This note comes from a comment down below concerning the authenicity of some comments and emails generated sent to this page in support of Dr. Stommel. We've been down similar roads of course with KinK and H_P, so I don't need to bore you. But I thought it was important enough to lay out what I know so we can let this go to rest. Stommel has let me know he's not coming back, but I wanted the community members to have this info
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For anyone keeping up on this, the IPs for 3 different Blogger logins and two emails addresses that contacted me with supporting remarks about the subject of this 2 day nightmare are both in Madison, more of them from a Safari browser on an OS X machine, and slightly fewer from a Firefox browser on an OS X machine.
I don't believe I'm giving anything away because Stommel is not pseudonymous and his institutional affiliation is not a secret.
Both of these logins use the same ISP (Internet Service Provider), Chater Communications. Comments and email generated from Independent Scholar, Dedicated Professional, John from Phoenix, and Colorado Prof all link to these two logins.
And finally, and I hate to do this, but it's on his fucking vita. Stommel is a grad of U of .. wait for it ... you won't believe it ... oh, yes you will, of course you will ... Colorado.
Tip your waitresses and your bartenders. I'll be here the rest of the week.
Go Buffs.
PS: Listen, I now feel badly about this, at least a bit. I actually admire this guy's ambition. I read some of his stuff today, and yes, he's wrongheaded in all kinds of ways, but I believe he's trying to do what he thinks is right, and he seems to be an advocate for the kinds of students he teaches. So I give him credit for that at least.
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I don't believe I'm giving anything away because Stommel is not pseudonymous and his institutional affiliation is not a secret.
Both of these logins use the same ISP (Internet Service Provider), Chater Communications. Comments and email generated from Independent Scholar, Dedicated Professional, John from Phoenix, and Colorado Prof all link to these two logins.
And finally, and I hate to do this, but it's on his fucking vita. Stommel is a grad of U of .. wait for it ... you won't believe it ... oh, yes you will, of course you will ... Colorado.
Tip your waitresses and your bartenders. I'll be here the rest of the week.
Go Buffs.
PS: Listen, I now feel badly about this, at least a bit. I actually admire this guy's ambition. I read some of his stuff today, and yes, he's wrongheaded in all kinds of ways, but I believe he's trying to do what he thinks is right, and he seems to be an advocate for the kinds of students he teaches. So I give him credit for that at least.
Spotted this on Stommel's timeline, from almost 24 hours ago.
ReplyDeleteI remember when anonymity could help create safe spaces for marginalized voices. Now I feel like it is too often used to shut them down.
— Jesse Stommel (@Jessifer) March 3, 2015
I've seen it expressed as something like
Deletewide audience + anonymity = probability of assholery approaches 1.
Oh, that's right, here it is.
There's another saying about not wresting with pigs: you just get dirty, and the pig enjoys it. But I truly don't think we "piled on" the individual; we piled on the ideas.
I have no idea if JS is a real person or pseudonym and don't care to look further into it; however, I do know that basically, the person posting as JS did express ideas that could be taken as intent to shut down the type of communication that goes on here. That this person would then claim the marginalized victim card of the silenced voice strikes me as, well, uh, hippopotamus or something.
This place is very safe for marginalized voices. I don't know of any place safe for voices who want to just say that everybody else is wrong. Narcissists Anonymous?
Yeah, that was part of my problem with JS's original argument: there was literally no place, except perhaps the privacy of our own homes or therapists/confessional spaces, where faculty could express any frustration or concern or displeasure with students.
DeleteI post here under my own name, because I'm willing to associate myself with the discussions that happen here, because I think they're more productive than many "more professional" spaces. A well-established tradition of pseudonymity -- and this community does it right -- as stable identities isn't a license to be obnoxious, unless obnoxious is part of your identity. Some of the best discussions I've ever seen on the internet were enabled by pseudonymity.
p.s. Thanks to my association with this blog, I am now FREE from seeing JS's tweets in my timeline! Yes, that's right: I went back to see if he'd posted anything else, maybe about this, and saw the dreaded "You are blocked from following @Jessifer and viewing @Jessifer's Tweets."
Ogre, I believe that I piled on the individual. Intentionally. Due to his ideas.
