I remember identifying Faisal Jaswal as a snake back in 2013. He was the Dean of Students at my school (Bellevue College), and seemed to float around like some kind of beloved administrative cool-kid.
My own feelings about him began forming when he came into the newsroom and, in front of everyone, talked about the importance of free speech — pointing to me in particular — and saying how valuable it was… when I knew full well he was behind all of the campus programs that threatened free speech (multiculturalism, diversity, bias incidents, etc). I had been told by another writer that my crusade for free speech threatened “his brainchild,” though I do not remember which multicultural project “his brainchild” was. And a member of the associated student government (ASG) told me how Faisal would manipulatively guide ASG discussions by presenting them with false choices between a clearly good option and a clearly bad option, and then congratulate them on making a good choice when they opted for the only viable option that had been presented to them.
But even I didn’t know it was this bad:
After S.R. began working at Bellevue College in 2009, as a front desk representative for the Assistant Dean for Student Programs, she was promoted quickly from a summertime to a full-time worker, then a full-fledged personal assistant to the official.
Then the grooming began by former assistant dean Faisal Jaswal, attorneys claimed in a lawsuit filed last week. The 54-year-old gave her presents, asked her to drive him to work, discussed personal and sexual subjects with her, took her out to dinner and brought her on overnight “work” events.
In October 2010, the behavior developed into sexual abuse, which would persist for nearly six years and escalate to stalking, manipulation and frequent abuse, S.R. contends in the suit.
S.R. filed the suit against Bellevue College last week, claiming the school — and by extension, Washington state — fostered a hostile work environment by failing to protect S.R. from a man who’s been the subject of multiple sexual harassment complaints by students and employees.
S.R., now 29, has the mental capacity of a 14-year-old due to intellectual delays, according to the lawsuit. That made her ripe for manipulation, says her attorney, Julie Kays. And because S.R. was also a student, the school knew about her intellectual limitations, she added.
The story only gets worse as you read more.
This whole situation begs the question, why was a mentally retarded student 1.) at school in the first place, and 2.) working as the assistant of the dean?
2009 was the early days of talk about “ableism” and of promoting people with disabilities began to take off. Faisal, being the king of progressives, was, of course, supportive of this.
Sargon has talked about the dangers of male feminists, but I think this can be applied to male progressives in general. Faisal was more of a Bill Clinton kind of progressive — he was cool. So cool. Fun fact, it was actually his DeLorean in Macklemore’s famous “Thrift Shop” video. Scroll down through the description and you’ll find Faisal in the “Special Thanks” section on YouTube.
Now it appears that all of Faisal’s support for progressive political causes and for the handicapped are like his support for free speech — superficial, insincere, and self-serving.
I am not happy about the rape of a young woman, but I am enjoying a bit of smirking vindication, watching the school I grew to hate being revealed for what it was. Because in many ways, Faisal was the student government and the administrative bureaucracy for students. He was relatively powerful, and very well paid, but more importantly, he was their chosen face. The school loved Faisal.
Getting rid of Faisal is not the end of the road for academic institutions like Bellevue College. This is the shape of things to come. Faisal was not a one-off; he was the natural candidate based upon the values which schools, in general, have chosen and the incentives they have created.
This is not just a Bellevue College problem.
That’s why freedom of speech is such a hostile concept for them, and why becoming an intellectual force of nature is not only not respected, but actively discouraged, in favor of tolerance and–of course–being “cool.” They have been making this bed for more than two decades now. If you want to lie in it for tens of thousands of dollars, go ahead.
Just don’t expect anything like an education, except in the bedroom arts.
Farooq
22 Jan 2019this article is spot on. i was in Student Govt back in 2003
Faisal was head of Student Programs, after my tenure people asked me about him
i said he was a democratic dictator
regarding this rape incident, it is very unfortunate. i had heard rumors about him having affairs with some of the people working there, but this is really bizarre and things turned for the worse as years passed by
i think Faisal thought he can get away with anything.
C.B. Robertson
22 Jan 2019Back in 2003? Wow, I actually didn’t know Faisal had been there that long. I was only there in 2013/2014.
“Democratic dictator” is the perfect phrase.
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Craig
22 Mar 2019It takes a special kind of fucked up free speech crusading bitch ass snowflake to use a rape of a highly functioning autistic person who was very capable at her job to push an anti-progressive message. So an utter monster like Faisal represents progressive ideals as a whole? I guess you and your crusaders are responsible for the actions of monsters like James Alex Fields, and the other white, free-speech, blood-and-soil bitches who’s words and actions unnecessarily causes those with less power and voice to fear for their lives.
You just want the privilege to say whatever fucked up shit comes out of the bowels of you brainstem without any consequence… like you white male shock jaw boneheads have gotten away with since the beginning of time.
Faisal was a monster walking among us. I also agree Bellevue College is to blame for not seeing early warning signs and covering his ass when the allegations were raised. But disparaging the victim who I know personally, saying that she shouldn’t have been there in the first place just shows that you have no idea what you are talking about and that someone at the school probably asked you to tone down some low-key hate speech of an article at the Pulitzer Prize winning “Bulldog” and you got butt hurt like a Joe Rogan wannabe snowflake and have never gotten over your petty grudge.
