HANOVER — While some faculty, alumni and students say Dartmouth College’s ongoing efforts to eliminate sexual harassment are important and should continue, they also say more needs to be done before they can move past a scandal in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.

“How can a community heal if we don’t know” what happened, said Ivy Schweitzer, a professor of English and women’s, gender and sexuality studies.

Last week, a federal judge granted preliminary approval to a $14 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit against the college first filed in November 2018, in which nine women alleged the college turned a blind eye to sexual misconduct by three professors in the PBS department.

The three professors — Todd Heatherton, Bill Kelley and Paul Whalen — left in 2018 as the college was moving to terminate their employment, following internal investigations. A criminal investigation by the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office into the professors’ actions remains ongoing.

In some ways the episode seems to be coming to a close. The college and the plaintiffs first announced the settlement last August; the college rolled out a new campus-wide sexual misconduct policy in the fall; and other reforms also are ongoing.

But a Jan. 4 New York Timesstory that linked former PBS chairman David Bucci’s suicide last October to stress brought on by the lawsuit touched a nerve for some in the Dartmouth community who felt that the article unfairly blamed the plaintiffs in the case for Bucci’s death.

All agree that Bucci’s death in October at the age of 50 was a tragedy. He left behind his wife Katie Bucci, who declined to be interviewed for this story, and three children. A memorial page in his honor — davebuccimemorial.com — contains fond remembrances from dozens of friends, colleagues and students.

But the Times’ story raised the ire of Schweitzer and history professor Annelise Orleck, who wrote a column that appeared in the Valley News, signed by 30 Dartmouth faculty members, that sought to defend the plaintiffs following the Times’ story.

“Missing from the Times article was any discussion of the ongoing pain of the young women who were targeted by the predatory behavior of their male professors, as the lawsuit alleged, or of the misogynist culture in the Psychological and Brain Sciences Department and across the college that sparked the suit,” they wrote.

The Times story also caught the attention of six alumni members of an activist group called the Dartmouth Community against Gender Harassment & Sexual Violence, who penned a letter to the editor in The Dartmouth similarly defending the plaintiffs in the PBS suit.

The letters said that linking Bucci’s death to the lawsuit and what the Times’ story calls a “scorched-earth legal strategy” on behalf of the plaintiffs was unfair.

“The angle of the Times’ piece was misguided and regressive: Its narrative missed the nuances of mental health and the institutional failures of Dartmouth College, while perpetuating harmful victim-blaming,” the six alumni wrote.

The Times story noted that it’s not possible to know the reasons why people die by suicide and Bucci, who served as the chairman of PBS from 2015 until last July, had a history of depression. However, his widow Katie Bucci told the Times, “But I know that he wouldn’t have gotten to that point had he not gone through that experience with this lawsuit.”

The suit asserted that Bucci was one of the Dartmouth leaders who knew about the three professors’ alleged misconduct and failed to protect female students from harassment.

The Times story said Bucci’s inability to defend himself against the suit caused him anguish.

Bucci had Dartmouth’s “unqualified support for the principled and sensitive way he responded on behalf of the graduate students who sought him out to report concerns about the behavior of the three former faculty members,” college spokeswoman Diana Lawrence said in an email.

Last June, Elizabeth Smith, Dartmouth’s dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, defended Bucci and Thalia Wheatley, director of graduate studies, in an email to faculty members. Smith said that they addressed reports of sexual misconduct in the department by creating a department-wide Inclusivity, Diversity and Climate Committee and an advisory committee for each graduate student; and offering resources and opportunities for members of the department to make anonymous suggestions; and recruiting several new female faculty members.

“Dave has been an exemplary chair,” Smith wrote in the June email.

Though the plaintiffs’ attorneys declined to comment for the story, one plaintiff, Vassiki Chauhan, who alleged in the suit that one of the ousted professors sexually assaulted her, took to Twitter to express frustration with the way the Times story presented the situation.

“The astonishing thing about the NYT article is that it simultaneously manages to revert the conversation about both mental health and sexual harassment reporting,” Chauhan, who is still a graduate student at Dartmouth, wrote on Jan. 6.

At the same time, she linked to the memorial website for Bucci and said, “His death left a vacuum that will never be filled. I will grieve this loss forever.”

She also said she hopes Bucci’s death will encourage academic institutions to invest in mental health resources and will not discourage other victims of sexual harassment to come forward.

“For all survivors threatened by the treatment of plaintiffs in this particular case in the wake of a tragedy: You still have the power to tell your story, should you choose to do so,” she said. “I don’t regret sharing mine one bit.”

Schweitzer said she doesn’t need to know the “lurid details” of what went on — the plaintiffs in the lawsuit allege a range of actions by the professors such as talking about female students’ appearance in a sexualized way, favoring those who participated in drinking binges and even sexual assault.

But in order to prevent future misconduct, Schweitzer said the community needs to know the “bigger picture” of which systems allowed it to occur and persist for years, as the PBS plaintiffs alleged.

“It’s not about blame,” she said. “… How did this happen?”

