How One College Has Set Out to Fix ‘a Culture of Blatant Sexual Harassment’

Boston Globe via Getty Images

As the #MeToo movement has gathered steam, women have gone public with accusations of sexual misconduct by professors at dozens of colleges. But one institution in particular has faced reproach as a hotbed of abusive behavior. The Berklee College of Music was described in a recent Boston Globe article as having a “a culture of blatant sexual harassment.”

The Globe’s characterization did not surprise students or faculty members at the college, many of whom said they knew or had heard about people being harassed. But it spurred them to action. Worried that the issue would not be taken seriously by the college, students quickly organized a walkout, march, and forum this month that drew more than a thousand participants.

“People just got to a point where we were like, OK, we can’t ignore this any longer,” said Michela McDonagh, a professional music major who organized the protest. “People were so ready to move forward.”

At the event, Roger H. Brown, the college’s president, laid out numbers that revealed the extent of the problem: Eleven professors, he said, had been fired for sexual misconduct over the past 13 years.

The walkout — and the forum that followed — launched the college into public soul-searching. Students, faculty, and administrators now say they are determined to fix a culture that has allowed sexual misconduct to persist. At a moment of dramatic change in how the issue is addressed across many fields, Berklee is trying to emerge as a model for other higher-education institutions and the music industry that the college helps populate.

Berklee’s students aren’t the only ones pushing for change. A small group of professors that formed after the publication of the Globe article has issued a list of demands. Among them: diversity among the faculty and student body.

“It’s our belief that if women and femmes are more adequately represented, that this is going to be less likely to take place,” said Carlee Travis, an instructor of liberal arts. Women make up 36 percent of Berklee’s student body and 37 percent of its faculty. A group of faculty members is calling for gender parity among both populations by 2025. They’re also demanding that at least 30 percent of the faculty be people of color by that time.

“That was met with a lot of resistance from my male colleagues,” Ms. Travis said. Some faculty members responded to the demands with emails arguing that “a gender quota would negatively impact what male colleagues believe to be a meritocracy,” she said. But Mr. Brown, the president, said that diversifying the student body and faculty is one of several big changes the institution is trying to make. He said the faculty members’ demands are “probably doable,” though he did not want to commit to specific numbers without first making a plan.

Reporting and Support

Since the November rally, Mr. Brown said, he has met with hundreds of students. Every one of them has told him that either they or someone close to them has a story about being subjected to sexual misconduct.

Berklee College of Music

“The insight I came to is that I think there’s a tendency for us to look at these cases as isolated incidents of a bad person doing bad things, particularly when it’s sexual in nature,” he said. “After hearing the #MeToo stories and reading about this, I’m not sure these are isolated incidents, and I think they have less to do with sex and more to do with power and the abuse of power.”

With that in mind, he said, the college plans to bolster the structures that provide support to students who say they have been sexually harassed or assaulted. Mr. Brown said the university will hire more counselors, and Berklee officials have already placed posters around campus that tell students how to report an incident.

The president plans to give faculty members more instruction about boundaries and to make sure everyone knows how to report an incident. Like all colleges that receive federal funds, Berklee already reports on the number of crimes committed on campus under the Clery Act, but he also wants to improve their method for reporting incidents of sexual assault so that students and the public have “some way of comparing us to the past and to other institutions so we’re as transparent as we can be without naming individuals.”

The president is creating a working group of students, faculty, and staff to evaluate broader changes to prevent sexual assault.

‘Pass the Harasser’?

The working group may examine a policy that the college will not change in the short term: the common practice of keeping private the names of people investigated or fired for sexual misconduct. That policy, critics say, effectively gives faculty members who have been fired for sexual harassment a better chance of finding work elsewhere. Colleges have debated this practice for decades. It has been referred to as “pass the harasser,” because bad actors were allowed to jump from job to job.

Berklee has been on both ends of that dynamic, according to The Boston Globe. In one case, an anonymous woman told the newspaper she woke up naked to find her mentor, Jeff Galindo, a jazz musician and instructor, groping her. She reported the case and Mr. Galindo was fired. She later found out that he went on to teach at three other institutions, though she said she had been assured by Berklee that he wouldn’t be able to. Berklee told the Globe that it had provided one of the institutions with Mr. Galindo’s termination letter, “which included an explicit statement that explained the reasons for his departure from the college.” Mr. Brown said that “if another institution calls for a reference on some one we will tell them that they were terminated for sexual misconduct.”

In another case, Berklee recently hired a professor, Steve Kirby, who had retired from the University of Manitoba. The Winnipeg Free Press reported that, as he stepped down, the university was meeting with students reporting concerns about the professor that were “sexual in nature.” At the November rally, according to the Globe, Mr. Brown said that Berklee did not know about the students’ allegations until hearing from reporters in Manitoba. After an investigation, Mr. Kirby was fired from Berklee. (Another Steve Kirby who works at Berklee has not been accused of sexual misconduct.)

If no one feels good about those stories, no one is entirely sure what to do about them. Sky Stahlmann, a first-year student and professional-music major, acknowledged that balancing an accused person’s right to privacy with students’ need for more transparency is tricky.

“A lot of people want to see sexual offenders strung up,” she said. While she sees the benefits of that approach, she said she plans to focus on making sure victims have support and educating people on campus about sexual harassment. Ms. Stahlmann is president of a newly formed group, Berklee and BoCo Against Sexual Assault, that will work independently of the administration to teach people about the issue and give students a voice as the college mulls changes.

Many victims of sexual misconduct have taken it upon themselves to name abusers. Since the Globe article and the rally, said Jaclyn Chylinski, a senior musical-theater major, more students have been speaking out about their experiences on campus. “I do not think this will be the last of the allegations,” she said.

More revelations would bring more soul-searching. But Ms. Chylinski and other student activists say they have been encouraged by their administration’s willingness to listen. That alone won’t change the culture, but they say it’s a start.

Nell Gluckman writes about faculty issues and other topics in higher education. You can follow her on Twitter @nellgluckman, or email her at nell.gluckman@chronicle.com.

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Correction (11/30/2017, 2:47 p.m.): This article originally stated that more than 1,000 people participated in the walkout and march at Berklee. In fact, the walkout and march participants numbered only in the hundreds. The subsequent forum drew more than 1,000 people.