It was a spring afternoon in 1913. At Colorado College, the president, William F. Slocum, had taken his secretary, Maud S. Bard, by the shoulders and forced her to stand against his office wall. Mr. Slocum pressed his whole body against hers, according to a statement by Ms. Bard. She struggled, freed herself, and fled.
Ms. Bard, who continued to work in the president’s office for three more years, would become the first woman to come forward during the 1916-1917 school year with accusations against the president.
It’s been 100 years since the resignation of Mr. Slocum, who was president from 1888 to 1917. But the recent national conversations about sexual harassment, prompted by allegations against the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, have reignited a campuswide interest in why Mr. Slocum left.
The college’s archivist, Jessy Randall, has been fielding so many questions that she decided to create a website that compiles her research. The site details allegations of how Mr. Slocum sexually harassed and assaulted staff, faculty, the wives of faculty, and students.
“I’ve had a lot of phone calls, a lot of emails, a lot of people stopping by,” Ms. Randall said.
Mr. Slocum’s serial harassment isn’t a secret, but two of the college’s histories mention the president’s behavior only vaguely, and another hardly mentions it at all.
The college’s official history about Mr. Slocum focused on the fallout. Edward Parsons, dean at the time, told the board of trustees about Mr. Slocum’s behavior; after an investigation confirmed the dean’s claims, the trustees asked the president to resign. But Mr. Parsons, too, was asked to step down; the board said the dean had overstepped boundaries and tried to overpower the college. Mr. Parsons resigned, and 22 faculty members followed suit in protest of the board’s decision.
The American Association of University Professors later found that the trustees had mishandled the matter, and Mr. Parsons and the faculty members were asked to come back. All of them declined.
Shifting the Focus to Women
In the wake of the evidence against Mr. Weinstein, a newfound credibility given to those who speak up about sexual harassment has elicited accusations in all kinds of workplaces, including at college campuses.
At Colorado College, the push has manifested itself, in part, as an effort to shift the focus of the college’s history, from President Slocum’s resignation to the women who were victimized by him. Some professors and students on the campus have suggested removing the president’s name from a dorm, Slocum Hall.
The allegations against Mr. Weinstein themselves hit close to home, too. Tomi-Ann Roberts, a psychology professor at Colorado College, has stepped forward to publicly accuse Mr. Weinstein of sexual harassment that she says occurred in 1984 when she was a waitress in New York City.
“The campus is abuzz right now with ideas of what should happen next,” Ms. Randall, the archivist, said.
People are also buzzing about the 100-year-old statements from women that reveal how Mr. Slocum abused his power. Rumors had circulated on campus about the president’s behavior, and women were warned about what to expect, but nobody spoke up until a distressed student described Mr. Slocum’s behavior to Ms. Bard, the secretary and herself a graduate of Colorado College.
That year, 1916, she decided to speak out. Hundreds of women then came forward, offering only oral testimony. James Hutchinson Kerr, a professor of geology, chemistry, and metallurgy and a self-described local historian, copied down the statements of nine women in a collection called the Kerr Papers. Only five gave their names.
Going through documents was emotional, Ms. Randall said.
Harriet Sater, a cashier, was at a loss for words about her encounter with Mr. Slocum, according to the Kerr records: “I am unable to express the looks which have left me boiling with a sense of shame and disgrace. The constant need of having his hand on your body, feeling it, are things a woman cannot mistake.”
“The women,” Ms. Randall said, “didn’t even have the words to describe what was happening to them. There’s no word for the crime that’s being committed.”
The language the women used was often euphemistic, she said. They had nobody to whom they could report harassment, and when they did, the answer was simply for them to quit their jobs.
“And so you have to figure that the problem was extreme that it came out at all,” Ms. Randall said.
Tracking Down Statements
When Ms. Randall arrived at Colorado College in 2001, she knew about the history of Mr. Slocum’s departure and of Mr. Parsons’ subsequent resignation, along with the resignation of the 22 professors.
She was aware that inappropriate behavior led to Mr. Slocum’s departure but, to understand what really happened, she had always been curious about what women said 100 years ago. While reading a research paper by Joe P. Dunn, who in 2010 published research about the Colorado College controversy involving Mr. Parsons, she noticed quotes from women accusing Mr. Slocum. She called up Mr. Dunn to ask where he had found the transcripts.
Copies of the women’s statements written by Mr. Kerr, the professor and local historian, made their way to the college, where they were transcribed and added to the library’s collection. Ms. Randall looked into the Kerr Papers, which bore a label that read: “This volume contains material on the Pres. Slocum affair. If it is necessary to allow anyone to use it, it MUST be used under the closest supervision.”
She did not imagine the inappropriate behavior would be as bad as it was before she read the women’s statements. It seems, she said, that if archivists had seen the statements there would be no ambiguity about the behavior prompting the president’s resignation.
Ms. Randall couldn’t believe that archivists had missed the papers for the past few decades, but she suspects they were trying to be discreet and protect the women’s reputations.
“It’s a different time now,” she said. “I don’t think those women need to be shamed for what they said about Slocum.”
It’s hard not to be mad when reviewing the women’s statements, Ms. Randall said, since archivists are supposed to remain neutral. But that neutrality can sometimes lead to protecting people like the president.
“It’s time to stop protecting this person,” she said, “and maybe think about protecting those women instead.”
Correction (11/15/2017, 11:38 p.m.): The credit on the picture accompanying this article originally misspelled the first name of the photographer. He is Bryan, not Brian. The credit has been updated to reflect this correction.
