VLS Student Rankles Classmates, Administrators

By Matt Hongoltz-Hetling

Valley News Staff Writer

Published: 04-10-2018 5:15 PM

South Royalton — During the two years Sisyphus Bradford has been enrolled in Vermont Law School, she has aired and otherwise pursued a variety of concerns and grievances about the South Royalton institution, ranging from how it has handled its tight budgetary situation to the behavior of its faculty and administrators.

One of her more recent clashes with the school — a dispute about a newsletter she has emailed to the campus community — has caught the attention of a First Amendment watchdog organization, which has accused the school of reserving the right to infringe upon the free speech rights of its students.

Meanwhile, she has recently filed civil rights complaints against a faculty member and administrators and not all that long ago defended a controversial snow sculpture. 

While the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education seems to have no reservations in taking up her cause, reaction from her fellow students ranges from outright hostility to reluctant admiration. Others don’t quite know what to make of her. 

“Sisyphus is somewhat of a known entity, but there’s some mystery that surrounds her as well,” said VLS student Travis Clark. 

Digital Dissension

Many people form their early opinions of Bradford via her emails, which are notable both for frequency — some students report getting five to seven emails a day from Bradford —  and tone.

For example, “(I) will not tolerate any gossip or bullying,” she wrote in a March 31 email blast. “Individuals who have tried it have found themselves in uncomfortable situations as I report them to all four deans and/or the media. As adults, people are responsible for what they say/write and if they say/write ugly mean things, attempt to threaten or intimidate me then they had better be willing to defend them as VLS students, as future lawyers, and as human beings.”

On March 1, Bradford began using the school’s email distribution system to disseminate The Goose, an unauthorized one-woman, one-sheet emailed publication that asks “what the honk is going on at VLS?”

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Over the last few months, Bradford has used her email pulpit to weigh in on various social justice issues — the administration’s support for the destruction of a snow sculpture of a penis, weaknesses in the arrest data of Vermont state police that could hide racial disparities and purported bullying on campus, among others.

Under current school policy, individual students aren’t allowed to use an “all-campus email” function to send messages out to the entire student body. That privilege is reserved for official student organizations, like the Student Bar Association, and not self-described independent newspapers.

But Bradford did an end-run around the restriction by sending her emails to seven or more different “sub groups,” each of which allows for posting to large segments of the VLS community.

The deluge of emails, and Bradford’s persona, earned her enmity among some of her peers.

“To get rid of your stupid emails i have to go to IT,” wrote one student, in an email that Bradford promptly disseminated to her audience. “I am going to complain to the administration. … You send emails all of the time no one wants to read.”

“Again,” wrote another. “Stop harassing me. I don’t want your email, your advice, opinions or hate. Rather, I want you to leave me alone. Do I need to get a restraining order? Because I will.”

On March 13, administrators, responding to student complaints, changed Bradford’s permissions so that she could no longer post her emails to the sub groups.

Bradford immediately cried foul — various official student groups are allowed to use the all-campus email function, she said, drawing the conclusion that the political content of her messages was being unfairly targeted.

“Because I write things that question ... the VLS administration, The Goose is censored?” she asked.

Bradford continued to send The Goose to individual email addresses until March 23, when Shirley Jefferson, associate dean for student affairs and diversity at VLS, sent Bradford an email that took her self-description as an independent newspaper seriously.

“It has been a long standing policy practice that Vermont Law School does not allow outside newspapers, magazines, or other materials to be circulated to students without prior approval,” she wrote, adding an ultimatum. “You must cease and desist from using Vermont Law School’s name, including ‘VLS,’ and the VLS email system to distribute your newspaper. If you continue to do so, I will start a disciplinary procedure against you which could result in your email privileges being terminated or your dismissal from Vermont Law School.”

Jefferson also cited a policy in the student handbook that says any student who wants to use the school’s name “on products such as clothing, uniforms, or furniture, on publicity items distributed beyond campus, such as posters, flyers, or postcards, or other items (including letterhead, envelopes, forms, or publications) is required to obtain prior approval from the Communications Office.”

That policy is what attracted the attention of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which is based in Philadelphia, and was founded in 1999 by a libertarian professor and a civil rights lawyer “to defend and sustain individual rights at America’s colleges and universities.” In an April 2 letter to the school, FIRE wrote that the policy “grants administrators broad discretion to penalize students who use the name of the law school — or merely use words referring to the law school — in any manner not consented to in advance by the institution.”

