Her University Publicly Accused Her of Using Meth. Here’s How It Came to That, and Here’s What Happened Next.

Denise Bennett was known as a passionate, if sometimes ferocious, professor. She’d go to the mat for her students, which occasionally meant wrestling with administrators.

That all changed one day in January when an alert was sent to the University of Idaho campus saying that the tenured associate professor — recently placed on leave — had admitted to “meth use” and had “access to firearms,” and that if anyone saw her on campus they should “call 911.”

The alert angered her students and raised questions from her colleagues, who wondered if administrators were trying to further silence a vocal critic. A panel of five faculty members was tasked with analyzing Bennett’s case, including what led to the campuswide alert. On Friday, the group reached a conclusion: Bennett should be fired, the panelists wrote in a recommendation letter obtained by The Chronicle, but not because of her alleged methamphetamine use — one of the reasons the provost gave for her dismissal.

Though the alert caused “undoubtedly significant” harm to Bennett’s reputation, the letter says, the professor also engaged in unprofessional conduct, including sending a profanity-laced manifesto and berating an administrative assistant. Even now, she is unrepentant, refusing to acknowledge “the inappropriateness” of her actions, the letter says. Essentially, Bennett did not apologize or indicate she would change.

The letter, coupled with emails obtained by The Chronicle under open-records laws, paints a troubling portrait of a difficult professor who seemed to delight in provoking senior administrators — officials who in turn had little patience for her barbs. And it raises questions about whether those administrators went too far in seeking to show her the door.

‘It’s a Performance, Dude’

On January 22, Bennett, a nearly 13-year veteran of the School of Journalism and Mass Media, got frustrated. She was shepherding a grant for a student, and there was about $450 left. That day, an administrative assistant, Diane McGarry, told Bennett that under the grant’s original terms, the remaining funds should have been spent by the end of December, according to an email obtained by The Chronicle.

It seems to have been a breaking point. That night, Bennett sent an email to more than two dozen administrators and colleagues with the subject line, “A MANIFESTO FROM A PROFESSOR WHO IS BEYOND FURIOUS.” She aired frustrations about the unspent grant money and vowed to “NEVER GO TO ANOTHER MEETING INVOLVING THE WORDS ASSESSMENT OR STRATEGIC PLAN” and to “NO LONGER SPEAK IN PERSON WITH OR RESPOND TO EMAILS/PHONE CALLS FROM” any administrator. Bennett said she would reserve 13 minutes per week for necessary interactions with the journalism school’s director, Robin Johnson, and McGarry, for administrative duties.

The next day, Bennett and the student met with McGarry, during which Bennett engaged in “a verbal attack,” the panel’s letter says. McGarry was “shaken and upset.” In Bennett’s account of the incident, she did not curse at McGarry but raised her voice. Johnson overheard the yelling from behind a closed door down the hall but did not respond to it in time to intervene, the letter says. (In an email to The Chronicle, Johnson said he was on the phone with the dean, discussing Bennett’s manifesto, when the “verbal attack” occurred. He heard parts of it, but did not see it, and also said he had to teach a class immediately after it.)

McGarry reported the incident. That evening, Sean Quinlan, dean of the College of Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences, emailed Bennett, asking to talk. Bennett replied, saying she was just getting out of her night class and that “I’ve already spent over three minutes of my thirteen dealing with administrators today but you can certainly call me, I might entertain some logic but I’m not expecting it.”

At some point that day, Bennett appears to have scheduled a group event, slated for every day, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., in which she implored students who were “sick of inconsistent policies, administrators on power trips, not being treated like an adult, or have any other issue about the ineffective management of this university” to “come talk to me. Students have more power than they realize. Use your power, don’t be complacent.”

The next day, January 24, some administrators met to discuss Bennett. If she reacts “poorly” to conversations or has “another incident,” she should be put on administrative leave, Torrey Lawrence, vice provost for the faculty, told Quinlan.

While driving in a rental car with the provost and the vice provost for academic initiatives, Quinlan called Bennett and put her on speakerphone — unbeknownst to the professor. He requested her assurance that she would stop treating support staff “in an abusive fashion.” Bennett refused, saying, “Hell no I won’t.”

Quinlan then told Bennett she would be placed on administrative leave.

The next day, Bennett was called in for a meeting with Quinlan, and she told the dean’s assistant that she refused to meet unless it was on her terms, the panel’s recommendation letter says. On January 28, Bennett told a university ombuds that there was no way she would talk to administrators without her lawyer present.

On January 29, Bennett read the terms Quinlan’s letter describing her administrative leave on a YouTube live-stream video. She added her own interjections: “I interact with students in a way more offensive manner, in a way more uncivil manner, on a daily basis. I yell at them. And the reason why is because it’s a performance, dude.”

The live stream found an audience, both on campus and off. When told about the video, Chuck Staben, the university’s president at the time, responded in a text that it “May be good.”

Police Report Emerges

A Moscow Police Department officer also watched. The officer recognized Bennett and dug up a police report from a November 4, 2018, domestic disturbance. According to the report, someone had called the police because Bennett and her husband were fighting. When the police arrived, the couple said that their marital issues were related to Bennett’s “recent methamphetamine usage,” the report says. Bennett’s husband had guns in their home, the document says, but they weren’t a factor in the argument. No charges were filed.

The police department decided to send the report as well as a video of the incident — on which an officer can be heard promising Bennett that the information she was providing would not be shared with her employer — to the university, the panel’s letter says.

