Archive - Feb 2010
February 10th
Wordless Wednesday
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 02/10/2010 - 10:27
February 9th
Freedom of Information and Political Campaigns
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 02/09/2010 - 14:37Saturday’s Hartford Courant has an article about a complaint that Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz used public data for private use. After a brief investigation, I find that The Friends of Susan 2010 has used public data as part of their campaign. In fact, just about every campaign legally uses public data in their campaigns. What is different about The Friends of Susan 2010 is that they used public data in a creative and innovative way.
On February 2, 2009, Jason Doucette, Treasurer of Friends of Susan 2010 filed a freedom of information request per the Connecticut Freedom of Information Act of 2008 (Connecticut General Statues Chapter 14, Section 1-211) requesting an electronic copy of the Secretary of State’s constituent database. This public information was provided to the campaign and the campaign then used it to contact various people.
Based upon a letter from Joan Andrews, director of legal affairs and enforcement for the State Election Enforcement Commission (SEEC) to a Geoffrey Griswold Fisher of Litchfield, CT, it appears that over eight months later, Mr. Fisher filed an affidavit of compliant with the SEEC on October 26, 2009. The response sates that “This matter will not be docketed for an investigation as it does not allege facts, which if proven true, would constitute a violation of any law within the Commission’s jurisdiction.” It goes on to state that Connecticut General Statutes 5-266 et seq, commonly known as the State Hatch Act is administered by the Department of Administrative Services as a personnel matter. Ms. Andrews accordingly referred the complaint to the “Commissioner of the Department of Administrative Services and the Auditors of Public Accounts.”
The Secretary of State’s office keeps many different databases of public information. One is the voter registration database which is often purchased by campaigns for their voter outreach programs. Another database is the list of Notaries of the Public, which vendors sometime request in an effort to do business with Notaries. There are also databases about companies registered in the State of Connecticut and their agents. Often, the Secretary of State’s office has been criticized for not having systems that make this data more easily accessible.
In this case, the Friends of Susan 2010 have requested and received public information that they have used in a creative, innovative and as far as I can tell, perfectly legal manner. To test this, I have sent a Freedom of Information Request to each of the Constitutional Offices as well as the Governor’s and the Lt. Governor’s office.
Deputy Secretary of State Lesley Mara has informed me that the IT staff in the Secretary of State’s office will fulfill my request in the same manner as it did for the Friends of Susan 2010 and will be providing details soon on exactly when I can retrieve this data.
As of the time that this article is being written, I have also received several replies from other agencies. Anna Ficeto, Legal Counsel for the Office of Governor M. Jodi Rell responded:
This email will acknowledge receipt of your FOI request. We have not had a similar request and will need to research this with our IT staff. We will be in touch. Feel free to email me with any questions or concerns.
Catherine LaMarr, General Counsel to the Treasurer’s office replied:
I am in receipt of your email addressed to the Office of the Treasurer dated the 8th of February 2010, requesting that this office furnish you with copies of certain documents in accordance with the Connecticut Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”).
By copy of this message, I am asking the Treasurer’s Senior Executive Assistant for External Relations to furnish me with a copy of any constituent database she may employ. Additionally, I am checking with each Treasury Division to determine whether such divisions maintain constituent databases. Once I have determined whether the Office of the Treasurer has databases responsive to your request, we will determine the cost of compiling and copying any such database.
It is the standard practice of this office to charge $0.25 per page for copies of documents or the actual cost in employee time and state resources to produce electronic copies of records requested under the Connecticut FOIA. Once we have identified documents responsive to your request and calculated the costs associated with your request, we will contact you.
Should you have any questions regarding this matter or should you wish to modify your request, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Steve Jensen, Press Director for the Comptroller’s office replied:
I'm Nancy's press director. I assume your request is in the context of the story regarding the Sec. of State's constituent database. The short answer is we do not compile such a database here - we have a monthly mail log that records constituent inquiries and contains copies of their correspondence and to whom it was assigned internally for action, but we do not compile the names in a list or use the info for any other purpose. Let me know if that satisfies your request or not...
So far, there has not yet been a response by the Lt. Governor’s Office or the Attorney General’s office.
There is a lot of valuable information that our State Government collects and makes available to all the people of the state. The Secretary of State’s office has done a good addressing these requests. The Friends of Susan 2010 has been creative and innovative in their use of public data and others would be wise to follow suit. Others in politics do not yet appear to have learned the value of openness and public information.
