19
Difficult Decisions
IN MY SECOND MONTH at Gallaudet, Dr. Ann Powell, a biology professor who had chaired President Davila’s diversity team, made an appointment to speak with me. In her role as diversity team chair under my predecessor, she’d led a group of faculty, students, and administrative leaders who administered a diversity website, held open meetings on topics related to race and ethnicity and sexual orientation and gender, and advised the Office of the President on diversity initiatives.
“We should have a senior administrator in charge of diversity and inclusion,” she told me. Fairness, openness, accommodation, celebrating differences, and overcoming bias and discrimination—these were all crucial issues facing every American university, Gallaudet included. She felt that we should follow the national trend of having a senior leader dedicated to guiding the institution’s work in those areas. I agreed, and after discussing how that position might work and who the person occupying it should report to, the provost and I decided that a chief diversity officer (CDO) would serve in a dual role. They would be both associate provost for diversity in academic affairs, reporting to the provost, and assistant to the president for diversity and inclusion, reporting to me. It was an arrangement that we felt would reflect how vital diversity and inclusion was to so many aspects of the university’s health—social, cultural, financial, public relations, and academic.
To fill such a significant, highly public role, we set up a committee to conduct a national search, hoping and expecting that leaders with both ASL proficiency and extensive experience in diversity leadership and management from around the country would apply.
One of the finalists was a beloved member of Gallaudet’s own staff, Angela McCaskill, who had the distinction of being the first Black woman to earn a PhD at Gallaudet. She had been on the staff at Gallaudet for more than twenty years in various roles, from student services to academic advising.
A Howard graduate, her Gallaudet doctorate was in special education administration. She’d worked for the US Department of Education to oversee the states’ implementation of IDEA and as a research associate for the VL2 project that was funded by the NSF. Overall, Dr. McCaskill was academically impressive but had limited experience in coordinating diversity programs. The provost and I believed, though, that she would be an outstanding leader of diversity for Gallaudet. What she lacked in directly related experience she could learn on the job, with our support.
Over a short period, Dr. McCaskill made excellent progress and established several workshops, panels, and open forums related to diversity on campus. She brought in consultants to help the university to achieve its diversity goals, which included enrolling more minority students, achieving a higher retention and graduation rate among minority students, and making our faculty more diverse. She also established a large advisory board of community leaders from the campus and outside campus as well. With feedback from the advisory board and her consultants, she developed a strategic plan that was enthusiastically supported by the university. Because her staff was small, I provided some of my staff from the Office of the President to support the program. Everything was going well and moving in the right direction. I was pleased and looked forward to her continuing progress.
In October 2012, just over a year into her assignment, two faculty members came to my office to report something they found alarming. They had just discovered that Dr. McCaskill’s name was listed on a public petition to demand a vote—a referendum—to uphold or strike down the Civil Marriage Protection Act, which legalized same-sex marriage in Maryland and had been signed into law in March 2012.
“She should issue a public apology,” they argued, “to the university.” I indicated to them that I fully understood their concern about a high-level member of the administration taking what could be considered an antitolerance and antidiversity stand in such a public way.
“I’ll speak with her,” I said. “And would you be willing to meet with her to discuss your concern after I have had the opportunity to discuss the issue with her?”
Yes, they said they’d be willing, but they also insisted that a public apology to the community be issued first before they’d attend any meetings.
After they left my office, I sat for a while alone at my desk, filled with anxiety and disappointment. I agreed with the two professors. Dr. McCaskill’s signature on that petition seemed like a rash and inflammatory act. While a diversity officer has the right to vote however she wants, live her private life how she wants, and even express her personal political opinions in private, I felt that the public nature of her role as the university’s face on issues relating to diversity and equity meant that she should not make any public statements—which is what signing a public petition amounted to—that would conflict with the university’s own diversity and inclusion stances and ideals.
I emailed her and asked her to meet with me to discuss what I’d learned. She wanted to meet with the two professors to defend herself, and discuss with them her ideas of how to address the issue of the petition with the Gallaudet community.
I encouraged Dr. McCaskill and the two professors to meet without my presence so that they could talk freely without my interference. I was hoping they would air their thoughts and feelings, make concessions, and admit that the other side had valid points. And I wanted them to draw a road map out of the mess, something that we could all agree to.
