This page is to rebut the wholehearted support shown by the UT Office of Students with Disabilities for my dismissal, in every particular. I will comment on their official statement line by line. (Keep in mind that I was disabled, they had all the disability documentation, and it was their duty to HELP me, not pull the noose tighter.)
When you read their document, notice how many people they interviewed; in person, on the phone, and via email. (To think, I never had five minutes to discuss my Mars research with anybody during four whole years – five minutes, versus what must have been hundreds of man-hours.)
I had no chance to talk with the Disabilities Office during the five months it took to evaluate my appeal. They did ask me to come in, AFTER IT WAS ALL WRITTEN UP. How is that fair? The following itemizes just a few of the wrong things they allege – I’m supposed to go in and refute them all at once? In a single short meeting? With no knowledge of the contents of their letter, a chance to prepare and gather supporting documents? No nothing? It fills me with rage, now, 20+ years later, the outrageous things they say – I can’t imagine how it would have been at the time. In other words: they set me up.
In the Army, they appointed an attorney to represent me when I was discharged. At UT? The Student Legal Services Office hauled me in and accused me of misuse of university servers – less than 2 weeks before my oral qualifying exams. I had to waste several days to prepare my arguments and then another whole day to drive to campus to defend myself; my mom even came to the meeting as a witness.
My advisors? Dr. Brouck and Dr. Fowler. Where were they? They couldn’t call and ask, “Please leave this until after he takes the written qualifying exams.” No. Dr. Fowler actually says in his letter quitting as my advisor that he resented having to talk to the Legal Services people; the one thing he had to do as my advisor the entire time he was my advisor – in part for having my Mars research online; and for giving away $1000s of dollars worth of commercial energy conservation software to promote my McGraw-Hill textbooks. Legal Services dropped the charges, and I moved to a private server.
So much for Student Legal Services.
Please note: this whole appeal was not my #1 priority at this time. My mother had just been diagnosed with terminal bone cancer. She stopped by my home in Lago Vista (we lived only a few blocks apart and had played tennis every Saturday morning for 10+ years) the afternoon after I was expelled (the very day I went in to take the oral qualifying exam). How did it go!? I got expelled. She died the day after my final appeal was rejected by President Faulkner. My brother and sisters and I looked after her nonstop that entire year.
When you read the Disability Office’s letter, you will realize why I refused to meet with them. They had their minds made up and there was nothing I could have said or done. They had been interviewing people for four months; not once did they give me their interim evaluation, give me a chance to refute, present documentation, or anything else. What new evidence I did present was rejected or outright destroyed.
I mean, really: It’s mind-blowing all the lies in that document. It’s staggering beyond imagination all the twisted things they say, the dark subtext, the hatred, and the distortions of the facts. I say this now, 20+ years later, older and wiser and calmer. It’s still very hard to read that document. There are just too many things they got wrong. I can only skip through it and hit the highlights.
THIS EVIDENCE IS NOT JUST RELEVANT TO THEIR INVESTIGATION (meaning the emails from experts + my polished thesis). The Graduate College and the President’s Office were denied the chance to see my research written up in a formal document, and denied the chance to consider comments from 20+ outside experts. Denied the chance to visit my Mars website. That prejudiced the entire Chain of Command against me and violated my right to due process.
Be that as it may, I have not really read this document in 20 years. I will comment and refute as best as I can.
They refused to consider my complaint that nobody had reviewed my research as my advisor or as a consequence of my taking 24 semester hours of thesis or research classes “because it has no basis as a disability-related claim.”
This is absolutely nothing more fundamental to a graduate student than the opportunity to do research. I paid over $100,000 to have that research supervised, mentored, and commented upon. Having been denied this is a violation of every contract the graduate school has with a student. The outright denial of this fact by the Disabilities Office is vile and offensive to the extreme.
You were informed by Dr. Kahn of the grievance proceedings to be followed.
I have kept every single document pertinent to this case. I have no such document from Dr. Kahn. Nobody at any time told me anything about any grievance procedure to be followed nor whom I should contact about what.
You contacted Dr. Kahn about this and that. Asked for copies of documents.
I had one contact with Dr. Kahn, and that was the previous summer when he wanted to talk to me about neglect by the Aerospace Department. I have no further documents from him. I have no recollection of being the least bit interested in a physics degree. I do recall posting this letter (PDF) all over campus, with a note asking for help, nothing more. Honestly? I DESPISE PHYSICS. I tried physics for a semester in College Station at Texas A&M circa 1984 and disliked it very, very much. I would NOT have made that mistake again.
I did have one professor, Dr. Bedford, who wanted me as a grad student. I TA’d for him for many years. I never had a chance to talk with him. He was in ASE, engineering mechanics. With a little guidance from the Graduate College, I would have become his grad student. I was also on very good terms with Dr. Abusali and Dr. Chambers, even after the dismissal. But they weren’t professors, just postdocs who taught some of my classes. An astronomy professor, too, who taught Celestial Mechanics II one semester. (Since astronomy and physics are in the same department, perhaps that was my idea; I honestly do not remember.)
