At Wednesday's school board meeting, Trustee Mei Mei Uy and some of her
Citizens for "Better" Education collegues spent 35 minutes debating
whether to approve the week's new hires.  While this is normally a rubber
stamp process, this week, Trustee Uy demanded to see the resumes of all
the new employees, and attempted to table the hiring until next week's
meeting.  Why did she do this?  Could it have had anything to do with the
fact that one of their political opponents was on the list?

30 responses total.

Uy does this things because she veiws her childern as "perfect."  If it isn't
good enough for her "little angels" it isn't good enough for her.  She also has
a warped idea of what works and what doesn't.  I don't think she realizes that
she's breaking the law.  And if she found out, she wouldn't even care.  It has
one hell of a lot to do with political oppenents on the list, that's why it's
illegal.  She knows she's causing harm and she's laughing in our faces because
she enjoys being a fascist, stupid, neo-nazi (Sorry about that, Neo-Nazi's are
better than she is.), Idiotic, bitch.  What she needs is a 12 gauge shotgun
shell through her head.  Damn!  I forgot an insult: heartless wench.

Prior to that blatant bit of political manipulation I had thought she
was narrow-minded but somewhat savy as to how the system works.  Now
she simply looks narrow-minded and overzealous, sans savy.  It's 
just a matter of time and she'll kill her own career for lack of 
knowing when to stop.

We can only hope so.

  If it's true that her children are perfect, then maybe they should
be sitting on the school board, and Ms Uy, should go back to school.

I think we should execute her through public, televised, crucifixtion.  And
show it at half-time during a football game.  Make sure she's right side up,
we want a slow and painful death.

I think you can verbally assault someone to such a degree that
no matter how much they deserve it they still come out looking
better than those hurling accusations.  I keep hoping someone
from the School Board will log in and maybe say a few words.
I don't think it's gonna happen though.

The most likely thing is a Recall vote.

   I don't think a recall vote would work.  First of all, it is very hard to
get enough signatures to get it on the ballot, and then we would need to 
convince the voters that they should end her term early.  Besides, even if we
did manage to get her recalled, that doesn't mean that we would get somebody
good on the Board.  If the people the voters put there are bad, just wait
till you see the people that CBE would probably install to replace Uy (if a
Board seat is vacant, the replacement is chosen by the remaining Board members,
rather than by the voters.
Rather than a recall, the thing to do is to make sure that it is very hard
for Uy, Westfall, and Campbell, to be reelected this June.

Obvoiusly you don't know that a recall petition is already getting vowed
signatures, though the petition is not out yet.

A vowed signature is not a signature of a registered voter.

True, How True.  But I realize it may be a better Idea to make sure Uy is
not re-elected.

                      *NO LITMUS TEST*
              SCHOOL TRUSTEE DESERVES DEMERITS
                (AA News editorial, 9/27/93)
     Ann Arbor school trustee Mei Mei Uy wrongly used her
position last week to strike out against a political
opponent.
     Uy denies her intent was political, but her actions
indicate otherwise.  The attempted power play occurred when
a list of newly hired teachers was presented to the Board of
Education.  Among the new teachers was Pat Bantle, a
prominent organizer of the Quality Education Drive, a school
political group.  Uy, who is tied to the rival Citizens for
Better Education, asked an assistant superintendent to
provide her with resumes of the six and records of how the
teachers were hired.  She then made a motion to table the
hiring of the teachers -- a motion that failed, we are
pleased to say.
     Uy deserves demerits on her lack of understanding of
the board's function and on the right of teachers to hold
political beliefs different and separate from members of the
board.
     The role of trustees is to set policy, not to
administer the schools.  School administrators should be
trusted to find employees best suited for available
positions.
     More important, school employees should never have to
pass a political litmus test.  who they opposed or who they
supported in an election contest should be irrelevant in the
hiring process.
     This is a case of a school trustee in need of a civics
lesson.  The same is true for those trustees willing to go
along with Uy's motion: James Cameron, Vicky Rigney and
Willie Campbell.

That's wonderful!  Who wrote it?

Ah.  Very interesting.  That leaves, let's see, Argersinger and Westfall
as the CBE dissenters?  I guess that moves those two up a notch or so in
my estimation, while the other four drop.

I should watch these school board meetings more often.

Then jack up the volume on the TV.  They're never loud enough.

Westfall abstained. 

Okay.  And Argersinger voted the other way?  (I was waiting for someone
to mention whether the two had even been at the meeting.)

Uy, Cameron, Rigney, and Campbell voted for.  Barker, Kloss, 
Argersinger, and Garnett voted against.  Westfall abstained.
The motion failed for lack of support.

I am hoping that Uy received enough critical feedback so that she modifies her
behavior in the future.  At least in the future she has left on the board.
Perhaps her behavior will bring out the people in our community who dont
typically follow schoolboard elections and elect not to vote for the next
election.  And if there is enough fuss made over this breach, she may choose
not to run again.  Perhaps instead of talking to each other, we should be
registering our displeasure in a way she can hear.

re #13:  Whoever writes the Ann Arbor News editorials.  I think it is actually
a group of people, but the "Editorial Board" might just formulate the
positions and turn the writing over to an individual person.  I'll ask Pat
Windsor about that at the School Board meeting tomorrow.