By looking more closely at Mr. Fisher’s apparently meritless complaint we can find two different paths. Mr. Fisher seems to want to use the State Hatch laws to prevent people from gaining access to public information. On the other hand, we can take the course of the Secretary of State’s Office in their reply to the Friends of Susan 2010 request to promote the use of public information and move towards a more open government that is, in fact, of, by and for the people.
February 8th
Free Speech, Good Conduct, the School to Prison Pipeline and the Educational Imperative
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 02/08/2010 - 11:25Recently, there has been a fascinating discussion concerning free speech and learning going on online that I wanted to explore and comment on. Last week, David Drury wrote an article in the Hartford Courant about teens facing fines for swearing at Windsor High School.
Andy Thibault posted a letter from Jon Schoenhorn to the Hartford Courant entitled Swearing In School Is Not A Crime. Jon writes:
Once again, school officials are foolishly trying to use the police to enforce good manners …
Apparently this principal doesn't understand that constitutional free speech protects bad manners and language in criminal prosecutions, unless the intent of the speaker is to annoy and harass, or unless the language constitutes "fighting words" — that is, words likely to provoke a violent reaction.
I got to know both Andy and Jon through my coverage of the Avery Doninger case. Andy has provided great coverage on the case and Jon is the lawyer representing the Doningers. My initial reaction was to side with them on this issue.
However, going back to the Hartford Courant, it says that students "who use profanity directed toward a teacher, toward another student in class or during a verbal altercation in the hallway or cafeteria," will be ticketed. It may well be that the intent and the actual practice will be to only ticket students whose language constitutes fighting words and falls very nicely within the bounds of free speech laws.
Yet there are also deeper issues. First, how big a concern is “fighting words” at Windsor High School. According to the Courant article, there were some parents “that expressed some surprise over Sills' letter, since there had been no communication about what led up to it.” Perhaps it is not only the students who have not been communicating as effectively as they could be.
Another concern that has come up with this is that by using police, Windsor High School may be perpetuating or expanding the school to prison pipeline. Schools that use police to address behavior problems may be keeping the immediate behavior problems a little bit better under control, but may ultimately be adding to problems by causing student to think of themselves as in conflict with the legal system and not simply in conflict with their teachers. On the other hand, it may be that the best way to get students to learn more effective ways of dealing with their anger and frustration than using fighting words in school is to hit them where it hurts most, in their pocketbooks.
Yet perhaps, there are even better ways to address this. Schools are supposed to be learning environments. Fighting words can disrupt a learning environment, but they may also be opportunities for deeper learning. Should Windsor High School have a special session on Free Speech? A couple years ago, I went with Avery Doninger to Windsor High School to talk about her case. She had learned a lot from her experience. She learned that some popular colloquial words for, such as using “Douchebag” when you mean “jerk”, may hamper ones efforts to get a message across. She also learned the importance of being allowed to get ones message across and standing up for that right. She shared this learning with students at Windsor High School and I think it was a great educational event.
Likewise, should the school have classes in anger management and learning better ways of dealing with conflict than resorting to fighting words, or for that matter, resorting to $103 tickets? Perhaps such classes could be offered where students, teachers and administrators are all the learners in the class.
Ultimately, I hope that all my friends on all sides of this discussion return to the educational imperative. What are the goals of public education? What are the best means of achieving these goals? In my mind, learning about the importance of free speech, what it means, and how to stand up for it, as well as learning about better ways of dealing with anger and frustration than using fighting words are important parts of this educational imperative. They aren’t part of the Connecticut Mastery Tests (CMTs), but perhaps they should be. The race to the top, and breaking the school to prison pipeline are both important goals that such learning could facilitate.
What do you think?
February 7th
Holden Caulfield and the Phonies of #PCWM
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 02/07/2010 - 09:53Yesterday, I drove up to Westfield State College for PodCampWesternMass2. Podcamps are open space unconferences where people interested in podcasting and often related topics like other social media, gather to talk about their interests. At PCWM, there was not an awful lot of talk about actual podcasting, and the sessions tended to be much closer to traditional speakers or panels than true open space unconference meetings, but it was a good group of people.
I’ve been doing so much with so many forms of social media for so long, that I typically don’t expect to learn a lot at these conferences, but I always hope for some good pointers here and there. More importantly, I like to share some of my own experiences and meet interesting people.