I appealed to stay in the Aerospace Program, nothing else. At no time did I meet with anybody to discuss my options; nobody in the Graduate College or the College of Engineering. A little counseling would have helped, from the ASE Department or the Disabilities People (with whom I never met after I went to their office in October 2001). As it was, I was at a total loss – stumbling forward, trying to recover from the terrible shock of being expelled with such malice.
A bar was placed on ANY registration. I only wanted to take undergraduate classes to get a teaching certificate to be a high school math teacher. After fighting the bureaucracy, I finally got a chance to register because I got my BSME from Texas in 1978 and have the right to register for classes any time I like.
Incidentally, when I did go in to register in the spring of 2002, I met with a math advisor, and she spent more time talking to me about my goals and interests and looking over my qualifications than the sum total of all the advising I had received in the Aerospace Department for the previous whole four years.
One of the classes I took that spring was Dr. Riggins’ History of Ancient Science and Technology. I spent a few minutes with him now and then, discussing my term papers for the class. I told Dr. Riggins I spent more time with him than the sum total with all my advisors for the previous four years in grad school. True fact. He said I was joking. I was most certainly not joking.
I have no recollection of complaining about Dr. Khan withholding any documents for the simple reason that I never even gave him any important documents. I repeat: At no time after the summer of 2001 did I have any contact whatsoever with Dr. Khan or the Graduate College other than fighting them to get the bar to registration lifted so I could take classes in the spring of 2002. I most certainly never met with him; I can state that for a solid fact. That’s wrong. All the problems cropping up? Where was the Graduate College??
The emails I submitted (PDF) were from recognized experts in the field of orbital mechanics. I wrote to them, asked them to visit my Mars Pathfinder 2.0 website (2002 HTML site, best viewed on a desktop PC), look at my research, and write back. Any support from Dr. Hull, my graduate advisor, would be appreciated.
I submitted those emails to support my research as a topic of interest to experts, perhaps leading to one or more of them being on my dissertation committee (in my emails to them, I asked if they would). I did not imply that they were better than anybody at UT. I can say, unequivocally, that those people spent more time investigating my Mars research than anybody in the Aerospace Department sum total in the past four years, and that is a measure of neglect.
Failure to consider written interest in my Mars research from outside experts (including Dr. Zubrin, president of The Mars Society) is wrong. Especially since the research was belittled so badly by the Aerospace Department. I have every right to present evidence in my favor, and the University has every obligation to consider it on its merits. The Aerospace Department has no right to disregard outright statements from outside experts that contradict the UT orbits group.
If my submission of these emails from outside experts was construed as saying they were better than the campus experts, that was not my intention. I only wanted to illustrate how they showed a keen interest in my research, an interest that had been totally absent in the previous four years from the experts in the Aerospace Department.
The fact that the experts I contacted not only emailed me but also emailed Dr. Hull, and that he refused to take their messages and support into consideration – personal emails from fellow experts – is telling. Then, when I do as Dr. Hull asked, and bundle up the emails in a single place, he rejects the whole lot of them.
These emails were not considered because you did not follow instructions.
This is nonsense. I sent Dr. Hull the emails in one batch, exactly as instructed. Again:
This allegation has no merit as a discrimination-based complaint since it calls into question the academic credentials and experience of the faculty within the Department of Aerospace Engineering.
What the dickens is that supposed to mean?? If the ASE people reject outright research that outside experts of equal qualifications show a marked interest in, that is a sure sign of neglect.
Your complaint calls into question the academic credentials and experience of … the individuals outside UT with whom your corresponded.
I submitted these people as experts. They were supportive of my research objectives. The only people calling their judgment into question are the ASE Department and the Disabilities Office.
They reference competition and prize money and an AIAA competition. I did no such thing. I submitted my research paper on my Mars research to the AIAA “grad student projects page.” It was nothing more than a kind of bulletin board for students to post their research and get feedback. There was no conference. No prize. That was all fabricated by the ASE Department to justify their actions to remove my research from the AIAA website. (I am convinced of that now, and I recall being extremely confused about this part of the letter when I read it back then – where the F did this conference come from? That’s fake news. All wrong. Didn’t happen.)
All of this took place in the spring of 2001; I say this because I submitted the exact same paper to The Mars Society after the AIAA took it off their website, and the Mars Society accepted it (the email from Dr. Zubrin at The Mars Society is in the batch of emails linked above). I received my MSE in December 2001. And yet, they state:
Since you had completed your master’s degree and the research you wanted to submit was completed after the master’s degree….
They go on and on about how Dr. Lightsey got involved, etc. I’m sorry, but I had absolutely nothing to do with anybody in the Aerospace Department that spring 2002 after I was expelled. No communications other than one or two emails with Dr. Hull.
