The Article below was published in Vol. 135, Issue 6 of the Lake Forest College Stentor on March 6, 2020.
By Emma Overton ‘22
Editor-in-Chief and News Section Editor
(L to R) Trustees William A. Lowry and Angelique L. Richard, and President Stephen Schutt speak at the forum (Emma Overton/Stentor)
Following student activism last fall regarding alleged Title IX violations against members of the Senior 25, President Stephen Schutt tasked three members of the College’s Board of Trustees, William A. Lowry ’84, Cook County commissioner and managing partner of the Chicago law firm Nyhan, Bambrick, Kinzie & Lowry, Angelique L. Richard ’85, RN, PhD, senior vice president for hospital operations and chief nursing executive at Rush University Medical Center, and Sean Thomas ’81, retired partner, Hewitt Associates, to form a special ad hoc committee to review the Senior 25 program.
On January 28, Schutt shared the final Trustee Report on the Senior 25 with the campus community via email, noting that “the College intends to follow the Special Trustee Committee’s recommendations, including a suspension of the Senior 25 program for at least next year to allow time for a full review and revision of the program’s mission, goals, requirements, selection processes, and procedures.” Schutt’s email further explained that an open forum with the trustees was scheduled for noon on Thursday, February 20 (later rescheduled to 4 p.m. on Friday, February 21) for members of the campus community to hear from the committee members regarding the report.
Student protest reveals ongoing issues with Senior 25
Three days prior to the release of the report, during the College’s Diversity and Inclusion Summit on Saturday, January 25, an anonymous student placed a photo of convicted rapist and former Stanford University student, Brock Turner, on the Senior 25 wall. Stentor staff received information from the student about their placement of the photo via email and have chosen to honor the student’s request for anonymity. Commenting on their choice of a photo of Brock Turner, the student stated “I could not think of a more perfect person to represent how disgusting the idea of Senior 25 is and how terribly it’s conducted. If anything they should change the title to Terminal Preppies, at least that’s more representative of the people who are on that wall.” Claiming that the reasoning behind their actions was to “atone for something which I have done in my past a few years back at this school,” the student noted that they “engaged in some very distasteful behavior with a few fellow female students who then reported me to school authorities once I was found out. I was then called to meet with said authorities and was expecting severe punishments for my action. Needless to say my ‘punishment’ was more like a slap on the wrist . . . I was simply told to not do what I did again and forced to move from one side of campus to another. In essence, I received virtually no punishment for my transgressions against my fellow female students. What ensued the following years was a deep hatred for this school for not punishing me accordingly and how they handle such matters.”
Beyond the personal reasons the student claims motivated their action, the student explained that they were “interested in the several ongoing injustices that were [and]are occurring on campus. I noticed that a few actions were being taken by students such as sit-ins and such. I was interested in joining their group(s) as I found it noble, but I decided against it as the more I looked into it the more I noticed that their methods were ineffective and I believed that they would reject my methods as too extreme . . . I decided that a diversity of tactics was needed as well as some challenge to [the]authority, which ended up being my little stunt.”
The student further noted that the Senior 25 program “is supposed to be reserved for those who are model people and students who actually Editors note: phrase redacted [care]about the things they are involved in because they have a passion for them. It is not for people who are vulgar egoists [and are]involved in things just to look good on paper and so they could write on their resume that they were a part of the Senior 25.” Referencing sexual misconduct allegations against some members of the Senior 25, the student shared “the school has not punished them in any way . . . and if anything is celebrating them from the looks of it since they approved them to be a part of the Senior 25.”
Explaining their choice of Brock Turner, the student noted that Turner was also an “intelligent, bright, and wonderful ‘model’ student who was the future of America and set to do such wonderful things as a hopeful Olympic swim captain . . . that ‘model’ student end[ed]up being a lowlife who raped a woman and was sentenced to six months in jail [and]serv[ed]only three. A mere slap on the wrist in comparison to what he did to his victim.”
Credit: Anonymous Source
Credit: Anonymous Source
The student further shared their interpretation of the Senior 25 program, noting “we celebrate our predators by framing high-quality photos of their beautiful faces so everyone can see them (especially their victims) and celebrate them for being ‘model’ humans!”
Speaking to Vice President of Student Affairs and Dean of Students Andrea Conner regarding the student’s placement of the photo, Conner noted that she was alerted to the photo during the mid-morning break of the Diversity and Inclusion Summit. “I hadn’t seen it and I started having a conversation to make a decision about what to do, and in that timeframe, not even 5 minutes later, someone else, I don’t know who, called Public Safety to report it and then Public Safety took it down as they have with other unapproved displays.”