DeleteI don't know the man, but what I've been able to see, I'm not impressed. He doesn't seem to have any idea what 99.9999% of us see on a daily basis. He sits there running seminars and workshops and "institutes," with little to no clue.
Now, I don't know how he started his career, whether he did his service in service classes or not. However, his smug attitude in the now just set me off. The post this morning with his tweet about laptops and pencils should have come with a trigger warning.
I'm going to pile on a little more here. Not about my favorite PAC (not Political Action Committee, but rather Pretentious Ass Clown), but about my original post. It may not have come across well due to the rushed nature of the last few sentences of my original comment (I had to go to the class that I wasn't prepping for when I wrote my missive), but I love what I do. I love working with the vast majority of my colleagues. I love the act of imparting knowledge upon my students, whether they want it or not. I've wanted to do this since I was an undergrad. I know I'm damn good at what I do. I don't need student evals or the site that shall not be named or Dr. Jesse Stommel to tell me that. I would not trade this for the world. What I would trade is the administration that makes random organizational changes to increase "student success" that include trading faculty members for non-faculty members running the tutoring center to save money. I would trade the students that don't want to contribute to their own education because it's "hard," really meaning that they don't want to work. I would trade my fellow faculty that have had the Kool-Aid that the administration is selling, those that believe that students can do no wrong and that CCSOD should be run like a business, increasing profit and TRUE student success be damned.
In other words, I just like 99.9999% of those that are active here.
Please don't take this as an attack, because it's not. This Stommel guy struck a nerve with me at a time when I don't need the extra nonsense. That's all.
And by the way, I'm a total internet dickwad, and I'm OK with that. ;)
Oh yeah. I'd also like to trade my beer with gin and tonic. I almost forgot.
DeletePat, your points are well made and well taken.
DeleteI had consumed some red fermented grape when I wrote the above, and I want to be clear that I was attacking no one here. What I was trying to get at is that JS's lament about anonymity is covered elsewhere, but what we have here is different, and we do it right, as Jonathan explains. We are not the internet dickwads that JS would have us be.
But the dude did basically tell us to shut up and that ideas like ours are not to be traded anywhere. Then when we objected, he cast himself as the victim. Do I not have that correct?
I would have happily entertained more of his ideas. And I don't mean as audience nor participant of a bloody gladiatorial event; I mean genuinely to engage in the ideas.
ReplyDeleteI would recommend he return as a pseudonym. We have/had numerous individuals expressing alternative views here. I think, generally, we do consider the ideas ahead of the pseudonym espousing them. I often learn something from the engagement.
I just thought of something! Has this all been this years April Fools' Day prank? Is Stommel even real? This is the kind of thing that Cal, Cash, Walter and Fab could pull off. I'm sure of it. I don't know who the fuck went and got a degree in Colorado, but my money is on a big reveal tomorrow. That's why we're having a live chat! Please don't tell me I'm wrong.
ReplyDeleteYou are wrong; everybody here is wrong. I know the one true way, and I have the BS in Ed to prove it. More quizzes! Fewer assessments! No grades! It's all good!
DeleteI missed the explanation of "no grades" (sound like a student, huh?)
DeleteWho is Stommel teaching? (aside from us, that is)
BEST. DAY. EVER.
ReplyDeleteK from K and JS are made for each other.
ReplyDeleteI thought he was more like the lovechild of honest_prof and KinK myself.
DeleteSadly, during the chat, he revealed that he is smitten with Ben, instead. Don't think that one's going to work out for a variety of reasons.
DeleteI FUCKING MISSED IT ALL. FUCKING MEETINGS.
ReplyDeleteBut I caught up, working my way up from the bottom of the page. When Terry said U of Colorado, I peed in my pants a little.
I'm with Cal. Post of the Week? Not enough. Post of the Year!
For giggles, check out what's happening in the post below. JS is deleting his comments and -- shocker -- Colorado_Prof says he's going to do the same!
ReplyDeleteAnd sorry, I forgot that Katie's acronym is KinK.
Colorado Prof also appears to have left a supportive comment at JS's blog: the account is new, and the "Go JS! To hell with nattering nabobs!" comment is the only one ever left by that account.
DeleteKind of makes me wish I had the time to check out more of the accounts in the cheering section.
Invoking Agnew while advocating for civility. Ho! That's rich!
