my shadow knows

Music: A Covenant of Thorns: If the Heavens Should Fall (2004)

I've protected this post with a password because it is serving multiple functions. First, this post is largely therapeutic for me to "get it all out." Second, I need a written record of this week's events, might as well do it while it's all fresh. Third, if I'm sharing it with you, it's because I personally know you. This is not a public post for many reasons, some of which are legal.

You may have noticed some changes to the blog recently, including a shift in tone and topic, as well as some disappearing posts (they have not been deleted, just set to "private" for a while). This is because---as many of you know---I have a cyberstalker, and last week he started attempting to post again. I have set to "private" every post in the past two years that this person has tried to post to, or has successfully posted to (because I did not yet know it was him). I did this for two reasons. The first reason is because he attempted to post this on the recent, fruitful discussion about plagiarism and cruelty:

Anonymous
swan-necklace@hotmail.com
68.76.44.62
Submitted on 2009/07/21 at 11:41pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRw98ALGgBA
Start at 7:14 and then watch the beginning of the next video in the sequence. . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzR9yR18L2Y
Some people deserve the break. Some people don’t.

The film Wit, based on a play by the same name, is about a professor dying of cancer and regretting that she was cruel to her students. Obviously the stalker knows how to walk right up to the line of physical threat without crossing it.

Of course, all the posts on my blog are now moderated because this guy started posting stuff like this in January, 2008. Prior to that date, my blog was not moderated and only filtered for spam.

Just weeks prior I had installed software on my server that allowed me to block certain IP addresses. I immediately blocked "68.76.44.62." The next day, the stalker tried to post three times. All he would see is this: "You Are Banned for Failing to Disclose Your Identity and/or for Being a Jerk." Actually, I'm not sure if he can even read my blog, but I know he cannot post unless he goes to a different IP.

Apparently this made the stalker very angry. In response, on the 23rd the stalker emailed the following message to my dean and the president of the University of Texas:

From: Sean Jacobs [mailto:seanjcbs@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2009 9:24 PM
To: Hart, Roderick P
Subject: Concerned CMS Student.

Dear Dr. Roderick P. Hart,
I'm writing this letter to inform you of the absolute disgraceful conduct one of the professors in the college of communication is showing. Yesterday evening on Joshua Gunn's website joshiejuice.com, there was the posting of a letter that exposed a current students name for supposedly plagiarizing on a final paper. Throughout josh's post he gives out this students name numerous times and then goes on to degrade and disrespect the individual.
Although I am in no position to judge neither the student nor the instructor, Joshua Gunn's belligerent actions are completely unacceptable. From what I know and from what Josh has wrote in his blog, the student unintentionally forgot to cite 3 lines from his 10 page final paper. I understand there are strict rules and penalty's that comes with plagiarism intentional or not, but the bashing and cruelty that took place in this letter is unacceptable and is really must stop.
Last semester I had professor Gunn as my teacher and for several months now, I and many others have been following his blog. It really seems to me that Instead of sensibly coping with his anger (mainly due to not being a tenured professor); he frequently tries to insult and belittle students by calling them failures and so forth. Through his rhetoric we can all clearly see that this man is evil and really should be reprimanded for his aggressive rude actions. To take pride in calling people failures, cheaters, and horrible people (in previous blog post) is completely offensive. Think of what these words due to one's self esteem/ image all just for making an honest mistake? This is absolutely unbelievable.
Also, I'm not sure what fetish Joshua has with exposing letters/emails and names of students that are supposed to be confidential. It's very unprofessional and says a lot about the instructor's character. I also was browsing through a previous post from Mr. Gunn's blog and I happened to find one especially striking! A student, obviously African American, had made comment about the black nails and the strange looking cane that is currently in the communication website photo of him. The reply from Josh was, "The cane was my great grandmother's. I'll bet you'll never know where this cane has been." If I'm not mistaking I'm pretty sure he is referring to slavery and the beating of blacks! Take a look for yourself if he hasn't deleted the post already as I've just discovered that the one from yesterday is longer there.
Although I am willing to bet that this isn't the first rodeo that we've seen dealing with Mr. Gunn's behavior, I would appreciate it if you would bring this to his attention. I have emailed the president as well as the Texas State Board of Education in hopes that someone will further look into this matter.
Sean

