The ongoing saga at UIC over a certain word

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1-13-2022 (issue No. 18)

Today I’d like to lay out for you at length a story that has received surprisingly little attention locally. If you find the tale does not hold your interest, I won’t be offended if you scroll down to the tweets, news about Mary Schmich’s battle with COVID-19, the tune of the day (it’s a great one!) and more.

Anyway, the story began on Dec. 2, 2020, when University of Illinois at Chicago Law School professor Jason Kilborn administered the final exam in his Civil Procedure II class.

One of the written questions posed the following hypothetical scenario:

After she was fired from her job, Plaintiff sued Employer under federal civil rights law, claiming employment discrimination on the basis of her race and gender. Employer also revealed that one of Plaintiff’s former managers might have damaging information about the case, but no one at Employer knew where that former manager was, since she had abruptly quit her job at Employer several months ago and had not been heard from since. With nothing to go on but the manager’s name, Employer’s lawyer pieced together several scraps of information and concluded that this former manager must be located in a remote area of northern Wisconsin. Employer’s lawyer spent $25,000 to hire a private investigator, who successfully located the former manager in northern Wisconsin. Employer’s lawyer traveled to meet the manager, who stated that she quit her job at Employer after she attended a meeting in which other managers expressed their anger at Plaintiff, calling her a “n____” and “b____” (profane expressions for African Americans and women) and vowed to get rid of her.

Later, Plaintiff’s lawyer served [another discovery demand, omitted, and] an interrogatory demanding the identity and location of any person with any information related to the termination of Plaintiff’s employment at Employer or potential discrimination against Plaintiff by Employer or any agent of Employer.

Can Employer identify the former manager but properly withhold her location, as this is the product of a significant amount of work and expense by Employer’s attorney?

The blank spaces in reference to the “profane expressions” appeared on the exam, in keeping with the now standard practice that white people may not speak or write the dehumanizing slur for African Americans even when quoting someone else in a context that assumes and underscores the poisonous nature of the word.

UPDATE—

In response to the criticism that he should have been even more vague about the offensive terms, Kilborn wrote this to me the day after this issue came out:

The question concerned an employment discrimination scenario, and the evidence concerned a former manager whom someone had heard saying she had been called these slurs.  This is explosive and directly relevant evidence, putting the sharpest point on the desire for the employer’s lawyer to resist turning it over. 

I was testing whether my students could resist their nature desire to help their client at all costs—no, you have to turn it over! 

This is not at all tangential—I needed an extreme example of something a student might try to characterize as “work product” because the lawyer worked so hard and spent so much money trying to find it.  It’s not.  This is a common scenario where lawyers claim things are “work product” when they’re not.

—END UPDATE

Kilborn, who began teaching in 2000 at Louisiana State University and joined the UIC faculty in 2007, said he’d used the same question with the same redacted wording a dozen times in his classroom career.

This time, however, it provoked a backlash. Here is an excerpt from a statement shortly thereafter from the UIC Black Law Students Association:

The slur shocked students, created a momentous distraction and caused unnecessary distress and anxiety for those taking the exam. Considering the subject matter, and the call of the question, the use of the “n____” and “b____” was certainly unwarranted as it did not serve any educational purpose. The question was culturally insensitive and tone deaf. It lacked basic civility and respect for the student body, especially considering our social justice efforts this year. …

The unnecessary use of the N-word in an academic setting is traumatizing and distracting, especially during an already stressful exam in a time of civil unrest and a catastrophic pandemic. … The visual of the N-word on Professor Kilborn’s exam was mental terrorism. The use of this vile and repugnant word, even in an implied state, was utterly disgraceful. …

When asked how reading those words while trying to complete a law school exam impacted her, one student stated, “I was completely flustered by the question and had to take several moments to gather myself prior to proceeding with the exam.” The student added, “I had to seek counsel immediately after the exam to calm myself from what I had just experienced.”

Another student stated that upon reading “n___” and “b___” on the exam she became “incredibly upset” and immediately began to experience “heart palpitations.”

One Black student was left in a hopeless mental state after learning about the words implicated on the exam. … He added, reading “n___” and “b___” was triggering, and made him feel as if he no longer belonged at the school.” …

One student who sat for his exam questioned Professor Kilborn’s intent, asking, “Given the events of George Floyd and the continued racial unrest in our nation, would [Professor] Kilborn intentionally force this indignity onto his African American students?”…

The language used lacked respect, human decency, and civility during one of the most stressful times of the semester and of our lives. It is inexcusable, unacceptable and culturally inappropriate to use insensitive language as context to test civil procedure concepts.

It’s important to emphasize again that Kilborn’s exam did not use the slurs in question but merely alluded to them in the way that most of us have been careful to do for many years.

