Cops in the Classroom: from Pedagogy to Oppression

In documents obtained through a public records request made by the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington a strange exchange is revealed. On March 13th, 2007 a former Masters of Public Administration adjunct faculty named Steve D. Johnson copied and forwarded on to the Washington State Patrol (WSP) a post on TESC Crier advertising a March 15th anti-war protest at the Port of Tacoma rallying against use of ports for military shipments.

This daytime protest, planned as a mock funeral mourning the departure of a ship laden with weapons and supplies headed for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was called for by Port Militarization Resistance and Olympia Iraq Veterans Against the War. Statements in the call-to-action such as “Wear mourning clothes, bring many flowers to honor the victims” and “The Ship is gone and it is now time to mourn those who have died and those that will,” seem questionable as to the necessity of this faculty alerting the Washington State Patrol. But this is also where a seemingly simple situation of an overly paranoid adjunct faculty takes on a different dimension.

Included in the members of the WSP that Johnson forwarded the TESC Crier announcement to is a WSP patrolman also named Steven Johnson. A look at the payroll for Evergreen and the Washington State Patrol shows a Steve D. Johnson listed in both for the 2007 pay period. While Steven D. Johnson could not be located for comment, a bio of Washington State Patrol Lieutenant Steven D. Johnson contained in the WSP newsletter, “Inside Out”, from October 2009 states that Lieutenant Johnson received his BA and his Masters in Public Administration from Evergreen, the same department in which the adjunct faculty Johnson was employed.

Further lending credence that Lieutenant Johnson and Professor Johnson are one and the same, the subject of the email forwarded to WSP was short and informal enough to imply previous communications, containing only the phrase “FYI”, with no further reasons given for why this TESC Crier announcement may have been of interest to the State Patrol. It would seem that if a faculty felt it necessary to forward a TESC Crier announcement of a mock funeral to the State Patrol they would have, at least, included some contextualizing statements of why they felt this information needed to be brought to the State Patrol’s attention. The October 2009 “Inside Out” newsletter also contains some further interesting information on Lieutenant Johnson. Beginning his employment with WSP in 1986 and transferring to District 1, Olympia on January 17, 2005, Lt. Johnson received numerous promotions and awards. Included among these is a commendation for “outstanding response to a riot situation” and a Chief’s Coin for “actions during a civil disturbance at the Port of Olympia.”

While adjunct faculty Johnson appears to have broken no criminal laws by removing a message from a closed college community listserv, there are a few points of Evergreen policy that this action could be violating. Besides the effect such actions could have on cooling political speech on campus, there are also clearly laid policies for Evergreen under the “Appropriate Use of Information Technology Resources”.

These college policy guidelines state that “the college [which includes faculty and staff] has a responsibility to treat information about, and information stored by, the system’s users in a manner that respects both user privacy and the value of that information.”

The policy further prohibits any use of college resources, and specifically TESC Crier, for the purpose of, “personal gain or financial profit”, defining personal gain as, “Any use of resources that is associated with receiving a financial profit is considered a personal gain. The profit does not need to be direct.” By using college resources such as a faculty email and TESC Crier in furtherance of an outside, wage-paying job, Johnson may be violating State and College ethics laws by using his position and resources as faculty to accomplish his job as a Washington State Patrol Lieutenant.