http://whitmanpioneer.com/news/2013/05/20/debate-culture-under-scrutiny
As Longtime Coach Steps Down, Debate Culture Under Scrutiny
This article was written by Shelly Le, Rachel Alexander and Karah Kemmerly. Emily Lin-Jones and Blair Hanley Frank contributed additional reporting.
This article is the first in a three-part series about Whitman’s debate team. Part twofocuses on the Title IX investigation conducted in the spring of 2012 and reactions to it.Part three discusses the transition following Director of Forensics Jim Hanson stepping down, and what having a new, full-time coach will mean for the team.
An editors’ note accompanying this series can be found here.
In the last week of April of this year, Director of Forensics Jim Hanson announced he would be stepping down from his role coaching Whitman’s debate team in order to take a position as chair of the newly created rhetoric studies department. Hanson has been coaching debate at Whitman for two decades and has been widely credited with getting the team to its position of national prominence today.
In the weeks following his announcement of resignation, debate alumni, students and faculty have raised questions about Hanson’s decision and the administration’s handling of the change, given that a new coach had not yet been selected for Whitman’s nationally ranked team when Hanson stepped down. Many alumni and debaters have suggested that Hanson’s change of position was not a voluntary choice, a charge which he has declined to comment on.
While the college is legally prohibited from discussing the reasons why Hanson stepped down due to laws about employee confidentiality, Hanson’s decision came in the wake of greater administrative focus on the debate team. A three-week investigation by The Pioneerhas confirmed that the team was the focus of a Title IX investigation during the spring of 2012, and that other administrative concerns were raised about sexual harassment and treatment of women on the team, as well as about the supervision of assistant debate coaches, most of whom are recently graduated students.
The college’s Title IX investigation into the team has been the focus of discussions about Hanson stepping down, but the full story involves earlier concerns raised about team culture, including the treatment of women on the team.
Sexism in team culture
Alumna Kate Kight ’13, who was a debater her first year at Whitman, said she experienced sexual harassment, inappropriate comments and pressure to drink from fellow debaters and assistant coaches during her year on debate, all of which contributed to her decision to leave the team.
During her year on the team, Kight was told by a teammate, “You’ll never make it on debate because you’re a woman.”
“It was intended to be funny, but I felt [some] truth behind it,” she said.
Over spring break, the team had a tournament which she wasn’t invited to attend because she had been less involved than some other debaters. Still, she was home for spring break and the team was staying near her hometown, so she went shopping with a friend on the team who attended the tournament. The friend told her that in the hotel room the night before, team members had been discussing her body, commenting on the size of her breasts and discussing the outfits she wore and whether they were helping her get more points with judges.
“That was obviously really hurtful to be objectified that way,” she said.
Kight was not sexually active yet as a first-year, and while this was never an issue among her section-mates and other friends at Whitman, she said her debate teammates reacted negatively and continued to bring up her lack of sexual experience.
“At the time, I was just really embarrassed because people reacted so strongly,” she said. “I started acting more sexual because I felt that’s what was expected of me.”
Rising senior Tiffany Lewis, who debated for Whitman from 2010-2012 and later transferred to Western Kentucky University, felt that female debaters on the policy team were treated differently from their male teammates. Specifically, she felt that women were discouraged from partnering with other women during her time on the team.
“There was a sense that pairing females together would lead to too much cattiness. I never heard someone calling males on the policy team catty,” she said. “There have been multiple women on the team, just not partnerships [of women] …When it comes to partnering two girls together—that didn’t happen very often.”
Lewis felt she couldn’t always go to Hanson when she had concerns about sexual comments made toward other female teammates and financial concerns about not being able to afford Whitman.
“Females on the team, who may go to Jim crying for certain reasons, [would] be brushed off for being emotional, rather than [him] saying, ‘This is a problem that I need to address,’” she said.
Because of her frustrations with debate culture and financial issues, Lewis eventually left the team.
“My current experience with the military, Marine Corps and army personnel, which have been considered to be one of the most sexist organizations in the United States, has been, overall, less sexist than my experience on the team,” she said.
Hanson said he has an open door policy, and he encouraged all students to bring concerns they may have to his attention. He also said that he has never told anyone he or she may be emotional or reactionary.
“I believe it is important to listen and understand student concerns, and I always take action to correct and resolve them,” he said.
While he has never personally observed sexual harassment on the team, Hanson said he would be sure to take steps to remedy these problems if he observed them.
