say about this fas­ci­nat­ing call of Chan­cel­lor Wise for dia­logue & dis­course & debate (“D3”), and how it seems D3 was lack­ing in what Salaita said but is present in abun­dance in the Chancellor’s declin­ing the oppor­tu­nity for pub­lic dis­cus­sion with Urbana.

But my talk is cheap.  So instead, let’s use the DDoS-FOIA approach and bring in the Mar­vels to pro­cure and share the emails and other doc­u­ments Chan­cel­lor Wise has exchanged over Lau­rel Prussing’s offer.

 

3. What the Mar­vels might ask UIUC-FOIA.

Now I’m not one to tell super­heroes what to do or how to do it.  So I have no script for what one or more of my mys­te­ri­ous Mar­vels milling out there might enquire of UIUC-FOIA on the topic of Wise’s actions.  That said, I’m sure we’d all agree it would run some­thing along the lines of:

Please pro­vide all emails and other doc­u­ments sent by Chan­cel­lor Wise or per­son­nel in her office regard­ing Lau­rel Prussing’s ask­ing Wise to have UIUC cohost the dis­cus­sion with Urbana.

As I said in my ear­lier post, I can’t myself file this FOIA request with­out incur­ring a wait­ing period of months and months.  And although the law isn’t com­pletely clear on it, heav­ens for­bid that I should have some­one else act as a mere min­ion of mine and FOIA to my specifications.

But I’ve no doubt that there are more than a few Cap­tain Mar­vels, Juniors, Uncle Mar­vels, Mary Mar­vels and — as the mar­quee image shows — even Baby Mar­vels, all of whom are out there in cyber­space and are inter­ested in fol­low­ing up on this quite inde­pen­dently of me.

The lan­guage: you’re super­heroes, use your own lan­guage.  The address?  Merely click on the link UIUC FOIA and fol­low the direc­tions.  And keep in mind that you can file anony­mously, so your name can be what­ever you want, “Mary Mar­vel,” say, or “Mary FOIA” if you pre­fer.³  And since you can file anony­mously, the only con­tact infor­ma­tion you need pro­vide is your email.  Check the Illi­nois Attor­ney General’s facts on FOIA fil­ings if you have any doubts: How to file a FOIA request.

I don’t think this needs to be said, but: in your FOIA, be polite, the peo­ple at UIUC-FOIA are mostly very nice, and D3 is a good prin­ci­ple no mat­ter if the peo­ple propos­ing it obey it or not.

 

4. What to expect (when you’re expecting).

In term of tim­ing, UIUC-FOIA will get back to you in about a week, then they can take an extra 5 days under Illi­nois law.  But come new years you should hear some­thing back … then you can share it with all of us!

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The mar­quee image is from page 24 of that same issue #1 of Dec, 1945, of Mar­vel Fam­ily Comics.  See Mar­vel Fam­ily Comics #1.

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1. See UI won’t join Urbana meet­ing on Carle. [↩]
2. See The prin­ci­ples on which we stand. [↩]
3. Given the sea­son, “Merry FOIA” might be more apro­pos. [↩]