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Staff Editorial: Embrace transparency

23 February 2008 | By , | The Flat Hat » opinions

By all rights, the Board of Visitors shouldn’t be on campus today. If former College President Gene Nichol’s ouster had been conducted properly, no reason for further inquiry would exist.

The board could have preempted student and faculty questions with a transparent process and a thoughtful explanation. But that didn’t happen. While we remain confident that the BOV made the correct decision about Nichol’s contract, we worry their process only aggravated what has become a troubling new tradition at the College: high-minded policy-making conducted from behind closed doors.

At the College, well intentioned decisions have too often sparked outrage because of a lack of transparency. Of course, Nichol’s decision to move the Wren cross without prior consultation marks the most notorious instance of relatively benign policy changes gone awry. While we did not criticize the cross policy shift itself, we found the apparent secrecy with which it was made disconcerting. The debate that followed would likely have proven more useful before, not after, the fact.

Similarly, the BOV’s actions concerning Nichol’s contract have left much to be desired. Even if the affair ran by the book, the lack of a clear statement detailing the board’s procedures and reasoning after nearly two weeks raises eyebrows­ — and protests. BOV members’ arrival on campus today, however, indicates a commitment to clearing the air. We must remember that these men and women are accomplished and educated. Much is to be expected of them.

We hope today’s discussion will ease the process of sifting the personal from the objective. Too many recent developments have surfaced from individual e-mails and correspondences rather than official statements. Robert Blair’s ’68 resignation from the BOV — although it prompted members to concede their decision may not have been unanimous — raised more questions than it answered. Now is the time for explanation from the BOV that will satisfy anxious members of the community.

Absent a comprehensive report, divining an official position has become a game of journalistic Whack-a-Mole — finding an opinion from one source has ensured another’s popping up elsewhere. Whereas BOV Rector Michael Powell ’85 said recently the search for a new president had already started, just yesterday, fellow board member Barbara Ukrop ’61 thought otherwise. “That will not even begin — we’re talking not until next September,” she said.

Confusing? We thought so, too. Waffling like this does nothing to instill further confidence, especially on an issue as significant as the selection of our next president. But here again, the BOV has the opportunity to do right by offering an official position on the matter. The past year and a half have proven the value of releasing information for public scrutiny. Better to provide too much than too little.

Certainly a friendly presentation of the facts is preferable to their forcible extraction. The ACLU has offered to challenge the legality of BOV’s decision to appoint Taylor Reveley as president designate. Following Nichol’s resignation, Reveley was installed as president with a bit or parliamentary finagling. The ACLU contends the move violated Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act. Reveley is immensely qualified for the interim, but installing him as president without an official vote opens the BOV to criticism. As is the case with our other items of concern, greater transparency from the outset could have prevented such a situation.

In large part, the ongoing controversy surrounding Nichol’s departure should have been avoided. A correct decision has become mired in a procedural morass, but today’s sessions provide an opportunity for the College community to find its way. Above all, the event will require openness on both sides so that the community can be satisfied and we can move on as a school.

1. Nichol was invited by the BOV to participate in coming to a mutual agreement on presenting their decision to the public. Instead, with no warning, he chose to go behind their backs accusing them of bribery and bowing to right-wing political pressure. The BOV expected Nichol to behave like a gentleman and a professional. Instead he tried to sabotage them. THAT’S why the BOV appears to be in disarray. They’re still reeling from Nichol’s selfish and petulant departure. Now his ACLU friends want to cause more trouble. (Hopefully, any thought the College may have of hiring another former politician/ACLU lawyer will now vanish forever.) Nichol was paid over $300,000 a year to be self-centered, divisive and incompetent. My understanding is that BOV members serve just for the honor. Now ungrateful whelps like you complain they’re not good enough for you. Did Nichol teach you nothing about compassion or patience?

   
   — robert    Feb 24, 03:05 PM    #

2. how dare you insult nichol and then try to use him as leverage against us. that decision has torn this school apart, and judging by your “ungrateful whelps” comment, you’re obviously not one of us. let us grieve for our president, and keep your nose out of our business.

   
   — can't be serious    Feb 25, 07:09 AM    #

3. W&M has survived fire, wars, the occupation of several armies, etc, etc. Now it’s “torn apart”, and you have to ‘grieve’? Wait to you get to the real world, you’ll be dealing with this kind of thing on a yearly basis. And by the way I’m an alum, donor, and part-time instructor so please save your possessive language for people with a little less life experience and a thinner skin.

