Illustration: Cover of Michel Foucault's History of Madness, which I'm currently reading, and is quite funny--in part--as I think, again, about the reactions of some from IU's School of Informatics. They don't seem to get, to this day, that even though I didn't like the reactions I got--at every step of 'the game' (so to speak)--I continued to learn what I need for creating Life in the Box. That is, with every unusual step they took (mapped with tools I created, like this), I learned more about human psychology; part of me was thrilled to learn how people respond to extreme difference, while another part of me was aghast at what they thought, and depressed by the effects on my professional career, stuck between the stupid-human trick: distinguishing the message from the messenger..."...[T]he composite picture is gray, not black and white--and though seedy, not really colorful. And though involving psychological aspects of life--those are the most concrete facts, here. But it is a group shot, not a Facebook profile picture of one person."(Albany, Oregon (v3r5, Final Final version in 13 sections (a-m)) – Over the two years since leaving Indiana University's School of Informatics, I've heard different kinds of feedback from a variety of different people. This leads me to believe that the issues I worked on both professionally and personally continue to be the source of misunderstandings in others. So I want to take this entry to clear up some things with some straight-forward talk. It is nevertheless, very complicated.
Getting at the "truth" is rarely easy.
I apologize for going "personal"--and I cringe at having to "self-defend." "Self-defense" is Terra Ingognita for Aspergerians, who do not have a sense of self like neuronormal people have. As I try to educate my friends, some cannot "get" this "non-ego" space any better than I understand their "ego space" (although I've made that my main area of study for over ten years, so I do understand it pretty well). I'd rather be talking about theories of cognition, cognitive neuroscience, and their relationship to software and hardware, as most readers of this blog know...
My two years of study in Indiana University's School of Informatics were "crowning achievements" to the seven years of largely self-taught, independent, scrappy work I'd done--first in designing
hardware/software for e-books and then in my
Life in the Box project, a huge endeavor which remains daunting. At IU, in the School of Informatics, I learned the language and
tools of the trade, some of which I had already been using because of training and years of work in writing, editing, designing and publishing books--and I worked with some brilliant professors and students, some of whom I would, at times, battle over discrimination.
The positive side of all my work on advancing awareness of cognitive diversity is that changes have been made at Indiana University and within the School of Informatics in regard to Asperger's awareness--and some of those are a result of work I engaged in, though none of it helped me as a graduate student. The negative side is that getting to the point where changes were made meant stepping on a lot of toes. Given toes are connected to feet: some continue to kick back, as a result....
(a)
Asperger's Syndrome - (i) I became aware of Asperger's because of contact with a young man in Pennsylvania who had it. Never having heard of AS, I read everything I could about it--including the original research by Hans Asperger and the newer work by Lorna Wing--so as to better interact with this person and understand his perspective. (ii) As I read about AS, it "felt" like I was reading about something that described me, which was unsettling. (iii) The algorithms I was then working on for my Life in the Box software, and which I was testing on myself--as I know more about my own neurology than anyone else's--was suggesting that I had more than ADHD; so the Asperger's stuff offered a plausible answer to a question which arose out of running
Life in the Box through what I would learn in graduate school as a "
cognitive walk-through." (iv) From 2004, onward, I found professionals in psychology and psychiatry who acted as "checks" on my own research. So I started in with an ADHD psychiatrist in January 2004--and found my way to an Asperger's specialist in August 2006.
