Cutler Lashes Out At Magazine Piece

By Sudhin Thanawala
Assistant News

An article published in the summer issue of Wesleyan: The University Magazine, a publication for Wesleyan alumni, has reignited the conflict between Professor of Dance Cheryl Cutler and the Wesleyan administration.

The article, written by Director of Public Information Bill Holder, highlights the findings of the Faculty Committee on Rights and Responsibilities (FCRR) in the case filed by Cutler against President Douglas Bennet.

Filed in September of 1997, the case was brought to the FCRR after Cutler was removed as chair of the Dance Department by Bennet.

In a written statement to faculty, students, and alumni, Cutler said the article about the FCRR’s report in this summer’s edition of the University Magazine was misleading.

"The FCRR report, if read in its entirety, conveys an entirely different impression from that created by the Holder article. The alumni magazine quotes only carefully selected excerpts from the FCRR report, which, together with glaring omissions, place a very particular spin on that report, an interpretation that adopts the administration’s view," said Cutler in her written statement.

"While even a discerning reader would not know this from the article, the FCRR report itself actually found me guilty of no wrongdoing and President Bennet of having repeatedly violated the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) guidelines for University governance in a fundamental way," Cutler’s statement continued.

Cutler said that she was informed by alumni that the editor of the magazine, Bill Holder, had communicated with Bennet about the article. She added that she was not consulted.

"This is evident from an e-mail regarding the matter sent by Mr. Holder to an alumnus, with President Bennet [on the recipient list]," said Cutler in her statement.

Culter went on to say that she and other alumni requested that Bill Holder not publish the article, saying they were concerned that an unbiased article could not be written about such a charged subject. They asked him to instead publish a copy of the FCRR’s report. Citing "editorial independence," Holder was not dissuaded from publishing the article.

"I stand by the story in the magazine as being fair and accurate," Holder said.

Members of the FCRR refused to comment.

Willy Feuer, a former dance professor, sued the University and Cutler after he was denied tenure in 1993. He claimed that Cutler abused her power in the tenure review process and voted against him because of personal reasons. The case was settled out of court in September 1997 and Feuer was returned to his position in the Dance Department.

In a reply to the FCRR report released in April 1998, Bennet said he removed Cutler as chair because he did not think she would implement the agreement reached by the University and Dance Professor Feuer "in a fair, honorable, and humane manner."

Cutler said she protested the settlement because she was not consulted for almost a year while the negotiations of the settlement were in process. She did not read the settlement and was refused a copy of it until April of 1998.

In Cutler’s recent statement she wrote, "I explicitly agreed to implement the settlement on September 4, 1997, some eight months before I actually saw the settlement agreement. Remarkably, the administration repeatedly refused to give the Dance Department a copy of the final settlement, which the Dance faculty was supposedly bound to implement. It was only after the FCRR report was issued, that the administration finally agreed to reveal to Dance faculty certain terms of the agreement. This was over seven months after the agreement went into effect."

According to Cutler, in a meeting in November 1996, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Richard Boyd informed her and two other members of the Dance Department that the University was considering settling the Feuer suit. Cutler said he outlined several possible settlement terms being considered at the time.

"I asked whether they wanted the dance faculties responses to those possible terms at this time," Cutler said. "He just said no."

According to Cutler, after outlining the negotiated settlement to her and another member of the Dance Department on June 5, 1997, Boyd called her on July 2 and told her that a copy of the settlement would be made available for her to read and sign.

At the June meeting, Cutler said she and another member of the Dance Department pointed out their concerns about the ambiguity of the settlement’s language. They were concerned that it could be reasonably interpreted in different ways.

"We told him it was not clear," Cutler said.

According to Cutler, at the July 2 meeting she was told by Boyd that in a week she would be asked to sit alone in a room in North College. At that time, she would have 30 minutes to read and sign the agreement. She was not to consult with anyone. She was told that if she did not understand the legal issues in the settlement, the University’s lawyer would interpret them for her.

"I was stunned," Cutler said.

Cutler said she subsequently informed Boyd that she had concluded that a "conflict of interest" had arisen as she was not being given usual council as a defendant. She said she also protested to Bennet about the handling of the case. Cutler said their failure to address her grievances prompted the Dance Department’s September 2 letter stating their opposition to the terms of the settlement.

In her letter, Cutler asks Bill Holder to print a copy of it in the next issue of the University Magazine. She said he has not yet responded. She added that Bennet’s offers of reinstatement are based on the condition that she implement the settlement. The FCRR’s report, on the other hand, has put no such restrictions on her reinstatement.

Cutler wrote, "in retrospect, an undeviating pattern emerges in the administrative actions taken throughout this case. The article evidences a perpetuation of the administrative policy style of ‘no consultation’ which initiated all these difficulties in the first place. Instead of turning affairs in the direction of greater collegiality, consultation, interdependance, and mutual respect - the spirit of the AAUP guidelines and the blue book - the article has only compounded the critical problems which the President, the Dance Department, and the University face and now must solve."