“I take such concerns very seriously and I do not tolerate inappropriate behavior by team members or coaches. Consistent with the school’s policies, I report any such concerns to the College, and I follow the direction given to me,” he said.
Alumnus Ethan Robertson ‘13, who was a debater on the parliamentary team from 2009 to 2011, said he only heard one moment of obvious sexism on the team, when a male debater told a female debater that only men can debate well. The woman responded quickly by spitting in the male debater’s face. After that, Robertson said he didn’t notice as many sexist comments toward women, whether subtle or overt.
“That’s not the best example of people trying to fight sexism, but it is an example of the fact that people knew the culture was there and were trying to stop it,” he said. “Even though some teammates and coaches may have said things that would have been sexist, there were people actively fighting against it. I don’t think sexism was a direct result of Jim’s behavior.”
Although Robertson only recalled one explicit incident, there were also many times he was unsure whether potentially sexist comments made by fellow team members were meant jokingly or seriously. This confusion occasionally put him in uncomfortable social settings with his teammates.
“There were some comments that were made about women, in general, but I think they were just trying to be offensive … things like ‘women are lesser than men’ or ‘women can’t do things that men can,’” he said. “It’s really hard to parse out when they’re being ironic, when they’re just trying to get a rise out of you and when they’re saying something that they actually believe.”
Robertson was particularly struck by how quickly he began to accept these comments as normal. Aspects of debate that had seemed problematic to him when he joined the team as a first-year, such as drinking with coaches and observing casual sexism, quickly became a regular part of participating in debate.
“Looking back on my time at debate, certain things seemed okay, and seemed that they were just a part of debate then, but now looking back on then, it’s like, ‘Was that okay? Was that a thing that I should have done?’” he said.
Fighting sexism in debate
Some debaters experienced differences between Whitman’s team culture and debate culture on a broader scale. Alumna Emily Cordo ’02, who was a policy debater for four years, said that the overall culture of debate was incredibly sexist during her time on the team, but Whitman was an exception to that trend. At tournaments, she was persistently sexually harassed by the coach of another team, and eventually she decided to file a complaint about it at nationals. Although the complaint could have been risky for the team, Cordo said, Hanson fully supported her decision to take action.
During her time debating, Cordo said that judges and other debaters were often dismissive of women. For instance, on male-female teams, judges giving comments would occasionally attribute all statements made to the male member of the team, even if the woman was the one who actually said them. In response, the Whitman team developed a habit of responding to judges’ “He said …” by yelling “She said!” as a group.
The majority of current debaters interviewed for this article felt the team culture was no more sexist than society as a whole, and several also said that team culture has become more inclusive during their time on the team.
Debater Jean Erickson* said that because team members are so conscious of the way they speak, they are actually more likely to avoid sexist language than non-debaters are.
“It’s less of an issue than it would be on, say, a sports team. Sometimes the atmosphere is very locker-room-esque, but that’s a problem with broader social structures, not just the team,” she said.
She pointed out Hanson took her complaints of sexism on the team seriously.
“I think Jim has been very responsive, especially in recent years. Once when some team members were making some sexist jokes, I approached Jim about it, and he had me fill out a form immediately. He wants to know about these issues. It’s silly if people think that Jim is the problem, because he loves this team and this campus,” she said.
Many sources agreed that Hanson addressed their concerns regarding sexism on the team. Rising sophomore policy debater Meritt Salathe approached Hanson this past semester because she wanted to remain in her current partnership, and she felt he was attentive to her concerns.
“My partner and I are both women. We wanted to keep debating together because I think it gives women a better chance when they’re partnering with other women. Jim respected our wishes, and we’re still partners. He listened to everything we said in partner meetings, and he tries to give women good partners and make sure they’re winning too,” she said.
Cordo agreed that while she was on the team, Hanson created a supportive atmosphere that allowed women on the team to thrive.
“He gave us such confidence that [our gender] didn’t matter with the Whitman team, that we could demand to be treated better,” she said.
While rising senior and parliamentary debater Paige Joki similarly believes that the wider national debate community does have room for improvement regarding sexism, she also thinks that Hanson and other members on the team have been vigilant about enforcing gender equality on the Whitman debate team.
“Jim does his very best to make sure that we feel comfortable on the team, and that we feel respected both on the team and in the wider community,” said Joki. “I think the team is doing a great job, not just expecting its members to behave in [exclusive] ways, but also holding people accountable if someone says something wrong.”
Social pressures
In addition to sexist language, several ex-debaters also cited pressure to drink alcohol as one negative aspect of the social culture of debate.