African American linguist John McWhorter of Columbia University wrote about this evolution in usage in a New York Times essay last year:

The modern American uses “the N-word.” This tradition settled in after the O.J. Simpson trial, in which it was famously revealed that Detective Mark Fuhrman had frequently used (the full version of the word) in the past. Christopher Darden, a Black prosecutor, refused to utter the actual word, and with the high profile of the case. … Mr. Darden in his way heralded a new era.

That was in 1995, and in the fall of that year I did a radio interview on the word, in which the guests and I were free to use it when referring to it, with nary a bleep. That had been normal until then but would not be for much longer, such that the interview is now a period piece.

The implication of the complaint against Kilborn lodged by the UIC Black Law Students Association was that the rules had changed; that for a white person even to allude to the word in question — to imply its existence — is “traumatizing and distracting” and an act of “mental terrorism.”

If indeed a new standard of politeness had emerged, it certainly was not and still is not widely known.

When now-former UIC Law School dean Darby Dickerson brought the substance of the complaint to Kilborn’s attention several weeks after he’d administered the exam, Kilborn said he assured the dean he had no ill intent, and on Dec. 22, 2020, he emailed a note of apology to the students in the class. The relevant portion reads:

I feel terribly that anything I did might have caused anyone discomfort in the middle of my exam.

On the one hand, civil procedure questions require substantive context, and the casebook authors and I specifically focus this class in part on the procedure implicated in employment discrimination litigation, as recent studies have revealed that to be among the most common subject matters in federal litigation. The topic raises particularly important civil procedural challenges that represent a mainstay of modern litigation, which I try to use to give you a realistic and meaningful exam experience. It is a context, unfortunately, in which hurtful words and painful behaviors occupy center stage. The question at issue starkly took on that important context by obliquely referencing the kinds of hurtful language one encounters in cases involving race- and gender-based employment discrimination. I tried in a respectful but realistic way to convey the types of facts where discovery practice would come most starkly into conflict with a defendant’s desire to withhold information in a situation involving the commonly invoked but limited protections of work product doctrine, again in a context that aspiring lawyers would most likely actually encounter in the real world of federal litigation.

While I tried to dull the sharp edges of these painfully salient and relevant words, I can see why some people might have felt uncomfortable being confronted with this reference to the harsh realities of discriminatory language during a high-stakes, anxiety-filled exam. I can see how someone against whom such epithets might actually be hurled in the real world might feel especially jarred by the reference in the middle of an exam, and in particular, I can see, in light of the extraordinary events of these past few months, that sensitivities to this kind of context were heightened this semester. Some individuals might have felt especially emotionally vulnerable when reminded of the cruel realities that civil procedure is called on to uncover.

I certainly did not intend to cause any student or group of students to feel distressed, and if that happened to anyone, I’m really sorry for that. I truly care about each and every one of you, and I am more than willing to listen receptively and discuss the matter with any student in the class comfortable doing so.

You’d think this would have been the end of it — unintentional offense, sincere apology, time for everyone to move on.

But you’d think wrong. The Black Law Students Association statement was posted online eight days after Kilborn sent his email, and it demanded that Kilborn “immediately step down as chair of the academic affairs committee.”

Kilborn then participated in a Jan. 7, 2021, four-hour dialogue with a Black Law Students Association leader via Zoom. He later said he thought the meeting had gone well and the exchange had been productive.

But on Jan. 12, the dean canceled Kilborn’s spring semester teaching assignments, banned him from campus and placed him on paid leave. Why? Because about 90 minutes into the four-hour conversation with the student leader, Kilborn had speculated that the reason the dean hadn’t initially shared the Black Law Students Association complaint with him was because she was "afraid if I saw the horrible things said about me in that letter I might become homicidal.”

Several days later, in a meeting with administrators, the student said he considered this a threat. Kilborn said it was a flippant and obviously euphemistic reference to his view of the dean’s mindset, not a statement of his own mindset.

The story of the law professor being hounded for using an oblique reference to a racial slur in an exam began making waves around the country. UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh retold it and posed this question in a Jan. 15 Reason magazine blog post:

What exactly will the rule be when teachers want to talk about racial or sexual harassment, or other mistreatment of people based on race, sex, religion, sexual orientation, and the like? Have we reached a point that one can't even quote epithets in expurgated form? Or is it that all discussion of "deeply offensive" conduct by defendants is itself "deeply offensive," regardless of the words (or letters and underlines) that one uses?

On Jan. 19, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a takedown of the administration at UIC Law (which until May of last year was known as UIC John Marshall Law School) by Northwestern University law professor Andrew Koppelman:

 If lawyers are going to be competent to do their jobs, they must be able to cope with the fact that humans sometimes do and say very bad things. Discrimination is among those bad things.

