Plausible Deniability…?

I have…questions.

In the article posted by the Times of Malta, Fr. Aaron Zahra, the Rector and St. Albert the Great, sticks to his guns and states that Mr. Mario Mallia, who is at the forefront of a lengthy saga, has allegedly refused to seek audience with the board of directors to discuss his ideas for inclusion.

I am not sure I am convinced.

Did they make themselves available?

Did they make themselves open to discussion, or did they just expect him to concede?

WERE they as inclusive as they paint themselves before?

WAS he as reluctant as they make him out to be?

That last one seems to conflict with what the rest of the community knows him to be. Furthermore, from the community of St Albert’s very public response, it does not seem they were accessible at all.

Are they going to AT LEAST honor his efforts by not doing away with everything good that he had set up?

On affiliation outside of the workplace, I am somewhat ambivalent; whatever one does outside of their workplace is, per se, not the business of the employer unless they are a politically exposed person (meaning being a high-profile representative) and conflicts with the ethics espoused by the place of employ. Especially if this is tied to popular politics rather than an association advocating for a cause or another. I am not entirely convinced or comfortable, but that much is understandable.

Having said that, I find it only reasonable that this is settled by an unbiased party; however the consequences will also be testament to this. Whichever way this is resolved, if it is decided that Mr. Mallia’s role in the college cannot be continued, the board of directors will lose any and all credibility if, with him, they also dissolve everything that he built. If they really were as inclusive as they are depicting themselves, then whatever Mr. Mallia built will stand.

Only then they will be credible to be doing this in order to address specific incongruences they perceive, and not his efforts for inclusivity.

In fact, scratch that. This would be trial by fire.

However I must stress one point.
There may have been those who have criticised people (like myself) who have come out in droves to support Mr Mallia, particularly the community at St. Albert’s. One even said that the community should be “ashamed that they made the school their own instead of the people who are meant to be running it.”

To that I say:

No one knows how a community is run better than a community.

No one knows how to dirty their hands doing it than those actually doing it.

No one knows the needs of the community than the community themselves.

Not an inaccessible board of directors, not a sum of people that are never present on campus, not those who profit off of the backs of the hard work of people who run the show.

We should be happy the community cares about their own and have united in droves to protect their own. You don’t see this much, especially not in a neoliberal hellhole like Malta.

And yes, as a socialist, I am very content.