On Tuesday, 16 faculty members issued a statement calling the situation ?an embarrassment to Northwestern and Medill? and agreed with a Chicago Sun-Times editorial that the dean should either produce the notes or allow IT to retrieve the deleted email from his computer to prove his veracity.
They weren?t the only ones organizing against embattled Dean John Lavine. Medill students formed a blog as a forum to discuss the issue, and four students formulated a petition supporting the faculty statement and identifying their own concerns. (For the sake of transparency, let me say, I signed this petition.)
Yesterday, Lavine sent an email to Medill students and faculty, insisting that he did not fabricate the quotes, but he also apologized. ?I did exercise poor judgment, and I apologize for that. I used a quote from a student in a letter I wrote in the Spring 2007 issue of Medill without naming the student. I should have asked permission to use the student's name with their comment about the IMC 303 class,? he wrote in the email.
Lavine went on to say IT searched his computer for five days and could not locate the email as it had been permanently deleted, and that he did not save the notes he had taken in the class. He called his work ?careless? and signed off saying he was ?asked to hold further comment? until the Provost?s office has completed a review.
Well now I, for one, don?t know what to think.
Lavine?s letter still left many questions in my mind. Why did it take him this long to make a formal statement to the students? Why didn?t he say five days ago that he was trying to recover the email? Why does he suddenly agree that his ?personal letter? requires the same journalistic standards as a news story, something he disagreed with when the story broke?
And most importantly, where do we go from here? No one can prove he fabricated the quotes, and Lavine can?t prove that he didn?t. So what now?
Lavine did exactly what the faculty asked of him. He searched for the email, but without any luck. And he did exactly what I asked for in my column from six days ago. He acknowledged that it was poor journalism and apologized for not living up to Medill?s standards. Still, I feel unsatisfied. This feeling isn?t new. In my, albeit limited, contact with the dean, I have always left with an uncomfortable sense that I have just been spun. Lavine does things that make some people angry and or think hurts journalism. Then he explains them away, and he, and the school, move on.
In spring 2006 the dean spoke to a group of Medill students in my dorm about his new curriculum, and answered droves of questions about why he was changing it and what it meant for us. After the meeting, most of us didn?t feel better, and though we?d asked a lot of questions and he?d responded to them, we didn?t feel like we had a lot of substantive answers.
This is no different. Lavine has done what he can to quell anger and discontent within the Medill community, but still hasn?t fully addressed the issue. Ultimately there is no resolution, and we at Medill and in the journalism community are just asked to take his word for it, and move on. So what does that leave us with? A dean we?re not sure we can trust. A lot of bad press for the school. An eroding confidence in the quality of our education and instruction.
The faster this story becomes old news, the easier it will be for Medill to go back to the status quo. Lavine will continue to change the curriculum. Many professors will continue to put up resistance, and many students will continue to complain, ?What is Medill coming to?? The evidence isn?t damning enough to get Lavine fired, but not light enough to go unnoticed.
Lavine should look long and hard at what his actions have done to Medill?s reputation, for the journalism school will outlive his tenure as dean. All a journalist has is his word. Let's hope Lavine's tainted credibility doesn't take the school down with him.