Students must thus be able to see the facts of discrimination lawsuits, and be able to perform legal analysis in the face of those facts. In the real world, racist slurs are not bowdlerized as they were on Kilborn’s exam. He did nothing inappropriate. A sensible and responsible administration would have told the students that. …

Kilborn did avoid language that could cause hurt and distress to students. He censored the words. He did, concededly, allude to the words in a way that made it easy to know what they were. But if that is “deeply offensive,” punishable behavior, how is it ever permissible for a professor to take note of the fact that racial slurs exist? How is one to teach a course in antidiscrimination law? …

When students make unreasonable demands, a school has an obligation to protect its faculty. The law school’s behavior is reminiscent of indiscriminate blacklisting during the McCarthy era.

John McWhorter, the African American linguist, weighed in on the burgeoning controversy on Substack on Jan. 27:

Let’s pull the camera back, take a deep breath, and look at something like this pillorying of Kilborn with clear eyes. If a Black student is traumatized to such a degree by seeing “n*****” on a piece of paper, then that student needs psychological counseling. We all understand the history and power of the N-word, but we all also understand the simple issue of degree. That student who got heart palpitations needs help, and what the suits at the University of Illinois in Chicago should have done was gently direct this student to the proper services, which the school surely provides, for people who have fallen away from the ability to cope with normal life. …

A five year old having a tantrum generally makes a great deal more sense than someone who has been alive for a quarter of a century claiming heart palpitations over reading “n*****” on an exam. …

A Black student who pretends a white professor is an actual physical threat on campus because of a flippant remark using the word homicidal is neither genuinely afraid nor being sophisticated. That student is pretending an ignorance of the basic nature of hyperbole in human communication, without which neither a language nor a society could exist. The student engages in such verbal hyperbole in various ways all day every day. To engage the student in pretending not to understand hyperbole is to treat that student as a dimwit.

(On Monday I put this question to the Rainbow PUSH Coalition— whose leader, Jesse Jackson, spoke at a protest against Kilborn last November — and to the UIC Black Law Students Association: Is the expression “the N-word” now one to avoid? I will let you know if and when they respond.)

But even after all the negative attention directed at UIC Law, administrators there doubled down. On Feb. 17, 2021, they sent an email to Kilborn putting him on notice that the school’s “Office for Access and Equity (was) commencing an investigation into allegations of race based discrimination and harassment” by him that went beyond just the exam question.

A little more than three months later, Donald Kamm, director of the school’s Office for Access and Equity, released his findings in an internal document that has since been made public. (See it and other documents related to this story in this document supplement)

Here are the key portions of the investigatory findings along with some explanatory and contextual interjections:

Based on a preponderance of the evidence, OAE determines that, for a variety of reasons, Professor Kilborn’s substantiated conduct, considered cumulatively and particularly in the matter of his response to criticism of his exam, affected many Black students and substantially interfered with their participation in the University’s academic program. …

[A] recording of [a] Jan. 23, 2020 class session clarifies that Professor Kilborn used [African American vernacular English] when referencing a Black artist’s lyrics to sound Black, referred to minority civil rights plaintiffs as “cockroaches” and as part of modern day extortion (and) referenced media coverage of minority civil rights cases as a “public lynching.”

Kilborn, writing in the third-person, responded to each of these in turn in his eight-page summary of the case.

First, about his use of vernacular in the classroom:

Prof. Kilborn was distinguishing the unique facts of a discrimination case under discussion, comparing it to racial profiling by police of young Black men. Prof. Kilborn had heard a particularly apt line in a song on his run music mix that morning, in which Jay-Z describes just such an abusive pretextual racial profile stop, and in explaining to the young Black man why he stopped him, the police officer says, “You was doin’ 55 in a 54.” Recalling this line, in class, Prof. Kilborn pronounced 54 as Jay-Z does in the song (“fifty fo”), in order to faithfully convey the sound of the song that Prof. Kilborn surmised the class would recognize.

Next, regarding his use of the word “cockroaches,” Kilborn offered this transcript for what he said as taken from the audio recording of that class session:

“The fact that other plaintiffs see that one other plaintiff lost isn’t a disincentive. If it were, frivolous litigation would have ended long ago, because lots of plaintiffs have been pushed to the wall and lost. You don’t hear about those stories in the media. You hear about idiot people winning $1 million verdict against Subway for having 11.5”-long sandwiches. That’s what makes the press, right? That Subway lost. Not that they win against this ridiculously frivolous case. That wasn’t in the media, only in the legal media, maybe, if you were paying attention. And that’s the problem. If they win, no one hears about this. They only hear about it if they lose, and God forbid that, then all the cockroaches come out of the walls, they’re thinking, right?”

None of the coverage I found online of the infamously silly “honey, they shrunk the Footlong” suit that resulted in Subway paying a half-million dollar settlement indicated the race of the plaintiffs or their attorneys, but from the profile photo from the Facebook post that started it all —

— the original complainer appears to have been white.