Such a policy constitutes a form of prior restraint, the letter argues, a manner of censorship the Supreme Court has ruled to be “offensive … to the very notion of a free society” and unconstitutional.

Thomas McHenry, VLS president, rejected the idea that the law school would abridge the rights of its 630 students, who have a reputation of being an engaged and liberal group.

“We’re a law school,” McHenry said during a Thursday interview in his office. “We’re deeply committed to all constitutional protections — including free speech.”

Students Divided

The threat of disciplinary action also didn’t sit well with some of the same on-campus peers who had complained about Bradford in the first place.

Anne Hamilton, a 32-year-old master’s student from North Carolina, is the one who wrote Bradford the email that threatened to complain to the administration. Hamilton said during a Thursday interview that she followed through with her threat by making a complaint to Jefferson.

Hamilton successfully petitioned to get off of Bradford’s distribution list. But a friend mentioned that a recent Goose had tackled an issue near and dear to Hamilton’s heart: Bullying on campus.

“I emailed Sissy,” said Hamilton. “I said ‘Hey, I’m willing to work with you on this. That is something we should bring before the senate and the administration.’ ”

When the two met face to face to plan out a student survey on bullying, Hamilton realized that she already knew Bradford, sort of.

Hamilton makes a habit of taking her dog for walks near the South Royalton Village Green, and engaging in friendly small-talk with passers-by. One woman in particular — tall and pleasant and quick with a kind word — had on multiple occasions engaged in what Hamilton called “short, sweet” conversations.

That was Bradford.

Now that she’s matched the face of the pleasant dog-petter with the name of the firebrand who was clogging up her inbox, Hamilton said she has a much greater appreciation of Bradford as a person.

“Sissy is reasonable,” Hamilton said. “It’s just, she has a certain communication style. If you don’t communicate with her in those boundaries, you’re not getting anywhere. I’m a similar kind of person, so I guess I empathize.”

Meeting Sissy

Of course, if anyone wants to get to know the real Sissy Bradford, there’s a source willing to talk about it: Sissy Bradford.

Fifty years old, the former Texas A&M University-San Antonio adjunct instructor came to VLS as a law student in 2016. A mother of a 26-year-old daughter, Bradford suffers from PTSD. She grew up in Texas. She has a master’s in sociology, and specialized in criminal justice. Born Sissy Bradford, she adopted the name “Sisyphus” while in college, a nod to the Greek mythological figure who is doomed to perform endless, fruitless toil in Hades. In person, Bradford is approachable, ready to answer even pointed questions with calm aplomb.

“Being older and being a professor, I’m not going to be bullied,” said Bradford.

Don’t mistake her persistence with aggression, she said.

“If you do reach out and complain, now you’re the scary, crazy complaining woman,” she said. “But you could have just listened.”

She said she was deeply affected by the idea that her emails at VLS were being restricted.

“I’m a writer. I’m a researcher. I’m a speaker. I’m a presenter. I’m a poet. I’m an academician. Not being able to think and write and speak, that’s awful,” she said.

In the fall of 2011, Bradford made headlines at Texas A&M University, where she worked as an adjunct instructor of criminology, after objecting to the placement of crosses on a tower near the entrance to the university. When her efforts led to the crosses being taken down, she received a flurry of hate mail from those who felt that Bradford, who is Jewish, was being intolerant of Christianity, according to The New York Times. After receiving an email that questioned whether she had a right to live, Bradford told news outlets that university administrators were not enforcing their own student conduct rules to ensure her safety.

When Bradford was dismissed from her teaching job the following June, one semester before she planned to leave the university, she characterized it as a retaliatory attack by administrators. University officials told media outlets that Bradford’s dismissal was unrelated to her political views, and that she was one of 20 adjunct instructors who had not been asked to return for that semester.

VLS Finances

The first edition of the The Goose questioned the school’s financial planning, and included attached copies of the school’s publicly available financial disclosure records. That hit home for Clark, the student who described Bradford as a mystery and one of several who said they have found common ground with Bradford’s viewpoints. Clark said he worries about what he calls a “culture of scarcity” that he sees in delayed capital improvement and maintenance projects, an increase in cost-saving faculty sabbaticals, and a recently announced 3 percent tuition hike to $48,254 that takes effect in fall 2018. The last increase, three years ago, was 1.6 percent.