(b)
What do the professionals say? - (i) I was diagnosed and began treatment for Adult ADHD in January 2004. (ii) This treatment ended at Indiana University in the Fall of 2005, after the (iii) intervention of the head of the Counseling Center, there, overruled the (iv) computerized ADHD test and the (v) assessment of the psychologist with whom I worked on intake. This arose partly because the first psychiatrist with whom I worked at the Counseling Center, without having read my file, in a six minute meeting, (vi) discounted the ADHD diagnoses of the psychiatrist I'd worked with since 2004, the computerized testing which his Center uses, and the face-to-face assessment of his Center's intake psychologist. (vii) The 2nd psychiatrist with whom I worked at IU's Center did prescribe ADHD medicine, but a kind which created terrible side-effects, after which I discontinued treatment until (viii) Summer, 2006, when I was able to find a new psychiatrist outside the IU system. She confirmed the ADHD diagnosis and referred me to an Asperger's specialist. After extensive testing, she upped the ADHD diagnosis to Combined Type (severe) and confirmed my suspicions about having Asperger's. This work has continued with psychiatrists since leaving Indiana University; when I could afford to do so, I have continued to be on ADHD medicine.
(b)
M.S. at Indiana University - for various reasons, some of them petty and some of them as a continuation of a struggle engaged in at Indiana University, my efforts to raise awareness about cognitive diversity while at IU are often misreported. After (i) documenting 24 incidents which I ascribed to discrimination from August 2005-September 2006, (ii) I worked with Indiana Protection and Advocacy Services legal counsel to prepare a complaint against (iii) Indiana University, Martin Siegel and Erik Stolterman of the School of Informatics. This was delivered to the (iv) United States Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights, which, after reviewing it, found enough evidence to (v) warrant a full investigation in February, 2007. Simultaneously, I was engaged in a battle within Indiana University against (vi) Martin Siegel with similar charges of discrimination and evidence of grade-shaving, among other things. On the advice of (vii) my student adivser, who, it turns out, is (viii) personal friends with Martin Siegel and his partner Doug Bauder--(ix) I dropped the investigations within and outside of Indiana University--under the impression that "bygones would be bygones."
(c)
Ph.D. at University of California - Santa Cruz - after (i) working in its Purchasing Department since November, 2007, in Spring 2008, I (ii) began conversations with a professor in the Computer Sciences department. These led to her (iii) inviting me into the Ph.D. program for the following Fall, with assurances of one year of support (the standard full package). After making inquiries to be sure the water had gone "under the bridge" at IU--and being assured that, in fact, the past was the past, (iv) Martin Siegel offered to shepherd my Letters of Recommendation. He wrote a nice letter, and Erik Stolterman and Jeffrey Bardzell wrote letters which brought up (v) "psychological problems"--without telling me what they meant, and a surprise, given there was nothing vague about Asperger's + ADHD diagnoses; on appeal they changed this to "medical problems." The professor with whom I had established a good working relationship began (vi) to get defensive, and then even and surprisingly, indirectly accusatory, beginning to talk about (viii) the effects of publishing "false accusations on-line." I was (ix) accepted into the Ph.D. program--but having lost the support of the "sponsoring" professor, and my funding--I (x) declined.
(d)
"False Accusations On-Line" - While I could speculate endlessly about what others may or may not believe, nobody has ever said to me that I published anything false on-line. In fact, if they did--and I weren't broke--I'd sue them for libel, as I am primarily a non-fiction writer outside of Interaction Design. In an attempt to smooth things over after the battles within Indiana University and attempts outside it regarding discrimination, I did write emails which took full responsibility for all that had gone on--even going so far as to sympathize with Martin Siegel and others. That these--or anything I've written anywhere-- could be interpreted to mean that I ever included false information in my original list of 24 incidents of discrimination--or in attempting to have him investigated by a full Indiana University Grievance Review--would be to confuse my attempts at appeasement. So, once again, let me state for the record that I (i) believed strongly enough in my case against discriminatory practices at IU that I (ii) engaged assistance via a social worker at (iii) an Indiana state agency. After reviewing my evidence, that agency's (iv) legal counsel believed strongly enough in it to assist me in preparing it for consideration by (v) the United States Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights. After receiving it, and then reviewing its contents, they believed it warranted an investigation. This investigation ended for one reason and one reason only: I withdrew the Complaint because of fears that I would never receive my Masters of Science from Indiana University, according to what my student adviser told me.
