Max Ramsay Week 'milestone event missed'; added support for court action against UMass
By Debra A. SantucciPARIS -- From all indications and reports, Wilmot Max Ramsay Week celebration, in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, was a memorable event. This honorary Week, thanks to Hon. Bruce C. Bolling and his fellow Council members of some twenty-five years ago, was rightly declared in honor of a star! The 25th anniversary of Wilmot Max Ramsay Week was celebrated this year, 2007, during the week of September 27 and October 3.
Unfortunately, I missed the "milestone" event due to an emergency which delayed me here in Paris, France, where I have now called home. Also, I want to believe that Max Ramsay would like it here as a result of the harsh treatment he received in the United States while he toiled at the University of Massachusetts Boston. However, as I have heard it through the grapevine, Ramsay, for the present, seems somewhat content being in America.
So, UMass Boston lost the Honors Program War. That fact was established with the intervention of then Governor Mitt Romney back in 2005. For Max Ramsay, it is a win-win situation, for if the issue of Ramsay's bizarre treatment, while at the University, really has to go to court, and UMass, an institution of the State is adjudged "not culpable" then, of course, the Massachusetts legal system would have to be put under a microscope for further analysis. Of course, Ramsay, by now should know that he has to be very careful as the matter of race still runs deep in the United States and, therefore, as "a person of colour" the legal system of the courts can prove hard to negotiate.
My recommendation to Max Ramsay, therefore, is to seek out the services of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, ACLU, a legal organization well known for its dedication to the cause of the oppressed and a group which will marshal its forces and present a sound case. The University of Massachusetts is prepared, with its legal team, for a fight and with its position within the state system, my further advice to Max Ramsay is to court Civil and Human Rights advocates.
Ramsay was indeed correct in calling on Massachusetts Governor Deval L. Patrick to intervene in the Ramsay-UMass (Boston) debacle which, times over, dealt with the matter of race and as eloquently dealt with in a recent article by John Blake. Patrick, therefore, ought to be brought up to speed as to the happenings with this "saga" which played itself out, for the most part, on Campus, at the University of Massachusetts Boston. In June of this year, Governor Deval Patrick was awarded an honorary degree from UMass Boston thus making him, as Ramsay correctly put it -- in addressing his honorary Week event -- "a fellow [UMass Boston] alumnus as well," as carried by HERITAGE RESERVES.
Professor Fiora A. Bassanese and Company -- Professor Robert H. Spaethling, then Deputy Provost and Ramsay acquaintance and Professor James F. Brennan, then Honors Program Director at UMass Boston and currently Provost at the Catholic University of America, CUA -- have remained quite silent since the 'Bassanese Apology' of the Spring of 1990. These persons of trust and of high positions thought the Honors Program War of 1990 at UMass Boston would have been hushed up and put to rest! It was morally wrong and unjust then in 1990 as it screams today. Of course, Professor James Brennan, the current Provost of CUA, being the philosopher king he is, ought to have known better. He is a trained psychologist. Probably, it was just one of his experiments that went a wry. As for Spaethling, he, apparently, assumes the role of Aschenbach in Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice" as was the talk of the social circle, as reported, of the Wilmot Max Ramsay Week gathering. Bassanese, of course, represents Italy (Venice); Ramsay, the young Polish Tadzio, (Jamaica); and I suspect Daniel C. Bracken to be Jaschiu. The question therefore remains: What role did Brennan play? I want to advance the argument that he was the Hotel Manager. Chairman Stephen P. Tocco, though the new boss at UMass, for this writing, and due to the uncertainty of his tenure, will be typecast as the Ticket Seller. And, former Chancellor Sherry H. Penney of UMass Boston: Did she, Penney, become the wise Englishman (or woman) who warned Aschenbach of the plague?
The Boston Globe and The Boston Herald, both Massachusetts newspapers, I would like to point out, were caught off guard with the Ramsay-UMass tog-of-war, the Honors Program War, at UMass Boston. For both newspapers, they sat on the sidelines and watched, without a word, as blatant racism reared its ugly head. If it were some black-on-black or black-on-white situations in, say, Dorchester, they -- the Globe and the Herald -- would have certainly inked the events but the Honors Program War was just too academic!
However, the story got out from the ivory towers of UMass Boston, nonetheless, and, like the Greek Hydra, it has been banded about. Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, you are being watched. Former Jamaican Councillor Hon. Wilmot Max Ramsay summed it up correctly: "Not until the matter of race is tackled seriously before true respect and equality will be achieved in the United States."
Or, would this epic true story have to be "Death in the Cathedral"?
(Copyright @ HERITAGE RESERVES, Tuesday, October 30, 2007)
Editor's note: A Carl Rowan article entitled "Racism haunts black students" was published in The Boston Herald newspaper on Friday, April 13, 1990 -- "nine days after the beginning of the Honors Program War" at UMass/Boston.