To my dismay, they could not resolve the conflict. Neither side was willing to make amends or come up with a compromise that would meet both of their satisfactions. Soon, rumors spread throughout campus, making a resolution both more difficult and more urgently needed. I decided to temporarily suspend Dr. McCaskill, with pay, from her position in the administration, so that I could ask the appropriate individuals to investigate the situation and advise me. By now, news of the petition and her signature was known everywhere. Many LGBTQ students were angry and concerned. In my office, we had a series of dialogues with students, faculty, and staff about how the incident might either positively or negatively affect the student body.
Students sat around the table in my office and sobbed. Others angrily described their feelings that the university itself was abandoning their rights. “If you say you’re willing to put my rights to spend my life with the person I love up for a popular vote, then you don’t really believe I have rights!”
With her lawyer, Dr. McCaskill held a televised news conference two days later. She described her feelings about receiving my email informing her of my decision to place her on leave: “I was shocked, hurt, insulted. I was humiliated,” she said. I watched her on the television screen from my living room, with Vicki, and my heart sank. Dr. McCaskill argued that she wasn’t “anti-gay” but rather “pro-democracy.” She listed the actions she’d taken as Gallaudet’s CDO to further the cause of LGBTQ equality—opening an LGBTQ student center, hiring an openly transgender person to her staff, and holding forums and other events with LGBTQ themes. She characterized my suspending her as “intimidation,” and the complaints and threats from the two faculty members who had complained about her as “bullying.”
It was an emotional and trying time for me. The LGBTQ students and faculty felt attacked by the referendum to put their rights up for a vote, and they felt disrespected by the very person whose job it was to advocate for them. On the other hand, many other students and faculty of color and many religious students felt that my disciplining of Dr. McCaskill was rash and overly harsh. Even some gay and lesbian leaders among the students and faculty criticized me for suspending her, arguing that doing so violated her right to free speech and was an overreach.
The irony stung. I could see the merits of the freedom-of-speech arguments against me. After all, I had very recently asserted that same argument in my defense of the Corpus Christi play, offensive to some Christian students.
Then-governor of Maryland, Martin O’Malley, a strong proponent of marriage equality rights, made a statement criticizing my suspension of Dr. McCaskill and calling for her reinstatement. It seemed that I was caught in the middle of a storm, and everything I did to batten something down in the wind allowed for something else to be whipped away. I was making no one happy, it seemed. My old mentor’s advice to me—that I should worry less about what anyone thought of me—felt useless in those weeks. Whether I worried about perceptions of me or not didn’t seem to matter. Amid such hurt feelings, conflicting opinions, and conflicting principles, any decision I made would be met with an outcry.
In bed that night, I tried to shut off all thoughts of Gallaudet. I wanted just a few hours of peace. I wanted the heavy dread that seemed to press lately on my chest to lift. Our cat, Sophia, jumped up onto our bed and stalked across my legs and Vicki’s, up my torso, and nestled between our heads. I reached over to pet her striped cheeks, and she returned my gaze serenely, as cats do. She didn’t have a care in the world. “I should try to be more like Sophia tomorrow,” I joked to Vicki. She laughed and agreed, but pointed out that Sophia didn’t have any direct reports, let alone a large university to lead.
After several months of meetings with key leaders at the university and the board, I ultimately made the decision to remove Dr. McCaskill from her position and relocate her to an academic department as a faculty member that would be commensurate with her experience and training.
From the beginning to the end of this issue, I kept the board of trustees informed and met with the board chair to apprise him of the situation in our weekly videoconference calls. I believed it was resolved in the best interest of the university and the students, although it was one of the most unpleasant and disillusioning experiences in my career as an administrator.
Afterward, I worked with a consultant to develop a new position description for the next CDO with considerable and comprehensive involvement of various constituencies on campus, including faculty, staff, and students in open community-wide forums. A new position description was drafted and shared with the community, including governance leaders (e.g., the faculty council, staff council, student body government, graduate students association, and board of trustees). Prior to my retirement in December 2015, the position description was posted with the expectation that the next president of Gallaudet would select the new CDO.