The Article below was published in Vol. 135, Issue 3 of the Lake Forest College Stentor on November 8, 2019
By Emma G. Overton ‘22
Managing Editor and News Editor
Claiming her art installation on October 16, 2019, where she projected its title, “Tell Us Who They Are,” and offered notecards “for people to write their narratives of incidents with any of the students” onto the Senior 25 Wall in the College’s Mohr Student Center, was designed to bring attention to “distrust between our students and our institution,” Blythe May ‘22 of Hixson, Tennessee, a studio art major, explained in a recent interview with Stentor staff.
The Senior 25 is a group of 25 seniors who, according to the College’s website, have been recognized “as leaders among their peers . . . must not have been dismissed. . . or placed on disciplinary probation at any point during their Lake Forest College career, must not have a record of significant or sustained violations of the Student Code of Conduct and must not have been found responsible for any violations of the Student Code of Conduct after the start of the fall semester Junior year.”
May told Stentor staff that she chose to focus her project on Senior 25 when she claims she was told by other students “. . . that there were members [of Senior 25 who]. . . had said or done things that I felt personally should eliminate them from being able to hold that sort of honor.” She then claims that as she spoke with more students about her project, she “ decided. . . . to move my installation around the campus, [with her next stop planned for]the Sports and Rec Center.” She then explained that during her project’s installation at the Senior 25 Wall, “Public Safety showed up . . . they told me to remove the notecards from the pictures for ‘legal reasons,’ . . . so I did.”
Noting at the outset of the interview that while she thinks the College does better than other institutions on some of the things that my project critiques, that doesn’t mean they are doing good enough.” May said that she “designed her project to make people aware of what students have told me are ‘known secrets’ . . . that [students]don’t have formally recorded anywhere.”
May further claims that students have told her that obstacles exist for victims’ who choose to report incidents because of “their feeling they have to relive the incident.” She also claims that some students have told her that “very few of us know that an anonymous report[ing]form exists.” Beyond this, May also believes “there is a distrust that keeps students from reporting [incidents because]students have told me they feel there is little the College is able to do about the incidents.”
She further explained that she “hadn’t gotten permission . . . but that was sort of the point,” and after, what May said, were multiple meetings with the College’s Vice President of Student Affairs and Dean of Students, Andrea Conner, “I removed the entire installation.”
Stentor staff also reached out to Dean Conner for comment, and she stated, “Blythe and I actually share three important goals: One is that I want to do everything we can to decrease obstacles to reporting, two is that if someone is alleged to have violated our policies I too would like to hold them accountable, and three: I share her worries that there is sort of a generalized distrust between some students and the administration or administrative processes.”
Dean Conner also stated, “I acknowledge that it is really tense right now,” and, “We [the College and its staff]also are bound by federal law, which requires a fair and equitable process that allows the claim to be investigated and then adjudicated, which is a fancy word for having some kind of decision made about whether the person did or didn’t violate college policy. So I had to exert some institutional boundaries around parts of her project that did not allow for a fair and equitable process to happen—and that’s hard.”
When asked by Stentor staff what steps can be taken, Dean Conner replied, “So some things I can do: we called an emergency, extra meeting of the Coalition Against Sexual Misconduct (CASM), [made up of]students, faculty, and staff. Blythe was invited to that meeting, understandably she declined. But [President Schutt] and I feel that a pre-established coalition that has students, faculty, and staff on it is really useful to wrestle with these campus issues, and so we spent the entire time talking about trust. Trust in processes, trust that people will take your report seriously, trust that the process will not be painful.”
“This is the first of many conversations, so [Blythe’s] work has inspired us to have more tangible conversations about how to improve that and we welcome suggestions,” Dean Conner said, who described herself as the “keeper of policies and procedures.”
Dean Conner also asked that “students who have things they need to report to come through our process [which is]aligned with federal law, [and]offer[s]supportive remedies.”
Editor’s note: The Title IX reporting process can be accessed online at https://www.lakeforest.edu/sexualmisconduct/reporting.php, which includes a link to a reporting form as well as contact information for the Title IX Coordinator. The reporting form can be accessed directly at https://www.lakeforest.edu/live/forms/147-report-sexual-misconduct
Emma Overton can be reached at overtoneg@mx.lakeforest.edu