Kilborn allowed that he did reference lynching during another part of that class:

Prof. Kilborn was challenging the class to put themselves in the shoes of a bank executive considering settlement. He suggested that the executive might be concerned about biased media reporting, which, if the story were not true and the bank had done nothing wrong, might be resented by the executive as the bank’s “being lynched” in the public media.

Regarding his allusion to lynching, Kilborn wrote that he immediately apologized to students for invoking a crime that alludes to a terribly racist and ugly part of our nation’s past, an assertion that the investigatory report confirms. The report also said that a review of audio recordings of six other classes from that semester “did not substantiate allegations that Professor Kilborn made (other) racially-charged comments.”

About the incident that started this whole imbroglio, the Office for Access and Equity report said that even though Kilborn had used the same question on his exam for many years without incident, he should have known better than to have used it when he did:

At the time of the final exam in December 2020, the country and the University community were grappling with issues of race-related violence, protests, and a national election that invoked issues of racial tension in ways not experienced in the United States for many decades. That broader context rendered Professor Kilborn’s decision to keep the question on his final exam insensitive and indicative of poor judgment, at the very least. OAE determines that a reasonable person would have recognized that use of the exam question at that particular time was likely to create anxiety for minority (and non-minority) students alike, during a significant academic moment requiring extreme concentration.

The balance of the investigatory findings regarding Kilborn centered on his pained, flabbergasted response to the charges leveled against him due to the exam question.

OAE determines that, when Professor Kilborn learned that student groups had lodged written objections to his exam question in late December 2020, he responded in at least two instances in early January 2021 in a manner that created safety and retaliation concerns for Black students. … [In a] January 4, 2021 email to a student who had signed the [Black Law Students Association complaint letter] … Professor Kilborn verbally chastis(ed) that student for signing that letter. Professor Kilborn’s email called it a “horrible, horrible letter,” an “attack letter,” that was “vicious” and “cruel,” and that led Professor Kilborn to feel and to write that his “hand of help had been bitten off.”

The reference is to a private email to a former student, who was white. Kilborn wrote:

Can’t tell you how painful it was to see your name on BLSA’s attack letter against me. That question and that very language were on the exam that you and your class took, yet no one in the years I’ve administered that question has ever said anything. I’m sure you know that I certainly did not intend to cause anyone distress and that I am especially sensitive to the issues raised in that horrible, horrible letter.

Such a shame to see all of my efforts to offer comfort and encouragement … only to be now vilified in the most vicious, cruel, and uncompassionate way. I feel like my extended hand of help has been bitten off.

I’m not criticizing you, and it hurts that anyone would even dream that I would seek retribution against anyone about all of this—all of these people are and will always be welcome in my classes. But a few of the familiar names on that letter—with not one person ever, ever reaching out to me—is painful beyond description.

My heart is absolutely broken by all of this.

The student had responded:

As a white student, with the privileges that come with that, is believing People of Color when they say that actions or inactions have caused them pain or distress. This year has been a constant source of stress for students and professors alike. This year also saw a racial reckoning on a global scale. If students expressed concern, pain, or feelings of inhumanity, I can't ignore, negate, or deny those feelings. Rather, as a [Student Bar Association] member, and a [UIC Law School] student, I felt it was my place to stand in solidarity with those experiencing these feelings.

I’m not the gatekeeper of what is right or wrong, or offensive or not offensive. Students of color were detrimentally affected by this question; I cannot, in good faith, disregard that because of help that was extended to me for my own benefit.

As you mentioned, this question was on the exam that I took last semester. An issue was not raised during that time and that is part of the problem. That I was able to read that question without much thought, without the reawakening of trauma, is part of why I signed that letter. Because I am privileged enough to read over that question, I want to stand in solidarity with those that weren't able to read that question without issue.

Again, I'm sorry that you feel betrayed, that wasn't my intention and it is heartbreaking to think that I caused anyone such pain. But when I say I stand in solidarity with students of color, especially as a member of the SBA, I cannot then ignore students expressing feelings of pain and trauma.

Kilborn had replied:

Acknowledging pain did not and does not require attacking me very personally and cruelly. I also acknowledged and expressed regret for the pain that question caused. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

I admire your support of your colleagues. I support them too. Making me into a villain is not a fair or effective pathway to healing and understanding.

Enough said. We’ll all learn from this ...

In other words, Kilborn had said he’d not intended to offend anyone, had offered a sincere apology and felt deeply wounded that his character was still being maligned even by people with whom he thought he had a mutually respectful relationship.

