Administration accused of Dial cover-up

By Nathan Walls
Editor

Faculty and staff criticized administration Feb. 18 for a lack of communication about the Dial Building’s closing, going as far as comparing their actions to Watergate.

Comments were made during a Special Dial Building Committee open forum that was held for faculty and staff to provide information. Most of the statements were from faculty members who worked in the Dial Building, which closed on Oct. 17 when 17 types of airborne mold were found, including the potentially lethal Stachybotrys spore.

English professor Dr. Anita Guynn said she doesn’t think the administration has been completely honest about the building’s closing.

“The announcement right after the closing that, ‘As soon as we knew there was a problem, we shut the building’ - that sounds right to most people, but we know that that’s not true,” Guynn said. “I would hope that we learned from Watergate that the cover-up is worse than the mistake.”

Chancellor Allen Meadors, not present for the meeting, denies a cover-up.

“What would we cover up? This is not a private business where someone makes money by not doing something,” Meadors said. “Now did our folks do everything right? Of course not. Who ever does everything right?”

Mold information was released during a session on Oct. 22 in GPAC and in various news releases shortly after the Dial Building was closed.

English professor Dr. Kay McClanahan found reactions of Physical Plant personnel odd. She says an event that happened last August in Dial was particularly unusual.

“In my office, room 120, in August, the terrible stench appeared,” McClanahan said. “Then the Physical Plant people came and they were checking, they were trying to find out, so forth and so on. Then one day, I could just not stay in there without gagging. So, the next day they came and a troop came, headed by Larry Freeman (Physical Plant director). They sniffed in the corners and they did all this stuff and they finally pulled back the wallpaper and it was solid black. Larry said to me, ‘We’ve got to take this wall out.’ This was the wall under the window. He said, ‘Is it OK if we come back tomorrow afternoon and do that?’ I said, ‘Come back whenever you can and do whatever you need to do, the sooner the better.’ It didn’t happen. They came and they scraped and they washed it and then they painted it.”

According to a work order submitted by Freeman, the wall was not supposed to be removed:

“Quote from the comments sections of the work request dated 09/08/2003:
Mr. Freeman wants you to repair the outside wall of Room 120 by stripping
the wallpaper and painting it white.”

“As you can see there is no reference to removing the wall only the wallpaper,” Freeman said. “Could it be that the word wall was mistaken for wallpaper? This work was completed as discussed and requested.”

Soon after, Dr. Pat Valenti and Dr. Susan Cannata’s office walls were painted over.

Speech secretary Tina Emanuel found situations she encountered with three or four Physical Plant workers even more disturbing.

“We were told that we were crazy, that we were stupid and that we needed to hush, that it wasn’t mold that it was dirt and that we were going to start something,” Emanuel said.

McClanahan mentioned similar treatment to Vice Chancellor of Business Affairs Neil Hawk in an e-mail.

“One or more of the Physical Plant staff who were working in the building told our support staff not to use the word mold, that it was just dirt behind the wall paper and that our staff didn’t know anything about mold,” McClanahan said. “I don’t know if they were speaking for themselves or if they had been told to say it wasn’t mold, but their insistence that it was not mold was at best rude and insulting to our intelligence and at worst was an attempt to cover up the fact that mold was in the building.”

Freeman, not present at the meeting, said he never knew his workers had told Dial employees to keep quiet and no one instructed him to tell them to say that.

Testimonies of what happened the day of the closing were also given.

“The administration seemed to have this meeting,” said history professor Dr. Julie Smith, “that intimately affected faculty and no faculty members were even called to say, ‘Hey, are you in the building, can you come to a meeting and talk about maybe the ramifications of what could happen if we close your building?’”

Meadors remembers no such meeting.

“When I was told that black mold was found in Dial, I ordered it closed on the spot,” Meadors said. “Do you call a meeting to discuss if you should clear a building when there is a fire or don’t you just clear the building, put out the fire, then talk about it - how you can limit the chances of future fires?”

Smith was positive of the meeting, however.

“I do know there was a meeting by some people in a building on this campus on Thursday, the first day of Fall Break, and I was in my building on that day,” Smith said.

History secretary Janet Gentes remembered an exchange with Hawk.

“At 4 o’clock Neil Hawk came to my office and said, ‘Leave the building immediately, no longer than an hour. You may take your personal items with you,’ and that’s basically how he said it,” Gentes said. “I said, ‘Should I call the faculty? Should I let anyone know?’ He said, ‘No, that will be taken care of. Just get out of the building.’”

McClanahan said another upsetting incident was rude memos that were sent out by the administration during the ordeal.

“The way that some of the administrators communicated, some of the memos that I saw and heard, were just downright rude,” McClanahan said. “It was ‘You shouldn’t be dealing with this’ and ‘You shouldn’t be worrying about this,’ it was rude.”

She wouldn’t release the exact contents of the memos.

After the building was abandoned, Smith said no thank you letters were sent out to faculty, although Provost Roger Brown, who wasn’t present for the meeting, sent one to students.

“I think the most glaring omission that I have seen so far has been the students were acknowledged for bucking up and doing a great job and the administrators moving rooms did a great job,” Smith said. “There’s no associate provost or provost or chancellor on this campus who has said, ‘You all did a great job.’”

But minutes from the Nov. 5 Faculty Senate meeting show that Brown and Meadors thanked faculty.

In response to why a mass e-mail wasn’t sent to faculty thanking them, Brown said, “I believed that the best thing to do was thank the faculty in person, and that is what I did. Perhaps you would have sent a mass e-mail. That is just the difference in what you and I would do.”

Vice Chancellor for University and Community Relations Glen Burnette and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Diane Jones were present for the meeting but didn’t comment during it.

“No one asked me to go to the meeting or no one asked me not to say anything,” Burnette said. “My purpose for attending that meeting was to listen to everyone’s concerns so that the administration can act upon those concerns. Sometimes if we are not aware of issues and concerns we can’t act upon those. For me, I learned a lot by participating in the meeting. I did not want to debate issues. I wanted to take down information, share it with my colleagues and we acknowledged those concerns. We will be addressing those issues.”

Burnette did not say how those issues will be addressed.

Jones could not be reached for comment.

Special Dial Building Committee chair Dr. Richard Vela said the information from the open forum will be presented to the administration sometime this semester. The next committee meeting is March 3.