csua.org/u/6wf -> sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi%3Ffile=/chronicle/archive/2004/03/25/MNGI85QTK11.DTL
Clarification: Jan Richman, the former writing instructor who is the subject of the following story, has written as a freelance contributor to SFGate, the online partner of The Chronicle. Jan Richman had seen the work of some hyperactive imaginations in her time as an art-school writing instructor. The quiet freshman from Seattle who sat in the back row had submitted a disturbing short story, a fictitious first-person account of a young serial killer. The story was so rife with gruesome details about sexual torture, dismemberment and bloodlust that the teacher panicked, wondering what to do now that she had already handed out copies to her class to take home and read. Ive read a lot of student stories where theyre trying to emulate some shock genre, Richman said last week. There was no story, no character development - just hacking up bodies. Still, she said, he was definitely bright, and I thought there were parts of the story that were well written. In addition, it was not the first serial-killer story she had read in her six semesters on the faculty at the Academy of Art University formerly College in San Francisco: It was not even the first story that had somebody slicing off someones nipples. Nevertheless, she went to her department coordinator looking for advice. Though the story was cause for concern, Richman could not possibly have envisioned how far its implications would stretch. Before the week was out, the student was expelled and sent home, the instructor was fighting for her job, and many students and faculty were left wondering about issues of artistic and academic freedom in the post-Columbine era of heightened fear over student safety. Tom Molanphy, head of the schools writing division, read the students story and took notes. Richman said Molanphy suggested the instructor have her students read the first chapter of Alice Sebolds recent bestseller, The Lovely Bones, a novel about a 14-year-old rape and murder victim, for comparison. That story was a good example of grisly details presented in the service of literature. The student seemed to need a lesson in avoiding gratuitous repulsiveness. According to Richman, Molanphys advice was to deal with it however you feel comfortable. But what happened next, just before last Christmas, made the instructor feel anything but comfortable. News of the story shot up the administrative ladder, from Eileen Everett, chairman of the liberal arts department, to Vice President Sue Rowley and to President Elisa Stephens, granddaughter of the schools founder. By the time Richmans weekly class was set to reconvene, the universitys director of security had called in the San Francisco Police Departments homicide division. After a brief interrogation in his dormitory, the student, who did not respond to The Chronicles requests for comment, was put on a plane and sent home to his family. The next day, according to Richman, the young mans parents called the university, alleging that their son had been encouraged to write about violence after reading a short story assigned in Richmans Narrative Storytelling class. Controversial assignment The story was Girl With Curious Hair, the title piece of a 1988 collection by David Foster Wallace, author of Infinite Jest, one of the most widely acclaimed novel of the 1990s. Girl With Curious Hair features a character called Sick Puppy, a yuppie who hangs out with a crowd of punk rockers for cheap thrills. Richman assigned the story, she said last week, as an example of an unsympathetic narrator, a guy who is sadistic and sexist. But the story was not part of the classs authorized textbook, and fellow instructors say administration officials were angry that Richman had not offered the information sooner. According to Richman, no one in the administration was familiar with the author, and Rowley and Stephens were none too pleased that the instructor was teaching Wallaces story. In a series of meetings, Richman said, administrators warned her about her attitude. Despite her consistently high evaluations from students, the administrators suggested that she solicit character references from her colleagues.
She requested a reason for her dismissal, but none was forthcoming, she said. As an adjunct professor, like the majority of instructors at the private university, she was employed on a semester-by-semester basis. She contacted Lawyers for the Arts but was told that as long as the university declined to state a reason for dismissal, she had no case. Senior Vice President of Public Relations Sallie Huntting would not acknowledge the fate of the student and the instructor, citing a university policy prohibiting comment on personnel matters. Certainly there is a lot of creativity, and we encourage that, she said. But when there is a questionable or disturbing issue, we contact the proper authorities. In an interview, Richman recounted her version of events last week sitting in the kitchen of her Dolores Street flat, where she now ekes out a living selling vintage clothing on eBay. The author of an award-winning poetry collection called Because the Brain Can Be Talked Into Anything, she made no mention of the title of the student story that has caused her such grief: It is called A Complete Loss of Hope. Several of Richmans former students and colleagues say that both she and the student have been treated unfairly by the university and that the incident has fueled a climate of fear and repression that seems especially out of place at an art school, particularly one in San Francisco. These are college students, and I consider them adults, said one of Richmans fellow instructors, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Sometimes you have to teach them things that are a little edgy or else youre looking down on them. Wallace, a creative writing professor at Pomona College who holds a chair endowed by Roy Disney, was surprised to hear that his story might have been instrumental in an expulsion and a fellow teachers dismissal. If this college is taking it upon itself to protect kids, he said, there are going to be a whole lot more books other than mine that they would not want them reading. Never a homicide case SFPD Homicide Inspector Holly Pera confirmed that the universitys director of security had turned the story over to the Police Departments Behavioral Sciences Unit, which in turn referred it to Homicide. This was never an open homicide case, she said, though she acknowledged she and her partner had consulted with a criminal profiler. They uncovered no indication that the student had engaged in any wrongdoing - no threats, no suspicious behavior. We have no evidence that it was anything other than a story, Pera said. The student has been interested in this stuff since he was a young child, and his parents were aware of some of his interests in this. Apprehension over the content of the students story grew when the university learned that the author also had brought a violent animation clip to film class after an instructor had screened excerpts of Seven, the stylish 1995 serial-killer feature that was widely noted for its visual innovation. Some classmates said that while they thought the expelled students story was horrific, they already knew him to be preoccupied with slasher movies and books such as Bret Easton Ellis American Psycho. He seemed like a normal kid with a normal life, said Timothy Loui, who is studying 3-D design. She has totally been treated unfairly, said Chris Logan, a 3-D animation major, upon hearing that she hadnt been rehired this semester. Many expressed the opinion that counseling rather than expulsion might have been appropriate for the student. However, Logan said, the school, which costs about $14,000 a semester including tuition, room and board, does not offer the sort of qualified counseling help the student may have needed. They are not counselors, people with college degrees that a large university would have. The bottom line is, the school does not have a psychologist on staff to be able to review something like this. Alan Kaufman, author of Jew Boy and editor of The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, teaches modern art and popular ...
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