[Vision2020] Facts

[Rosemary Huskey]

There are facts available via media and personal accounts about Ernesto
Bustamante that are indisputable: he was a four year employee of the
University;  he held a position of power over students; and he killed one of
them.  These are the ingredients of a tragedy: a violent perpetrator, an
innocent victim, and a gaggle of feckless enablers.  

 

I don't really care what (if any) disease factor or personality disorder led
to Dr. Bustamante's crime.  There is no excuse, no justification that
absolves him of clearly calculated, cold-blooded murder, and let's not
pretend there is.  Concurrently, his aberrant behavior was noticed and
reported by students, his serial disregard of a non-fraternization policy
between faculty and students, while not forbidden, should certainly have
called his judgment into question. Surely over the  past four years his
general demeanor was observed by professionally trained colleagues who, one
can reasonably assume, are able to recognize deviant behavior occuring in
front of their PhD eyes.  Why in the name of heaven was Bustamante retained
on faculty for several years prior to Miss Benoit's complaint?  Something is
broken in this picture - not the least of which are the hearts of Miss
Benoit's parents, family, and friends. 

 

Despite the terrible pain and loss the Benoit's are experiencing, University
of Idaho administrators have fled to the unholy sanctuary of privacy rights
for a dead murderer, and by the way, conveniently sheltering themselves and
the institution from any culpability.  I don't believe I am alone, in
pointing out that their graceless behavior shelters them from providing
explanations on how this event came to be, and what they did or didn't do
that contributed to it.  At the very least we know that grievous  mistakes
were made and sorrowfully, they can not be repaired.

 

What a pity, and in my opinion a crime, that in a university of all places,
a free and open appeal to truthfulness is trumped by laws which were never
intended to obscure it.  Integrity has fled the scene, in favor of self-
protection and a deeply flawed sense of loyalty to an institution which
appears to be rotting from the inside.

 

Rose Huskey

 

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