It’s unclear when, exactly, the information was sent. The letter says the officer saw the video on either January 29 or 30. Regardless, at 10:36 a.m. on January 30, Jodi Walker, director of communications, sent an email to another employee and to Staben with the subject line, “Text for potential Vandal alert.” (“Vandal” is the university’s mascot, and campus bulletins are known as “Vandal alerts.”)

“Context coming in meeting,” she wrote. “Denise Bennett has been barred from Moscow campus. Recent admittance to police of meth use and access to firearms.”

Fifteen minutes later, the alert was sent out, with an added sentence: “If seen on campus, call 911.”

By issuing the alert, the university was “erring on the side of caution,” Walker told The Chronicle at the time. There was no immediate threat to the campus, she said.

A student protest over Bennett’s administrative leave was scheduled for noon that day. As a result of the alert, it was postponed.

‘Hostile and Profane Language’

Many of Bennett’s students rushed to her defense and emailed administrators to complain. Some of her colleagues questioned why administrators would sign off on what they saw as a defamatory and misleading message. The alert suggested that a “meth-addict professor with firearms posed an imminent threat” to the campus, Steven A. Smith, a clinical associate professor of journalism, previously told The Chronicle. His students started getting phone calls from parents, he said, asking if they were all right.

For months, it was unclear from the outside what Bennett’s future held. Eventually, the five panelists were chosen to conduct a hearing and issue a ruling on Bennett’s status, which then goes to the president, who will have the final say.

Although the panel recommended Bennett’s dismissal, it did not issue a full-throated defense of the administration’s actions. There’s no evidence that Johnson, Bennett’s supervisor, “did anything, at any time, to intervene, to help resolve problems, to offer support to Professor Bennett, or to otherwise address the problems Professor Bennett was having or the problems she was creating,” the letter states. Johnson said in an email that he provided input in a meeting about how to reach out to Bennett, and the group decided the dean would inquire about her well-being. “I do not agree with the panel that I did not do anything, but I can understand the panel’s concern that I wasn’t more involved,” he said.

What’s more, the panel was surprised to learn of “previous problematic communication and incidents” between Bennett, Johnson, and colleagues between May and November of 2018. Bennett, herself, had suggested that she needed to take leave in November because of her concerns about her own well-being. The panel “can only speculate as to how much of this whole problem could have been avoided if Professor Bennett’s direct supervisor had followed up, or been more proactive, with good faith efforts to resolve such issues,” the letter says.

The university’s handling of McGarry’s complaint is “regrettable,” the letter says, because McGarry’s version of events was accepted without any effort to obtain accounts from Bennett or any other witnesses. The starting point for discussions with Bennett was based on Quinlan’s receipt of a “third-hand account of that encounter,” so “it is not entirely surprising that Professor Bennett reacted negatively to such an opening.”

And issuing a campuswide alert with “arguably misleading and defamatory allegations” was also “not conducive to productive dialogue with Professor Bennett.”

The panel was also concerned with how the university learned of Bennett’s alleged methamphetamine use in the first place. It’s clear from the video of the encounter that she was under severe emotional stress, and she was promised repeatedly that such information would not be shared with her employer, the letter says, yet the police voluntarily provided that information to the university anyway.

But in the end, the alert and its contents were irrelevant to the panel’s recommendation.

Bennett’s manifesto and her YouTube video contained “hostile and profane language,” the letter says. That, in addition to her verbal harassment of McGarry, constitute “unprofessional conduct.” Bennett has also refused to attend certain meetings or engage with administrative staff.

“No one can unilaterally opt out of those responsibilities,” the letter says, “and expect to keep their job.”

Perhaps most telling, the panel’s letter says, is that Bennett has not promised to engage in “civil and professional conduct” going forward. The letter asserts that in early August, Bennett saw Quinlan from her vehicle while the dean was at the post office and shouted something that included a curse word before driving away. During the hearing, Bennett said she did not regret sending the manifesto, adding that if she had it to do over again, she would merely “proofread it and shorten it before sending.”

‘A Chilling Effect’

If Idaho’s new president, C. Scott Green, accepts the panel’s recommendation to fire Bennett, she will try to review her case with the Faculty Appeals Hearing Board, her lawyer said in an email. (A spokeswoman declined to specify whether Green had reached a decision, saying the university does not comment on personnel matters.)

Bennett has also filed tort claims seeking damages from the university and the Moscow Police Department, the student newspaper reported.

For Smith, Bennett’s colleague, the panel’s findings were a foregone conclusion. “There was never any doubt how this particular committee would resolve this issue,” he said in a phone interview.

But he was somewhat surprised to read, in the panel’s recommendation, that Bennett had not adequately repented for her conduct. “If she doesn’t believe she did anything wrong, I don’t understand why there would be an expectation that she would have to apologize,” he said.

Smith was interviewed during the hearing as a witness, and he remembered being asked if he ever spoke “uncivilly” to people. He was flummoxed by that question. “Is raising your voice considered uncivil? If that were the case,” he said, “our newsrooms would be completely devoid of talent.”

Right now, it’s an unsettled issue at the university, he said. If it remains so, there’s potential for a chilling effect.

Bennett, who declined an interview, wrote in a brief text message that she is not finished fighting. “I still strongly believe my first amendment constitutional rights have been violated.” Being on leave has been torture, she said in a statement.

“I’m stuck in this small college town wearing my Golden V like Hester Prinn’s [sic] scarlet A.”

Clarification (9/4/2019, 12:16 p.m.): We added "[sic]” to the last quote in this article to show that this was Bennett’s spelling of the surname of the protagonist of The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne. We knew that, of course, but thanks to the reader who pointed it out.

Emma Pettit is a staff reporter at The Chronicle. Follow her on Twitter @EmmaJanePettit, or email her at emma.pettit@chronicle.com.