For the anonymous student, the response by Public Safety and the administration to their action amounted to “sweep[ing]the filth that’s in this school under the rug. No mention whatsoever was made of my action and I don’t know if they realize this, but that only proves my point that they are trying to avoid the problems with this school and avoid as much controversy as possible . . . in my opinion by taking down my piece, and not addressing it, they are defending the predators that are on that wall and confirms to me that if [my]stunt was to go public everybody would talk about it which would force them to actually have to make big changes and not toss us the peanuts they gave with that Trustee Report.”
Commenting on her impression of the student’s action, Conner stated that the action “may or may not have been intended to draw attention to the fact that they believe that there are other pictures on that wall of people who have done unforgivable things. I suspect there was an attempt to challenge our notion of how much we will tolerate. Brock Turner is . . . known to be found responsible for a very despicable sexual assault that has led to national attention . . . he is representative of very despicable behavior, and I feel like the activist wants to challenge us on what kind of behavior we do and don’t tolerate in our community.” She noted that she “absolutely thinks” that “the placement of the photo speaks to unresolved student concerns on campus. The Senior 25 report did speak to a need to have a determination when allegations are present to know if a student has participated in some kind of disqualifying event, whether that be academic dishonesty or a sexual assault.”
Students share concerns about the suspension of the Senior 25 program
Regarding the larger student body’s reaction to the Trustee Report, around 20 students attended the forum with two of the three trustees who authored the report: William (Bill) A. Lowry ’84 and Angelique L. Richard ’85, and President Schutt on February 21, and many expressed a similar sentiment: disappointment in the trustee’s recommendation to suspend the Senior 25 program for one year.
At the beginning of the forum, President Schutt stated, “as Trustees, I think they took this assignment appropriately seriously. The Board of Trustees has ultimate fiduciary responsibility for the College and that means, among other things, that our governance processes are working in the way they are supposed to, the ways in which we honor students are appropriate and well administered.” Lowry noted that “the reason why I got engaged with this initiative relative to the Senior 25 program is not really because President Schutt called and asked if I could do it, but because I heard our students wanted us to look at this. And we did this by starting with a blank slate—asked what the program’s mission was and what it was supposed to recognize. Then we could ask if that mission was being actualized or not. We were then ready to say, should the mission be tweaked, because what was the mission yesterday maybe shouldn’t be the mission tomorrow. Based on that, we made recommendations, and that’s what they are, recommendations.” Echoing Lowry’s statements, Richard explained, “Bill and I were both students here and feel very much a part of the community and we wanted to be a part of working through this with you.” She later noted that “we recognized that there were aspects of this that were broken, and we think it would be a disservice to not recognize that and pause for whatever period of time to fix it because the problems will just get perpetuated if we don’t.”
Answering a student’s question regarding how the program’s suspension will affect current juniors who were striving for the award, Lowry noted that there are “a number of ways for our students to be recognized for all they bring to the campus, and it is incumbent on us as a school to make sure those students are recognized even if it not this exact way. I understand it is not optimal, but based on what we heard and were able to glean from what we’ve heard to date, it was our opinion that we need to redo this program. And I understand that there are students who are disappointed by that, but quite honestly, there are students who are disappointed by the process as it is currently in place.”
Lowry and Richard also addressed student concerns about the length of the suspension and suggestions that the review process could be achieved in less than a year. Lowry stated that “we were not certain that this could be handled in less time but if so, this is not something that is set in stone.” Richard noted that the timeline of a year “provides thoughtfulness and time for a myriad of individuals to be involved in the process, the time to be able to be thoughtful and thorough and seek input from a variety of individuals.”
For President Schutt, the suggestion of the review taking less than a year caused him to share with the audience that he “didn’t know if the recommendation was going to be to stop the Senior 25 [program]forever, but I was half expecting that. Not a year moratorium, just done. The recommendation is not to stop, but to do a thoughtful review. I’m glad that wasn’t the recommendation, but we need to think as an institution about what we want to honor, how we determine who should receive those honors and for what reason. And I think there needs to be a period of time to do that. And whether or not that should take a full year is a separate concern.”
Speaking to Stentor staff before the forum, Dean Conner stated that she was “grateful to the trustees for taking the time to do this. One of the most important reasons to lean on external help for something like this is that we, as administrators, are all too close to it. I think the board members are all executives so they are used to analyzing a lot of information and making a tough decision.”
Conner further stated, “as the Board of Trustees was reviewing the program, early on, they said we have two separate issues here. One is about the program, is it really serving the needs of a contemporary college and how we want to honor seniors? The other is a concern about one or more of the current Senior 25 members, and that issue deserves a resolution. As we have said, it is not lawful to strip someone of that [honor]without some kind of determination. If and when we have a determination, I stand at the ready to rescind someone’s Senior 25 membership and any other leadership opportunities when there is a finding of responsibility.”
