Graphic by Julia Garrison ’25.
Gianna Hayes
News Editor
The Governance Room in the lower level of the Scot Center houses the monthly faculty meetings, which — until Monday — have been closed to students, for at least the past four years.
Through conversations with Mareike Herrmann, professor and department chair of German & Russian studies, the Voice was able to attend to report on the meeting to improve transparency on faculty-administration relations.
The meeting began with an executive session at 4:15 p.m. The Voice was unable to attend the first section of the meeting as it dealt with legislative issues. The final legislative matters included a motion proposed to allow members of Scot Council to attend regularly, which was tabled for the next meeting. The next motion to allow a representative from the Voice to attend the remaining section of the meeting passed.
The meeting then transitioned to the administrative reports, beginning with a report from President Anne McCall. She spoke first on the creation of a new committee, the Futures committee, whose goal is to oversee marketing and communication and to “see [the College’s] landscape, whether it’s intellectual or budgetary or legal … and to take that more into account as we’re building out the College.” This falls under the purview of the Strategic Action Plan, which is currently underway in the first phase of the three year roll out.
“Our strategic action plan is primarily a revenue-based plan,” she said, referencing recent budget cuts at similar institutions and inflation rates. She also tied this plan with the College’s recent marketing efforts to increase revenue by enhancing visibility and encouraging enrollment through surveys and interviews sent out to alumni, prospective students, high school counselors and current students which gauge public opinion on the College; she predicted this data will be usable by the end of February 2025.
The next issue that McCall touched on in her report was the ZWD emailing lists. ZWD lists are campus-wide distribution lists that previously allowed members of faculty, staff and administration — as well as specific student groups — to send out emails to the campus community at large. McCall stated that some faculty and staff use of ZWD lists may have created uncertainty about which emails reflect official College communication.
“This merging of two separate purposes in one stream of communication creates the constant risk of confusion between … what constitutes individual member speech and what is College speech,” said McCall, referencing the “complaints” she has received about specific emails perceived by her or others as “endorsing speech.”
To mitigate these complaints, she spoke on the “moderation” of the list-servs, which went through different phases and is still undergoing transitions as discussions are ongoing between faculty and administration. As of Nov. 5, College administrative personnel are the only faculty and staff allowed to use the ZWD lists.
Due to the moderations put in place in October, emails were previously placed in queues — which resulted in onslaughts of emails waiting to be sent out, alongside two emails that reportedly “never got out.”
“I was very concerned about the impression that was created by the fact that two faculty of color had their emails held up for over four hours,” said McCall. “To me, there’s no choice. Speech of people in the College needs to be separated from the official, frequently technocratic correspondences that people get because of the virtue of your being an employee here.” She proposed other options for faculty to reach large amounts of students such as Outlook groups. This would later be noted as an issue by Zach Sharrow, librarian and interim director of CoRE, as there is a limit based on memory constraints, which grows with the amount of members in an Outlook group.
McCall’s final topic in her presidential report was on the issue of safety, specifically referring to an incident in which two students on Beall Ave. were shot by an individual with an airsoft gun last Tuesday, Oct. 29, as well as to the guidelines proposed by the Dean of Students to regulate student demonstrations. She was unable to share any updates on the incident as the investigation is ongoing, but offered encouragement and support, particularly noting the anxiety surrounding the election period.
The guidelines for student demonstrations require organizers to speak with Ashley Reid, dean of students, 72 hours prior to the event. Per McCall, these guidelines are being put in place in order to allow students to be familiar with the College policies, as well as to address safety concerns. She referenced the student protestors at her inauguration last year, along with their noise levels. “People were terrified because they couldn’t see what was going on … there were people, because of the country we live in, who thought that there was about to be a mass killing,” said McCall.
“It is the same length of time as to have a [school-registered] party,” said McCall. “That’s where this is coming from — it’s a guideline to help people be successful in their protests and demonstrations.”