Because Kight was one of the only team members who didn’t drink, she said the team often put her in situations where she felt unsafe.
At tournaments, the team frequently went to parties held by students at the host school. Kight said that once she was driven to an off-campus party by team members. As the night progressed, most of the people there were smoking marijuana, and she started to hear whispers that the police were on their way. She wanted to leave, but because someone had her driven there, she didn’t know how to get back to the hotel, so she felt she didn’t have a choice other than to stay at the party and hope nothing bad happened.
Kight stressed that the social culture of the team made it practically impossible for non-drinking debaters to avoid students who were drinking.
“Every time we were in a hotel, people had alcohol, people had marijuana on them,” she said.
Even though she didn’t drink at many of these tournaments, Kight said she was concerned because she was underage and her name was on the hotel room with the other students. The combination of sexual comments directed at her and heavy drinking also caused her to feel unsafe.
Robertson said pressure to drink was exacerbated by the fact that the assistant coaches employed while he was on the team often purchased alcohol for team parties and drank with debaters.
“I remember coming to Whitman and being pretty surprised at the fact that the assistant coaches were partying with the rest of the team, but over time, that became fairly normal for me, and it didn’t feel as out of place as it initially did,” he said.
Whitman student Nicole Seibert*, who stayed with the team as a prospective debate student, said she experienced a similar atmosphere during her time with the team. She recalled attending a party during debate prospective student weekend. The party had been listed on the schedule she received of the day’s activities as “fun,” so she felt it was likely that Hanson and other coaches were aware that the team had some type of party planned, though Hanson said he has always discouraged debaters from serving alcohol to high school students.
Although the weekend was supposed to be a welcoming event for prospective students, she said the party made her feel isolated.
“People were hanging out and playing beer pong and people were just drinking and talking, not really talking to me, so I just felt uncomfortable,” she said.
While she didn’t experience overt pressure to drink, Seibert felt as though the social setting made it difficult not to.
“It wasn’t like they were saying, ‘You have to drink this 40 or you’re a pussy.’ It wasn’t overt pressure … There was definitely a sense that everyone else was drinking and it was expected that I would,” she said.
Team members were also passing around marijuana at the party, and though she didn’t especially want to smoke, she did so to feel welcomed and included by the team.
“It wasn’t like I wanted to be smoking at the time, especially not with a bunch of people I didn’t know, but … they also weren’t really making an effort to include me in their conversations. So I thought it would help me loosen up, or help me be a part of that group somehow,” she said.
Like Kight, she felt she was put in a vulnerable position because she was unfamiliar with the campus and didn’t know how to get back to the residence hall she was staying in for the weekend.
“If I had wanted to leave at that point, I wouldn’t have been able to figure out a way to get home. I really did want to leave. I pretty much wanted to leave from the moment I got there,” she said.
A debater at the party offered to walk her home. At that point, she was both high and drunk, which made her very disoriented. She remembered him making a comment that she looked cold, then saying, “Let’s get you inside,” before leading her back to his room, which was in a different residence hall from the one she was staying in.
“I didn’t really know where we were. I sort of took him at his word,” she said. “We were in his room sitting on his bed. Before I really knew what was happening, he started making out with me and groping me.”
She told him to stop and to take her back to her room, which he did. She did not report the incident to anyone.
Hanson said he was unaware of any incidents where prospective students had been sexually assaulted, and said he would have reported them to the college immediately if he had known. He also said he was not aware of any instances of prospective students drinking with the team.
“We have always followed the instructions provided by the admission office for prospective students. I have always discouraged situations where high school students were exposed to alcohol,” he said in an email.
Although she ended up coming to Whitman, Seibert also never felt comfortable on the team or like she fit in to the team culture. She said there was a joking atmosphere on the team, and teammates regularly made sexist and racist comments and brushed them off. She recalled a teammate once referring to Arabs as “angry towel heads” during practice.
“I was brand new on the team so I didn’t want to be that girl who’s like, ‘Actually, you guys are being assholes right now.’ I was put in an uncomfortable position, so I didn’t say anything,” she said.
Seibert ultimately decided to quit the team a year after she joined.
Kight had a similarly negative experience with her first year on debate. She felt she was expected to hang out with other debaters constantly, and her desire to be involved in other activities on campus was viewed as a sign of her being insufficiently committed to the team. Although many debaters view the tight-knit nature of the team as a positive aspect of their debate experience, Kight said that atmosphere made it much harder for students who didn’t want to party or drink as much to participate.
“We couldn’t really band together because all of our reactions were to find friends elsewhere,” she said.