   
   — Joe Towney    Feb 25, 12:11 PM    #

4. “how dare you insult nichol and then try to use him as leverage against us. that decision has torn this school apart, and judging by your “ungrateful whelps” comment, you’re obviously not one of us. let us grieve for our president, and keep your nose out of our business”

   Damn. A whole litter of ungrateful whelps! By the way, remember “great & public”, the phrase Nichol liked to repeat ad nauseam? Public means, as taxpayers, it’s our business whether you like it or not. And Nichol tore the school apart. You just didn’t notice it until it affected people YOU regard as human. Those are the values Nichol inspired: love yourself, love your like-minded comrades, attack everyone else. I can feel the “welcoming” and “inclusiveness” from here. At least I do Nichol the courtesy of capitalizing his name.

   
   — pointer    Feb 25, 07:34 PM    #

5. Pointer,

   If the state provided more than 20% of our budget, I would agree with you.

   And when did President Nichol EVER attack people that did not share his values? Oh wait! Thats right…his values are the Constitutional Rights that our College’s alumni gave us more than two hundred years ago.

   I do suppose that by following that little ole’ document, he did go on the offensive against people that would rather censor opinions and hinder our education.

   
   — Dave Johnson    Feb 25, 09:39 PM    #

6. Transparency? Education? A mindful pursuit of the facts? The W&M community needs to examine the caustic political climate that exists here, as the essay below points out (I hope the link above works, it’s from www.city-journal.org)

   Strange Bedfellows at William and Mary

   Anyone who still thinks of sorority girls as cashmere-clad innocents, giggling as they wait by the phone for that special someone to call, won’t understand much of the campus “date rape” scene. A few incidents at the College of William and Mary, a pioneer in sexual-assault awareness, may correct lingering misconceptions.

   In October 2005, at a Delta Delta Delta formal, drunken sorority girls careened through the host’s house, vomiting, falling, and breaking furnishings. One girl ran naked through a hallway; another was found half-naked with a male on the bed in the master suite. A third had intercourse with her escort in a different bedroom. On the bus back from the formal, she was seen kissing her escort; once she arrived home, she had sex with a different male. Later, she accused her escort of rape. The district attorney declined to prosecute the girl’s rape charges. William and Mary, however, had already forced the defendant to leave school and, even after the D.A.’s decision, wouldn’t let him return until his accuser graduated. The defendant sued his accuser for $5.5 million for defamation; the parties settled out of court.

   The incident wasn’t as unusual as it sounds. A year earlier, a William and Mary student had charged rape after having provided a condom to her partner for intercourse. The boy had cofounded the national antirape organization One in Four; the school suspended him for a year, anyway. In an earlier incident, a drunken sorority girl was filmed giving oral sex to seven men. She cried rape when her boyfriend found out. William and Mary found one of the recipients, who had taped the event, guilty of assault and suspended him.

   But in the fall semester of 2005, rape charges spread through William and Mary like witchcraft accusations in a medieval village. In short succession after the Delta Delta Delta bacchanal, three more students accused acquaintances of rape. Only one of these three additional victims pressed charges in court, however, and she quickly dropped the case.

   A fifth rape incident around the same time followed a different pattern. In November 2005, a William and Mary student woke up in the middle of the night with a knife at her throat. A 23-year-old stranger with a prior conviction for peeping at her apartment complex had broken into her apartment; he raped her, threatened her roommate at knifepoint, and left with two stolen cell phones and cash. The rapist was caught, convicted, and sentenced to 57 years in prison.

   Guess which incident got the most attention at William and Mary? The Delta Delta Delta formal “rape.” Like many stranger rapists on campus, the knifepoint assailant was black, and thus an unattractive target for politically correct protest. (The 2006 Duke stripper case, by contrast, seemingly provided the ideal and, for the industry, sadly rare configuration: white rapists and a black victim.)

   Stranger rapes also provide less opportunity for bureaucratic expansion. After the spate of “date rapes,” William and Mary’s vice president for student affairs announced that the school would hire a full-time sexual-assault educator, in addition to its existing sexual-assault services and counseling staff and numerous sexual-assault awareness organizations. Freshmen would now have to attend a gender-specific sexual-assault awareness program. None of this new apparatus—for instance, the “Equality Wheel,” which explains the “dynamics of a healthy relationship”—has the slightest relevance to stranger rapes.

