Update 2008: Oh, I suppose I really must say something about what has happened in this dreary old life since 2002, but it seems rather fraudulent to put it into this "resume" but indeed, where else does it belong?
First, the resume is a bit fraudulent in itself, I'll now admit. Not that there is any word of untruth in it, but take notice how the top work position states itself, "Reference Librarian and Research Technician". I can now reveal—since I now know for sure that I do not ever intend to work as a librarian again—that at California State University, I never had the title of "librarian" though I did in fact work as a librarian for all of the years between 1989 and 2002. That is I did the work of a librarian at the Reference Desks and in Library Instruction—as well as the work of a paraprofessional—but my job classification was as a Library Assistant. That was fine with me because all I really cared about was doing a good job and collecting a salary and—most importantly—getting group health insurance, and the State of California is perhaps the best of all employers with its health insurance benefits.
So much to say here. Well, I shall rely upon links. First, there is the truth that I shall now reveal here for the first time, that I have been HIV positive since 1983 (that I know of, perhaps far longer) and this was a main reason for me to look for a job in the field of librarianship. I had been denied health insurance because my CD4 cell count was too low: 408. (My doctor told me, "What are you complaining about? My patients would kill for 408!" "Well, but, but, but, they won't sell me health insurance." "Get a job with group health insurance, then." So I did.)
Now I did enjoy "working as" a librarian, did enjoy my colleagues and the students, but after more than ten years I did long to get the title of "librarian" itself, along with the commensurate raise in salary, for at least a couple of years before retiring. For budgetary reasons, however, there was always a delay in filling the Humanities Librarian position that kept coming up each year, tantalizing me with its nearness and near tangibility.
Retiring? I had never imagined that I might actually retire! I had imagined I would die from AIDS far sooner. But as the years went by, retirement actually became a more and more viable alternative to that other more dire alternative. Yet there was a battle. We had a new dean, and she did not like me. I knew why. I was always a fighter for truth and honor in librarianship and she—it most definitely seemed to me and to many other librarians whom I most esteemed—was not. It is actually the microcosm of pretty much any administration, I now come to understand as I have watched eight years of the Bush Administration go by. The administration seeks the status quo, which is almost always a non-progressive status quo, while it is up to the forces of thinking people to try to change the status quo into something more positive for the people served by the administration. This nutshell will be argued the other way by the forces of people seeking to uphold the administration, and so it goes.
The new dean recognized me as a force antagonistic to her aims. She was a true authoritarian, and my motto has always been, "Question Authority." She didn't like that.
There were finally three positions, bing, bing, bing, which came available, just at the time that my dad was dying in 2000. I had to somehow find a way to submit applications for all of them while taking care of my dad. Very difficult for me, but I did it. And with that kind of personal vulnerability, you can imagine my severe depression when I found out that I was not even to be invited to interview for even one of those new positions. I was especially outraged because I had served this library well and faithfully for more than ten years. Two of the three search committees were very favorable to me—I found out, despite the confidentiality of the proceedings—but the dean had told members of one search committee who had fought to have me interviewed, "Say what you like, but I'll never hire him."
Outrageous.
Now to be fair to those search committee members who were sworn to confidentiality I will admit to two things: one, this quotation by the dean was imparted in a secret meeting of librarians who were trying to get a grasp on this renegade dean and the injustices she was perpetuating, and so, as such, this information was imparted in the same degree of confidentiality as the search committees were bound to adhere to; two, I did approach the librarian who was so quoted, and this librarian told me that the quote had changed a bit in the retelling, also that this librarian wanted it known that there was still the same degree of confidentiality in this secret meeting as there would have been in a search committee meeting, or this quote would never have escaped.
Still, I now had the reason why I was not being allowed to even interview. The three search committees were forbidden by the dean to invite me. Gee.
So, it seemed that I would have to sue. And in that direction I proceeded. It took me more than a year to get a settlement, but two important things happened meanwhile. The first was that the dean was suddenly removed from her position (more on this deliciously ironic event below) and the second and perhaps more important event was that the head of the search committee for the position which suited me most precisely—the Humanities position for which a second Masters Degree was a preferred qualification—paid me a visit in my office to explain why I was not even invited to interview, while other candidates who did not have the preferred second Masters Degree were invited. He said, "We were given a talk by the personnel office across campus, and they want faculty members who are reflective of the diversity on campus. Look around at the faculty we've got. What do you see, middle-aged white men."