The president and the dean received two identical emails on Thursday. Rod emailed me---along with my chair---to ask for our reactions. I replied thusly:

Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2009 14:57:14 -0500
To: "Hart, Roderick P" , Barry Brummett
From: Joshua Gunn
Subject: Re: FW: Concerned CMS Student.
Cc:
Bcc:
X-Attachments:

Dear Rod and Barry,

First, this post is fraudulent. There is no "Sean Jacobs" in the UT directory, nor did I have a Sean or anyone by the name of Jacobs in my course last semester.

Second, I have never mentioned a student by name on my personal web-log or "blog." I have discussed plagiarism frequently, but I do not discuss students' identities.

Third, for going-on two years I have been dealing with a disgruntled "stalker" student on my blog. I have a rather large stockpile of messages similar to the one you received. I have filed a case with the University Police that remains open. Thus far, the police have said they cannot pursue the harasser because these nasty messages are on my personal web space.

Fourth, this message to you comes on the heels of a lot of activity from the "stalker." I recently installed software that allows me to +block+ people from posting if the are hailing from a certain ISP address. The "stalker" has tried numerous times to post on the blog this week, but he only gets a "you have been banned" message. I think his message to you was in part inspired by my blocking him.

Finally, now that he has emailed you directly, I think the police can act. Would you mind forwarding me the full email, with all the gobbledy-gook at the top of the email? We need the IP numbers. If these numbers match the numbers I have blocked this week, I will finally have the evidence I need to press charges.

This man has been harassing me since January of 2008, when I failed him for plagiarizing thirteen pages of internet material in a "personal reflection journal" assignment. I would really like to do something about it. It's not fun having someone this angry at you for so long; in fact, it's scary.

Sincerely,

Josh

Reading this exchange should catch most of y'all up to date. I made a police report last November of the stalker, submitting all the attempted and actual posts on the blog that I had saved. I went to the police station with this new "evidence" and submitted copies in a "supplemental report." The police said they would check with such-and-so department to see if the emails were criminal. If so, they could subpoena ISPs and Google mail for identity information.

I then went to visit with the dean. The issue with the timing of this "attack" is that my tenure packet will be turned in, literally, next Monday. The dean explained that this is not the time one wants attention from "The Tower" (slang for central administration, and because they are located in a big monstrous phallus-like building that you can see from all parts of Austin)---no controversy is always best around promotion time, since "The Tower" are a fairly conservative bunch. Apparently, the university president's office punted this email immediately to a central administration legal team who are undertaking an investigation of Rosechron. Even though the allegations are not true, for legal reasons they must look into it. Frankly, I'm pissed the stalker has succeeded in something, but I'm also not too worried about this because I have never disclosed a student's identity or even hinted at who a given student is or may be. Nevertheless, I've been advised to "blog about kittens" for the next year until the promotion is official.

Rod, as many of you know, is something of a wordsmith and no doubt he ran the stalker's email through Diction, a content analysis program he authored. He is of the opinion the writer is either a second-language speaker or psychotic. We profiled in a geeky rhetorician-cum-FBI profiler style for some minutes. He was of the opinion the stalker was not the former athlete I suspected, but someone else, perhaps someone not even affiliated with the university. I said I thought the stalker knew too much about my classroom for it not to be a former student.

The identity of the stalker became this week's "obsession" for me, not just because it's a mystery, but because I was concerned for my safety. For some reason driving home from my meeting with the dean, I remembered a nasty couple of emails sent by a student I had in the fall of 2005, my first semester here. These emails were the basis of my series of "petulant demand" posts (all of which are not available at the moment).