As I drove up from Connecticut, I listened to Studio 360 on public radio. For those interested, you can listen to Studio 360 as a podcast. One of the articles this week as about Joanna Smith Rakoff’s interactions with JD Salinger when she worked for the literary agency that represented him.
It seems like everyone has been talking about how JD Salinger has affected their lives. One of the best articles I found was Reflections on J.D. Salinger...Goddard College, Franny and Zoey and what an artist really is…. Nettie Hartsock wrote about how Franny and Zoey changed her life when she was starting at Goddard College.
I’ll commit heresy and admit that while I enjoyed reading Catcher In The Rye, and I’m sure I got something valuable out of it, it really didn’t have any great affect on my life, and I haven’t read any of his other books, at least as far as I can remember, although I have vague recollections of starting to read one or two of them and never finishing them.
The one word that I hear more often than any other in reflections about JD Salinger is Holden Caulfield frequent use of the word “Phony”. Greg Palast has a great essay, Kvetcher in the Rye which explores this in the political context. Ms. Rakoff talked about phonies in her show, and there was a lot of talk about Salinger’s reclusiveness.
Podcamps and social media are the other end of the spectrum from Salinger’s reclusiveness and concern about phonies. I don’t think I’ve ever met Mr. Salinger at a Podcamp or social media gathering nor have I met people channeling Mr. Caulfield. Too often, it seems, such gatherings, besides being the polar opposite of reclusive, tend to attract social media experts and other snake oil salesmen like those who talk about search engine optimization.
As I drove up, the words of Captain Hammer in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog rang in my ears, “Everyone’s a hero in their own way…” Perhaps Holden Caulfield is right, we are all phonies in our own way. Yet we are also all catchers in the rye in our own ways as well.
We can look at the phony social media experts and search engine optimization snake oil salesmen as phonies living their lives of quiet desperation. Or, we can recognize that it is precisely this quiet desperation that can make even the most fake phonies fascinating catchers in the rye, and that is where some of the real power of social media and podcasting can come in.
When people bring a little bit of their authentic lives into their social media, they become a little less phony and a lot more interesting. Many of the people at PCWM understand that, and tried to communicate it to people learning their way around social media. It is, perhaps, the most important message that anyone can come away with from a podcamp.
With this as my framework, I was fortunate not to meet any phonies at PCWM. Instead, I reconnected with some fascinating old friends from previous podcamps and met some fascinating new friends as well. I hope others had similar experiences at PCWM.
February 6th
Dr. Horrible’s High School Musical at Amity
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 02/06/2010 - 08:10Can a bunch of high school students take the horribly successful Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and produce it as a high school musical? If any group could pull it off, it would be the students at Amity High School. After their great production of Rent last year, I have a lot of respect for the thespians there.
Can they take such a great show, and add nuances to it that make the show its own successful interpretation instead of simply creating a pale copy of the original? I had greater doubts about their ability to do this, but I was wrong.
Produced by Katie Errera and directed by Laureen Fox, this show was a smashing success. Things got off to a poor start because of technical difficulties with the sound system. The students struggled with the problems and eventually got the system working sufficiently enough for the show which started around fifteen minutes late.
Ted McNulty, starring in the role of Dr. Horrible did a phenomenal job. Together with Rachel Hildrich as Penny and Dan Quarequio as Captain Hammer, they added a dimension to the show that seemed to amplify the meaning of the original show. Dr. Horrible is a shy, ill adjusted young man who wishes to display his horribleness in order to win the heart of the sweet idealistic young Penny. Captain Hammer is the dashing young do-gooder who does his good through beating up people and seeks Penny as little more than an object, another sexual conquest. Seeing all of this cast in the light of high school romances with the geeks, dweebs, jocks and good kids worked incredibly well.
In addition, the casting and acting of Tess Stirling as Moist was brilliant. In the original production, Moist is a flat minor character, a villain whose super power is merely to make things moist, and a close friend of Dr. Horrible. In this production, Moist was presented as a person that had a crush on Dr. Horrible from the beginning and Tess played this incredibly well.
There were two down points about the production. First, it was not as well publicized as it should have been. I imagine many people from the Amity Region would have loved to have seen this show. The second problem was related to the first. It was a one night show. The production deserved at least a full weekend run. In the end, it did get a deserved standing ovation, and I hope that Ms. Errera and Ms. Fox also get proper recognition for a very successful independent study project.
(Originally published in the Woodbridge Citizen.)
