Welcome to Sloanstown

Seldom have we seen an issue ignite such passion and, incertain cases, even cult-like devotion as has the matter of the Chico Unified School District’s reassignment of Hank Marsh Junior High School Principal Jeff Sloan. And the subject continues to reach new heights of absurdity. We may not see the end of this strange dance until after November, when two school board seats are up for grabs. If then.

Last week the News & Review received a letter to the editor from a Chico State University professor of communication design calling the reassignment of Sloan to vice president for the Center for Alternative Learning “a barbaric act” orchestrated by CUSD Superintendent Scott Brown.

This professor, who holds a doctoral degree and, we assume, is sane in all other respects, referred to Brown as a “wart on society” and said the school board was standing by and allowing Sloan to be the victim of “inhumane treatment.” You’d have thought Sloan had been reassigned to the Abu Ghraib prison.

Then this week the matter came full circle when someone anonymously sent us a CD with several files of information on Brown: his doctoral thesis; his application for employment with the Chico Unified School District; copies of a personnel matter from Brown’s days working under the Los Angeles County Office of Education; and two newspaper stories about Brown.

Accompanying the CD was a cryptic letter that lectured us, “As a reporter, you have a duty to investigate this. After all that has taken place, everyone should know about this and very few do.”

The irony is that all of the documents on the disk are copies of records and reports uncovered by the News & Review’s Devanie Angel, who’s reported extensively on both Brown and the Sloan matter. In fact, you can see Angel’s handwritten notes in the margins. All the relevant information has appeared in this paper at one time or another, but a small and very vocal segment of Sloan supporters apparently did not read it and now refuse to let go of their insistence that a great and shadowy conspiracy is at work here.

Stop drinking the Kool-Aid, folks.