I first met Chris Castle 10 years ago, on a hot June day in Ashland, Ohio. We sat outside of a coffee shop, sweating in the heat of the coffee and the sunshine. I was writing a profile of him for Cleveland Magazine, and we spent a great deal of time talking about writing. At one point, Castle said that when he’s writing a song, it’s like he’s walking into a pitch-black warehouse, one where […]
You can read this post and much more about the goings-on at Ashland University by visiting Eye On Ashland, a watchdog journalism website I created to keep an eye on the university administration and its questionable practices. That website has been reported to Facebook as one that violates the social media site’s Community Standards (it doesn’t) because they don’t want people seeing news critical of AU. I’m just pretty much going to leave this file […]
Note: You can also read this post over at Eye On Ashland. Another document that was filed on April 8 was the plaintiffs’ pre-trial statement.
Please consider heading on over to this post on the Eye On Ashland site. They’re the same posts, but I’ve created this one because Ashland University is doing everything it can to keep the Eye On Ashland site blocked on Facebook. The trial between six former Ashland University tenured faculty members and the university itself is set to begin next week. Yesterday (April 8), a couple new documents were posted on the Ashland County Clerk […]
Ashland University President Carlos Campo called Ashland County Municipal Court Judge John L. Good a “hillbilly judge” during an address he gave to the university’s Faculty Senate earlier this month, according to multiple people who were in the meeting. Campo claimed that “hillbilly judge” is Good’s Twitter name. However, a review of Good’s Twitter account shows that his Twitter name is actually John Good, and his Twitter handle is @JudgeJohnGood. In his description, Good describes […]
A summary of the Ashland University Board of Trustees’ review into the university’s hiring and drug policies was emailed to faculty yesterday. If you need to know why the BOT wanted to conduct this review, click here. The BOT calls this an independent review, but that is not accurate. That’s because the BOT hired the law firm Barnes & Thornburg to conduct this review, the same law firm that is representing AU in the lawsuit […]
Some people have asked me why I continue to write about what is going on at Ashland University. It’s a question I’ve asked myself numerous times. After all, I escaped AU and landed in a place — Fairfield University — that has made me believe in the wonders of higher education again, a place that has let me see that there are indeed institutions where the administrators and the faculty work together with a common […]
The Ashland University Board of Trustees has hired a law firm to conduct an independent review of the university’s hiring practices and its substance abuse policies, according to an email sent to university faculty, staff, and students on Wednesday, January 23. The email was signed by Kevin L. Doss, the chairman of the AU Board, and said the investigation, which will be done by the law firm Barnes & Thornburg, is being done in light […]
Twenty-eight years ago today (January 2, 1991), I sat in a hospital bed and watched “Hoosiers.” Mom had gone home to be with my brothers John and Jim, as Dad was still driving back east after making it several hundred miles west before he got the news and turned around. About six hours earlier in the day, I had been admitted to Wooster Community Hospital, to Room 404, so doctors could run tests. I had […]
Whenever we go back to Ohio for visits, I always make sure to stop in at Vertical Runner, the running store in Wooster. I did the same when we were there over the holidays and bought myself a new pair of running shoes. It was the last pair I’d buy in Vertical Runner’s original store, as they’re moving to a bigger facility, one that is also a historical Downtown Wooster building that has been beautifully […]