Eventually, Kight’s negative experiences and the team’s expectations led her to quit. She made her decision close to the end of her first year.
“I wasn’t going to be able to function with the kind of social life it seemed to require of me,” she said.
Responses to party culture
Hanson said he supports students who choose not to drink. In addition, he said the team has taken steps to curtail inappropriate use of alcohol. In the past, the team has had a policy which prohibits students and coaches from having more than two drinks in the evening while at debate tournaments.
Team members also have the opportunity to socialize at alcohol-free debate-sponsored events. When alcohol is present at these sponsored events, students are expected to follow the rules outlined in the Whitman Student Handbook.
“I sympathize strongly with the students who choose not to drink, as I do not drink alcohol. I lead by example, and I readily support students who have made this choice,” said Hanson. “Our program has discouraged excessive drinking at tournaments since I have been director.”
In September 2012, the college made changes to the two-drink policy to simply state, “Coaches are expected not to party with students and should always conduct themselves in responsible and appropriate ways.”
Hanson said that if he observes a violation of team policies, or if a student or coach notifies him of a concern, he has appropriate ways of dealing with the situation.
“The typical response is to address the particular situation and, where appropriate, to not allow the student to compete in the next tournament,” he said.
Kight’s and Seibert’s experiences were several years ago, and many current debate students interviewed for this article agreed that drinking was not specifically an aspect of debate culture, but rather part of college culture in general. Alumna Miranda Morton ’13, who debated on the parliamentary team for four years, was adamant that the team is not an exception to the Whitman norm.
“I think that college is a time when all young people find themselves in situations where they can experiment with alcohol or they can choose not to do that. At Whitman there are plenty of people who drink and plenty of people who don’t drink. That’s the same thing on the debate team,” she said.
Joki also believes that when criticizing the debate team, people often look at the way debaters behave at social events not actually sponsored by the debate team and then may see their individual actions as a reflection of the entire team.
“The difficulty I see lies in the administration’s failure to differentiate people’s actions as individuals and people’s actions as debaters. So I think that there is a conflation oftentimes that students, no matter what they do, are always debaters,” said Joki.
Morton emphasized that while some debaters do drink alcohol together, they also often find opportunities to socialize with one another without consuming alcohol.
“There is pressure on the team to spend time together, and that is to grow a community and to make sure we’re not together just in an academic setting, so that when we travel together, we know each other and feel comfortable with each other. That has nothing to do with the use of alcohol; in my view, it is often facilitated with things like dinners, movies or softball,” Morton said.
continue to part two
Whitman’s Title IX investigation into the debate team began in the spring of 2012 after the administration received a report that a Whitman assistant debate coach had sexually assaulted an assistant coach from another school at a tournament.
While Title IX, which was signed into federal law in 1972, is best known for requiring schools that receive federal funds to provide equal funding to athletic programs, its provisions reach far beyond the realm of athletics. The law states that no person should be subjected to discrimination at a federally funded education program based on sex. According to the Supreme Court, those provisions extend to prevention of sexual harassment at institutions governed by Title IX as well.
In a 2011 letter, the U.S. Department of Education reminded educational institutions that sexual misconduct falls under the purview of Title IX and that it is the job of each institution to investigate any claims of sexual misconduct as a part of its compliance with Title IX.
The same letter required schools to designate an employee as the Title IX coordinator, responsible for overseeing any investigations into complaints made under that statute and for rectifying any situations that make students feel unsafe. In response to this directive, Associate Dean of Students Clare Carson was appointed Whitman’s Title IX administrator during the summer of 2011.
The sexual assault case reported to Whitman involved Lindsay VanLuvanee, who was chaperoning the Pocatello High School Debate Team at the Whitman High School Debate Tournament in the fall of 2010. After hanging out with friends at Whitman, an assistant debate coach offered to give VanLuvanee a ride home. VanLuvanee ended up staying at this coach’s house, and she fell asleep watching television with him. VanLuvanee then woke up to the assistant debate coach sexually assaulting her.
VanLuvanee says that she chose not to report the incident to the Whitman administration or local authorities, and she actively hid it from Hanson because she had had a former unrelated, uncomfortable incident reporting a case of sexual assault to the police. However, someone later reported the event to the college without her knowledge or permission. VanLuvanee doesn’t know whether the person who reported it was a debater, a coach or someone else, or when the incident was reported.