OAE determines that all comments expressing Professor Kilborn’s anger, dissatisfaction, and disappointment related to issues of race and created fear and intimidation that relates to racial issues and were reasonably interpreted as such, given the context in which these comments were made. … (The comments) affected many Black students and substantially interfered with their participation in the University’s academic program.

Thus Kilborn’s expressions of anger at being called a racist were themselves deemed to be acts of racism. 

Back to the university's findings:

Professor Kilborn’s conduct, at minimum, has taken an understandable emotional toll on non-White students, faculty, and supporters of the non-White students who felt threatened. Professor Kilborn’s conduct has interfered with non-White students’ learning experiences at UIC [Law School] and created fear of an unsafe educational environment and concern about retaliation against students who disagree with his conduct. … Based on our investigation, OAE recommends that, to address Professor Kilborn’s Policy violation, Professor Kilborn partake in a series of individual training and coaching sessions regarding cultural competency before he returns to teaching in the classroom, which he is currently not scheduled to do until the Spring 2022 semester.

Though the contretemps had earned UIC a spot on the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s list of “10 Worst Colleges for Free Speech: 2021,” the matter seemed resolved. Kilborn said he and the interim dean agreed over the summer that he would return to the classroom in the winter semester, as scheduled, that all his classes would be recorded and that he would give prior notice to the administration before commenting to students on racial issues. Kilborn said he balked at undergoing “sensitivity training” but agreed to undergo it if reviews of his class recordings showed that he was maintaining a harassing classroom environment.

In September, Kilborn, 49, and his lawyers had a set-to with the school over the school’s denial of a pay raise related to the investigatory findings. But all was in order until the Black Law Students Association caught wind that Kilborn would be returning to the classroom for the winter semester.

On Oct. 28, the BLSA along with the UIC Student Bar Association issued an open letter demanding Kilborn be fired. The letter did not mention the precipitating event — the allegedly distressing exam question — but focused instead on Kilborn’s remark to a student that perhaps the reason the dean hadn’t immediately shown him the complaint about the exam was because the dean feared Kilborn would become homicidal.

“Kilborn confessed to stating to a Black student he would ‘become homicidal,’” said the letter. “Critically, students fear that Professor Kilborn may put his ‘homicidal comment’ into action.”

Rainbow PUSH Coalition leader Jesse Jackson rallied with the BLSA in the Loop on Nov. 4, and the Sun-Times reported,“The UIC law students allege a professor ‘called (students) racial slurs and labeled them ‘cockroaches.’”

It was a false, irresponsible and inflammatory summary of the situation. But you can guess what happened next.

UIC reneged on its earlier deal with Kilborn and postponed his return to the classroom until this fall pending his successful completion of the “Teaching and Learning in the Diverse Classroom Online Course” from Cornell University.

UIC responded to my request for further comment with a seven paragraph “Dear UIC community” statement dated Nov. 30, 2021 and an assurance that the school anticipated “that Professor Kilborn will return to teaching in Fall 2022.”

Kilborn has agreed to take the course, but told me he may still be filing suit against UIC based on the university’s handling of his case. A Dec. 16 letter from UIC’s legal counsel to Kilborn’s attorney noted that Kilborn will be paid his full salary as the process proceeds, and described the path ahead this way:

The course consists of 5 modules spanning 5 weeks. Each module requires an approximate time commitment of 2-4 hours. The modules will also be supplemented by readings, podcasts, and/or videos. After completion of each module, Professor Kilborn will be asked to prepare a written self-reflection paper in response to specific prompts.

In conjunction with his Cornell coursework, the Law School is retaining an instructional advisor to work with Professor Kilborn one-on-one. The advisor is a practicing attorney with significant experience in employment law and diversity and inclusion consulting and has a sub-specialty in higher education matters. In furtherance of her work in this area, the advisor has taken a similar Cornell course in diversity and inclusion and has earned a certificate in Diversity and Inclusion from Cornell similar to the one Professor Kilborn will earn. …

The advisor will assess whether Professor Kilborn is gaining insight, learning, and competencies in the subject matter presented, with a particular focus on applying the course content to his work responsibilities as a faculty member…

During the course of the program, the instructional advisor will also provide feedback regarding Professor Kilborn’s engagement and commitment to the goals of the program.

Self-reflection never hurt anyone, I guess.

But those who refused to accept Kilborn’s apology for what was, at worst, an honest misunderstanding and instead trashed his reputation and impugned his character by putting the worst possible spin on his every utterance ought to take stock of their words and deeds as well.

They could learn from Kilborn’s words in his email to one of his accusers: “Making me into a villain is not a fair or effective pathway to healing and understanding.”

Last week’s winning tweet

Smitty @JebTheJarhead

Do you remember, before the Internet, that it was thought that the cause of collective stupidity was the lack of access to information? Well, it wasn’t that.

Scroll down to read this week’s nominees or click here to vote in the new poll.

