FireBrazzell.com: She’s Positively Soviet

FireBrazzell.com: She’s Positively Soviet

This is just too amusing.

Article in yesterday’s issue of The Traveler:

Site targets administrator
By Rachel Rache and Carrie Coppernoll
Published: Wednesday, April 21, 2004

A Web site aimed at the elimination of the UA Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs is attracting attention online and from UA officials.

The Web site www.FireBrazzell.com, with the phrase “Oust the Commissar” spanning the top of the page, presents a case for the termination of the UA Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Johnetta Cross Brazzell based on her involvement with Associated Student Government.

Since her time at the UA, Brazzell has “worked to cover up voter fraud by her employees and other students, presided over a closed-door task force that took away the rights of students and denied their voice in their own student government, and allowed the political use of the university judiciary to attack her enemies,” according to the Web site.

Brazzell said she has not looked at the site and plans not to open the page.

“I would characterize these acts as very cowardly acts,” she said. “They do it in the dead of night. They won’t show their faces. … If they really think this, why don’t they stick their names to it? Then we’d know who they are.”

The Web site creator or creators, who did not identify themselves, said the site will “help out some of the corruption and hypocrisy that has existed within Brazzell’s office,” according to an e-mail interview.

“Helping to expose this is half the battle to eliminating it,” according to the e-mail.

The Web site has links to several articles from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, The Arkansas Times and The Student Press Law Center, as well as links for people to contact Brazzell.

Brazzell said she could not comment about the content of the site because she did not know what was on the pages.

But she said she does not plan to pursue any time of legal or university judicial action.

“There is such a thing as free speech,” Brazzell said. “And as long as they’re in the bounds of free speech – as misguided as they may be – I will not be in the way of free speech.”

But creating the Web site is a “juvenile act,” Brazzell said.

“This group of students, whoever they are, have missed the point of their education opportunity, and I find that very sad,” she said.

ASG Vice President Dan Oberste encouraged students not to take the site seriously.

“I think the students should look at it and say these students are spreading lies,” Oberste said.

This university is an educational institution, he said.

“You shouldn’t use this as a vehicle to harm others, and that’s exactly what these individuals are doing,” he said.

Several students and UA employees have expressed concern about the site to Brazzell, she said.

“If there is value to work I’ve been engaged in on this campus … I hope students will see, that they will be offended by this as I am offended by it,” she said.

Regardless of the content of the site, Brazzell said she thinks her work at the UA represents who she is better than an unauthorized Web site.

“I would like to think that my tenure on this campus – my five plus years here – speak for me,” Brazzell said.

The Web site designers included various ASG resolutions pertaining to the closed meetings of the task force and an expression of “no confidence” in Brazzell. The site also has a copy of an e-mail sent to Brazzell about voter fraud and as well as a memo about changes to be made in ASG.

With these documents, the creators of the Web site hope to “persuade people with information about actions taken by Brazzell and her office, ultimately leading to her termination from the UA,” according to an e-mail.

The site contains a biased argument, Oberste.

“It’s filled with some information, but it’s one-sided,” he said. “They only put the FOIA documents that apply to them.”

The site also has a copy of the 2003 memorandum Brazzell sent Chancellor John A. White concerning shared governance.

But the individuals behind the site are affecting the UA in a negative way, Oberste said.

“They haven’t been attacking ideas,” Oberste said. “They’ve been attacking individuals. By writing this story about it, that’s exactly what they want. It’s going to give them publicity.”

Although the site has only been publicized within the past 48 hours, the people behind the Web site have received a few “mostly inquisitive” e-mails, according to the interview e-mail. As of Tuesday night, more than 1,200 people had visited the site.

Advertisements for the Web site appeared on campus Tuesday. Stickers with a Soviet Union emblem and the site’s Web address decorated the walls of buildings on campus. The phrase “Oust the commissar” was chalked on a wall outside of Kimpel Hall.

The creators of the Web site do not necessarily know how the site will affect UA students.

“Maybe it provides them with nothing more than an informative read, but hopefully it provides them with a new Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs,” according to the e-mail.

The FireBrazzell.com creators know how the administration will react to the Web site, according to an e-mail.

“No doubt Brazzell and the rest of her staff will claim this is just another example of ‘personal politics,’” according to an e-mail. “Everything on that site is directly related to Brazzell’s job and her abuse of power within that capacity. ‘Personal politics’ seems to be her excuse for poor performance.”

Brazzell said she cannot understand why the Web site designer or designers would create a site such as FireBrazzell.com.

“I don’t think like that, so I really can’t tell you what they’re motivation is or what they hope to accomplish by it,” Brazzell said. “I think what they fail to understand is that it demeans them, not me.”

Once someone registered a domain, it is not anonymous.

using a simple lookup,

RegistrantContact Details
Name Andrew Long
Company UA Students
Email Address aslong@uark.edu
Address 776 Larkspur Ln
City Fayetteville
State AR
Zip 72704
Country US
Tel No. +479.5309602

So, a communications grad student @ the ua, who used his uark.edu email address as his contact information from the domain name registrar. Not too anonymous to me.