   However, the cross-currents of campus political correctness are so intense that they produce some surprising twists. William and Mary’s sexual-assault resources webpage invites visitors to “listen to what people affected by sexual assault are sharing.” It then offers ten audio accounts of sexual assaults, exactly half of which are male. “My experience came very close to killing me,” one man reports. One would need the skills of a Kremlinologist to interpret this gender lineup, and the site doesn’t explain who exactly these voices are—but it’s hard to escape the impression that William and Mary has admitted either a huge gay community or some very beefy women. Diversity politics, gay politics, and the sexual-assault movement produce strange bedfellows.

   
   — Joe Towney    Feb 26, 09:32 AM    #

7. Link below, sorry it didn’t post properly

   http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_1_campus_rape.html

   
   — Joe Towney    Feb 26, 09:33 AM    #

8. um when did this turn into rape 101 class? is this a metaphor for the BOV sodomizing our campus?

   
   — can't be serious    Feb 28, 10:49 AM    #

9. re: can’t be serious –

   It does seem a little tangential, but its an excellent example of how the administration handles and spins problems on campus – which is very relevant. I don’t know if you were there then, but 2005 was a very scary year at the College for a couple of reasons.

   First, everyone was genuinely made more aware of the problem of sexual assault, and that obviously made us sympathize with the victims, as well as with with all the women we cared about on campus. But it was also scary because of the witch-hunt that was conducted against several young men after instances of clearly consensual sex. That’s a terrifying realization for a sexually active guy, that a consensual relationship can turn into a rape accusation at the drop of a hat – and that the administration takes a “shoot first, ask questions later” approach to the accusations.

   The post is relevant because scores of administrators, faculty, and student organizations have demonstrated that they care more about pushing an idea and a cause than they do about finding the truth and doing justice. NOBODY like sexual assault – EVERYBODY can get behind the cause of stopping sexual assault. And yet when a male student is proven beyond a doubt to have been involved in a consensual act, the administration still wouldn’t back off because they were afraid of admiting they were wrong – regardless of how it ruined that guy’s life. Its shameful, and its the kind of dishonorable approach to problems that has plauged the campus on several issues for a long time.

   Many faculty and administrators are not open minded on this campus, despite their pretensions. For them, taking the time to investigate all sides of an issue is admitting defeat and they’re not willing to do it, due process be damned.

   - It happened when Nichol indulged someone who was so intolerant that they couldn’t stand the sight of another religion’s symbol (rather than opening a discussion with the community about what to do)

   - It happened when two philosophy professors were demoted because they exercised their freedom of conscience.

   - It happened when certain administrators cared more about pacifying the campus than about ruining a young man’s life.

   - Its happening now where certaing faculty and administrators want to make the Nichol fiasco about “diversity” as opposed to admitting what its REALLY about (the majority of Nichol’s opponents agree with his decisions on diversity)

   Its about all of this and I think its a general example of how those in power (yes, you are in power faculty – you aren’t “anti-establishment” anymore… you are the establishment) abuse power and do the wrong thing on this campus because they think doing things the right way makes them look weak.

   Thankyou, Joe, for bringing up the events of 2005. We forget them in the wake of the Wren Cross, but its an excellent example of how things get done at the College. And its not a feminist/anti-feminist issue or a conservative/liberal issue. None of these things has ever been about that. Its a power issue, and the empowered refuse to admit it and those without power acquiesce to it.

   We need to learn how to prevent sexual assault, promote religious tolerance, ensure the freedom of conscience, and promote diversity without doing it in an arrogant and dictatorial way.

   Newsflash! – if you try to promote religious pluralism by acting unilaterally, you’re not being a pluralist! Perhaps your detractors are complaining because of your unilateralism and not your “pluralism”

   
   — class of 2006    Feb 29, 01:46 PM    #

10. Virtually all of Nichol’s opponents favor Gateway and support diversity. The difference is that we need a funding source for Gateway, and we need it now. Losing donations does not help Nichol fund his programs, and having a lousy relationship with the General Assembly isn’t much help either. With the College facing a shortfall of millions of dollars every year, then Gateway will, as Rector Powell said, collapse. Nichol, however magical he may be, should have found a way to pay for these very worthwhile programs. He did not do so.

    Frankly there are issues surrounding diversity, the potential costs and benefits of it, and how it can, and should, be best achieved. These types of issues should be the subject of spirited academic debate, but they are not, because anyone who takes any position that can be perceived, rightly or not, as even slightly contrarian on diversity (or most any other issue, for that matter) can expect to be painted as socially regressive and backward thinking cave-dweller. It is a shame, really, that at a liberal arts college such as ours, such debates simply cannot occur.