In the fall of 2005 a student used an old architecture paper in his journal for my class on popular music. The student received a "C" or something (it was not an F) because I just didn't give him credit for those pages. Over the winter holiday break he was harassing me on email about his grade---sent a nasty note on Christmas day, as I recall. Anyway, when I got back to Austin I found his journal, saw what the issue was, and as a courtesy phoned him. He went into a rage, screaming into the phone. He was so over-the-top I just decided to hang up with him. Shortly thereafter, I received this email:

Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 18:46:26 -0600 From: ---------- @mail.utexas.edu To: Joshua Gunn Subject: Fun with scathing emails

Josh, First let me say that i really regret writing you such a good course review, i fully intend to retract it through the appropriate channels. It is unfortunate that you seem to view this issue as some kind of competition between us where your position trumps mine, as opposed to an entirely understandable problem to be solved. Education is the most fullfilling thing in life and grades are really inconsequential but as a professor you have a duty to your students to treat them fairly and with integrity. In this, Dr. Gunn, I believe you have failed. Since you seem unwilling to carry on a rational phone conversation without dancing around the issues like a politician on Crossfire or hanging up i thought i'd write you this friendly email. I'm absolutely astounded at your willingness to let this be drawn out through official and unecessary channels leading to weeks of headaches and more bad press for your "tenure run" when you know as well as i do that they will rule in my favor. Before our correspondence about my final grade had begun i had commented to several people about you being one of the better professors i've had at UT. Clearly, my impression of you was uninformed. While you're a very interesting lecturer and clearly very informed on the subject matter it appears to me that your inexperience with your authority has comprimised your integrity and your ability to effectively profess. Your obvious depression mingles into your lectures by way of a condecending and generally prickish tone (perhaps, Dr. Gunn, it gets lost in emails but it doesn't in person) and you've allowed your anti-establishment image and behaviour which you've worked so hard to cultivate (and which, in part, makes you a good lecturer) compromise your ability to communicate equitably. Your obviously a very intelligent person, unfortunately you, like so many intelligent people, have made the mistake of assuming that any legitimate afront to your authority is also one to your intelligence. So let me, a very intelligent person myself, give you some advice. Operating rationally and with concession gains one much more credibility in intellectual circles (that is what intelligent people like us are looking for, isn't it, eh?) than the alternative. So before you write me off as some snot-nosed, grade-grubing, student who doesn't really "know" you, you should realize that being privy to another's true view of you is a rare and invaluable tool in regards to advancing your career and (not to mention) enriching your life. So if you feel you need to write back an equally scathing review of me, i'll welcome it as i'm always interested in improving how I project myself and for that matter i'm interested in delightfully scathing emails in general. So that "none of the tone is lost" Dr. Gunn, this email is intended to be read as condecending and arrogant (and oh so therapeutic! thanks, joshie!) in hopes that it's message will resonate and that future students of yours will be treated with a little more due justice. Later, ----.

The student then disappeared and I never heard from him again . . . until six months later, when on June 5th he sent Rod this email:

Fwd: Re: In regards to Dr. Joshua Gunn

Doctor______, my name is _____ and i was a student in Dr. Joshua Gunn's rhetoric of popular music class last semester. I am writing you this email to express my displeasure with him as a professor. I'm sure you've gotten many emails about his "anti-establishment" behaviour and his propensity for foul language during lecture, these are not where my concerns lie. In fact, i think those characteristics make him an entertaining and effective lecturer. Dr. Gunn demonstrated a complete lack of ethical principals in my personal dealings with him, the details of which are long and arduous and will be provided upon request (my aim is not to get my grade changed or anything like that, simply to voice my opinion that he is not a professor of the caliber that the college should be employing) He is perfectly willing to flat out lie to his students (only to unwittingly reveal his lies when he calls your home to rudely dismiss your problem wiuthout even knowing what it is and then hang up on you),and in fact, his general attitude seems to be to coast by without actually doing any work on his was to a nice fat tenur. Which, by the way, he actively campaigns for during course evaluations, encouraging students to give him good evaluations so that he may make tenur quickly. This, i believe, is not only extremely unethical but also presumptious and highly premature considering it was his fist semester at UT. This email is already long enough and you no doubt are a very busy man, so feel free to contact me if you would like further details about his unethical behaviour, otherwise i would just like to reiterate my extreme dissatisfaction with him as a teacher. Thank you, --petulant student.