When the investigation began in the spring of 2012, VanLuvanee was phoned for a conference call with a Title IX investigation board that asked questions regarding the event and how comfortable she felt reporting sexual assault to the Whitman administration. In addition, the board asked VanLuvanee if she felt that Hanson’s response to the incident was sufficient.
Concerns about procedure
VanLuvanee feels that the questions she was asked during her conference call with the Title IX board placed her in an uncomfortable position.
“Some of the questions they asked me felt very inappropriate. For example, a lot of the questions were focused on Jim, as opposed to the actual person in question or the event itself,” she said. “I felt like I was forced to place judgement on Jim and the team; it felt like the questions required more speculation than perspective and facts that I could offer.”
Other debate members were also called in to answer questions regarding the former assistant debate coach, as well as the general atmosphere of the team and Hanson’s role as debate team director.
Parliamentary debater and rising senior Paige Joki was also called in to speak with the Title IX board. She said that she had been told the college needed help regarding a hiring decision for the debate team. After she went in for questioning, the board told her the hiring decision had been made, but they had questions to ask about the assistant coach who had sexually assaulted VanLuvanee and about the team culture as a whole.
“I ultimately felt that when I was notified that I wasn’t in there for an employment decision, that I had been lied to,” she said. “I felt like they were using authority in a way that was inappropriate to begin with.”
Additionally, Joki felt the questions asked by the Title IX board were uncomfortable and accusatory toward Hanson and the team.
“There were a lot of intentionally leading questions to incriminate Jim unfairly,” she said. “If I said no to a question, I felt like they kept re-wording questions and pressing for a different answer.”
She spoke to Dean of Students Chuck Cleveland about her frustration with the types of questions she was asked. Cleveland confirmed that he spoke to two or three students who had concerns about the questions they were asked and the way the investigation was handled, and he discussed these frustrations with the board.
President George Bridges said he was unsure whether students were called before the board under false pretenses or whether such a practice was standard, since he was not directly involved in the investigation. Carson, who was directly involved, declined to comment on any portion of the investigation.
Nicole Seibert*, the debater who was sexually assaulted as a prospective student, was also involved in the investigation. She felt it was well conducted, and it allowed her to voice some of her concerns about the way she had been treated on the team.
“I have felt nothing but supported and heard by [the administration] in that process,” she said.
She told Carson about being sexually assaulted as a prospective student and said the board was receptive and sympathetic to her concerns.
Investigation follow-up
VanLuvanee was much less satisfied. Following the investigation, she said she never received a follow-up from the Whitman administration. She feels that the administration used her case to scrutinize Hanson and the debate team members’ decisions and actions.
“Since my involvement with the investigation, it caused me to feel a lot of guilt, because I feel that it was handled so poorly, and that it’s still being handled poorly,” said VanLuvanee. “But Jim has always assured me that no one has ill feelings towards me on the team, and he always made an effort to make sure that I was comfortable and safe.”
VanLuvanee also said she was unhappy because one of her main concerns after being sexually assaulted was whether she would have to interact with the coach in question at future debate events, including at the Whitman National Debate Institute (WNDI), where she was planning to work that summer. The administration was unable to answer that question for her.
“They told me that they could not disclose this at that time … Beyond that, I had to rely on hearsay from Whitman debaters and searching for his [the coach's] email address on emails that I would be getting about the WNDI,” said VanLuvanee.
VanLuvanee was not told who else was investigated, whether the board talked to the assistant debate coach or when the investigation was over. She was also not given access to the board’s final report on the investigation. During and after her conference call, she was not asked whether she wanted to press formal charges against the assistant debate coach.
Joki was also dissatisfied with the lack of follow-up she received and with the administration’s lack of clarity about what would be included in the investigation findings.
“I asked specifically what things I said would be in the final investigation report, because I was unsure whether it would be taken into context. None of the things were recorded … Our quotes would be seen as anonymous, but even then it’s like, ‘Look, if you’re going to use something I said, I should be able to check it,’” Joki said. “Title IX is a wonderful process that is supposed to empower people to speak up, but that was not the type of process that took place at this school in this circumstance.”
Following the investigation, staff at the 2012 WNDI were required to attend a four-hour sexual harassment training put on by Whitman staff members. VanLuvanee believes this was one result of the Title IX investigation but said the orientation made her and many of her other coworkers extremely uncomfortable. The training also used a hypothetical situation to demonstrate sexual harassment that appeared to be based on her sexual assault.
