Information Regarding Faxing of Documents

As we announced last week, we are asking volunteers to visit the Dubuque County Courthouse to make copies of documents in Professor Jeffries' file(s). We have received a number of questions regarding this plan, which we want to answer here.

• It has been suggested that we will likely receive multiple copies of the same document unless there is some way for volunteers to know which items have already been copied. To decrease the possibility of this happening, we will supply a list of documents we current possess to those who plan on making copies. This shouldn't be a problem, since volunteers will have to email us to obtain the fax number; we will simply provide the list of documents when we send out the fax number. (A helpful note: at this time, the only documents we have copies of are those listed on the download site.)
• We will delete any fax header information (e.g., sender's phone number and/or name) that appear on documents which are sent to us (that way no one can tell who the sent the documents once they are downloaded). This obviously isn't a big deal if faxes are sent from Copyworks or similar businesses.
• For those who might be wondering, each copy at the courthouse costs fifty cents each.

If you have any further questions, please post them here.

Regarding Site Updates

A recent reader posted the following comment: "so is this website going to do anything or what? Where is all this information about the lawsuit and other issues? You haven't update in a month. COME ON."

We wanted to take this opportunity to both apologize and explain.

It is true that we have not posted some recent information regarding the lawsuit and the situation at UD. Part of the problem has been that two of our editors/contributors were not able to stay involved in maintaining the site. We have recruted some new help (and installed new scanner software), so we hope that content can now be added on a regular basis.

We now have a copy of the University's answer to the Jeffries' petition, and we plan on scanning and coverting it to PDF on Tuesday night, at which time we will post it on our download site. Please check back on Wednesday to view the file.

Thank you,
The Editors

Delay in Comments Being Posted

A recent reader left the following comment: "Please excuse me for my ignorance, but I thought that I had submitted a relevant comment, and it has yet to appear. Is there a time delay in posting comments?"

While there is not, technically speaking, supposed to be a time delay on the comment posts, lately they have taken awhile to appear on the site. There are two possible causes: (1) the Blogger.com server is busy, or (2) your internet browser page needs to be re-loaded.

If you've made a comment that did not eventually appear, please let us know. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Regarding Our Recent Hiatus

On Thursday, November 10, we received a comment that stated, "The school is looking into filing an injunction to have this blog removed from the internet." After various readers questioned the legitimacy of this claim, we received yet another post which said, "The rumor about the injunction is a fact and the school['s] lawyers are going to argue that [this site is] making defamatory remarks about Jeff Bullock and the school's administration."

Because we were unable to assess the accuracy of these claims, and because we had received reports of a number of more specific alleged threats, we decided to temporarily suspend access to the site early Friday morning until we could discuss these matters with a legal counselor. Having done so, we are now back up and running.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. We will continue with our postings as usual.

We would like to express how appalled we are at the prospect of the University's administrators threatening us with legal action. We are self-described "students, alums, and others." Why would a university threaten legal action against its current and/or former students, or others associated with it? Especially when the matter at hand is a website? It seems utterly ridiculous, offensive, and a confirmation of our worries.

What is more, we maintain that we have not defamed Dr. Bullock in any way. The figures we have posted regarding his compensation are accurate, and our critical views are obviously matters of opinion. The charges we have made to the effect that the administration's practices cannot be reconciled with the University's mission are points upon which reasonable people can debate.

We wish to reiterate that any factual errors that appear on this site should be reported to us at: whatwendtwrong@yahoo.com.

Thank you,
The Editors

Site Traffic Issues

We have been receiving so many simultaneous hits on What Wendt Wrong, that visitors may have experienced problems when attempting to download files or view the blog.

If you attempted to gain access to our "Download Page" (which is hosted on Geocities) and you received the message, "Sorry, this site is temporarily unavailable," it is because we exceeded our bandwidth allotment. The Geocities server is re-set every hour, so please try again at a later time.

If you receive a "Not Found" error when attempting to gain access to the blog site, simply hit "Refresh" on your browser a couple of times.

We apologize for any inconvenience, and we hope you will not be dissuaded from checking up on the site in a regular manner. We are presently attempting to figure out how we can accommodate the tremendous popularity of the site; hopefully these issues will be resolved in the near future.

Keep in mind that we're flattered that our site is crashing! We just hope it doesn't become too frustrating for our readers.

Thank you,
The Editors

Regarding the "Other Side" of the Story

Although we have not been (and unfortunately will not be) able to respond to every comment we receive, we did think it would be appropriate to respond to one in particular.

On Tuesday, November 8, a reader posted a comment in which s/he stated what is probably a popular concern: "This blog is like the network news, it only tells one side of the story, it's bias[ed]. If the owners of this blog wanted it to be taken as serious news, then they should have the guts to put their name on it, otherwise people think it's Jeffries himself." This is a legitimate concern that we want to address.

First, we make no claims of being unbiased. We do, indeed, think that Dr. Jeffries has suffered an injustice. It is our position that one should not be neutral on such matters. Nevertheless, we are very open to hearing from the University's administration. We would love to post an account of the administration's take on the Jeffries situation. In particular, we would be very willing to post the report offered to the Board of Trustees regarding the revocation of Professor Jeffries' tenure. Furthermore, we would be absolutely thrilled to receive a response to the following questions:

• What exactly happened with Mr. Garfield? We would like an official account of what he did and what the consequences were.


• What exactly warranted the revocation of Dr. Jeffries' tenure? Did he engage in actions that were worse than Mr. Garfield's? It certainly seems like they must have been, since Garfield is still employed and Jeffries is not.


• Did the University offer Dr. Jeffries a probationary contract in bad faith? Was the probationary contract offered as a way to invalidate his existing tenure contract?


• If Jeffries was punished in part because he asked for a raise (as the story goes), then the administration must explain why some faculty members (e.g., Alan Garfield) have received quite substantial raises. Even if Dr. Jeffries requested a substantial raise, is that really grounds for dismissing him? There must be something more at work here. Please explain it to us.


• On a related note, why in the world does UD president Jeffrey Bullock received such a substantial salary while academic programs (as rumor has it) have been subject to budget constraints? His pay is certainly not in line with other institutions of similar size. Furthermore, if UD is still recovering from the financial problems of the 1990s, shouldn't the president's pay be kept at a reasonable level?

Any response from UD administrators would be greatly appreciated.

We thank the reader for the comment, and hope that everyone continues to offer opinions, despite which side they seem to support, and despite the fact that we will be unable to offer a response to each post.

Source of Financial Information Revealed

It has come to our attention that interested parties want to know who is providing us with the University of Dubuque's financial information, which we have been posting on What Wendt Wrong.

Although we will continue to stand behind our own anonymity, and while we implore UD administrators to not hold our informant accountable for any of the content of this site, we have nevertheless decided to release our source.

Thank you,
The Editors