Now, I have always been an advocate of Affirmative Action because our country needs to find a way to promote minorities who are otherwise kept at the bottom of the pile by the ill-intentioned majority. But Affirmative Action has as a primary tenet that "when all other qualifications are equal" then the minority candidate is given the preference. That was clearly not the case in my circumstance since I did have the prefered second Masters and the other candidates did not. The other candidates, further, were young white women. Librarianship is a woman's profession; women as a minority do not need to be given preference in this profession; in fact, the argument could be made that for diversity's sake, men need to be given the preference in this particular profession.
But this is the point: the dean did not want me, Bob Locke, to be given a position of more power because she knew that I would be antagonistic toward her goals, whereas a nice young woman might be more compliant. I think that is a fair and honest evaluation.
Now, something that I learned from the several lawyers I approached to take my case was that the dean did have the power to simply discriminate against someone just because she personally did not like that person. The only way that I could have a lawful case against discrimination was if I had evidence that I had been discriminated against because of one of the state-specified non-discriminatory categories: race, gender, religion, age, sexual orientation.
For example, had the dean ever indicated a bias against me because I was gay? No.
However, I did now have evidence from the head of the Humanities Librarian Search Committee that indeed I was discriminated against on the grounds of three different protected categories. He told me that the personnel office across campus had directed his committee to give preference to a candidate who was reflective of the diversity on campus, and not a "middle-aged, white man." That combines age, race and gender in one malfeasance.
The lawyer who took my case was a Jewish woman who revealed to me frankly that never in her professional history had she ever taken on a "reverse discrimination" case. The discrimination against me, however, was so apparent and outrageous—particularly because I was such a good and faithful employee with a continuing written record of superlative service—that she was more than happy to take the case.
The settlement, though slow to come, was in the end very easy to accomplish, especially since the dean was now removed from her own position by a terrible thing that she had done. This was all to the good for me, but all to the bad for her and for our community. She had used a racial epithet in a public speech and she was fired within a matter of hours. It was a stunning reversal.
Her heart, I believe, was even in the right place. She was talking to a group of very influential people at the Golden Bear Museum in downtown Sacramento where there was a display of the CSUS Library's excellent and world's largest collection of Japanese-American memorabilia. The dean— seekiing to illuminate the terrible internment of the Japanese-Americans during WW II— was telling about how as a child she noticed the disappearance of the Japanese-Americans from her own town of Penryn, "Japtown" as she called it in front of all these people.
But she did not put that dreadful, loaded appellation in quotes. She gave no outward expression of how hurtful the term was or could be. She gave no historical context for her use of the word. She merely used the word as though it was a perfectly okay expression. The gasp that ran around the room—I heard later—was audible. Yet the dean did not notice even that. She blithely finished up her speech, resumed her seat, and did not know until the next day what she had done.
When I told my mother what had happened, she asked, "Son, what will happen to that dean now?"
"Well, I guess she'll be fired, Mom."
"Oh, bless her heart."
What a dear thing for my sweet little mother to say. Here was a dean who had patently discriminated against her son, causing him as yet untold financial and personal damage, and yet she could bless that woman's heart.
Well, and so that is the story of how I came to a settlement with the university and got my body and soul out of that place, a place that I had loved and fought for, but a place now that reeked to me, despite so many of the good people there. I didn't want to continue working there after having suffered that kind of discrimination, even though the cause of the discrimination had now been removed. I wanted out, and well out.
And indeed, I wasn't any longer the good reference librarian that I had been. I will admit this with a bit of bitter truth about growing older and out-of-date. The internet as a tool for research had become more and more preferred over the printed texts and library-selected databases, and I found that my eyes were not so good and my brain not so agile as those of the university students, and I longed to be away. Now, after six years of being away from librarianship, I am perfectly happy to leave it to the younger generation. In fact, I burned out.
And so I hope this update helps put a perspective on why this professional resume ends so abruptly in 2002.
Copyright © 2008 Robert Locke
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