By Robert Anderson, Part-time CHSS instructor
I think Dr. Steve Cormier, a 22-year veteran of our History Department is not the villain as he was present in the recent letter by Dr. Winograd.
Dr. Cormier was fired for supposedly being uncivil to a female faculty member.
But according to people at the Montoya campus cafeteria Dr. Cormier was calmly sitting watching a music performance when a female faculty member rushed in and aggressively took a guitar out of a musician’s hand abruptly stopping the performance and shocking everyone.
Dr. Cormier then went over and separated the female faculty member, who was white, from further confronting the musician who was black.
The performer had been singing proudly about labor and civil rights struggles. This has been his life-long passion as a black man in America.
Dr. Cormier actually stopped what could have turned into a violent confrontation with racial overtones.
It was said later the guitar was grabbed because the music was too loud, but no one else said that.
Near me was a table of white students who were being deliberately loud and rude as they tried to drown out the songs, but no one told them to stop.
And several years ago I was in this same cafeteria along with Dr. Winograd for a school-sponsored event when the music was far louder.
That seems to have been ok because the songs were not about social justice as they were this time.
Is it that certain things can be said on campus and some not?
Dr. Cormier is being smeared with incivility it seems to hide what looks to some like a racial attack by a faculty member on a guest to the campus.
The Chronicle should not be criticized for trying to get at the truth.
