Last week we learned something sickening: Wes too. According to anonymous testimony in an online zine (Begging for Table Scraps) the Chair of our Board of Trustees “made inappropriate contact” with, or “had harmful interaction with” (some might say “harassed”) a student serving drinks at a board function. Reports indicate the University “followed its policies regarding the [Title IX] report,” filed months in advance of this public testimony. Otherwise, no apparent action has been taken.
The incident is a personal crisis and should be respected as such. The incident is also a community crisis. We have all pledged to daily, actively make Wesleyan a community of care. We hold that this space flourishes only to the degree that the virtues of mutual respect, generosity, and concern for others are maintained. We are all responsible, but in this case someone with truly unique authority failed to ensure harassment and discrimination in all their forms not be tolerated.
We often speak as though presidents are in charge of universities. They are not. Our charter states: (Section 2) the “corporation shall consist of the Board of Trustees.” Period. The board is Wesleyan the legal entity (Section 3(a)). The president is the board’s local manager-who-presides (hence “president”), the board’s appointee to enact their policies, the board’s highly-paid first employee.
It is the trustees and their Chair who also are entrusted to safeguard the standards and values of our learning community, the Wesleyan that matters most. Though granted this serious moral responsibility, John B. Frank—on campus in his capacity as Chair—reportedly touched a student on the wait staff for a board gathering. The Chair’s hand upon one of us is a fundamental ethical problem: the entrusted broke trust. Frank apparently placed his “palm” upon “lower back,” hand vertical, fingers “lower,” a “pinky slowly sliding downwards towards my waistband.”
The Argus (February 29) and Middletown Press (March 1) focused on whether the University followed Title IX procedures in this case. It appears to have done so: good. The student chose not to pursue a legal claim: their concern. Everyone did their job, and yet we wait: no one has done enough. For the community the incident still matters because what was done may have been legally permissible but, according to our shared community values, it is not morally acceptable.
Who will restore the public validation of what we expect from each other? With trustees apparently too intimidated to talk to each other about ethics, The Argus reports the presiding employee did speak to his boss, thinking “I would be in a better position to do that rather than … someone who might feel more intimidated by talking to a trustee.” But for context, recall Frank’s surprise announcement (October 2021) to pre-emptively extend one of the most lucrative contracts among liberal arts college presidents. Who could expect our team’s highest-paid-player to have a morally clear and critical response to the person who handed them their mega-deal?
Predictably then, the ensuing discussion fails the test of good sense. “Frank asked Roth whether he should resign his seat on the board of trustees. Roth offered his personal opinion that Frank should remain on the board” though noted the employer-employee relationship: “it’s not up to me who resigns.” Two additional twists: Frank is already leaving his position before any “sensitivity training” would occur, and if “the training occurred during Frank’s term, Frank would have led it.” And so the head of our corporate body leaves uninstructed, but with a renovated academic building now bearing his name. The president offered a parting ethical hypothesis: “I don’t think touching someone on the back in a public setting while talking to them about the food they’re serving is the kind of action that should lead to resignation.”
Counterpoint: employee bodies are not among the university’s properties. No one in any service position should ever feel their body subject to those they serve. Power does not entail possession. This “touching” which—let’s be clear—none of us want cannot be seen as even implicitly acceptable.
The ethical question remains. What do we do to redraw lines and rebuild community trust?
Board of Trustees, the entity to which I owe my employment: this behavior has no place in our community and its excusing makes our space less safe. Not good enough. Silence about harassing behavior excuses, validates, and legitimizes. Wesleyan University Board of Trustees: you are tasked with moral leadership. Do better. Do you really have nothing to say about your chair unwantedly touching a vulnerable community member? Meanwhile, rumors spread that last weekend, trustees employed security details to ensure safety from students advocating for divestment. Is safety from harassment here determined by power, privilege, and wealth, or by shared standards and values?
Board of Trustees. You have stated policies—Wesleyan University will not tolerate discriminatory harassment and/or sexual misconduct—which go beyond prohibiting bad behaviors to unambiguously call for better. Live up to your expectation that our character can be measured in part by the kind of human relationships built and sustained within this small but complex environment … [A] community built upon mutual trust and respect for its constituent members … will flourish only to the degree that the virtues of mutual respect, generosity, and concern for others are maintained. Therefore, it is vitally important that harassment and discrimination in all their forms not be tolerated. Just as I must model ideal citation practices to justify my policies on plagiarism, so you must be excellent because you are in authority. You are supposed to be the best of us, to be Wes with us.
Come, and join us in making this space what it should be. Join with students, staff, alumni, admin, prospectives, faculty, and parents in ensuring everyone’s right to a safe, welcoming, better campus. The bodies which constitute Wesleyan must feel and perceive all of our person(s) to be protected. We will take the measure of our character together, by making this space good enough. We are Wesleyan when trust is entrusted in all of us again.
Jesse W. Torgerson is Director of the College of Letters and Associate Professor of Letters and can be reached at jtorgerson@wesleyan.edu.