Excuse me. I WAS EXPELLED. WHEN I WENT IN TO TAKE THE ORAL QUALIFYING EXAM. IT WAS AN EXTREME SHOCK. I AVOIDED WOOLRICH LABS LIKE THE PLAGUE AFTER THAT. WOOLRICH LABS AND EVERYBODY WORKING THERE.
I say again: Everything they referred to with this whole “AIAA Contest” fabrication took place in the spring of 2001; and when the tech paper was taken down from the AIAA website, I resubmitted it to The Mars Society, and it was accepted at their annual conference in the summer of 2001 – six months before I got the MSE.
On and on about the fictitious AIAA conference that I never submitted any tech paper to.
Discussions with Dr. Fowler about his resignation are based on his evaluation of the calibre of your research.
This is an outright lie. In his own letter quitting as my advisor (PDF), he mentions nothing about my research. He never even looked at it. Every time I tried to talk to him about it, to get his feedback, he always brushed me off and said, “not until you pass your qualifying exams.”
Dr. Fowler’s resignation leter was written after your were expelled on December 14.
That’s a lie, too. It’s not dated, but my records and the related events clearly show it was written and delivered on or around October 15. Dr. Fowler quit as my advisor immediately after I wrote to ABET, which was in October. Why would he even write the letter after I had been expelled? I was expelled for the express reason that Dr. Hull had “contacted everybody in the orbits group and nobody would be my advisor.”
The Disabilities Office supports Dr. Fowler because his actions are retaliation against a protected act, a crime – especially on a college campus. They should have investigated my allegation instead of rejecting it outright. (There’s nothing quite like being discriminated against by the Office of Students with Disabilities.)
Your inability to develop a research topic with Dr. Fowler.
Dr. Fowler was at my Mars seminar (PDF), where we talked about my research. He had no comments. Right after the seminar was over, I sat down in that classroom, and I jotted down detailed notes about who asked what. Drs. Ocampo, Fowler, and Abusali asked 2-3 questions each; plus one grad student. After the Q&A, Dr. Fowler introduced me to a friend of his from NASA in Houston. We talked about using my Energy Auditor 2.0 program (external website) to design energy-efficient buildings on Mars. In the spring of 2001, Dr. Fowler wrote this email (PDF) encouraging me to put the code for my Mars Pathfinder computer program online.
Dr. Fowler quit because I wrote to ABET. He stays exactly that in his letter quitting.
Dr. Hull placing a bar on your registration if you do not pass the oral qualifying exam.
Then they quote the rules: “If you do not pass the exam, the COMMITTEE will decide if you can take the re-exam or not.” Dr. Hull was not on my committee. And he was barring me from registering before the fact, which the committee cannot even do.
Dr. Hull commuicated the deadline for taking the oral qualifying exam.
There is no deadline. Only a recommendation “that you take it the semester after passing the written qualifying exam.” The rules also say I have a right to an oral practice exam given by my advisor. Dr. Fowler refused to do that for me. Once Dr. Broucke retired the previous summer and my degree area was no longer celestial mechanics, I had every right to ask for a little extra time to prepare for the exam.
… Standard practice to put a registration bar on students who have not completed a designated task.
This designated task requires a designated practice session by your designated advisor. Moreover, that registration bar – and Dr. Hull’s promise that it means automatic expulsion – is (have they forgotten what this is all about) discriminatory if it does not take into account mitigating circumstances – i.e., no practice session for the designated task and a new major area of concentration.
Excuse me, but a registration bar – accompanied by the kind of threat to be expelled if you fail to complete that “designated task,” I mean – really? Isn’t there an understanding of being counseled, prepared, mentored, and prepped to achieve that important designated task? They give you an entire two-semester course in mathematics to prepare you for the “designated task” of passing the written math qualifying exam. The practice sessions for the oral qualifying exam are every much a prerequisite as that math course.
Please visit my Mars Pathfinder 2.0 HTML website (external 2002 HTML website, best viewed on a desktop PC). It’s a fun program. There were hundreds of downloads, perhaps thousands. MIT Mars and The Mars Society chapters all over the world tried it and liked it. This is the research that Dr. Fowler found so distasteful that he, according to the Disabilities Office, resigned as my advisor in disgust. This same research was used to justify refusing to be on my dissertation committee by all the rest of the orbits group.
Or maybe it was my small paper on Kepler’s 2nd Law that got them so riled. That’s the idea that a straight line from the sun to an orbiting planet sweeps out equal areas in equal times. My little paper asked, “Well, what about extremely elliptical orbits like comets are in – the ellipse is so long and narrow, the line sweeping covers no area at the extreme?”
This is a valid argument (and research topic) in CELESTIAL mechanics, posing the idea of modifying Kepler’s 2nd Law to account for all situations (like Einstein’s Relativity modified Newton’s Law of Gravitation – adding a constant – so it could work at speeds approaching the speed of light). But in ORBITAL mechanics, it’s heresy. It’s bad research. I refuse to be this man’s advisor. He has to be expelled. I don’t care if I have to lie or cheat or deceive or make up fake conferences; HE MUST GO.