Argersinger didn't really participate in the argument, although I think the
things she did say were against the micromanagement.  Westfall was very
much a part of the action.  She was arguing more vigorously for the motion
to table than some of the people who actually voted yes were.  Westfall,
however, is a little bit smarter than Uy (that's not saying much, and the
difference is very slight), and probably knew how much bigger the flap
would have been if the motion had actually passed.  CBE was about to do an
other very unpopular thing, and Westfall probably knew that the Press was
not going to be nice to them no matter what they did.  I would assume that
she probably abstained to save face, and it obviously worked.

The editorial was written by Kay Semion, the Ann Arbor News editorial writer.

<vidar enters from the hole in the ceiling crying "Long live Kalak!  Long live
Kalak!"  Then he regains his sanity as he touches the obsidian golems left
pec.>

(you've got your roleplaying conference.  Now go use it. ;)).

True.  I couldn't think of a coherent response.  I'd O.Ded on sugar, and
was typically hyper.

                *CRITICISM OF UY IS RACIST, CAMPBELL CHARGES*
                                                                -Steve Gibbard
(From The Communicator, Thursday, 14 October 1993.  Reprinted with permission)

        Has all the negative publicity surrounding school board Trustee
Mei Mei Uy been racially motivated?  Board Vice President Willie Campbell
says it has.  "I'm tired of it," said Campbell.  "As an Asian-American,
she is being singled out."  Uy has been the target of several articles, in
The Communicator and The Ann Arbor News, as well as in other news
sources.  This was after making a motion three weeks ago, which passed, that
required that Community's per-student funding be brought "in-line" with
that of Huron and Pioneer without taking dual enrollment into
consideration.  At the same meeting, Uy also made a motion, which failed,
to table the hiring of a group of teachers including a political opponent
of hers.  Uy has denied that the hiring debate was political.
        "Anybody could have made the motion.  Everybody who voted for it
should be (blamed) equally," said Campbell.  In addition to Campbell and
Uy, the motion to cut Community's funding was also voted for by President
Marcia Westfall and Trustees Jim Cameron, Vicky Rigney, and Chris
Argersinger.  The motion to table the hiring was voted for by Uy,
Campbell, Rigney, and Cameron, while Westfall abstained.  Still, Uy got
the lion's share of the blame.
        The publicity about Uy was intense.  It included two editorials in
The Ann Arbor News, one about the funding "equalization" and the other
about the hiring debate.  Both were very critical.  The week after the
meeting where the pair of motions was made, all but one of the articles on
the opinion page of The Communicator were directed at Uy; none of them
were positive.  The Communicator was also full of other references to Uy,
including a poem, a parody on "This little piggy went to market," which
ended, "and this little piggy cried, 'Mei Mei Uy!' all the way to the
school board."  The motto at the top of page one of that week's issue was
also changed to say "the only weekly high school newspaper in the Western
Hemisphere -- as far as Uy know!"  Communicator advisor Tom Dodd had
blocked such a change the week before, but was unaware of it in that issue
until after the paper had been printed.
        "That's part of being in the public eye," said Uy when first asked
about the publicity.  When asked about the racism allegation, Uy claimed
to have "no opinion."  "Is that what Willie says?" she asked.  "Talk to
Willie."
        This was not the first time Campbell has accused The Communicator of
racism.  Last year, he objected to a letter to The Communicator saying
that Roberto Clemente students should not be invited back to Multi-Ethnic
Feast.  The year before that, he objected to a list of "the top ten
reasons to have racial quotas at CHS."

She is also a female and short.  What makes Willie so sure it's
racisim if indeed he believes she is being targeted for discrimination?

By the way, Steve, I read the Communicator every week and enjoy
your articles.  I also really respect Tom Dodd for the job he's
doing.

I don't know why Willie thinks it's racism.  He did get quite upset when he
saw this article, but he went through it quote by quote and couldn't find
anything he didn't remember saying.  "I know I told you to pick on somebody
other than Mei Mei, but I didn't think it would be me," he said.

An interesting aside regarding Willie.  About 3 months ago John
and I were at the Humane Society adopting a kitten.  While sitting
in the lobby waiting for the adoption interview I noticed Trustee
Campbell sitting nearby.  Two children seemed to be with him, a
young girl and a teenage boy.  I leaned over and whispered to John
that that was one of the key people who would be responsible for
killing the new alternative high school project.

A few minutes later Campbell got up and walked to the desk and for
a moment I thought maybe I was wrong - the look wasn't quite the
same.  The girl was standing right in front of me, looking at me,
so I asked her if that man, her father?, was Trustee Campbell.

She beamed, a wide grin broke across her face, and she rushed over
to her father and in a loud voice exclaimed, "Father, father, over
there, another one of your fans!".

I will always remember that child's unquestioning, loving faith.

Maybe the voters won't make the same mistake again ... or if they
do, she's on the way to Congress ..........

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