McHenry, who took the reins last June based in part on his strong fundraising track record, said there is no question the law school has felt the pinch of a national trend that saw applications decline by 35 to 40 percent in the wake of the recent recession.

“We suffered. We went through significant budget reductions. We did staff reductions. We did some faculty buyouts,” he said.

McHenry said the school has responded by cutting costs in a variety of ways, along with tapping non-tuition revenue streams such as fundraising and grants that have put it in a stronger financial position.

“We run a lean ship at Vermont Law School. There’s no doubt about it. We look for every efficiency we can have. We don’t have a large endowment and we don’t have state funding,” said McHenry.

Over the last several years, he said, the school nearly tripled its annual donations, from $271,000 to $721,000. Gifts and grants are up from $3.7 million in 2015 to $5 million in 2017. It also received a $17 million loan from the USDA last year that allowed it to restructure debt and make new investments in staff and technology.

But Bradford wants the school to invite its students, many of whom are professionals with a range of acquired skills, into the fiscal discussion.

“We’ve got lots of people with different backgrounds,” she said. “I’m a fabulous grant writer. You could put us to work in fundraising. You could have us working in the alumni office. You could have us working other ways.”

McHenry said administrators do a lot to make themselves accessible to students who want to talk finances but that, at a private institution, students can’t expect to have full access.

“There are certain issues, financial, personnel, and others, which have to be reserved, for confidentiality and legal reasons, to the board and to the administration,” he said. “You can’t necessarily have the students involved in all of those decisions. They don’t get to see the whole picture, always.”

Faculty and Administrators Accused

Bradford also last week released copies of a complaint she filed with the Office of Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education, in which she levies accusations at two law school deans, and alleges Professor Robert Sand engaged in “discrimination and harassment” against herself and four other women over 40 with disabilities.

One of the women, Lorie LaPorta, said she could not support Bradford’s characterization of Sand. In an email exchange with the Valley News, LaPorta said her own experiences with Sand had been positive and comfortable. Another woman identified by Bradford said in an email that she was unable to comment in time to meet the publication deadline for this article. Bradford said the other two women were not willing to come forward publicly.

Sand, a former state’s attorney for Windsor County, co-founded the school’s criminal law clinic and launched a restorative justice program there in December.

Bradford said in the complaint that, between May 2016 and March 2018, Sand at various times was “awkward and hostile,” and spoke to Bradford in ways that made her feel uncomfortable. She also took issue with Sand’s scheduling of an off-campus event at a venue that looks directly into her apartment, one of a handful of actions she cited as “off-campus stalker behavior.”

Sand did not respond to requests for comment. Law school spokeswoman Maryellen Apelquist released a brief statement on behalf of the school leadership that said simply that “the Vermont Law School administration takes seriously and investigates all complaints.”

The civil rights complaint also targets VLS Dean Beth McCormack, who Bradford said made jokes about Bradford’s “craziness” and capacity to be “triggered.”

Bradford circulated an email in which McCormack apologized for her words, and said she wouldn’t say anything like that again. Bradford says that after receiving the apology, she witnessed McCormack laughing again at what someone characterized as Bradford’s “craziness.”

McCormack did not respond to a request for comment. President McHenry said the school could not comment on any matters involving an individual student, or an individual member of the faculty.

Bradford has also made complaints on these and similar concerns to various other entities, including the Vermont Bar’s Professional Responsibility Program, the Family Policy Compliance Office at the Department of Education, and the Association of American Law Schools.

A spokesman for the law school association said Tuesday that the organization forwarded a copy of the complaint to VLS, and that “the complaint will be part of the school’s file,” which means it will be available when VLS is reviewed for accreditation during the 2019-2020 school year.

In the meantime, on campus, Bradford is seeking SBA approval to turn The Goose into a formal student organization, one that would be allowed, under school bylaws, to use the all-campus email system.

“It’s a poor, dead goose. But we want The Goose to become a phoenix and rise from the ashes,” she said. “I have articles lined up.”

Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com    or 603-727-3211.

Correction

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education describes itself as a nonpartisan group that protects First Amendment rights on college campuses. In addition, Vermont Law School student Anne Hamilton walks her dog near, but not on, the South Royalton Village Green, where dogs are prohibited. An earlier version of this story incorrectly described FIRE and where Hamilton walks her dog.

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