Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kathleen Sullivan Alioto


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Expanding a little on this since it was a contentious discussion: it is fairly obvious that this individual does not pass NPOL. However, the claims to notability rest on GNG rather than NPOL, so really discussion of NPOL is of little relevance. Furthermore; NPOL and GNG are independent. A failure to meet NPOL does not necessarily mean that all coverage of related to elections and politics must be discounted (though BLP1E may apply). With respect to local sources: there is no guideline preventing their use. Common sense says that a source with a very limited audience (such as a county newspaper, or a small-town publication) is likely to give disproportionate attention to items of local interest, and as such, coverage in a local source may not be useful in determining notability. That is an argument I would give serious weight to when considering the Tuscaloosa County Register (if such even exists): applied to the Boston Globe, a newspaper with the 25th largest circulation in the country and with 26 Pulitzer prizes, this argument is week. Finally, a number of scholarly sources and book sources have been provided, and not refuted. In sum, there is consensus that this individual meets GNG. Vanamonde (talk) 19:18, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Kathleen Sullivan Alioto

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After a thorough search, the only articles about her are about her failed Senate candidacy, her husband, and her relationship with ex-congressman Barney Frank. She clearly doesn't meet WP:GNG and has never held a major elected office, so she also fails WP:NPOL. Failed Senate candidacies are almost never notable unless they receive extensive national coverage beyond what is expected of them, which Alioto didn't. Redditaddict69 (talk) (contribs)  18:48, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Redditaddict69 (talk)  (contribs)  18:49, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Education-related deletion discussions. Redditaddict69 (talk)  (contribs)  18:49, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Massachusetts-related deletion discussions. <b style="color:#3399FF">Redditaddict69</b> <sup style="color:#339900">(talk)  <sup style="color:#7F007F">(contribs)  18:49, 10 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep - Has received significant coverage in The Boston Globe (The Sullivan 'girl' now has clout and a batting average to prove it. Cohen, Muriel. Boston Globe. January 27, 1977) and Barney Frank: The Story of America's Only Left-handed, Gay, Jewish Congressman - Hirolovesswords (talk) 20:29, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
 * This doesn't suffice for WP:GNG. The Boston Globe article is local news, which, while it does count, isn't sufficient. GNG typically requires national coverage. The Barney Frank source only mentions her, which also doesn't suffice for GNG. Passing mentions aren't considered significant coverage. <b style="color:#3399FF">Redditaddict69</b> <sup style="color:#339900">(talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(contribs)  20:34, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
 * WP:GNG makes no mention of local news not counting. The Barney Frank source covers her for 3 pages, which is more than a trivial mention, even if Sullivan is not main topic of the book. - Hirolovesswords (talk) 22:14, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Local news isn't verboten under GNG, but it isn't enough all by itself to make a person pass GNG. Bearcat (talk) 16:13, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Exactly my point User:Bearcat. And a source off of dating a closeted gay person doesn't make her notable. They just did extra coverage on her. She did nothing notable there. <b style="color:#3399FF">Redditaddict69</b> <sup style="color:#339900">(talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(contribs)  21:17, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but both of you are wrong. There is NOTHING in GNG that prohibits a local source from contributing to notability. We are looking for multiple, reliable sources with in-depth coverage and that can come from anywhere. If you want to change GNG standards, do so through the correct channels, not in an AfD discussion. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 01:09, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Also People Magazine - Hirolovesswords (talk) 22:23, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
 * That article is about the candidacy. Typically, articles stemming off of a failed candidacy aren't sufficient. <b style="color:#3399FF">Redditaddict69</b> <sup style="color:#339900">(talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(contribs)  23:03, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep: ... and that aside, the Globe is scarcely a local free supermarket weekly. It's a media source with national reach and impact, and dozens of Pulitzers.   Ravenswing    22:38, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
