LJWorld.com / Text of Dailey statement

Archive for Friday, May 9, 2003

May 9, 2003

This statement was submitted to the Journal-World by Kansas University professor Dennis Dailey in response to comments made by an anonymous woman during an appearance Wednesday night on "The O'Reilly Factor" television show. The woman appeared in silhouette and identified herself only as "Jennifer," a former Dailey student.

"I have no idea as to the identity of the silhouetted person who appeared on ‘O'Reilly.' In fact, I have some doubt about whether she actually attended the class on Intrafamilial Sexual Abuse, since most of her statements were untrue and the remaining ones were gross distortions of the course content that is usually presented.

"I have the same questions about these statements as I have about the allegations made regarding the undergraduate class, which was the initial target of this assault. If what the shadowy student said was the complete and gospel truth, (1) Why didn't she seek clarification during the class sessions? (2) Why didn't the other 25 or 30 students attending the same class become equally upset and stomp into the associate dean's office to raise a fuss? (3) Why are the numeric results of the Curriculum and Instruction Survey (required student evaluations) rated so highly? and (4) Why are the comment sheets containing students' narrative reactions to this class filled with positive comments about both the content and the process of learning?

"The Intrafamilial Sexual Abuse summer course has been taught for at least 12 years to hundreds of graduate students preparing for clinical careers and those already in clinical social work settings."