News & Views

News: Republican U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois won’t run for governor or senator because he wants to devote himself “full time “ to righting right-wing extremism.

View: Yes, Kinzinger, a principled anti-Trumper, probably wouldn’t stand a chance in any Republican primary these days. But his fellow anti-Trumper, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, one of the few Republicans in Congress who still puts the G into GOP, is giving it a go. She’s running for reelection even though polling shows her losing by 20 percentage points to the Trump-endorsed candidate, Harriet Hagemen.

If Cheney goes down, she’s going down with a fight, drawing attention every day, with every speech, to the moral emptiness and frightening aspirations of the increasingly cult-like Republican Party. The media will cover her speeches. She’ll be able to blanket the airwaves, however fecklessly, with commercials paid for with campaign donations from around the country.

Kinzinger will be helming his Country First PAC and sitting for occasional interviews on moderate and liberal talk programs.

Yes, it’s asking a lot of anyone to take on a political suicide mission. Campaigns are grueling and expensive. But a PAC with an inspiring name isn’t going to begin to drag Republicans back to their senses. A candidacy might.

News: Prosecutors are seeking federal charges in an effort to secure the death penalty against those accused of murdering Bradley police Sgt. Marlene Rittmanic.

View: The police account of the execution-style slaying of Sgt. Rittmanic is so awful, so infuriating, that it’s hard for this opponent of the death penalty to argue with the prosecutors.

(Suspect Darius) Sullivan allegedly chased Rittmanic down (a hotel) hallway before pinning her against a door. Sullivan struggled to unjam his gun using his right hand and mouth while also trying to disarm Rittmanic with his left hand, (Kankakee County State’s Attorney Jim) Rowe said.

As the scuffle ensued, Sullivan called out to (suspect Xandria) Harris, telling her to “cock the gun, cock the gun,” prosecutors said. Harris joined Sullivan, helping him successfully disarm Rittmanic.

The two then stood over Rittmanic pointing guns at her as she laid on the floor, already shot once, Rowe said. She begged Sullivan not to shoot her.

“Sgt. Rittmanic was pleading with them to, ‘Just leave, you don’t have to do this, please just go, please don’t, please don’t,’” Rowe said. “She was desperately pleading for her life.”

With Harris holding Sullivan’s gun, Sullivan allegedly fired two shots from what prosecutors believe to be Rittmanic’s gun, striking the sergeant in the neck area.

My opposition to the death penalty is rooted in the firm conviction that our justice system is too fallible to be entrusted with the power of life and death and executing people does nothing to enhance public safety. Stories like this rattle that conviction, though, I have to admit.

News: Tribune cuts freelance cartoonist Joe Fournier.

View: The decision to dump this wickedly funny satirist and brilliant caricature artist is one that leaves me paging frantically through my thesaurus for just the right words of dismay. Maybe you can help.

Land of Linkin’

• Former Tribune and Sun-Times metro editor Mark Jacob offers an extensive look at the Chicago area’s emerging local media landscape in “Local News Rebirth in Chicago: ‘More Exciting Than It’s Ever Been.’ With Nonprofit News on the March, There Are Plenty of Concerns, but Also New Feelings of Optimism.”

• Don’t be the last person in your social circle to play Wordle online. My guess is that the popularity of this fun, free little game will wane significantly as players start to employ opening strategies that can improve their scores (for whatever that’s worth). If those behind the game were smart they’d block commonly used opening words or otherwise try to impose some randomness on the opening move.

• Jawboning about John Wayne Gacy: Former Chicago Reader editor (and my friend and neighbor) Alison True has been reinvestigating the Gacy case with filmmaker Tracy Ullman for the past 11 years and has just posted an interesting new wrinkle that involves a disputed DNA test, a jawbone removed from a victim and an allegation of misidentification that may put Sheriff Tom Dart in a pickle.

• In the Toronto Globe & Mail: “The American polity is cracked, and might collapse. Canada must prepare: The U.S. is becoming increasingly ungovernable, and some experts believe it could descend into civil war. What should Canada do then?”

• ProPublica Illinois: “Chicago’s ‘Race-Neutral’ Traffic Cameras Ticket Black and Latino Drivers the Most.” The reasons for the statistical disparity are intriguingly complex.

• “California is about to witness its biggest change to trash since the ’80s. Hint: It’s all about composting.” The San Francisco Chronicle reports that “California’s ambitious goal (is) to divert three-quarters of organic waste out of landfills by 2025 and use it as compost (as) required by a 2016 state law … (but)

  already the state is far behind its goals, missing its 2020 mark of cutting in half how much organic waste ends up in landfills compared to 2014.”

• Ted Slowik’s column “Politics cloud school decisions about safety of in-person learning during pandemic” is for all of us who see both sides in these teacher/school district fights over COVID-19 measures.