Keep it. And keep your stale-ass commentary.
C.B. Robertson
23 Mar 2019The only marginally relevant bit of your emotionally incontinent comment seems to be the question as to whether or not Faisal represents progressive ideals. The answer is obviously not, but equally obvious is that he DOES represent progressive reality, especially the reality of progressive men. More relevant than any of your bizarre invocations of Alt-Right politics are the examples of progressive icons like Harvey Weinstein, or more recently, Morris Dee. Progressive ideals are in fact psychologically impossible, and so the people who can champion them most charismatically and aggressively are, disproportionately, monsters. Like Faisal.
Your criticism of free speech and tacit support for censorship is also irrelevant to this matter, but let my answer here show that “say[ing] whatever fucked up shit comes out of the bowels of you [sic] brainstem” actually *DOES* have consequences… thanks to free speech itself. Bad neural anatomy aside, I suspect you hoped to accomplish this very aim yourself; in your inarticulate, graspingly expulsive and obscenity-laden response — what I’ve come to expect of college students as a group — you hoped to challenge me and put me in my place. The fact that you simply embarrassed yourself by exposing your misunderstanding of free speech doesn’t change this point.
Now I meant no insult to the woman in question, who I don’t know personally, as you claim to. I had only the media reports to go on, and so if they got the nature of her condition wrong, then I apologize for taking their evaluation at face-value. That said, I’d like to point out that this whole situation would be no less fucked up if the woman in question had been entirely psychologically normal; her cognitive competence just isn’t that relevant to the rise of Faisal. But after criticizing me for not knowing the facts, you then go on to share your own ignorance again with attempted mind-reading (“you just want to say whatever… without any consequence) and wish-thinking (“someone at the school probably asked you to tone down some low-key hate speech…”).
WOULD you like to know why I got fired? Of course you would! Because unlike your incomprehending digressions, it actually happens to be relevant here.
I was fired not for what I wrote, but who I talked to. Back in winter of 2012/2013, someone had snuck into the campus LGBTQ resource center and written “Fags and Homos” on their calendar. Now, incidentally, this had been done in erasable marker on a dry-erase board, but the college nevertheless wanted to pursue this as criminal vandalism and hate-speech; in combination, a felony.
Well, it turned out that only two door codes had been used to access that area between the times when the last administrator left the area (after doing a final check; the words were not there) and the next morning when the words were discovered. And as luck would have it, those door codes were unique to the persons who possessed them. So the identity of the clumsy perpetrator could be identified. Felony charges seemed in order.
…except they were never pressed, because it turned out that those door codes belonged to none other than the head of the LGBTQ resource center at the time — one Ali Collucci — and her boyfriend. Suddenly, the whole event was just kind of… dropped. I made the horrendous mistake of going to ask Ali Collucci about what she knew of the whole thing. Being a somewhat naive aspiring journalist, I said, straightforwardly, that some people suspected that she had done it, and asked if she knew anything about it. She became enraged, and sent emails to my boss and the administrators demanding I get fired because of that question. In the end, I was fired.
I know you’ve been exquisitely trained by your school to ignore patterns, but can you pick one out here? Can you see that yet again, the progressive champion of empathy and compassion and whatever other bullshit is — surprise! — a manipulative liar?
Fortunately, Ali’s insanity didn’t really hurt anyone besides me (and myself, only marginally).
Like most progressives, you don’t have a plan for dealing with these kinds of people. You think you can just call them monsters and, having put your words of disavowal to use, solved the problem. That’s because you think that morality has something to do with what you say (which also seems to be why you progressives are so supportive of censorship). Like Patrick Bateman in American Psycho — or perhaps like his victims — you think that just saying “we need to solve world hunger and end poverty,” etc, is what being a good person is about. But all you do is give power and freedom to these monsters, who WILL say whatever they want, without consequences, because ignorant, self-righteous Dunning-Krugers like you empower them and instead go after people like me because someone like Faisal — or perhaps like Tim Wise — told you that I’m a “bad person”… because of what I say.
Your female friend may in fact have been competent for her position. Or maybe not. I don’t know. But your comment illustrates that YOU are not, and for ideological reasons, probably never will be, competent to be a college student. You lack the open-mindedness, the introspection, and, frankly, the grammatical clarity of thought for the role. Yet you and people like you are increasingly not only present on campus, but actually in charge. This is *precisely* why it is “Predictable” that people like Faisal end up in positions of power and authority on campus, and why I would never dream of sending my own brilliant and beautiful daughter to a campus where incomprehending moralizing dumb-asses like you have a vote on policy.
P.S. Joe Rogan is overrated.
Anonymous
16 May 2019Hm. How’s about, we don’t insult the victim (or each other?), and all agree that Faisal is vile. People will do awful things, regardless of politics, unfortunately. 🙁
Faisal always gave me the friggin’ CREEPS. I never liked being around him longer than I had to. (I was relatively active on campus, so our interactions were not infrequent.)
I’m a Pakistani woman, and he knew my father, so he thought he could be extra familiar with me and I *hated* it.
Ugh. Makes my skin crawl.
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