1: Crisis Communications

When your job description includes the words “crisis communication,” there are going to be times you wished you hadn’t answered your smartphone. And when I saw that it was Maggie Barton calling me the day after Thanksgiving, I knew this was going to be one of those times.

“Cody’s Carnival,” I said by way of greeting. “This way to the sideshow.”

The old gal giggled.

Such banter was normal between us, as readers of these chronicles will recall. Maggie had been reporting on St. Benignus University for the Erin Observer & News-Ledger my entire career as SBU’s communications director, going back to its days as St. Benignus College. In fact, I’m pretty sure she pecked out her first stories on a manual typewriter. Her age is north of seventy-five and her hair looks like pink cotton candy.

“Hi, Jeff. How are you?”

“Blissfully ignorant up to now.”

I’d taken a day away from the office to digest turkey and pumpkin pie, but there’s no such thing as “off the clock” with a 24/7 job like mine.

Knowing that Maggie hadn’t called to ask about my health, I frowned as I looked over at Lynda on the couch. She was nursing the boys at her womanly bosom, one on each tap, with their sister Donata paging through a picture book next to her. Lynda is an old-fashioned girl, and breastfeeding is so old it’s new again. I felt warm all over watching her, despite the ominous phone call. Readers, meet Sam and Jake Cody, age fourteen months. Jake is the adventurous one, just like his namesake grandfather. We now have three children and a mini-van, though Lynda refused to part with her yellow Mustang.

Not a half-hour earlier, over our healthful breakfast of oatmeal with raisins and bananas, Lynda read me my daily horoscope from the Observer. This was a new practice acquired since she’d left the daily grind.

“Listen to this, darling: ‘You’d be so bored if people always did as you preferred.’”

No, I wouldn’t.

In that innocuous message, about as helpful as a fortune cookie, there wasn’t the slightest clue that we stood at the precipice of a case that had the most gut-wrenching solution in Sebastian McCabe’s entire amateur sleuthing career.

“What happened?” I asked Maggie.

“I’m calling about Warren Burch.”

Oh, crap.

“What about him?” As if I didn’t know.

“I thought he chose to retire as dean of the business school after the vote of no-confidence. That’s the way it was presented at the time. But a source tells me that he was forced out after three women accused him of sexual harassment and an investigation verified their accounts. I understand he got paid to sit out the 2017-2018 academic year and then come back this year as a full professor teaching just two classes for the Financial Economics major at a nice salary. Is all that true?”

“I guess ‘nice’ is a matter of opinion, Maggie. It’s not a very precise term.”

To be precise, the weasel earns two and a half times what I do. Well, I wouldn’t say “earns.”

Lynda, who could hear both ends of the conversation, rolled her gold-flecked brown eyes at me. She does that a lot.

“Oh, come on,” Maggie said. “Spill, Jeff.”

When I write my magnum opus on public relations, I plan to devote a chapter on how to not stonewall the media. It just never works. The obfuscation itself becomes the story, and those stories don’t die quickly. So, I had to answer Maggie—but carefully. The Warren Burch business was a tough one.

Burch had been dean of the Gulliver Mackie School of Business and Economics at SBU for just three years. In that short time, his dictatorial management style had the faculty from which he was promoted in an uproar. Lesley Saylor-Mackie, our executive vice president and provost, wanted to give him the boot after the second year. She hesitated, however, because Burch had been publicly critical of her husband for donating so much money to the school that they named it after him. She thought that removing Burch might seem like payback for the raspberries.

Then came a faculty vote of “no confidence” in his leadership and a series of accusations by female students. I originally thought they were all work-study students, but most of them were interns. What, you don’t know the difference? Work-study students are in it for the money, meager though it is. They have a financial need. Interns, who may not even be paid, are on a career path.

“I would be careful about using the term ‘sexual harassment,’” I advised Maggie.

“I’m told that the young women who filed complaints said he leered at them, made them bend over to pick up things, asked them to stand on a stool to adjust an air vent, and asked for dance lessons. Is that incorrect?”

