WESTFIELD – As the legal teams representing Westfield State University President Dr. Evan Dobelle and a group which includes several high ranking members of the school’s Board of Trustees prepare for battle in federal court soon, students at the Western Avenue school have been left to attempt to sort out the facts and fiction on their own.
The thought of a campus community remaining in the dark prompted the leaders of WSU’s Council for the Class of 2015 to host an information session yesterday, where over 50 students showed up at “The Owl’s Nest” in the basement of the school’s Ely Campus Center to ask questions regarding the exact situation that is currently putting the school’s name on the front pages of newspapers across the state.
University Vice President of Student Affairs Carlton Pickron did the majority of question answering for a panel that included Dean of Student Affairs Susan Lamontagne, Director of Public Safety Michael Nockunas, and Vice President of Enrollment Management Dr. Carol Persson, with the University’s Vice President of Government Relations Ken Lemanski joining about midway through the hour-long forum.
Questions regarding the exact status of Dobelle’s presidency came up early in the discussion, as reports from various media have called it a “suspension”, which Pickron said isn’t accurate.
“Suspension suggests that you were found responsible, guilty, you did something wrong,” he said. “We all remember high school or elementary school… when you got suspended, you got busted for doing something wrong. Taking an administrative leave of absence is an opportunity for you to step aside, allow the institution to get on with the business of the institution, and handle the business with respect to the investigations.”
Pickron encouraged students to make “critically thought through decisions based on facts” and proceeded to bring students up to speed on the events which led up to the board placing Dobelle on administrative leave, including a marathon ten-hour executive session in an emergency Board of Trustees meeting two weeks ago.
“CP the VP”, as he addresses his emails to students and faculty, reiterated that he couldn’t speak to the details of that executive session, other than confirm the announcement of Dobelle’s administrative leave and the board’s retention of Boston-based law firm Fish & Richardson to conduct another investigation into the case. The deadline for their findings is late next month.
“Come November 25, we hope to have some facts about what’s what, what the board of trustees will then do, and then you can have an opinion of whether you agree with what the board did or disagree with what the board did,” he said.
Students also expressed concerns over the reputation of the university and what the scandal means for them as undergrads.
“Our reputation doesn’t change overnight,” Pickron said. “Our reputation is rock-solid. We just got reaccredited for ten years. Our nursing program just got nationally accredited.”
Referring to whether Harvard University’s reputation changed because of a student-athlete cheating scandal several years ago, “175 years doesn’t change over one chapter,” he said. “The investigation is not about ‘you’, it’s about the president. No one should be distraught about seeing Westfield State in the media. It’s our president who is dealing with these allegations. You should be proud to wear that sweatshirt.”
Asked what he believed the best-case scenario would be for the resolution of the situation, Pickron said he hoped “all investigations would be done and all lawsuits would be dropped” by November 25, and that “everything would be clear, appropriate action would be taken, and that no follow up lawsuits would be filed.”
Following the event, Pickron said he enjoyed fielding the questions, but that some students seemed confused or seemed as if they “had an ax to grind.”
“It was productive and served it’s purpose, which was to support the students,” said Rich Darrach, a business student and Student Government Association president, from Marlborough.
“It went really well,” said Ally Davis, a political science major and SGA rep for the class of 2015, who hails from Andover. “The turnout was about what we expected.”
Davis added that false information regarding the situation has been rampant on campus, and that the forum was a step in a positive direction for the student body.
“There’s been a lot of misinformation, whether students have an ax to grind or just are not knowledgable,” she said. “(Tonight) they got more information and are on the right track, which will stop the growth of these rumors.”