    The post on rape IS QUITE RELEVANT, if one looks at the issue from a broader perspective, especially of what can happen when political correctness runs amok, as it did at Duke. The whole issue has been highly politicized and is highly contentious. For the inside story on what happened in the Duke lacrosse team case, see the new book “Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacross Rape Case” by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, the liberal writers who actually broke the case in the media. The author John Grisham terms the book “A masterful examination of the pathetic rush to judgment in the Duke rape case.”

    An inflamed prosecutor, left-leaning academics who convicted the three white men of raping a black woman on the very day the story came out, and biased media all contributed to the disaster, which is far from over. The Duke case is, for those willing to think about what really happened, an object lesson on what happens when PC culture goes haywire.

    Many of own faculty have spared no words for the Board, and passed judgment on the Board’s decision without knowing the first thing about it, and have persisted in pretending not to know that personnel matters cannot be made public.

    We now have the ACLU involved, coming to the rescue as always, and ready to insist that wrong was done. I suppose if they can file a suit and make the Board come back to Williamsburg to cast a public vote for Reveley, they will consider it a good day’s work.

    The claim that process wasn’t followed is ludicrous. Powell announced the process. They sought thoughtful comments from all parties, and accepted those comments for months. They scheduled a 360-degree review, a process which is fairly consistent and can be found by spending a couple of minutes on Google, and Nichol himself submitted a list of the people that he wanted the review team to speak with. The Board waited for the final report from the review to come out, then engaged, if Bob Blair is to be believed, in spirited and prolonged debate in which both sides had their say. Powell did not claim a unanimous vote, as he said no vote was taken. What he said was that all the Board members realized that Nichol was not going to be renewed, and they agreed that Powell should tell him once that became clear.

    The facts about many things are yet to emerge, but they need to. The facts of the review cannot be revealed without Nichol’s permission, but other questions can and should be asked, about the philosophy department fiasco, about the amount of donations that were actually withdrawn (likely to be far more than $12M) and other matters.

    
    — 86 Alum    Feb 29, 11:45 PM    #

11. And the saga continues:

    Harvard Sets Women-Only Hours for Gym, Complying With Muslim Students’ Request

    Sunday , March 02, 2008

    In response to a request by female Muslim students, Harvard University has created women-only workout hours at one of its campus gyms. The decision has angered some students at the Ivy League university.

    Since Jan. 28, the Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center has been open only to women from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Mondays.

    The change was prompted by a request from the Harvard College Women’s Center, which was approached by six female Muslim students, said Robert Mitchell, communications director of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

    “It was done for religious purposes, but it’s not closed to other women who may want to participate,” he said.

    Ola Aljawhary, a student and a member of the Harvard Islamic Society, said the women-only gym is needed.

    “These hours are necessary because there is a segment of the Harvard female population that is not found in gyms, not because they don’t want to work out, but because for them working out in a co-ed gym is uncomfortable, awkward or problematic in some way,” she told Boston University’s Daily Free Press.

    Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, in Washington D.C., said modesty may prevent some Muslim women from exercising in a co-ed environment.

    “If the women are dressed in a manner that makes it more comfortable to exercise, they may not feel it’s appropriate for them to be viewed by men in that particular attire,” he said.

    But the change has angered students like Nicholas Wells, a junior who called the change a “lose-lose” situation in an opinion article he wrote for the Harvard Crimson newspaper.

    “It is an unreasonable policy that is unjust to men and useless to women,” he wrote.

    “Rather than a genuine attempt to provide comfortable workout hours for women and religious observers who might be uncomfortable working out around men, this policy beats around the bush by offering the least utilized and the most inconvenient hours and gym space,” he said. “No one benefits from women’s only hours.”

    The Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center is one of three large recreational facilities on the Cambridge, Mass., campus, though most of the 12 residential houses also have workout facilities, Mitchell said. A large Harvard athletic center is also available for use on the Boston side of the St. Charles River.

    Harvard has made many accommodations for students’ religious needs, Mitchell said. Those include prayer areas for Hindu and Muslim students as well as the rescheduling of exams to accommodate religious holidays.

    “This is just yet another of what we thought was a reasonable request for some special times because of religion, not because of gender,” Mitchell said.

    The women-only hours are being tested on a trial basis and will be evaluated at the end of the semester, he said.

    Reports of the Harvard decision have sparked discussion in student publications across the country, including the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where an athletics department spokesman said such a measure would be “hard to pull off” in the campus’ primary gym.