Damn.

“No, it’s not incorrect. Those were some of the allegations.”

I could hear Maggie’s computer keys clicking rapidly.

“There were others, then? What else did he do?”

“I’m at home, Maggie. I don’t have the details of all the accusations handy.”

“But there was an investigation and a report of findings, wasn’t there?”

“Yes. The dean of students and the director of employee relations wrote a report. They concluded that Dr. Burch violated the university’s Values & Ethical Responsibility Policy by not respecting student employees in that he engaged in belittling and demeaning actions and statements.”

In other words, he’s a skank.

“That’s not a direct quote,” I clarified. “As I indicated, I don’t have the report in front of me.”

“But you’re saying the allegations were verified by the investigation?”

“The investigators found them credible, although there wasn’t enough evidence to say that Dr. Burch engaged in sexual misconduct. They also concluded that, in various ways, Dr. Burch fostered an unhealthy culture of fear, intimidation, and bullying among the faculty and staff of the business school.” That was a direct quote, though I didn’t say so. “The resolution of ‘no confidence’ approved by the business-school faculty said much the same.”

“And that’s why he resigned as dean?”

“His departure from that position was mutually agreed upon with senior administrators of the university as being in the best interests of St. Benignus.” Translation: We reached a quiet settlement. “However, he still has much to offer as a valued member of the faculty.” A huge ego, for one thing.

“Soft landing,” Maggie muttered. “Could I have a copy of that report?”

“I’m sorry, but no. We are a private institution, as you well know, and I can’t share that with you. It might contain information that would reveal the identity of the women involved.”

She might have pointed out that Burch’s name was being made public, so why not his accusers? And I would have volleyed back by pointing out that it wasn’t the university’s choice to make this public. But she didn’t go there. That line of thought wouldn’t have occurred to her.

“Why wasn’t Burch terminated?”

“Terminated” always sounds like a mob hit to me. Maybe that’s what Maggie had in mind.

“First of all, Dr. Burch is a tenured faculty member. His actions, while deplorable, were not illegal and did not rise to the level of warranting dismissal of a faculty member with tenure.” Lynda glowered at me as I said this, and Donata pouted. They look a lot alike, what with the curly hair of a honey-blond hue. (Donata’s hair started out a nice shade of Cody red, but changed its mind.) The boys just appeared contented and well fed. I turned my head so that I couldn’t see my adoring family while I dealt with this ticklish work issue.

“Also, there is nothing in Dr. Burch’s file to indicate any inappropriate behavior in the classroom or any other venue over his decades at SBU before he became dean. He had an excellent reputation as a demanding but brilliant teacher.” But he’s still a skank.

Maybe ascending to the ranks of administration as dean so late in his academic career had caused some formerly tight screws to go loose. Who knew?

“How much does he make as a full professor?”

“As a private institution, we don’t reveal faculty salaries.”

“But a lot?”

“Our salaries are competitive.”

Though mine is giving Burch no competition at all.

“Gosh, Jeff, it does sound to me like this man is getting off awfully easy.”

That’s what Saylor-Mackie thought.

“On the contrary, Maggie. Look what happened: The university had several reports of highly inappropriate actions by the dean of one of our major schools. We investigated those accusations, verified them, and took action. Dr. Burch is no longer the dean.”

“Why didn’t you make this public before, all the events leading up to his resignation?”

“It’s a personnel matter.” The university also agreed not to make a public announcement of the reasons as part of our settlement with Burch, under which he agreed not to sue us to get his deanship back. But I didn’t see any need to overburden Maggie with details like that. “Normally, we don’t talk about personnel matters at all. Most private employers don’t—or even public ones, for that matter. Since you had some information, though, I wanted to be sure you had it right.” I’m such a pal!

“You could be even surer if you gave me a copy of the report.”

“Nice try, Maggie.”

We sparred a little more, but she didn’t lay a glove on me.

