Gavel through heart graphic. Julia Berkman
Stella Harvey is currently a writer at the AS Review. This submission was written in collaboration with Harvey in her capacity as a Student, and Harvey was not compensated for the time she spent working on this piece.
By Julia Berkman, Esther Chong, Stella Harvey, Laura Place and Kayla Sousa
We’re sure that many of you are on unstable ground in regards to your life and future at this institution. We’re sure you’d prefer to be focused on yourselves, your community and your health right now. It’s unfortunate that even when it feels like the world has stopped, the bureaucratic wheels at this university are always turning.
We are five current and former student journalists who have concerns about our former professor and Academic Coordinating Commission Chair Sheila Webb. Last year, we published an Op-Ed in the Western Front detailing our experience of being intentionally intimidated by then-Faculty Senate President McNeel Jantzen and Dr. Webb.
That situation unnecessarily took our attention away from an extremely important story about the process of limiting the use of the N-word by faculty.
Dr. Sheila Webb is one of two finalists running to be the Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education. If selected, she will oversee the Catalog and Curriculum Office, Center for Community Learning, the Fellowships Office, the First-Year Interest Group Program and several other programs.
We are speaking up as concerned students who know from experience what Dr. Webb is capable of, and ways she has already failed to meet her responsibilities as an educator, as detailed in the letter linked below.
Last spring, Dr. Webb leveraged her power as both a journalism professor and as ACC chair in an attempt to intimidate students and publicly shame them. We’ll try to condense a very difficult month of negotiation and emotions into a few paragraphs. Please stick with us.
Unhappy with the coverage of an ACC meeting, Dr. Webb sent an email to 15 professors in and out of the journalism department, including McNeel Jantzen– previous Faculty Senate President and Kayla Sousa’s professor at the time. In the email, Dr. Webb referred to Kayla by name and called her work “a disgrace to the department.”
Furthermore, Dr. Webb then refused to work with Kayla or another student of color in the correction of that article.
Dr. Webb still refuses to apologize to the students who were hurt in the process of attempting to correct minor errors in the coverage of an extremely nuanced, difficult story, and as a result we feel unsafe in the department and at this school.
We have learned many lessons through this experience, but here is what we take away the most: People who intimidate students who question their power and authority are not responsive leaders.
We were not given the opportunity to learn what we were supposed to, which is how to bounce back from a mistake. Instead, we learned that no matter how earnest you are, no matter how many times you plead your case to people who are supposed to support you, sometimes no justice is served.
Sometimes, nothing is done.
Dr. Webb’s actions show that she is willing to bully even her own students if they question her power. Dr. Webb has faced zero consequences and shown no accountability for her actions in the year since this took place, so what will stop her from doing this again to any undergraduate student who questions her authority, as an even more powerful administrator?
The decision at hand will impact students for years to come.
The letter and supporting documents linked below have been sent to the search committee whose job it is to collect feedback and present it to the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Brent Carbajal.
Carbajal, who has also received our letter, will select the new Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education after reviewing the materials and perspectives provided by the search committee. Students, staff and faculty are being asked to give their opinion on who should hold this power through an online form and two online forums, one on May 21, and another on May 22.
This quarter, in the midst of a global pandemic, everything is harder. The comforting thing is, this will end. Schools will reopen, classes will resume, and things will go back to some semblance of normalcy. In that process, that’s when it will matter most that we have people in our administration who care about students.
Note from the editors: This article was edited solely for grammar and not for content. Submit guest submissions to as.review.editor@wwu.edu.