    
    — Joe Towney    Mar 2, 01:17 PM    #

12. 86 Alum —

    I got the Duke rape case book. I think the guys who wrote it, Stuart Taylor, Jr. and KC Johnson, are actually liberals.

    The book was really excellent and really detailed. You were right — there are parallels with W&M. Even if there weren’t, it would still be worth reading — I learned a great deal about the case, and about how the ultra far-left humanities faculty (the “Group of 88”) joined the media, the Duke administration, and a politically motivated DA in a mad rush to judgment.

    The facts of the case were disturbing enough; what was worse was the behavior of these ultra-far-left humanities professors at Duke who engaged in the worst sort of name-calling and political posturing one can imagine; Taylor and Johnson believe that sort of behavior has become an epidemic at colleges nationwide.

    Based on the whole Nichol resignation mess, I believe we may have it at W&M as well, at least based on the behavior of Nichol’s diehard supporters among the ultra-left faculty. The scariest thing for me was to see what passed for “scholarship” among many of these Duke tenured faculty members, and how out-and-out nasty they were.

    Their tactics were reminiscent of those of the pro-Nichol crowd at W&M: claiming that freedom of speech is at stake, that “academic freedom” is at risk, that opponents are racists, homophobes, or otherwise socially backward, that McCarthyism is alive and well, and so on.

    All the same accusations were made at Duke as they were at W&M: that social Neanderthals were to blame, opposed to diversity, equality, and fairness. It was definitely a racial-political crusade at Duke, termed, in the words of the former president of the Durham NAACP, “a case which profoundly has the potential to challenge racism, classism, and sexism simultaneously.” This was said in defense of the soon-after-disbarred prosecutor, Mike Nifong, after his integrity was attacked in the media, and it proved that in the minds of many, whether a rape occurred or not was immaterial; larger issues were at stake. At W&M, whether Gene Nichol lied or was incompetent were immaterial issues; larger issues were at stake.

    There were several quotes in the book which pertain to Duke but which seem to apply nicely to William and Mary as well. Concerning Duke’s most extreme faculty, John Podhoretz in the New York Post said (with a good bit of irony) that these academics “will continue to enjoy their aristocratic installment in Durham. They’re fighting the white patriarchy. They’re on the side of the dispossessed and oppressed. They’re giving voice to the voiceless. They’re giving hope to the hopeless.”

    The head of the group Friends of Duke University had what I consider to be the most appropriate statement of all in terms of what he faced at Duke and what I believe we’ve seen at W&M: the extreme faculty “are used to controlling the scope and terms of debate on campus, and are truly out of their element dealing with people from the real world.” Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

    Duke’s President (who should have been fired, in the authors’ view, I believe) responded to the disaster by forming a Campus Culture Initiative (CCI) to deal with the problems on the Duke campus and find ways to “improve” the culture on campus. You would not believe the crew of characters who were appointed to be on it — read the book. The CCI, after ten months, reported that they had “connected” with four campus groups: the Women’s Center; the Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Life; the Council on Civic Engagement; and the Center for Black Culture. This is all well and good, but does no one see a problem in the fact that these were the only ones the group connected with? In their findings, the CCI said that those who had opposed the “Group of 88” faculty’s rush to judgment had exercised “pressures for conformity,” engaged in “uncivil speech and intolerance,” and had failed “to engage differences constructively.” To remedy these problems, the CCI recommended a mandatory class for all Duke students that covered “the reality of difference in American society and culture.” Guess which professors would teach the class? The CCI also proposed raising the academic standards for admission for athletes and relatives of Duke alumni ONLY, while lowering the standards considerably for certain minorities (these minorities already comprised 41% of the Duke Class of 2010). The CCI also urged ending “selective living groups” (sororities and fraternities, sports teams living together, etc.) as they “encourage exclusivity” but at the same time praised campus organizations that encourage self-segregation among minority students.

    At Duke, the only voice of reason came from the Duke students themselves, in the campus paper, The Chronicle, which had adopted a reasonable approach from the very beginning, and called the CCI “an unmitigated disaster… a caricature of university governance, populated by agenda-driven individuals…”

    The book is well worth the read, and those who care to think about it can ponder the question as to whether there really are any similarities between W&M and Duke.

    For myself, I am more and more sure that Nichol’s departure will eventually prove to be of benefit to all parties involved.

    
    — I See What You Mean    Mar 6, 10:44 PM    #