• Tim Miller at the Bulwark: “I Spent Insurrection Week Listening to Steve Bannon, Where the Trump coup is real, spectacular, and ongoing.”

• “Podcasting Hasn’t Produced A New Hit in Years,” in Bloomberg: “Spotify hosts more than 3 million podcasts, up from a few hundred thousand just a few years ago. … The number of new podcasts has grown more quickly than the podcast audience, and so the number of listeners per show is going down. …

  Discovering new shows is harder than ever as a result.”

• The Picayune Sentinel on the air: On Thursdays at 4:30 p.m., WCPT-AM 820 host Joan Esposito and I chat about ideas raised in that day’s issue. The listen-live link is here.

Mary Schmich: Breaking through in the New Year

My former colleague Mary Schmich posts column-like thoughts most Tuesdays on Facebook. Here is this week’s offering, posted early:

Are we really only one week into the new year?

I look back on last Sunday, the first Sunday of 2022, as if it were a different century. That morning, my brother Michael dropped me off at the Portland, Oregon, airport. He wasn’t feeling well and after he deposited me he went to get a COVID test, though he had tested negative just 3 days earlier. I felt fine.

By the time I was home in Chicago, he had a test result: Positive. On my walk home from the L that night, I stopped by a Walgreens to pick up a rapid test. Wrestled with getting the cap off the little vial—those things really shouldn’t be that hard—then made my way through the instructions—IQ test!—and 15 minutes later had a result.

Yay! Negative.

I knew better than to think that was the definitive word, however. I scheduled a PCR test for Wednesday.

On Monday I had a sore throat and a weird sensation in my chest, like little critters scratching around in the dark. But, hey, how many times have I been a victim of Covidchondria—the conviction that you’ve got COVID when you don’t?

But when Tuesday came and I felt achy, tired and just—weird—I knew. I just knew. I found a COVID appointment that afternoon at DePaul University, where I teach. It was my first saliva test, which taught me how many spits—a lot!—it takes to provide the right amount of spittle.

That night I tossed and turned with fever and chills and periodically checked my phone: any result yet? Just tell me what I already know! That the thing I've spent nearly two years trying to elude had finally caught me.

By 8:30 a.m. I had an answer.

Yep, me too. Another of the surging millions with COVID.

For the next few days, I locked myself inside. Gratefully received care packages from friends. Thank God for friends! Coughed, sneezed, shivered, sweated, took long hot showers trying to dim the chills, praised the heavens for Tylenol. (And addendum to original post: headaches, ringing ears, astonishingly aching teeth!)

And I gave thanks that I’d been double vaccinated and boosted, which meant that by today, though I’m still locked inside, I’m feeling OK. No cough, no sneezing, no fever or chills, just some fatigue and an empty Kleenex box.

It’s been an interestingly contemplative time. I organized some drawers. Numbed my discomfort with streaming shows. “Don’t Look Up” (meh). “The Righteous Gemstones” (better than I expected). “Only Murders in the Building” (made me laugh out loud). Finished Jonathan Franzen’s new novel, “Crossroads,” which I liked a lot.

And I contemplated the mysteries of life: How does so much crumpled Kleenex wind up in the bed even though when you’re tossing in your sleep you can’t find any Kleenex?

I’ve been lucky, I know. COVID’s tentacles run vast and deep and this thing has done damage beyond measure to individuals, to the country, the world. But I feel lucky that my brother is almost back to normal, that most of my friends who have gotten it (which is many by now) are doing OK, and that I expect to be just fine.

Realizing the ways you’re lucky even if you’re sick ain’t a bad way to start the new year. I know from Facebook posts that many of you have been struck too. Good luck to you all.

Meanwhile, the photo below is of a paperwhite I bought around Thanksgiving. It had seemed stalled, but this week it decided, at last, to flower. It’s a weedy, tentative bloom, but a flower is a flower. The year is looking up!

— Mary Schmich

Minced Words

John Williams, Heather Cherone, Austin Berg, Eric Zorn & Lisa Donovan

A bit of news about Chicago’s favorite (so I like to think) news-chat podcast: Starting Saturday, Jan. 29, an hour-long version of “The Mincing Rascals” will air at weekly 8 p.m. on WGN-AM 720 (barring live sports coverage). Talk about an inviting sponsorship opportunity! Contact the station!

This week we dissected the negotiations between the Chicago Teachers Union and the Chicago Public Schools. Austin Berg broke the news, to me anyway, that Jesse White is running for Illinois Secretary of State. Only it’s not that Jesse White. Discussions of Adam Kinzinger, Anthony Fauci and Matt Nagy followed, and I showed my age by reminiscing about Mark Fairchild.

We’ve made the finals for best podcast in the Reader poll, so please go vote for us.