DeleteSorry, that was a paraphrase. My fault. But the tone's about right. You can see the actual comment here: https://disqus.com/by/colorado_professor/
DeleteThere's "complaining and bitter" and "bitch about their students" and "didactics" , though.
PS. I suspect that the person impersonating me will also delete their comments.
ReplyDeleteWhat? This is classic! LOL!!!
You are the crazziest motherfuckers on the planet, and even you had your hands full with Stommel. Regardless of the comments above the nutjob handled the entire incident poorly.
ReplyDeleteI saw the Colorado connection coming a mile away, but it did not make your post above any less satisfying.
Y'all stay real.
Walter!!!!
DeleteSo, in other words, he's dishonest. Why am I not surprised..
ReplyDeleteThis. No need to refute him further, simply point out that he seems to have felt the need to generate his own support through sockpuppets.
DeletePS. His students are likely not first-semester (or first-year). So Pat's points are spot-on. When he has to deal with students who wouldn't know a blog from a JAMA article, he can talk to me.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteFor me, one of the funniest things about this is that it was spawned from his repudiation of The Chronicle, which many of us have repeatedly expressed our contempt for. You have to be a serious fuck-up to denigrate the Chronicle in such a way as to piss off this particular audience.
ReplyDeleteEC1 is right. That's a good line. The funny thing is that when I found out about the Dear Student letters, I thought, "Hey, maybe the Crapicle is getting interesting. Maybe I'll check out some other stories."
DeleteMy thoughts, too, Ben, Poopie, and EC1 below.
Delete"You have to be a serious fuck-up to denigrate the Chronicle in such a way as to piss off this particular audience."
ReplyDeleteSOW! (Sentence of the week).
Under the main title of the page there is sometimes, in a smaller font, some hint as to forthcoming attractions, a piece of news, or clue as to the RGM's state of mind. It would amuse me no end to see PP's concluding sentence up there for an hour or two.
For the good of the order, I compiled the various aliases and their first appearance on multiple pages.
ReplyDeleteThe profile at www.blogger.com/profile/00874034447778322667 is used by
* Jesse Stommel
* Jesse Stommel
* Jesse Stommel
* John from Phoenix
* Colorado Prof
The profile at www.blogger.com/profile/13330402271110129564 is used by
* ColoradoProf
* Kindly Doctorate
* Tenured Educator
* Dedicated Professional
* Independent Scholar
I think I got them all. I see now that there are two versions of "ColoradoProf", which may or may not be the same person. However, I suspect that the only way for aliases that track to JS's profile to not be the same person is if someone other than JS gained access to that account. Reasons for that include JS leaving the computer unoccupied while still logged in, or someone obtaining his password. That's about all I can say about this rich and tangled tapestry.
Great work, OPH!
DeleteThe amazing thing about CM's sock (suck? sick?) puppet types is how crap they are at picking aliases.
Maybe the dummies guide to sock-puppetry website has a lame name generating game, or something?
Correlating IP addresses and browsers to the profiles could shed more light. The RGM has stated that two IPs from the same ISP were in play, as were two browsers both on OSX, but we don't know the overlap. And you know what? That's enough of that for me. As the song says, let it go.
DeleteBut this does touch off some associations worth a few more words. I've personally used two browsers simultaneously on my computer. At work, "real me" uses Firefox to administer a Blooboard course while "pseudostudent me" is in Chrome, logged in under another account, to see the site and gradebook from the student view. At home, real me is answering work email using GMail in one browser, while "other me" in the other browser is dropping the occasional one liner or more on CM using a different google account.
Both Chrome and Firefox offer private browsing modes that would allow multiple simultaneous but non-overlapping logins, but then the browsing history is not preserved. On my home computer, I'm quite OK with my history being full of CM pages, as I sometimes like to revisit them.
But sockpuppetry? I've never thought to do it, and I don't see how it would help. If my words are unpersuasive before a certain audience, how will adding another voice who says or agrees with them help?
And "voice" is another issue. I was tipped off to one of the socks, as I suspect others here were, by the voice of the comment: the message and phrasing "sounded" like that of other commenters.
Writing in another voice to make a truly convincing sock would, I think, take more work than the exercise is worth. Better that one should spend the effort improving one's arguments or understanding the other side.