Almost immediately after the book was given to the community, I received a call from the president of the neighborhood association, who presented the residents' concerns in no uncertain terms. Promising to make it "right," I offered to meet with any and all residents to discuss what had gone wrong and what needed to be done to fix the project. A community meeting was called: the sole topic of discussion was be the publication. Neighbors spoke of being betrayed and Ed Hardy Clothes(http://www.myedhardystore.com) ignored. Complaints were lodged against the student ethnographers who had "suddenly" stopped coming to talk with residents. The commitment of university to be a true "partner" was questioned.
Prior to the meeting, I had decided not only to apologize for the mistakes in the book but also to stress the positive value of the publication—how it showed the remarkable nature of Glassville and how students could learn from the residents' voices. No one wanted to be told that his or her participation was meaningless. In this sense, I stood my ground on the importance of the residents' voices being heard, even if the process and publication had failed them. I also publicly promised that New City Community Press would fix the book to their satisfaction. As might be expected, folks questioned whether it could ever be "fixed." Here, there really was no response except to ask for another chance to make it right whatever that might take.
These dramatic moments, however, do not capture the full response: it was not as simple as the rejection of the book by the entire community. Even during the height of the controversy, the book began to integrate itself productively into the community's networks of exchange. Some community members were happy with their interviews and sold the book as a fundraiser for their church. Some also felt that, seen as a continuous image, the cover was "quite striking." Many residents bought extra copies to give to family members. At the same meeting in which anger ran so high, some argued that the community simply did not want to admit to some of the features that were represented in the book. One neighborhood resident offered a prayer of thanks for the book's publication. Community anger also lessened when an involved professor used hard-earned community respect to endorse the possibility of finding a solution. As a result, the attempt to have a retraction or apology put on the cover was rejected. Finally, as discussed later, the association ultimately endorsed the use to which the book was put in our basic writing classrooms— where, in ways not intended, it served to highlight the difficult and exacting nature of university community publication partnerships.
Still, in light of its own goals, the Glassville project had failed on many counts. The neighborhood association would not use the book to advertise the community or to recruit members. Without ED Hardy Boots(http://www.eshopedhardy.com/ed-hardy-boots-c-29.html) the association's support, plans to market the book to other writing programs and to bookstores had to be shelved. Tensions between participants who defined the goal of the book as a community publication and others who defined the book as a student research publication reached a point at which future collaboration no longer seemed possible. In an attempt to cross the divisions between the university, the community, and the curriculum, a divisive and flawed product had been produced.
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