I sat these years-old messages along side the recent ones. I then compared them all to this student's journal, which for some reason (thank you unconscious) I kept. It's the same rhetorical style; I think it is the same person.

Of course, I reported this to the police. I now have a specific name, and it wasn’t whom I had originally suspected. I have a situation where a student from 2005 has now come back two years later and has been harassing me ever since.

We did a search on this student in the UT databases. His last enrollment at UT was 2005. He never finished his degree. He was a psychology major. Apparently, after his class with me, he dropped out of school---and I gather blames me for this.

One has to wonder: what kind of person holds a grudge for four years for something he did wrong? The obvious answer is only someone who is "unstable" (or better, psychotic).

This past week I have been in email conversations with both Barry and Rod about the stalker. Rod's advice was to "chill" and focus on scholarship, which is sort of hard to do in this kind of situation. I wish I could! Barry's advice was to "go comic." That is, to email this guy anonymously and tease him---and doing so may have the added benefit of getting him to admit his true identity. So, I set up a fake gmail account under fake name. Barry crafted the message (he's good at this stuff) to play on suspected stalker's true name. I got a friend to hit "send" from another state. Here's what was sent to the stalker:

:

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 2:45 PM, ~mp wrote:

A little boyd told me you doug yourself in too far with that recent prank and now you are a mark for every cop in the land.

~mp

Within the hour the stalker, with his assumed alias, replied thus:

:

From: Sean Jacobs <seanjcbs@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 3:43 PM
Subject: Re:
To: MP <mp@gmail.com>

Hey bud,

Boyd and Doug are my 2 best friends! And guess what? Their both cops! The sad thing is... They love me!

P.S. miles, I'm a little bit to old for pranks! Believe me it's all business! A Professor that admits to using acid and binge drinking with the purpose of trying to "keep it up" during sexual activities is a complete freak and Nutty professor! Quoting one of my dear friends who works for the Texas Board of Education, "we must get rid of the bad teachers one day at a time." Joshua Gunn is to be included! You know what they say miles... knowledge is power. And people outta try using it.

Have a good lad!

Sean<

(He is referring to my "sex on acid" post about the iPod). This quick response to my anonymous post, while not evidence that would stand up in court, is enough to convince me I know who the stalker is. It's the psychotic guy I had in class fall of 2005, the same guy who has weird writing errors, who likes to use big words to sound smart, is narcissistic to the core (a signature of psychosis), and so on.

Thursday I decided to run a criminal background check with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice on this student's name. What do you suppose that I found? He has been in jail for a 3rd degree felony and is currently on parole. For what, you ask? Why, for Internet fraud and forgery under a fabricated identity, and I gather (I don't read the jargon well on these reports) with something to do with prescription drugs. The student is 27, but his alias is a man by the name of "Clint Moore" (with his real first name as the middle name) who is 36 years old. In short: fabricating fake identities is this man's m.o.

So, in sum: I know my cyberstalker's identity now, he's a convicted felon, and he appears fearless. He believes this is some sort of intellectual duel, that we are engaged in a game. He apparently knows enough about Internet law to know how close he can march up to the line. He knows something about the tenure and promotion process. And he knows just what to say to university officials to cause an investigation. I'm not a profiler and don't have that expertise, but it's clear he is either a classical obsessive neurotic (as are most of us, only less so) or, worse, borderline psychotic. Unquestionably he is malicious.

Unfortunately, the police have told me that they cannot do anything because, in their view, none of this harassment is "criminal." Their advice remains that I should take down my blog. They have suggested I get an attorney and go at this from a civil angle. I have contacted a few attorneys to pursue the "defamation" angle. I will visit with the university lawyer next week to argue for them to get involved, since I'm being harassed for doing my job and no one will do anything about it. And, it stands to reason this guy is on parole; certainly deceptive Internet behavior is a violation of his parole. I'm not interested in suing this guy for money; I'm just interested in my safety. I had a good conversation with Shaun tonight, and a defensive posture is best---if I could just get a restraining order, that would be good. He will violate it in a day's time, of course.

Now you're in the know. And maybe now that I have vomited all of this out, I can get back to work.