The Bollard Bulletin: December 24, 2024
Cartoon Tuesday: Bollardhead heads home on a holiday; UMaine trustees divest from reality
WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED
Crazy. Just yesterday, in my review of Peace Mountains of Peace’s powerful new demo release, May We Love In Ways That Devastatingly Disrupt State Violence, I mentioned its inclusion of a recording of a protester upbraiding the trustees of Rutgers University for failing to divest from the U.S.-Israeli military-industrial complex currently committing genocide in Gaza. This morning we get news that trustees of the University of Maine system have refused to publicly debate or vote on a similar demand by hundreds of students, faculty and alumni, because … they need to protect open discussion and discourse?
“[A]fter a 25-minute executive session, the board publicly deliberated and came to a consensus that it would not advance the issue,” Press Herald reporter Riley Board wrote. (Note: executive, in this context, means secret or closed-door).
“Board of trustees Chair Trish Riley said she had met with students about their concerns, but that the board’s responsibility is to foster open discourse,” reads the next paragraph in the article. You don’t have to be college-educated to spot the logical inconsistency here.
The chairwoman said, aloud, in public, “The question here is, is it appropriate for the board of trustees, given our statutory responsibility to assure that this university is a place of open discussion and discourse, is it appropriate for us to take a position on these demands?”
Well, yeah. I mean, you can’t have a discussion if no one has a position from which to engage in discourse. And, as student organizer Willow Cunningham of Jewish Voice for Peace pointed out to the reporter, the trustees’ decision to continue to fund the war-crimes machine is, by definition, a decision. “We already have a position, and it’s to support genocide, to support apartheid,” Cunningham said of the UMaine system.
The trustees’ rebuff has only “emboldened” students, faculty and graduates to press them harder. “There’s a lot of energy going forward to make it clear to the board that they can’t just not consider this issue, that it’s actually quite important to all of us,” said Cunningham. Again, amen.
CARTOON TUESDAY
As always, it’s been a real adventure drinking and investigating weird stuff in Rockland, but Bollardhead, Rupert and the two-headed mutant Bollardhead baby they found there have to head home. This heartwarming episode is perfect for Christmas Eve, idn’t it? Awww…
Oh, and entertainment-wise, not much happening tonight, but Jeffrey Alan Boyd will be performing at Andy’s Old Port Pub for free at 8 p.m., and Portland Stage’s production of The Snow Queen ends today at noon (tickets still available).