(e)
IU Retaliation - This is of course retaliation, which is illegal. And as part of the United States Department of Education investigation, incidents of retaliation were listed. One of the other reasons I withdrew my complaint, and stopped the Grievance process at IU was that I could not find a lawyer in Indiana willing to take on Indiana University. Let me repeat that I did not stop the process because I suddenly "saw the light," and realized discrimination hadn't happened (though a different spin on this can be found in the closing paragraphs, below).
(f)
Drugs & Software...Don't Mix - As I tell everyone and anyone I meet, should the subject arise, today: I have no interest in illegal drugs--I don't want to be around them and certainly don't want to know anything about how anyone gets them. Having been down that road once in my life, I've exhausted anything I could learn long ago. I sound like a fuddy-duddy and a party-pooper: this is necessitated by my shifting out of the life of an "avant-garde" writer and into the life of an interaction designer (not that drugs and software don't mix, as many students attested--but for this individual, they don't mix). Yet, as all of those with whom I worked at Indiana University eventually would know, while attempting to track an underground network of illicit drug traffickers for a few weeks in October 2003--after freelancing for the local alternative press--I sometimes used illicit drugs. Upon my return to Indiana in 2005, and after learning that some of those I had tracked had gone to jail, I initiated some contacts with that same network, which was telling me they believed I had turned them in. Nothing could be further from the truth: after realizing I was following a story which was more than I could handle, in October, 2003, I disengaged from it--and from those involved. I had minor contact with an individual who had joined the drug network as a high school student, who I had encouraged to leave the network. In 2006, this individual showed up "suddenly" at Indiana University, as a student in Journalism (actually he was in an independent study program which included Journalism). This individual, who was the boyfriend of the main drug dealer I had tracked, was, I later discovered, causing problems for me at Indiana University in certain social networks, including students at the School of Informatics who were (self-admitted) partiers--some of whom were in the class ahead of me in the program, who even graded me--and competed with me for the limited Ph.D. slots. None of my drug use has ever been particularly secretive--I've written openly about it as early as 2003--and none of it was ever kept from any psychologist or psychiatrist with whom I worked..
(g)
Interest in "Underground Networks" - my freelance writing work in investigating illicit drug networks led me to discover the use of underage and barely legal individuals by drug networks, as is indicated in (f). That individual was barely 16 when he began dating the drug dealer I was shadowing; indeed, I helped move his stuff into the drug-dealer's house before I fully understood what was up. Later I gave him one of my computers, encouraged him to get out of the house, and develop his creative skills (he had designed clothes for fun). He would stay loyal to his boyfriend, who I discovered also lived in Bloomington--after getting out of jail in January 2006--which I found out as I was leaving, in August, 2007. But after I left Indiana in 2003, I would encounter other young individuals who were gay--some of whom were abused by a network of rich gay men in rural Pennsylvania, a network which reached back to Indiana by virtue of the oldest member of that group. When I returned to Indiana in 2005, I found more connections between aspects of the what I have written about, with irony, as "Old Boy Networks"-- in faculty and staff at Indiana University, including it's head of gay, lesbian and student life, Doug Bauder. Bauder is also the partner of Martin Siegel, who I had battled on discrimination. Bauder's office is within the house on IU's campus where student complaints are handled.
Now, one might begin to see a very tight circle, here, where gay students with complaints against faculty would be headed off at the pass, so to speak. After watching literally a whole so-called "student support" apparatus shift behind a completely false story made up by Siegel to explain his actions with regard to me, how could I have not moved to an investigation outside of Indiana University? While I would, in the end, work closely with an investigating IU Dean outside of Informatics--with some success--it was pretty clear that the machinery by which student complaints of harassment and abuse--particularly where gay issues arose--would not receive adequate help at IU if those complaints were aimed at IU faculty and staff in the Siegel-Bauder network.