Subscribe to the Rascals wherever you get your podcasts. Or bookmark this page.

Re: Tweets

This week’s nominees for Tweet of the Week:

• Turns out I didn’t mean “Let’s circle back in the new year.” I meant “Leave me alone.” — @jzux

• I'm old, but not "warn all my friends I got 'hacked' on Facebook" old. — @lloydrang

• I don't know if I could be single nowadays. Mostly because I say the word “nowadays.” — @Marlebean

• A one-night stand where you make it clear you don't want to see each other again should be called a Humpty Dumpty. — @Grommit56

• Has Covid-19 forced you to wear a mask and glasses at the same time? You may be entitled to condensation. — @triniliciousd

• You're so old you pay your cable bill in person. — @meantomyself

• When people introduce a statement with “Not gonna lie,” it fills me with confidence in their honor and commitment to veracity. — @UnFitz

• For my 40th birthday present, my husband replaced a pan that he broke and that's how I know he'll never be able to leave me for another woman. —@EmSlyce

• Due to inflation you can now eat food that has been on the floor for up to 7.3 seconds. — @scootergonscoot

• Try the Keto diet and instantly notice how much lighter you feel without the will to live. — @ForgetTheMoose

Click here to vote in the poll. For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Follow up to my Twitter spat with Amy Dickinson

In last week’s PS I reported on a little online set-to I had with syndicated advice columnist Amy Dickinson. It was over what I considered to be her too-sympathetic reply to a reader seeking a diplomatic way of saying “none of your business” to friends who wanted to know her COVID-19 vaccination status before agreeing to socialize with her.

I took two click polls on the underlying question, the results of which were as overwhelming as I’ve seen in such polls, even in the somewhat siloed environment of my world. The first was linked off this newsletter:

The second was posted to Twitter:

In the Zmail this week was this:

Jenny C. — I read about your “Twitter spat” with Amy Dickinson and cringed. While I am 100% in your corner about the public health emergency aspect of disclosure, as I always tell my daughter “there are at least 5 different ways you could say it and you chose THAT one.”

Amy was wrong assuming you didn’t consider the full context of her response, and that was a big error her her to assume that. Could the important context here actually be that she lives in the “Live Free or Die” state of New Hampshire? So isn’t there another way to persuade her, then, using that knowledge?

While it may be a snappy Twitter post, your words “set a better example” and “my friend” have a lecturing tone mixed with a dash of mansplaining. Her defensive tone in her response back to you seems to support that idea. Better to appeal to her sense of community and the urgent responsibility that goes with the large megaphone of her column. If Amy feels OK to tell a friend her status to make them comfortable, then ask her why not feel the same for a neighbor’s grandma or the local teacher/nurse/waiter/dentist across town she doesn’t know?

To move the needle on the problem we need to think of where others are coming from as we try to shape our worries and fears in a way they can hear. I hope that makes sense! And please know I am writing to her too because I expected better from her as well. My head just explodes when people concentrate on drawing a line to prove the other side is wrong and lose sight of finding a way out of all this.

I see this point, and, yes, I could and probably should have taken a less splenetic and less personal tone in raising my objection to Dickinson’s response. Regrettably, perhaps, I’ve lost all patience with those who coddle those who are making all of our lives miserable by not being insistently promoting and practicing the measures necessary to get this pandemic under control.

Even Donald Trump is now telling vaccinated people,“You gotta say it – whether you had it or not. Say it. … The vaccines saved tens of millions throughout the world. ”

My general difficulty in concealing my intemperance and impatience is one reason I wouldn’t be a good advice columnist. On this topic and others, most of my responses would begin with something on the order of “Oh, fer cryin’ out loud!”

And, to underscore, I think Amy is good at her job and generally quite wise. I’m still a fan, though I’ve evidently been kicked out of the fan club.

Today’s tune

The first instrument I ever studied seriously was the banjo — I took bluegrass lessons in the mid-1970s from Willard Spencer of the RFD Boys — but around 1980 I converted to the old-time clawhammer style, which, as I explain to the uninitiated, is simpler, more rhythmic and less notey than the bluegrass style. It’s better suited as a solo instrument to accompanying a singer.

I recently came across a pleasingly illustrative example of clawhammer in Josh Turknett’s version of Penguin Cafe Orchestra’s composition, "Music for a Found Harmonium."

As one of the YouTube commenters says, “it feels like the banjo version is the original folk tune, and the Penguin Cafe Orchestra version is an elaborate cover.”

PCO, an avant garde folk/pop/classical group, released the tune in 1994. Its insistent beat and catchy melody made it a favorite among traditional musicians, and “Music for a Found Harmonium” gained wider exposure when it was featured in the soundtrack of the 2004 film “Napoleon Dynamite.”

I’m not good enough to play it on the banjo, but I know people who are.

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