In the wake of charges brought by the Foetry.com website (see yesterday’s MobyLives digest), the director of the University of Iowa Press says “There’s no way to have absolute blind judging” in the school’s fiction and poetry awards. In a report by Drew Kerr for the school’s student newspaper, The Daily Iowan, director Holly Carver responds to the protests of Foetry and others over the fact that this year’s awards in poetry and fiction were won entirely by UI faculty members and former students of the program that screens the contest, the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, by saying “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.” Kerr also reports that at least two applicants who lost have complained to the school asking for their entry fee back and complaining that the award doesn’t seem to have been open to the public as advertised. One, Steven Brown, says “he received a response from the university counsel contending that his complaint gave the school no reason to revise selection procedures.” Meanwhile, the executive director of Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, “a New York firm that handles similar cases,” suggests that “The university should perform an internal review to examine the selection,” says Kerr. Elena Paul tells him, “It may find the process is perfectly fair, but it’s important to be transparent about it and be open to change. It may find a legitimate concern here and that its public contest isn’t really public.”