After McCall’s remarks, the floor was opened for questions, as Provost Lisa Perfetti’s update was in absentia. Beatrice Adams, assistant professor of history, moved to suspend the rules of the meeting after responding to McCall’s comments on safety during the demonstrations at her inauguration.
Adams’ motion was seconded, and at the same time, student observers who had been waiting outside the Governance room filed in. Suspension of the rules refers to parliamentary proceedings during which the regular rules of the meeting, either specific or general, may be disregarded — usually in order to speak more openly and allow coarse language.
At this time, Herrmann also asked McCall to have an open discussion about the ZWD lists and the reasoning behind the moderation. She emphasized that the decision of moderating the listservs was a ruling that came “unilaterally and without discussion and without involving anybody that makes up our faculty and shared governance on the campus,” going against American Academy of University Professors (AAUP) rules.
“This was not an example of collaboration, this was top down executive action, and that’s what I’d like to protest against right now,” said Herrmann.
Laura Burch, associate professor of French and francophone studies, also pushed back on McCall’s reasoning for the moderation of the ZWD lists, saying “there was no confusion about whether you were speaking for the College or for your particular self — that was not [ever] a problem.”
Daimys Garcia, assistant professor of English, also spoke during this discussion session, noting that “a protest that was predominantly by Black students was suddenly [characterized by the administration as] a mob that could kill people is really problematic,” in reference to McCall’s comment about the demonstration at her inauguration.
Among the students who had filtered in earlier was Aidan Loop ’25, who then addressed the faculty about their concerns on the protest guidelines. They spoke on their conversation with Dean Reid, which was intended to speak to these concerns. During the conversation, they reported feeling “patroniz[ed]” after an alleged joke from Reid that “she felt like she was mothering us.”
“It’s hard to move through bureaucratic systems that are not set up to account for our voices, it’s frustrating to go to Scot Council meetings or email members of the administration or seek to engage in conversation with authority figures, only to be met with extremely dismissive responses,” Loop continued.
Gus Thomas ’25 also spoke, addressing McCall’s comment comparing protest guidelines to the process of registering parties. “Protest is a significant part of our political subjectivity, and partying is not equivalent.”
Marlo Starr, assistant professor of English, then shared her own experience at Wittenberg University, comparing her perceptions of censorship there to The College of Wooster’s moderation of the ZWD lists — she noted her experience at Wittenberg began with limitations of email communication. It was at this point that the faculty meeting was officially over, though all of the administration present and many faculty remained to continue discussion.
The faculty then voted on a resolution by Burch which called “for the immediate cessation of all administrative and technological efforts to moderate faculty/staff use of “ZWD” lists,” a proposal that was sent out to all faculty and staff prior to the meeting, which passed.
McCall responded to comments from faculty and students, reiterating that “it’s not about communication, it’s about the requirement to receive the emails.” Herrmann again questioned why that was a metric.
McCall also responded to Thomas and the rest of the student speakers, highlighting legal concerns for student safety.
Amyaz Moledina, professor of economics & business economics and department chair of global & international studies and co-founder of social entrepreneurship program, noted the University of California’s statement based on AAUP guidelines for free speech. Addressing McCall, he said “that red line you’re drawing is your own personal red line — it is not consistent with our right as faculty to have access to this listserv.”
The statement by University of California, per their Electronic Communications Policy, states that “In general, the University cannot and does not wish to be the arbiter of the contents of electronic communications. Neither can the University always protect users from receiving electronic messages they might find offensive.”
Annastassia Gallo, assistant professor of chemistry, also weighed in with their perspective on McCall’s insistence on the importance of being able to “opt in” to receive certain emails from the ZWD lists.
“Our students can’t opt out of the slurs that they hear, [and] I can’t opt out of the slurs that I hear,” Gallo said. “I understand protecting our students, but protecting them from the world that’s around us isn’t it.”
At this time in the evening, the meeting had been officially over for about 45 minutes. Makiba Foster, librarian of the College and chair of the faculty meeting, officially adjourned the meeting, though students and faculty mingled to continue some discussions in a more unofficial capacity.
