In the fall of 2011, Southern Oregon University released its Institutional Goals for 2011-2012. I’d like to take a moment to see how they are doing with the first of those goals.
Goal One (summarized): Enhance SOU’s public recognition as The Public Liberal Arts Univeristy Of The West.
This goal comes as no surprise, as an Ashland Tidings article from 2010 shows: SOU has been working hard at rebranding itself over the past couple of years, and “THE Public Liberal Arts University Of The West” is what they settled on. Apparently much of the effort focused on redesigning the logo (which cost $14,000), but also on “reintroduc(ing) SOU as a local partner,” according to Jon Eldridge, vice president of student affairs. “It’s really beneficial to our students to feel a connection to the community,” he adds.
The article also outlined how SOU plans to reach out to local businesses, asking the interested parties to display SOU brochures and merchandise in exchange for advertising to students. Also, new banners would be hung from light poles, because, “If you don’t know there is a university here you can miss it.”
So, SOU decided to market itself as THE Public Liberal Arts University Of The West, and now they are trying to make sure the public sees it as such. Interesting, then, that they choose to fire (without notice) Deltra Ferguson, Coordinator of the Women’s Resource Center on campus. Deltra had been coordinator for eight years and mentored dozens (if not hundreds) of young women who worked at or volunteered for the WRC. She also was an experienced, trained sexual assault advocate.
Deltra was fired on Friday, March 23rd, at around 5pm: the day before spring break, when most students are preparing to leave town, if not gone already. She had no warning or notice, nor did any of the employees of the WRC who are now leaderless moving into April—Sexual Assault Awareness month, their busiest and (arguably) most emotionally trying month. No, not only leaderless, but also lacking their primary trained advocate. For those unaware of the gravity this, it would be something like firing a basketball’s head coach right before going into March Madness, leaving the team to fend for itself while a search committee is formed and goes through the process of posting a job opening, taking applications, screening applicants, interviews those applicants, before finally making a decision. Then, of course, comes training the new hire. Clearly none of this can happen in time for the WRC to have a new trained advocate as its coordinator for April. Was this even taken into consideration before firing Deltra? I understand that, during April, it isn’t unusual for the WRC to take in and support multiple women a day who have been assaulted. A day. And yet the SOU administration found it a good idea to fire Deltra without informing her or her staff. Interesting . . .
Furthermore, Deltra wasn’t only fired, she was ousted; instead of staying in her office for the duration of her last 90 days, she’s been moved to Family Housing, off campus some five or six blocks away. Administration calls this a routine HR procedure, which is total bullshit. How many of the other people “let go” recently have been ordered to vacate their offices immediately? And how many of those people have such an important need to remain in their office as Deltra?
Even if Deltra was only fired because Jonathan Eldridge doesn’t like her (which the whispers around campus of students, faculty, and staff would indicate), the utmost least that could have happened was to let her stay in her office for . . . I dunno . . . Sexual Assault Awareness Month? But no, that’s not HR policy. What’s the real reason for erasing her from the WRC? Is the administration scared of her? Worried that she might inspire some sort of ‘student action’ perhaps?
And come on, Jon, right before April? Right before Sexual Assault Month? Do you understand HOW UNACCEPTABLE THIS IS? What do you think the WRC does Jon? Do you think they sit around and talk about their periods? About “lady” stuff? Perhaps Jonathan, YOU should be on call for the whole month of April to understand that the WRC provides a very necessary service to women on campus (and off).
