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An expendable hero
- - - - - - - - - - - - Don't worry about the $508,000 liquor tab the University of Colorado ran up throwing booze bashes for big shots. Don't sweat the fact that $336,160 went to Liquor Mart, a company partly owned by former CU Athletic Director Dick Tharp—a multi-millionaire with his own jet who received a $175,000 university wage to boot. "What's the big deal?" CU Board of Regents Chairman Jerry Rutledge told a Rocky Mountain News reporter just before cutting short an interview about the liquor tab that he considers of no importance. It's no big deal, and we shouldn't worry, because it's clear that CU officials—who lead what's become the laughing stock of higher education—are working hard to save us money. Sure, they spent a half million on booze in the past five years, but earlier this month they fired Environmental Studies Instructor Adrienne Anderson. To save us money, praise God. When students demonstrated against the firing of a popular whistle-blowing instructor who saves lives, administrators assured us it was for one reason only: budgetary constraints. We were assured it had nothing to do with the fact that she annoys Colorado's worst corporate polluters in order to protect children from disease. We should all believe this "budgetary" explanation for the bizarre firing of one of CU's most popular instructors—who has made headlines by rescuing entire communities from eminent harm—because it's absolutely believable. Anderson and her pay simply had to be stopped before another school year began. Brace yourselves readers, because it's sometimes hard for us mere mortals to grasp the financial benefits afforded those who work in the ivory towers of academe. Here goes: Anderson's wage totaled $23,000 a year! Where does she spend it all? Just where does she get off? If they kept her, Anderson's wages would add up to the university's short-term booze budget in just 22 years. If the five-figure wage makes your head spin, perhaps this will explain it: Anderson's the rare teacher who instills in students the ability to learn, research and think independently without the need for governmental, societal or institutional approval. Her teaching career is a crusade of passion. She changes students' hearts and minds forever, instilling in them the tools to improve our world. Now I'm the first to admit that Boulder's garden-variety environmentalists are one collective pain in the ass. They find their personal comfort zones and then fraudulently defend them at the expense of others by fabricating exploitative hysteria about trees, rodents, native grasses and nuisance birds. They view businesses as crime scenes—with the exception of their own businesses and employers, of course. But Anderson isn't that type of environmentalist. "I don't want to see children suffer from brain tumors," Anderson said, when I asked why she tilts at windmills. During 10 years at CU, Anderson taught students how to find environmental hazards—the kind that threaten humans—and expose them. In doing so, she annoyed big shots—the type invited to drink at CU. Executives of Asarco/Shell, The Denver Water Board, Lockheed Martin, Ensign-Bickford and Dyno Nobel are among those who've complained about Anderson for the past decade, in letters to CU administrators, whenever she and her students blew the whistle on toxic atrocities. Anderson and her students turned up documents in EPA files that revealed how a consulting firm quietly detected levels of radionuclides (including plutonium, Americium and cesium) in Lowry Landfill's groundwater at levels up to 10,000 times higher than the background levels at Rocky Flats—a former plutonium plant. Anderson alerted residents in and around the Friendly Hills subdivision, southeast of Denver, of high levels of benzene, TCE and other toxic solvents in the drinking water. The community's water was from Kassler Well, which had been thoroughly contaminated by defense contractor Martin Marietta (now Lockheed Martin). Anderson's work led the Colorado Health Department to close the well, but not before demographic data revealed that residents suffered abnormally high levels of fatal birth defects. "There was a 1-year-old in Friendly Hills with a brain tumor the size of an orange," Anderson said. "That's when I decided this kind of work was a life-long commitment for me." Lowry Landfill, Rocky Mountain Arsenal, Friendly Hills. Name any of Colorado's high-profile, lethal environmental nightmares and it's likely we can thank Adrienne Anderson—or her students—for exposing them. Anderson values people, especially those who can't defend themselves. "I believe miscarriages, still births, infants born with defective hearts, cleft pallets and spina bifida are all linked to environmental toxins," Anderson said. "I'm working to protect infants from being chemically contaminated in the womb." When crusading against hazards posed by the Lowry Bombing range, Anderson worked side-by-side with Leslie Hanks—vice president of Colorado Right to Life. "I'm not active in the pro-life movement, but I actively support Leslie Hanks," Anderson said. "She's a wonderful woman, and we are good friends. I don't believe this notion that life doesn't begin with the first cell—it does. Given that fact, there are a lot of quandaries regarding abortion." That's not an easy or cost-free statement for a progressive environmental studies instructor to make while fighting to win back her job at a university obsessed with all that's politically correct. But Anderson hasn't devoted her life to winning approval. She's devoted it to defending human life, without much care for the toll it takes on her. Sure, $23,000 a year buys a lot of beer. But it's less than one-twentieth of CU's five-year booze budget. It's a small price for CU—academe's circus of scandal—to keep a beloved instructor who fights for truth, justice and life. Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com |