 * The Globe article archives aren't working for me, but as far as I know, those articles stem off of the candidacies. As I said above, articles from a failed candidacy aren't considered sufficient for GNG. <b style="color:#3399FF">Redditaddict69</b> <sup style="color:#339900">(talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(contribs)  23:05, 10 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Comment This online exhibit put together by UMass Boston history & American Studies grad students has some interesting sourcing and puts the article subject in the larger historical context of Boston's desegregation, but you have to click through the sections on the upper right to go through it. Bakazaka (talk) 00:02, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep in addition to sources already introduced, Sullivan is discussed throughout Ronald Formisano's book Boston Against Busing (University of North Carolina Press, 2012) . Passes WP:GNG. Bakazaka (talk) 00:53, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete Only coverage presented so far is fairly trivial (certainly not the "significant coverage" we require) and insufficient to demonstrate lasting notability. Notability is not inherited from her relationship with a notable person. Other coverage addresses her unsuccessful candidacy for political office, which is routine. She fails WP:NPOL as an unelected candidate for office who has not received "significant coverage in reliable sources" AusLondonder (talk) 02:45, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete. Neither serving on a school board nor being an unsuccessful candidate in a party primary hands a person an automatic inclusion freebie under WP:NPOL — and notability is not inherited, so she doesn't get to keep an article just because of who she dated or married in her personal life. Since school board trustees would be simply expected to get some local coverage in their local media, the fact that a couple such hits exist is not an automatic WP:GNG pass that exempts a school board trustee from having to pass NPOL by going on to serve in a more notable office — if a couple of local media hits were all it took to hand a school board trustee a notability pass, then there would never be any such thing as a non-notable school board trustee anymore, because every school board trustee everywhere could always show at least that much local media coverage. And hits #4, 5, 7 and 8 are just glancing namechecks of her existence in coverage about her ex-boyfriend and her husband, not sources that demonstrate that she has any independent notability in her own right. So no, nothing here is enough to make her notable. Bearcat (talk) 16:11, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep The claims to notability are fairly week, but there do seem to be enough high quality sources here to meet GNG. She has gotten more coverage than any school board trustee, which would usually get only passing mentions in reliable sources. ~ EDDY  ( talk / contribs )~ 16:58, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
 * No, school board trustees would not usually get only passing mentions — every school board trustee everywhere could always cite at least as many detailed sources as are present here, because the local school board is a thing that local journalists routinely cover as a core part of their jobs. Bearcat (talk) 17:06, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
 * As far as I'm aware, the only public educators on a state level that are notable are Superintendents of Public Instruction such as Tony Evers or John King Jr. before he became a U.S. Secretary of Education. <b style="color:#3399FF">Redditaddict69</b> <sup style="color:#339900">(talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(contribs)  22:14, 11 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete fails WP:NPOL. I'm not convinced the other sources shown pass WP:GNG as they're largely in the context of her election or the fact her notability is inherited from the people she's dated. SportingFlyer  talk  23:30, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep part of the problem appears to be that during the most important part of her career, her name was Kathleen Sullivan. This is the name under which she chaired the Boston School Committee during the Boston busing desegregation.  Coverage of her role has made her notable.   Nom,  appears  have missed the fact that her marriage to Alioto came late. And to have misled other editors into thinking that this is about notability "inherited from the people she's dated."  when, in fact, searches reveal that she was a national figure because that was the most notorious/notable/widely reported of America's school busing disputes.  User:SportingFlyer, User:AusLondonder, User:Bearcat, any of you guys wanna revisit this one?  Here's a search of the NYTimes on kathleen + sullivan + boston + busing .  Sullivan was the School Committee Chair who implemented school busing, Washington Post:  Boston Busing, Stage II "What makes this remarkable is that the school committee is no longer the bastion of bitter-end anti-busers. Its chairman, Kathleen Sullivan, provides moderate leaderhip that accepts the inevitability if not the wisdom of court-ordered busing. She led all candidates for reelection Nov. 8, when Boston's voters elected the committee's first black (a moderate) and defeated its foremost anti-busing zealot. But the new school committee is treated no differently from the old school committee by Judge Garrity. He and what Miss Sullivan calls "those crazy experts of his" are not surrendering control...." [[User:E.M.Gregory|E.M.Gregory] (talk) 21:46, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