As if firing Deltra wasn’t enough, though, the administration continues to leave the students in the dark about the situation. The original word, given to Deltra when she was fired, was that the administration wanted to take the WRC “in a new direction.” Eldridge has since denied this, and Mary Cullinan herself has said that Deltra was actually fired for “personal” reasons that are confidential. While this confidential “mask” may not seem that uncommon at first glance, it actually hits hard for those close to the WRC and Deltra. Earlier in the year there was word that the administration was considering merging the WRC and the Queer Resource Center so as not to have to increase student fees. While this was supposedly an “idea,” there was a big student backlash to it, calling for transparency on such issues and demanding that students be informed and included in any such discussions, even preliminary. Here is an exchange with Eldridge from Facebook:
While there is may be truth in his words regarding coming to him first, I actually feel like it’s the responsibility of the administration to come to the students, especially when the topic at hand regards identity-based resource centers. As a white man, I don’t expect Eldridge to really at all grasp what it may be like to be part of a marginalized demographic (i.e. women, queer identifying people, multi-ethnic people) that said centers serve. Eldridge came to the meeting and berated all those present for requesting transparency, saying that they didn’t offer transparency themselves. But Jon, there’s a big difference here: you’re part of the fucking administration and the school (ideally) exists to serve the students. Also, the proposed idea was to merge two centers (the WRC and the QRC) in an effort to save money. Think about this, Jon, would a female sexual assault victim feel comfortable walking into a joint Womens/Queer Resource Center? While I certainly would feel more comfortable there than say . . . a football locker room, it’s not the same thing as having a dedicated WRC and QRC. The same goes for a young person who is struggling with how they identify (sexually or gender-wise) having to go to a joint WRC/QRC and talk to a heterosexual white woman. Just because the two centers serve two “underserved” communities, it doesn’t mean you can lop them together and call everything good.
The point here, though, is that Eldridge met with the students and promised them appeared to promised them that nothing would change. Interestingly, though, he only said that the centers wouldn’t be disbanded, or that he “didn’t know” of any planned changes for the centers. He did, of course, provide generic lip-service, waxing poetic about how ‘the administration’ wants nothing but to support the students and their resource centers. So it comes as no small surprise that, upon hearing about Deltra being fired, people were outraged and heart broken.
I got to thinking about the (now official?) word that Deltra was fired for “personal reasons.” I found it interesting that it had nothing to do with the budget, nor anything to do with her ability to do her job. Most people I spoke to about the issue assumed it was due to budget cuts (sad, though, isn’t it that we just accept cutting money from our education systems as normal?). I, too, assumed this at first. But no, the President of the university said it was for “personal” reasons. So I decided to investigate why this might be.
Clearly the word “personal” indicated that it had something to do with Deltra as a . . . well . . . person. Was she a poor role model for the students? Was she a bad advocate? Did she treat her employees poorly? I mean, she worked in public service, so her main job was to serve the student body (if not the community of women in the area in general), so if she was fired for “personal” reasons, what could those be?
Luckily people had tacked notes to her on her (ex)office door:
Hmm. Yes. I see. Clearly she was a poor resource to the community and a terrible role model and mentor. Clearly.
I heard from an anonymous SOU faculty person that Deltra could be “hard to work with.” Hmm. Interestingly I’d heard that before from a handful of people. Apparently if you were a co-worker, Deltra seemed . . . strong willed. I guess that’s a negative trait for a woman to have?
Unfortunately the university doesn’t want to inform the public about why Deltra was actually fired. I can’t help but wonder if it was because she was a “strong” woman who stood up for what she believed in, someone who wasn’t afraid to rattle a cage to get her way if she thought that was right. I mean . . . why would an educational institution want to educate its students to behave in such a way? After all, we all the quote, “Well-behaved women rarely make history.”
Wait . . . No. That doesn’t make any sense. If we are supposed to be empowering women to be free thinkers, to be independent, to stand up for themselves, for what they believe in, why fire someone who embodies that so well? I don’t know but it makes me sad.