“I felt that it violated the confidentiality that was promised at the beginning of the interview that had happened, because they used an example from my interview without my consent,” said VanLuvanee. “It was triggering for me, because it was like ‘Hey, remember this one time that you were sexually assaulted on our campus? Well, we’re going to bring it up in the four-hour mandatory meeting.’ And then, it violated any sense of anonymity or privacy with it, because obviously it was in a room full of my peers that were very close to the situation, and it became apparent because people asked me about it after the fact.”
Bridges sympathized with student concerns, but denied that the administration had any agenda when questioning debaters.
“There was no attempt by the college to microanalyze the debate team and put Jim under scrutiny. Period. I also realize that within these investigations, the topics with which we must deal and the process itself is very difficult. Feeling uncomfortable and in an awkward position is very understandable, but federal law requires us to conduct the process in a very thorough way,” he said.
Bridges was unable to comment on any particular complaints about staff conduct during the investigation because he was not directly involved in it. Both Carson and Bridges declined to share any findings from the investigation or to answer questions about specifically what the investigation was looking for when questioning students.
Title IX and other laws do not prohibit the college from publicly disclosing this information, so long as the identity of complainants is private, but the college is not legally required to share any findings. Bridges cited a college policy of protecting the privacy of people involved in the investigation as the reason for not disclosing this information. He said the college plans to share findings from an independent review of the investigation in the next few months, though with whom they would be shared and in what form had not been decided.
Hanson also declined to comment on the investigation’s findings.
Calls for further investigation
In the wake of Hanson stepping down, 135 debaters, alumni and Whitman community members have signed a petition on Change.org asking the college to conduct an independent investigation into its Title IX investigation. The text of the petition is embedded below and states that “reflexively citing ‘privacy concerns’ is an insufficient response to serious questions regarding the adequacy of the College’s approach to Title IX complaints generally and Prof. Hanson’s removal specifically.”
Call for Investigation by WhitmanPioneer
In a May 17 email to debate community members that responded to these concerns, President Bridges noted that the college retained an independent attorney, Saundra Schuster, to “provide counsel on our work involving the debate program and related matters” over the past year.
Bridges’ Letter to Debate Alumni by WhitmanPioneer
“Given our commitment to comply fully with Title IX and our belief in the importance of the debate program to Whitman, we will seek a second opinion from an independent legal expert not affiliated with Ms. Schuster or her firm in order to evaluate our response to this and any other civil rights and employment law issues that arise,” he wrote.
In response, the concerned alumni group that drafted the letter plans to write a response. Alumna Jean Tobin ’92, a member of the group, said she was pleased to see the college open to outside investigation, but that alumni still had significant concerns.
“In his letter, President Bridges asserts the importance of following Title IX. We absolutely agree. Treating individuals equally and without discrimination is an important value held by the alumni, as well as Professor Hanson. Our concern is that the actions of the administration have not prioritized those values,” she wrote in an email. “We continue to have significant concerns about the way the College conducted the Title IX investigation of the debate program and Professor Hanson. We do not believe the investigation was respectful of victims’ rights and we do not believe it was a thorough investigation. We believe a full review is called for.”
continue to part three
Following last spring’s Title IX investigation, the debate team made a number of changes in response to concerns regarding team culture. One aspect of team culture addressed was the relationship between students and assistant coaches.
Assistant coaches are almost always recent graduates, often just a year removed from being Whitman students. Despite their closeness in age to members of the team, they are hired as members of Whitman’s instructional staff and are expected to conform to the same codes of conduct as other staff members.
Former debaters Kate Kight ’13, Ethan Robertson ’13, and Nicole Seibert* all said that during their time on the team, assistant coaches would regularly drink and party with team members. Although Director of Forensics Jim Hanson maintains that he does not tolerate this type of behavior, the team attends anywhere from 22 to 25 conferences per year, of which he personally attends 14 to 16. At other conferences, team members are entirely supervised by assistant coaches.
Kight acknowledged that the team’s culture may have changed during the three years since she left, and said the growing numbers of women and people of color on the team were a good sign of movement in the right direction. Still, she said Hanson was largely unaware of the problematic aspects of debate culture during her time on the team. While she generally felt he was supportive, she also didn’t feel that she could come forward with complaints about the culture of the team without being ostracized by other team members.
“I don’t think he ever saw the impact that the culture had on us,” she said.
Kight responded to debaters who have said that Hanson shouldn’t be held responsible for the problematic behavior of other students and assistant coaches.
“That’s fine until someone like me gets hurt and isn’t able to come forward … [The team] makes it really hard to come forward. They make it really hard for people to feel safe. That’s not the kind of school Whitman is,” she said.