 * That doesn't appear to be significant coverage of her - it's coverage of her in a role that we don't typically include people for under WP:NPOL. SportingFlyer  talk  01:38, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * A lot of people helped with desegregation of public transportation. That doesn't make them notable. The fact that there's not even 5 sources I could find with an in-depth description of Sullivan/Alioto's work on bus desegregation but I could find thousands on other people does not help this case. WP:GNG, to be sufficient, needs many in-depth, description, more-than-just-a-passing-mention sources. I don't see that. I read through the article and I know her last name wasn't Alioto for most of her life. I saw those articles. I don't believe she's notable. <b style="color:#3399FF">Redditaddict69</b> <sup style="color:#339900">(talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(contribs)  02:18, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * ReddittAddict, Boston busing desegregation refers to the battle over whether to desegregate the Boston public schools. Sullivan's career has nothing to do with public transit. It is truly WP:DISRUPT to nominate an article for deletion without reading it and without performing WP:BEFORE that is, at a minimum, sufficient to enable you to understand that much. Please slow down and look more carefully.E.M.Gregory (talk) 10:37, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify, busing and "desegregation of public transportation" are not the same thing. Bakazaka (talk) 03:11, 13 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Sullivan's role in the Boston busing crisis is discussed in quite a few books in addition to the books already mentioned above, these include:
 * Charles Ogletree, All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education (W.W. Norton & Company 2004)
 * Barney Frank: The Story of America's Only Left-handed, Gay, Jewish Congressman, Stuart E. Weisberg, University of Massachusetts Press, 2009
 * Reforming Boston Schools, 1930-2006: Overcoming Corruption and Racial Segregation, Joseph M. Cronin, Palgrave Macmillan, Jun 15, 2011
 * The Elusive Ideal: Equal Educational Opportunity and the Federal Role in Boston's Public Schools, 1950-1985, Adam R. Nelson, University of Chicago Press, 2005


 * And in many scholarly articles, including:
 * Clark, Karen. “Boston Desegregation: What Went Wrong?” The Clearing House, vol. 51, no. 4, 1977, pp. 157–159. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30184960.
 * Beck, William W., et al. “Identifying School Desegregation Leadership Styles.” The Journal of Negro Education, vol. 49, no. 2, 1980, pp. 115–133. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2294961.
 * Brown-Nagin, Tomiko. “Race as Identity Caricature: A Local Legal History Lesson in the Salience of Intraracial Conflict.” University of Pennsylvania Law Review, vol. 151, no. 6, 2003, pp. 1913–1976. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3313022.
 * Wilkinson, J. Harvie. “The Dimensions of American Constitutional Equality.” Law and Contemporary Problems, vol. 55, no. 1, 1992, pp. 235–251. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1191765.


 * Part of the difficulty editors opinion delete may have been experiencing stems fomr the fact that there are a lot of other Kathleens Sullivan in the world.E.M.Gregory (talk) 11:13, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I know I'm just piling it on here, but there is INDEPTH in several biographies of Barney Frank, well, of course there is, not merely because he was a very well known gay politician on the national scene, but because when they were dating they were BOTH well-known Massachusetts politicians, so OF COURSE there was INDEPTH. Not because she was "the girlfriend" but because the was a public figure in her own right,  Ditto with Alioto marriage.  (here's some hot political gossip c. 1978 via the New York Times: In addition, Kathleen Sullivan, a member of the Boston School Committee who recently was married to Joseph Alioto, the former Mayor of San Francisco, is ‘expected to announce her candidacy on Tuesday.  I grant you that she's been more or less forgotten, cf. our endemic PRESENTISM problem.  But in this discussion, we seem to have a SEXISM problem as well.E.M.Gregory (talk) 16:20, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Question: Do we keep a list of suggestions for teachers who want to use Wikipedia as a teaching tool? I ask because it looks to me like pretty much all of the articles on the Boston desegregation busing crisis need major improvement, including this article, Boston desegregation busing crisis, Wendell Arthur Garrity Jr., and John J. Kerrigan.17:18, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Hey I made some extremely minimal improvements to the page (which had lacked any indicaiton of her involvement with the school desegregation crisis.) Section on her role in the Boston desegregation busing crisis remains in need of major improvement.  