Unsurprisingly, that makes other students (not affiliated with the WRC) sad, too, and they decided to voice their opinions by posting flyers in the Stevenson Union that looked like this:
What a concise, non-aggressive flyer, don’t you think? The flyers went up last night. To everyone’s surprise, they were all gone this morning. Even more surprising, the Stevenson Union supposedly opened later than usual to allow for the flyers to be taken down. Now why would that be? I’m sure that any inquiry to the administration would receive some sort of shallow, generic answer such as, “The flyers were hung in inappropriate areas, as outlined in such and such policy regarding yadayadayada.” In fact, perhaps someone has asked that question. Interestingly, though, while the above flyer was removed wherever it was posted, a whole lot of other flyers that were perhaps hung in “inappropriate places” were left hanging. This reeks a little too much of censorship, of a 1st Amendment breach. It’s also just plain hurtful.
Upon hearing that the flyers were removed, I sat on a rock in the courtyard for awhile and tried to ponder why this may have been. Clearly it wasn’t for whatever reason would be publicly given, if asked, no . . . there was something behind it. Then I noticed the tiny words at the bottom of the page encouraging students to show up at a specific place at a specific time to—at that point I stopped reading . . . clearly the flyers were encouraging revolution. Most likely violent revolution. There must have been a molotov cocktail making party the night before and today the weapons would be launched up into Eldridge’s plush office, destroying his fine oak desk. So I went to the specified place and the specified time and found this:
People with umbrellas? Apparently.
If you can’t make it out in that pictures, many of the umbrellas were adorned with the words “I miss Deltra.” As if that isn’t heartbreakingly lovely in a terribly sad way, here’s why umbrellas (from an unnamed WRC employee):
So, the WRC has had a box of umbrellas for a couple of years now, from a past event I think. In true Raider spirit all the umbrellas are either red and white or black and white. Deltra is a big fan of these umbrellas, always having suggested them to be used at various events—they’re visible, easy to carry, and draw attention. Why not have an umbrella brigade!? We never seemed to find an event where the umbrellas would fit in. . . until now. What better time to break out the umbrellas than to show that Deltra’s ideas and influences are being carried forward and are extremely valuable! So far, the umbrellas have done nothing but peacefully drawn attention and provoke people to ask what’s going on. Thanks for the idea, Deltra; this umbrella brigade is for you.
Ahh yes, clearly the flyers were “fomenting revolution against the administration.”
Also in the courtyard there was this:
Ah yes, I can see now why the posters needed to be taken down: they were a threat to the safety and wellbeing of the students, no, to the campus at large. They were advocating violent revolution. With umbrellas. And chalk.
So . . . why would The Ministry of Truth Jonathan Eldridge want the flyers taken down? Do the flyers contain offensive or abusive language? Hmm . . . nope. Do they encourage any sort or revolutionary action? Hmm . . . nope. They only ask students to stand with each other in the courtyard to show support.
Regardless of the fact that the administration essentially committed censorship, stripping its students of their Freedom of Speech (maybe the ACLU should read this post), this is just sad. The WRC is one of the most important resource centers on campus, especially during this time of the year. They (along with the Queer Resource Center) serve communities that are generally marginalized, that are not treated as equal citizens in our glorious nation, and that don’t always have their voices recognized. To remove Deltra without warning, without explanation, was shocking and sad.
But taking down flyers? Violating our right for freedom of speech? Unacceptable. Completely unacceptable.
So, if this is the administration’s idea of “enhancing SOU’s public recognition as THE Public . . .” yadayadayada, well . . . I’m disappointed. Perhaps that $14,000 spent on the new logo should have been put toward something else. Like hiring upper level administrators who actually care about the population that they are supposed to serve. Maybe the rebranding effort should have gone with something along the lines of “SOU—a college that cares about you.”
Or actually, maybe just “SOU—we don’t care about women and we violate 1st Amendment Rights” That seems more fitting.
Oh, and Jonathan Eldridge’s email is EldridgJ@sou.edu incase any reader would need it for any reason. Maybe to congratulate SOU on its amazing job serving the student body and accomplishing its stated goals. Or something.
Or better yet, let the WRC staff know that you support them by sending them your love at wrc@sou.edu