One poorly sourced example of this has to do with the school of journalism where, in an on-line forum, former students wrote that they had to have sex with a recently deceased male professor in order to advance. This has not been corroborated--and for that reason, names have not been used. But it does fit with the overall pattern--though of course, one does not "accuse" from a pattern: one uses facts to "accuse."
(h)
What was Really Going On? - So, to get on with it: disturbingly, Siegel was rumored to have been involved in an affair with a student in our program (source: an IU Dean), something which sources close to Informatics told me almost led to his complete dismissal from the School in 2006 (source: Informatics professors, Informatics graduate students). If these sources are correct, then, indeed, there was an almost schizo-interest in me by Siegel--who essentially had to do both "good cop" and "bad cop" with me, as he protected himself, and the program he helped found (Informatics), even as more than one graduate student group member in Informatics created problems for me and my work.
Essentially I was either going to buy into their party line, or lose my professional life. Siegel, a master at survival in bureaucracies, had the pins set to fall in my favor or perhaps wobble, but nevertheless stay standing--against me. If I'm writing this blog, you can probably guess that my graduate career at Indiana University turned into a series of gutter balls.
These ready-to-shift allegiances I'm describing of Seigel's--or any top University administrator, for that matter--can be confusing, so let me restate it: I was most afraid, upon returning to Indiana, that folks would discover and misinterpret the events related to (g). Yet had I simply relaxed, and gone with the flow, I would have seen that sex with students--and drugs--were what "the Romans" of Informatics did in Bloomington (another Informatics HCI/d professor would even make out with his 20-something graduate student girlfriend in front of you...). Not a big deal. I didn't get it--and came in with alarm bells about predatory sex between older men and younger men. Not exactly what you want to hear if you're a 50-something year old Dean sleeping with a 20-something year old student, or the partner of that Dean, who is supposed to be the advocate for the 18-22 year old gay, lesbian and bisexual IU students.
This was the worst example of what I saw as problematic: Siegel was allegedly having an affair with--and had given a 2-year scholarship to a student who was creating problems in student groups. And this student is someone whom I'd found in on-line porn. Those should have been numbered: (i) affair (ii) student in
my working groups (iii) given 2 year scholarship (iv) who I found in on-line porn. To some, this would recommend him to greater and better things in Chicago...
Yet those are the facts as I learned them from Indiana University employees--and which, even two years later, nobody has disputed; unless you consider the indirect talk of "false accusations" in (c) above--which is a smear--to be a rebuttal.
(i)
So, Really: What Was Really Going On? Are these false accusations? I'm reporting what I learned from multiple sources (including other graduate students in the Bloomington HCI/d program, Bloomington faculty and Indianapolis faculty), and have only named names where I can corroborate information from these sources--and make a judgment as to whether or not I'm being fed false information as part of someone else's political battle (a possibility).
Let me stop and be as fair as I can be. Siegel was also up for being the Dean of the School of Informatics in Bloomington, and it is possible that, knowing my propensity to "investigate corruption"' that I was fed misinformation about Siegel--and Bauder. Siegel, who had suffered and survived a heart attack the previous year because of his tireless work in promoting the School, has very strong supporters among most students. And I even find it difficult to dislike him--after all that has gone down between us. I barely knew Bauder while there, but the actions in the offices literally five steps from his desk--and the lies used to protect Siegel from my discrimination-related accusations, led me to believe the worst about them (as it surely has led them to believe the worst about me).
Yet what I lay out in this blog entry underscores the facts on the ground as I read them from 2005-2007:
some students
were acting in discriminatory fashion, and with Siegel's protection--as I was threatening the man-boy networks which Siegel and Bauder allegedly--and seemingly--belonged. I even parodied this in one on-line series of blogs as the "Redhead Brigade" because of the bizaare number of gay redheads around the two (say 8 of 10 students involved, at least on the student level, with either). But life, where it intersects with underground worlds, often is not as it seems: it is a distinct possibility that Siegel and Bauder are who they seem, very good educators who have consistently and more often than not, worked to protect and promote students in the way we hope and expect our best educators to act. But that perspective on them does not exclude what I may have learned. Life is complicated like this.