An enormous reservoir of sources exists.E.M.Gregory (talk) 18:07, 13 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Clarification – I said "desegregation of public transportation before" when, in fact, it was that of public school*** transportation. This, in my opinion, makes what Sullivan did even less notable. <b style="color:#3399FF">Redditaddict69</b> <sup style="color:#339900">(talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(contribs)  19:41, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify again, busing is not "desegregation of public school transportation" either. Bakazaka (talk) 20:02, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * No, NO, no!!! She was NOT involved in "public school*** transportation." The issue in Boston at the time when she was a very important elected official was desegregation of the public schools. the proposed solution was to bus working class and poor white kids to schools in black neighborhoods, and working class and poor black kids to schools in white neighborhoods (the middle classes had left Boston or were paying for parochial schools. the judge who ordered integration lived in a posh suburb.)  Boston's small, white working class white population was livid.   There were riots, violent opposition.  It was called a "busing" crisis, but it was about desegregation of the public schools.  Sullivan voted to desegregate.  Buses were used as a tool of desegregation.  It was NOT about school transportation. Please read the article, and the links it contains.E.M.Gregory (talk) 20:09, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Oh my god "No, NO, no!!!" what the heck is that? See WP:DBO. I did read it, and the crisis was named "busing" because of the issue of transportation. It was more, but the issue was named that by the judge. <b style="color:#3399FF">Redditaddict69</b> <sup style="color:#339900">(talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(contribs)  21:06, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Quote from Busing: "practice of assigning and transporting students to schools so as to redress prior racial segregation of schools..." Is that not transportation? I'd be inclined to think that it is. And yes, Busing isn't desegregation. I said that this was desegregation of the busing in Boston. <b style="color:#3399FF">Redditaddict69</b> <sup style="color:#339900">(talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(contribs)  21:07, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately for the discussion, there seems to be some basic confusion here. Given that it calls the underlying assumptions of the nomination and the assessment of sources into question, probably best to let other editors weigh in. Bakazaka (talk) 21:13, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * To me, this all seems like WP:BLP1E. Sullivan did nothing but assist in these efforts. Why not Merge with the Boston busing crisis article? <b style="color:#3399FF">Redditaddict69</b> <sup style="color:#339900">(talk) <sup style="color:#7F007F">(contribs)  21:15, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree. I've looked through the sources and they are all routine or not about her. The desegregation of the public schools issue is irrelevant - the fact it was a (I assume) notable issue decided by the school board she was on doesn't make her notable, and the people she dated don't make her notable. SportingFlyer  talk  00:03, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * To give just one example of the SIGCOV of Sullivan in scholarly sources, there are six separate sections in Boston Against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s, (University of North Carolina Press,) that offer INDEPTH coverage of her role.E.M.Gregory (talk) 00:32, 14 September 2018 (UTC)


 * A few of the newspaper stories that are about Sullivan, headline and text. As requested by User:SportingFlyer:
 * ''City schools are Kathleen Sullivan's lessons, Cohen, Muriel. Boston Globe (1960-1987); Boston, Mass. [Boston, Mass]19 Feb 1974: 5. (about her work to improve classroom education in Boston schools)
 * The diligent Miss Sullivan,Surkin, Carol. Boston Globe (1960-1987); Boston, Mass. [Boston, Mass]16 Sep 1975: 25. (profile of Sullivan as a notably hard-working member of the School Committee)
 * School Committee: Sullivan top votegetter Cowen, Peter. Boston Globe (1960-1987); Boston, Mass. [Boston, Mass]28 Sep 1977: 1.
 * An elated Kathleen Sullivan has 39,593 reasons to smile Marquerite Del Giudice. Boston Globe (1960-1987); Boston, Mass. [Boston, Mass]09 Nov 1977: 15.
 * Kathleen Sullivan puts pressure on businessBoston Globe (1960-1987); Boston, Mass. [Boston, Mass]25 May 1975: A5.
 * Kathleen Sullivan Engaged to Alioto The Hartford Courant (1923-1992); Hartford, Conn. [Hartford, Conn]16 Apr 1977: 38a.
 * Miss Sullivan gets shouted at againSales, Bob. Boston Globe (1960-1987); Boston, Mass. [Boston, Mass]20 Mar 1974: 3.
 * The Sullivan 'girl' now has clout and a batting average to prove it, Cohen, Muriel. Boston Globe (1960-1987); Boston, Mass. [Boston, Mass]27 Jan 1977: 3.
 * Sullivan denies deal with Palladino,Cohen, Muriel. Boston Globe (1960-1987); Boston, Mass. [Boston, Mass]19 Feb 1977: 4.
 * Sullivan, Alioto wed by controversial priest, Cohen, Muriel. Boston Globe (1960-1987); Boston, Mass. [Boston, Mass]28 Feb 1978: 1.
 * The plight of Alioto's second troth,Newsday (1940-1989), Nassau ed.; Long Island, N.Y. [Long Island, N.Y]28 Feb 1978: 9. "Former San Francisco Mayor James Alioto has married has married Boston School Committee Chairwoaman Kathleen Sullivan..."