The college doesn’t appear to be interested in looking backward. Neither the lawsuit nor the PBS department came up at a recent town hall or at a discussion by representatives of the Washington-based National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on the subject of sexual harassment in academia.

In response to questions about whether the college might issue an apology or offer some public airing of what happened in PBS, Lawrence focused on the future.

“We are committed to reviewing any complaint that we receive with the appropriate rigor,” Lawrence said in an email. “We are also focused on the hard work we all need to do to create and maintain a campus that is safe, equitable, diverse, and inclusive and where our community members can realize their potential.”

At the Dartmouth town hall meeting in Spaulding Auditorium on Jan. 8, Provost Joseph Helble said that he asks faculty members to be more than outstanding teachers and scholars.

“But I also ask that all of us think of ourselves as being part of something that’s much bigger than these individual pursuits of teaching, research and scholarly excellence — something much bigger than ourselves,” he said to the audience of roughly 100 people. “… To be members of a community that looks out for one another.”

Doing so will require that Dartmouth community members confront challenges “head-on,” he said.

That includes following through on an initiative Dartmouth President Phil Hanlon announced about a year ago, the “Campus Climate and Culture Initiative” or C3I, Helble said.

Drawing on a 2018 report from the National Academy of Science Engineering and Medicine, which describes the damage sexual harassment can have on research integrity and schools’ ability to retain talented students and faculty, the Dartmouth program aims to address sexual harassment.

The range of behaviors the college aims to curb include sexist hostility and crude behavior; unwelcome verbal or physical sexual advances; and sexual coercion, in which favorable professional or educational treatment is conditioned on sexual activity.

Representatives from the Washington-based NASEM, who came to Dartmouth to discuss the 2018 report, told about 75 people at a Jan. 13 forum at the Hanover Inn that though sexual coercion gets the most attention, it is the least common form of harassment.

Sexist remarks are much more common, said Lilia Cortina, a University of Michigan professor who studies sexual harassment.

“Even when sexual harassment entails nothing but sexist insults … it takes a toll,” said Cortina, a representative of the Washington-based group. “It’s about pushing women out.”

The NASEM report found that being the target of sexual harassment can undermine a victim’s professional and educational attainment and make work more stressful and less satisfying. Such an unsupportive work environment can be unpleasant for everyone, not just those targeted by the harassment, said Cortina, who noted that sexual, gender and racial minority groups are more likely to be harassed..

“Nobody sticks around to watch their valued colleagues be disparaged,” said Cortina.

Hanlon, the Dartmouth president, attended the NASEM forum and said sexual harassment is “an incredibly important topic for the success of our community.”

Helble, speaking at the town hall, said the college has made progress since the C3I initiative launched last January. It appointed Theodosia Cook, who previously directed institutional diversity and equity at Dartmouth, to oversee it. In partnership with the University of Michigan, Dartmouth began conducting climate reviews of all its academic departments and developing action plans to address issues that arise. The college aims to complete reviews of all departments within three years.

C3I “wasn’t just an announcement in January 2019 that we have forgotten about,” Helble said.

Also within the past year, he said, the college rolled out a new sexual misconduct policy; required a new online Title IX training for all faculty, staff, postdoctoral researchers and graduate students; tried a live training with a theater group; and is working with other schools across the country to share effective strategies for addressing harassment.

The college began conducting exit surveys to understand why faculty and staff leave Dartmouth and to look for “opportunities to enhance our environment to make this the kind of place where everyone wants to stay,” Helble said.

While those concerned about sexual harassment and violence on campus say that these initiatives outline positive steps, they are cautious in their praise.

“These policy initiatives should not be celebrated as monumental,” said Dartmouth senior Anne Pinkney, who is the executive chairwoman of the Student Presidential Committee on Sexual Assault.

Instead, they should be seen as “part of a larger effort that needs to continue,” she said.

One of the alumni letter signers Stan Colla, a Hanover resident and 1966 Dartmouth graduate, said he’d like the college to “take the gloss off the C3I program.”

While he doesn’t think it’s a bad strategy, he’d like the college to provide the community with clearer benchmarks as to how it will measure its progress, how it will report that progress and what it will do if that progress is insufficient. The C3I website says an annual progress report will be available to the public.

Beyond policy changes, Colla said he’d also like to see Dartmouth’s culture change. For example, he’d like to see more Dartmouth men speak up for women on campus.

“I wish there were more men, particularly of my age that would sign onto these things,” said Colla, who also went to Tuck School of Business and then worked at the college in development and alumni relations. “I think male primacy at Dartmouth is at the heart of this longstanding cultural problem.”

While Colla was the sole alumnus to sign the alumni letter, about a third of the faculty signers were men.

Schweitzer, the English professor who co-authored the faculty letter, said that in addition to making policy changes, the college also needs to change the way it has historically rewarded and protected faculty “stars,” or those whose scholarship brings the institution recognition and money.

“That’s harder,” she said. It’s “really hard to change people’s attitudes. That’s going to take time.”

Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.

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