Ultimately, she said Hanson is responsible for the overall atmosphere on the team, including the conduct of assistant coaches.
Seibert agreed, noting that an assistant coach was at the party she attended as a prospective student, and was drinking and smoking marijuana with students. She felt that Hanson should have been aware that the team was taking high school students to a party and considered that they would be put in a vulnerable position by not knowing their way around campus.
“That’s a huge, huge oversight and indicative of serious misjudgment,” she said.
Guidelines for coaches
In recent years, Hanson has coordinated with the administration to make various changes to the contract that assistant coaches are required to sign upon being hired. This year’s staff of assistant coaches was required to sign an updated version of the contract in January 2013, which is embedded below. Among various guidelines, the contract forbids coaches from partying or drinking with students.
Forensic Coach Duties and Philosophy Sheets by WhitmanPioneer
Hanson said he works directly with coaches throughout the year to provide guidance and training so that they will meet the college’s expectations for them.
“Once selected, I work with the college to ensure that coaches understand the school’s policies regarding staff,” he wrote in an email. “I lead by example, and I ensure that assistant coaches are aware of my personal expectations about how we work with and interact with team members, and I’ve done that for 21 years.”
President George Bridges felt the expectations about coaches not partying with students are reasonable, despite the fact that many assistant coaches were members of the debate team just months before they were hired as staff.
“I believe it’s totally realistic, and I believe that the assistant coaches are employees and staff of Whitman College and have to be held to the same high standards and expectations as other employees.”
He also said these responsibilities were clearly communicated to assistant coaches.
Rising sophomore Meritt Salathe, a member of the policy team, said the administration fails to see the benefits of social relationships between assistant coaches and team members. She said that coaches often help new Whitman debaters connect with other members of the national debate circuit.
“I think that it’s difficult when looking at debate from an outside perspective to figure out what a good relationship between students and assistant coaches is. Coaches have just graduated, so they’re still involved with the community. It makes for a better team community if debaters interact and hang out with the coaches. They can introduce you to people from other teams, and it makes an inclusive environment,” she said.
Debater Jean Erickson* also emphasized that because assistant coaches are often alumni of the debate team, many friendships between coaches and students developed when coaches were students themselves. She feels that the administration has unrealistic hopes for assistant coaches.
“I’ve been very close with several of the assistant coaches, and I think they’re an important part of building team dynamics. They’re not supposed to hang out with us, which is stupid. They do, though, and they’re an important part of building the team up,” she said.
Sean Mulloy, a rising senior policy debater who has been on the team for three years, pointed out that many faculty are able to drink with students who are 21 and over, yet assistant coaches are expressly prohibited from doing the same, which he sees as a double standard.
“They have to remember that we are adults and the coaches are adults,” he said.
Rising senior Ben Menzies, another policy debater who has been on the team for three years, also noted that rules for behavior regarding drinking are defined differently for assistant debate coaches than for most other faculty or staff on campus.
“At some level, I feel that attempts to regulate the lives of adults of age are not only pointless, but ethically dubious, especially when this level of scrutiny is not applied to any other position on campus … The way in which this standard seems to be applied to debate coaches, specifically, seems to me to be an exploitation of the fact that they don’t have a way to appeal any administrative decisions—they don’t have tenure,” he said.
Administrative relations with debate
In addition to expressing concerns about the administration’s treatment of assistant coaches, some debaters have been unhappy with the overall manner in which the administration handled their investigation into the team and displeased with some of the effects of these investigations.
Mulloy said Hanson implemented a number of new rules for the team during the past year in response to administrative concerns following the Title IX investigation. While he was happy to see problematic aspects of debate culture being addressed, Mulloy felt some of these rules were either overreaching or unnecessary, including one that prohibited the team from discussing sex at debate events. Mulloy also said that while some aspects of debate culture are problematic, the team has been excessively scrutinized compared to other campus programs such as varsity athletics.
“I think there’s been a higher level of scrutiny on the debate team than on other programs at the college,” he said.
Alumna Miranda Morton ‘13 said she fully understands any concerns the administration may have had in the past and believes action to change these concerns may have been necessary. However, she was unhappy overall with the solutions to these problems.
“Any of the investigations and preliminary sessions that have happened because of different problems of the debate team I [wholeheartedly] think were appropriate and positive. If there is turmoil on the team, I think it’s the team’s job and the administration’s job to try and find a way to fix that,” she said. “That being said, I don’t think the administration has handled trying to solve any of the problems of the team in an effective manner, or in a student-focused manner.”