 * Sullivan tells Garrity he nurtures 'a lie', Worsham, James. Boston Globe (1960-1987); Boston, Mass. [Boston, Mass]17 Mar 1976: 1. And more.  While I do understand SportingFlyer's complaint that editors like me make argument based on material that is behind expensive paywalls, the fact remains that paywalled archives of blue chip sources such as the Boston Globe are the front line of defense against our endemic PRESENTISM problem.  Of course, in Sullivan Alioto's case, there are books.E.M.Gregory (talk) 16:33, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not actually all that concerned about the paywall - there are ways for me to verify some of these articles. For instance, I've read "The diligent Miss Sullivan," which does discuss her and her voting record as a member of the school board, which raises the question of how much coverage someone who fails WP:NPOL needs to pass WP:GNG for articles that discuss the politician in their role. My bigger concerns were that the articles that I had easy access to did not show WP:SIGCOV but were presented as if they did. I'm less concerned about this article now. SportingFlyer  talk  00:49, 16 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep Delete - A local board member and an unelected candidate for political office do not guarantee notability. Finishing third in a Senate race does not make one notable, thus the subject does not meet notability guidelines. Fails WP:NPOL as the subject has never been elected into public office. The subject appears locally known in large part because of high-profile people she dated and married. Notability is not inherited. Also, because there is no wide coverage specifically about the subject, subject fails WP:GNG. Limited coverage, as shown above, which includes a few society-page mentions, is trivial at best. -AuthorAuthor (talk) 20:24, 15 September 2018 (UTC) On a deeper dive via Google, I found a UMass Boston report included within a published study titled A Collaborative History of Segregation in Boston. It includes a lengthy section on Kathleen Sullivan and her role against segregation. Her six years on the school committee fighting segregation helped change history, according to the study. Thus, coupled with the other media coverage cited in the article, the subject passes WP:GNG. I added the source and info to the article. I also reorganized the article. The article meets notability guidelines and should remain on Wiki. -AuthorAuthor (talk) 00:28, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Please encounter the argument for KEEP, which is not that she is notable because of who she dated meets POL noe based on who she dated.  The argument is that she played a key role in a major political battle over desegregating Boston's public schools, during which she garnered WP:SIGCOV in media nationwide and which had had ONGOING attention in books and scholarly books and articles in the decades since.E.M.Gregory (talk) 22:39, 15 September 2018 (UTC)


 * WP:HEY The SEXISM and lazy dismissal of sources supporting Sullivan's notability in favor of arguing that The subject appears locally known in large part because of high-profile people she dated and married. which includes a few society-page mentions  is almost as thick as the headlines about her that ran in the sexist seventies about   The Sullivan 'girl, and The diligent Miss Sullivan.  I have begun an expansion of the page.E.M.Gregory (talk) 22:39, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Sexism? Excuse me?!? Women and men equally make the society pages. I beg your pardon, ? -AuthorAuthor (talk) 22:44, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
 * The sexism argument is bizarre, this has nothing to do with her gender. SportingFlyer  talk  00:49, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Nom and more than one commenting editor dismissed this as being about who she dated.  But what truly puzzles me is why you are not revisiting your "delete".  This woman led the school committee and played a pivotal role in one of America's noisiest public school desegregation battles, she was in the news nationwide in the 70's and she gets INDEPTH in multiple books and academic papers.  Even though after he marriage and losing her campaign for Senate she  pretty much retired form public life.E.M.Gregory (talk) 00:57, 16 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Thank you No,, this editor did not dismiss "this as being about who she dated." Other editors mentioned her dating history as well. To be clear, it was about the news coverage she received as a result of whom she dated. Big difference. -AuthorAuthor (talk) 02:00, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
 * It is specifically because SportingFlyer was not among those making this sort of assertion that I explained to him that other editors had done so. Again, AuthorAuthor, I ask you not to misread me.  Sporting and I usually agree on perceiving or not perceiving SIGCOV, just as you an I usually do. E.M.Gregory (talk) 08:48, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I have looked at it and I disagree with your analysis, but I'm more of a weak delete than a delete now, as I see this as a discussion of when someone notable only for being on a school board passes WP:GNG. SportingFlyer  talk  03:18, 16 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Keep I agree with here and there is plenty of coverage of her work before and after her senate run in RS. Passes GNG. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 01:28, 17 September 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. <b style="color:red">Please do not modify it.</b> Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.