As I mentioned last week, Foetry.com is threatening to file a class action lawsuit against the University of Iowa for alleged bias in awarding a recent poetry prize to writers with connections to the University of Iowa. According to a report in today’s Daily Iowan, the university’s student newspaper:
the director of the UI Press, dismissed the charges, but said she doesn’t see how “influence and bias can’t creep in somewhere.”
“Short of just stacking up all the entries and flipping a coin, I’d be curious to know how people would think the fairest way to pick is,” she said. “There’s no way to have absolute blind judging.”
The executive director of New York’s Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts advises the university to “perform an internal review” to determine whether the process is “perfectly fair.” She points to a need for transparency in public contests. (Via Moby Lives, where the director of Boise State University’s creative writing MFA program responds in the letter section.)
