The Eagle and the Transcript provide the same article by Karen Gardner about student reaction to our current controversy. (I guess that they have some sort of sharing agreement on local stories. Gardner seems to cover Williams.)

The story provides lots of quotes from students, seemingly interviewed at random, most of whom say reasonable and positive things. It’s quite refreshing. I would wager that Gardner would have gotten very different quotes if she had gone to the leadership of the MinCo crowd. Just an observation.

My favorite part:

Smith said it didn’t bother him not knowing who the accused professor was, even if he might find himself in one of the classes she teaches. However, another student — a freshman who would only identify himself by his first name, Jerry — said the college should release the name of the professor.

“If they already found out about the professor they should at least tell the students who the professor is,” he said. “Unless they’re [still] under investigation — and the professor still has the right to representation and stuff — once they have already certified that the professor did make the racial comment in a malicious sense, not just like out of accident, then students have a right to know.”

You said it, Jerry! Although my motivations in pursuing the identity of the slurer [Slurer? ed. One who slurs.] were mixed — interesting puzzle, chance to show off my R programming skills, insistence that the College be more transparent in its dealings with students and alumni — the most important issue has always been thr right of students to know these things. Students have a right to know where there professors went to school, what scholarly work their professors have done, how well or poorly their professors teach, and what official sanctions, if any, have been applied to them.

And if the College isn’t going to tell Jerry and his peers these things, than EphBlog will.