Posted on 03/12/2003 2:10:43 PM PST by Writer1
Liberals always like to pretend that they’re more sophisticated than, in their words, coarse conservatives. They like fine wine. Speak French. And listen to Nora Jones jazz records.
They think conservatives only drink cheap beer; that the closest Republicans come to speaking Francais is belching. And that the conservatives’ idea of good music is Merle Haggard with the volume way, way up.
But I know of a gaggle of liberals who are nothing more than bumpkin bureaucrats. They are not as sophistique, to quote the French, as they imagine.
I’m talking about the Illinois Board of Higher Education.
This government body is full of the most unsophisticated – yet power-mad -- rubes imaginable.
Back in 1999, these simpletons shut down the state of Illinois’ only music conservatory.
The rationale? (If you can call their manner of thinking rational…)
Well, first of all, they had the power to do so. And secondly, they did not like the administration of the school. That’s my analysis.
The story goes back to the 19th Century when musicians founded the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago. Over the years, the school produced some outstanding musicians, including winners of the Pulitzer Prize for music.
The school was a cultural icon of Chicago, fostering the careers of countless musicians who performed their labor of love for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Lyric Opera, and even orchestras overseas in Korea and other lands.
Back in 1991, according to documents I obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), from the state of Illinois, on March 6, 2003, the school got into financial trouble.
Some alumni and faculty of the institution got together and purchased its assets and continued its operations.
But a few years later, the bumpkin bureaucrats came a-knocking.
These power-mad proletarians demanded that the conservatory re-register with the Illinois Board of Higher Education and get re-accredited.
The school’s directors argued that this was a Constitutional matter – that they had free speech and could teach whatever course of instruction that they wanted.
But the rubes disagreed, and, as all tres sophistique liberals do when they find something not to their liking, they filed a lawsuit.
Years of litigation commenced.
The school and its founders were bankrupted.
They could no longer even afford to pay for a lawyer.
Then – with the coast seemingly clear – the bumpkin bureaucrats moved in for the kill.
They filed a motion to close down the school.
Imagine the sight of these poor, but talented musicians, fighting in court against a bunch of shark-like Democrat lawyers, with no legal representation of their own.
They didn’t stand a chance.
The judge closed down their school – based on the rubes’ motion -- and threw students from all over the world out into the streets.
That action was an outrage, for it closed the only conservatory Chicago had, making it something less than a world-class city. New York City and San Francisco and London and – oui – Paris all have conservatories. But, thanks to the low class bureaucrats at the IBHE, Chicago no longer has a conservatory. These rubes remade the Chicago arts scene in their own image – and it became a Cow Town.
Now, I’ve read through scores of pages of court orders, motions and judgments, which I obtained through FOIA requests, and what really strikes me is this: this case was all about power.
The bureaucrats didn’t care about the students one whit.
If they did, they simply could have filed a motion to ask the honorable court to replace the administrators of the ecole de la musique with what is called a judicial trustee. This trustee could have run the school for a period of time. The bumpkins didn’t have to close down the school, but they did.
A source of mine who attended the conservatory – and who now teaches at a local college – this week told me that she called downstate to Springfield, where the IBHE is located, in early March. She spoke to a bureaucrat there, trying to get a copy of her old student records, which the bureaucrats had begged the court to give them control over. She wanted to apply to a PhD program.
The audacious bureaucrat – who should have known better – said that she did not have a copy of the records because, in her words, the “judge said the school was illegitimate.”
Not true.
I read through all the court documents filed in the civil case against the school – which I obtained in March through the Freedom of Information Act -- and nowhere, not once, did the judge ever say that.
It seems that the Illinois Board of Higher Education is the one who is illegitimate.
Can you get more low-class than that?
Non.
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