(j)
Take Home Point: Don't Be Young and Gay in Indiana - That IU's outside legal counsel would be a law firm who also has a partner with demonstrable ties to a long-lived, predatory man-boy network would just add icing to the cake; that I once counted this partner as a close friend, merely makes for a sad commentary on the state of gay life in Indiana, as I found it from 2005-2007. The best thing to be if you are gay, in Indiana, is...rich. The second best thing to be is: young, hung, and, um, looking for "friends with benefits."
No wonder Indiana's LGBTQ folks cannot get any rights laws passed, and a former Democrat Governor could have signed that state's DOMA: while most lesbians and gays in the state live open lives, those who profit from underground networks hold the power. The equation is always the same in states without LGBTQ protections: those most threatened are the men who have lived closeted lives. As the individuals named here suggest--if the worst of what I've learned is true--being "out, gay and proud" doesn't mean a closet doesn't still exist, as some out "gay" men use that as cover for predatory practices. These men learned to get what they want from the complex combination of threats to and underground needs of the young gay men they cater to. As my
first book deals a bit with this, I always root for the underdog. Of course, sometimes the underdog isn't always the young (usually gay) man, some of whom are quite adept at manipulating what starts out as abuse into an advantage (and more power to them!). This will surprise those who don't understand these kinds of issues, even all the way back to Anita Hill v. Clarence Thomas; to those who are adept at getting away from abusers and predators fast. Yet the most susceptible people never seem to get more than 2 or 3 steps away--especially if predators intersect, anywhere, with their professional lives.
Sometimes the underdog is a 40-something gay man who has returned, with alarm, to a state of affairs which he had recognized as sick--when he first left--only to find it sicker.
(k)
Blog as Affidavit - If this were a piece of paper and I could do it, I'd sign my name, below, so that this entry could act as an affidavit--as it is, I'll type it: I believe every word in this entry--and have done everything in my power to be sure that nothing which is written here is false. I have done everything in my power to remove any animus towards individuals named here with whom I have "battled" in the past--and I have even outlined those battles so that the reader can judge for herself, and take what is here with a grain of salt.
But if you want to really get my "ire" going: repeat to me the lies that I hear in trying to find work in Informatics: "Oh, gosh, we really tried to help him!" This is patently false. Those I named were, from the start, trying to save their own necks as my investigations into underground networks got closer and closer to them. For this graduate student, life, at Indiana University, was over-determined by what few knew--in the underground lives of gay students, drugs, and those that liked them both. The "battle over discrimination" was really never about Asperger's or ADHD--true, none of my IU "antagonists" believed or cared about my ADHD or Asperger's; true that they were stupid enough to leave a huge trail of incidents. But in reality, they were "battling" me because I was onto them, some corrupt practices, and the individuals who benefited from those practices--some of whom continue to spread myths about this writer-turned-interaction designer.
(l)
When You Point a Finger at Others... - And I don't want to leave the impression that I didn't make mistakes at IU, before and after: (i) I never fully understood the dynamics of life in a big, public state school (ii) I never fully understood the strengths and weaknesses in email. It may not have been the best "fit"--and few people's motives were single-minded and uncomplicated. Again, I've done the best I can to explain what happened, from what I know. By the time came to leave I (iii) had become too consumed with my work in and fears about underground networks, so that even I could not well-utilize my last months there. Yet we had an agreement in place which gave me until 2008 to finish, a plan which I saw as fruitful up until the poisen pen letters sent to UCSC. (iv) I would let the work in underground networks continue to upset me off and on until earlier this year; and why wouldn't it? I believed it was hurting people I knew--and had killed my professional life. (v) I should have been more forthcoming about my previous underground work (g) earlier. (vi) I put the interests of a young man I believed to have been abused ahead of everything, and everyone else. (vii) I did not and do not understand the complex relationships that form between younger men and older men who have sex with one another (Asperger's actually means I don't get any relationships very well); I don't believe they're all abusive, yet I also don't believe they're always fully consensual. Nor do I believe they are a "way of life," nor something to hide, either. Inter-generational affections are complicated like all relationships, and like most, complicated not because of what seems obvious to outsiders, but because of what two people encounter as they approach intimacy. (viii) I particularly don't get inter-gen relationships, at times, when they show-up in on-line chats; and because of this, no longer participate.