“Don’t be surprised if this shows up on the front page,” she said at the end.

“Nothing surprises me anymore.”

“Well, give my love to Lynda and the kids.”

“Will do.”

Lynda labored for almost fifteen years in the vineyards of the Observer & News-Ledger and its parent company, now known as Grier Newspaper Group. These days, though, her business card reads “Lynda Teal Cody, Storyteller.” That descriptor encompasses fiction, non-fiction, and podcasts. Lynda finished the first draft of her Kentucky family saga novel, Bluegrass, while on maternity leave and decided not to go back to the daily drudge. She was still polishing the manuscript, which included the addition of entire new chapters. I call her a recovering journalist, given that she’s still close to her friends at the Observer and reads their output with great critical attention every morning. For instance, she shrieked the morning she read an obit in the print edition that began “A funeral Mass will be celebrated at xxx A.M. on xxxx xxxx...” Somebody forgot to fill in the x’s.

“I love watching you work,” she said after I extracted myself from Maggie.

That must have been irony. With her oval face and adorably crooked nose, honey-blond curls spilling over the generous curves on display in her form-fitting red turtleneck—where was I? Oh, yes. My beloved is much too lovely to be sarcastic, so it must have been irony.

“I was just trying to be transparent,” I said.

“Well, it worked, darling—I could see right through you.”

Her fingernails were painted like candy corn, matching her earrings. At least they weren’t approximately 110 percent sugar, like the real thing.

“Burch gives me the willies, I must admit,” I admitted.

“I was disappointed in Father Pirelli and Saylor-Mackie,” Lynda said. The good father is our legendary president, but his executive vice president and provost calls most of the shots day-to-day. “I can’t believe they didn’t fire that creep. I know there wasn’t any love lost between him and Lesley.”

The Burch brouhaha wasn’t a topic of conversation at Chez Cody the first time around because Lynda was still an agent of the Grier media empire at the time. So, I had to catch Lynda up a bit.

“Saylor-Mackie was advised to reach a settlement in order to avoid a lawsuit,” I explained. The use of passive voice was deliberate, but it didn’t save me.

“You mean advised by what’s-her-name, SBU’s top legal eagle?”

“Kelly Richards. Ultimately, yes. But I said it first.”

“What?”

I winced. Is it cold in here or is it just you?

“Fighting a lost cause is expensive, Lyn, both in money and in reputation. If Burch sued, which was about as certain as an amateur drinker’s hangover on New Year’s Day, we would have settled before it got to court anyway. It was a lot easier just to cut to the chase.”

“Why would you settle? Why not litigate?”

“Because he would have won, and probably kept his job as dean while we paid his legal expenses. I read about cases like that all the time in Higher Ed Insider. Heck, there have been a slew of cases where students disciplined by their university as a result of sexual assault allegations sued the school for lack of due process and won.”

“Couldn’t the students that he harassed sue the university under Title IX for not giving Burch the boot instead of a cushy new job?”

Colorfully put. You should be a writer.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is the federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in the programs and activities of educational institutions. It’s done wonders for women’s sports, but also comes into play in issues of sexual harassment.

“All three of the accusers said they wanted Burch out of the dean’s office,” I said. “They got what they wanted. It ain’t pretty, I know—like sausage being made, excuse the cliché. But we live in a fallen world.”

My philosophical musings didn’t go over too well. If Lynda had been her flirty Italian mother, who is even more beautiful but tempestuous of temperament, I might have been in real trouble. I could tell by the way she pressed her lips together. Then her eyes lit on Donata, who was busy doing whatever almost-three-year-olds do with paper and crayons.

“Would you want him anywhere near our daughter, or our nieces?”

Low blow! Donata was too young even for Burch. But the oldest of the McCabe girls, Rebecca, is nineteen—nineteen!—and a sophomore at SBU.

“I don’t even want him near me, Lyn. Fortunately, I’m pretty sure he’ll be long gone by the time Donata walks the hallowed halls of SBU.”

I sure had that right.