I often try to say it like this: if your son or daughter was caught up in some of this stuff, how would you react? Gay people have to treat the younger generation like it is their progeny. I have let most of it go, having to believe that I've done what I could to unearth corrupt practices and spread the word about them, and get help to those who need it. Yet I still cannot find work in the industry...
(m)
Parting Glances (and Shots) - Some in Informatics, even before I left, began to use my "on-again, off-again" discrimination battle (with very personal and damaging other aspects) against them as a weapon against
me! This is pretty extraordinary, but something I've come to expect: grab any straw, no matter how thin, and use it to move the focus away from the real problem; portray it, as a "sign" of a "psychological problem" which I call "failure to f*ck" (on one interpretation) but which they try to pawn off on others as making up stories about them. I don't make up stories--I report what I hear, corroborate, double-check, etc. etc. That is the life of non-fiction writing.
Why would I suddenly, out of the blue, at Indiana University, for 2 years--and until today--create a phantasm of associations of evil men? Even if I'd wanted a graduate life at IU--once I broached the subjects I did, in the way I did, about the people I did--my Ph.D. life was over. I went "nuclear"--knowing the consequences, yet (I'm still) trying to negotiate them away whenever I can...the fundamental problem at Indiana University for me was that I was caught between an Indianapolis Dean's information, which I tended to believe because of a 20-years association (and yet who was corroborated by sources in Bloomington); and a Bloomington Dean, who I barely knew, and who, after a strong start (changing my 1/4 year of funding to 1 full-year), kept receding into shadier and shadier territory. There could be many reasons for this, some of them having to do with me as much as him.
The point was never to end up in a fight over discrimination (or to write a book about it)--but to get back to Informatics school work. And far from what my investigations being "created" they were discovered, well-sourced, and well-documented; and yet perhaps, still, intentionally misinformed
by my sources. If the students and faculty from Bloomington and Indianapolis who told me what they did from 2005-2007 want to now recant, I'll publish a correction immediately (an offer I've made before). After all, each and every one of them has jobs that earn them more money in an hour than I've earned in the best weeks, since leaving Indiana University. It is so nice to be primed for "battle" by allies who run for the hills once engaged; I'll say this for Siegel and Bauder: they fight, and for this, even if everything I've written turns out to be true, I have more respect for them than the "sources" who came to me.
As it is, the composite picture is gray, not black and white--and though seedy, not really colorful. And though involving psychological aspects of life--those are the most concrete facts, here. But it is a group shot, not a Facebook profile picture of one person.
So, the bottom-line: if you want to know, ask. If you want to take sides, don't. But if you want to work with someone who really doesn't want to know your personal life, but instead, wants to create some incredible software/hardware based on the latest in cognitive neuroscience and semantic information theory, I'm your guy.
--John Michael Vore
v3r5
Using Apple's Grab, a screen shot (above) was taken of iTune's Coverflow...which--ironically?--shows the Desktop action (e.g., the use of Grab and the Dock on left side) in each "empty" Album cover "slot"... (Source: Vore, 2009). This Informatics411 entry deals with some of the ways of getting a handle on your iTunes Libraries. There is no Synch Up Heaven, be forewarned!