Mulloy understood administrative concerns about debate culture, but emphasized the improvements made by the team. He said the culture revolves less around drinking and partying than it did when he started, and the current policy team is welcoming of new members.
“We don’t pressure our freshmen to do anything. We welcome them fully as team members,” he said.
Rising senior Paige Joki also noted that the team has become a lot closer and more inclusive in the past two years, in part because of Hanson’s efforts to make debate a safe space to talk about all issues. Hanson started a discussion on diversity and inclusivity in the debate community at the Whitman Swing Tournament in February 2013.
“[The discussion] really challenged me to think of the way our community operates, and to try to make improvements to those areas, to make sure other debaters of all backgrounds feel that they’re respected and appreciated in the community,” said Joki.
According to Joki, Hanson’s commitment towards issues of race, gender and sexuality has made the Whitman debate team overall more inclusive towards individuals of all backgrounds.
“Jim is one of the champions of inclusivity; he instills an ethic of acceptance in each one of his debaters and his students. In his classes, race, gender, sexuality are always at the forefront; we always consider social location … I can’t imagine someone more dedicated to understanding and enforcing these things,” Joki said.
Other debaters have also expressed frustrations with the fact that the administration seems to be focusing on past events and not on current debate culture.
“The administration needs to separate events of the past from the current conditions of the team. If there were problems in the past—especially legal problems in the past—those are not indicative of the climate and conditions of the debate team now,” said Morton. “Because it seems that the administration has very little knowledge of what’s going on with the team now, everything seems to relay back to old problems, which gets the debate team in cycles of blame.”
Morton reiterated that Hanson has been a leading proponent of the administration’s requests for changes to the debate team.
“Jim is an amazing liaison between the administration and the students. He was constantly working to implement the administration’s changes, but he faced challenges from his students who didn’t understand them. But I think he did a really excellent job of managing that,” she said.
Moving forward
Although Associate Dean of Students Clare Carson would not comment on the specifics of the Title IX investigation, she saw having a new full-time director as an opportunity to make the team more inclusive, noting that a full-time position would allow the coach to devote more time to addressing concerns.
In seeking a new director, Bridges hopes to find someone who can foster an inclusive environment.
“We also seek a director who will cultivate an environment in which students learn and develop through successful training and competition,” he wrote in an email. “As with all of our programs and teams, an essential ingredient of this environment is an atmosphere of respect that promotes the well-being and dignity of all students regardless of their gender, background and orientation, and that affords all participants equal opportunities to compete at the highest levels, advance intellectually and develop interpersonally.”
The debate team has met with the administration twice since Hanson’s resignation, and these discussions have largely been focused on creating an advisory group consisting of alumni, current debaters and a faculty member to provide input for a new director.
Menzies said he was happy with these plans for an advisory group, especially because he felt that current team members have more knowledge about debate and about the qualities of a good director than most administrators do. However, he is frustrated that choosing to involve the team more directly in the search for a new director was ever a question at all.
“While the conversations have been productive, as preliminary discussions can be, I’m very disappointed that we’ve seemed to have conversations on whether or not the team should be involved,” he said.
Morton would like to see a director who is a Ph.D. candidate at least, who has experience with debate and the administrative tools to book and plan trips for 20 or more people. She also stressed it would be a good idea either to hire an interim director or to set aside a year-long training period so that Hanson can work with the new director.
“When Jim took over as director of forensics from Bob Withycombe over 20 years ago, there was an entire year of transition, and that’s really important to maintaining the success of the debate team,” Morton said.
Debaters also hope more two-way conversation will occur between team members and the administration about hiring decisions and future administrative choices regarding the team.
“I feel that we’ve made some positive steps in reestablishing our relationship with the administration, but I still think that we have a long way to go in order to ensure that that relationship continues,” said Joki. “Like maintaining open lines of communication and ensuring that we have a staff next year.”
Menzies said in the past there have been conversations between the administration and individuals of the team or the team as a whole, but he feels the administration has not kept team members in the loop about changes to the team as a result of these conversations.
“In these conversations we were promised transparency. These conversations were followed by weeks, months of silence from the administration,” he said.
Some debaters hope communication between the administration and the team in future years can be focused more on positive reinforcement. Morton said most team interaction with the administration in the past year has been negative. Next year, she hopes there can be an acknowledgement of each other’s feelings and concerns.
“The administration has, if anything, in the students’ views, placed the students as the place to undue blame on the coaches and the students and make it harder for us to continue to be competitive and continue to learn and grow,” she said.
Hanson said he was heartened to see support from students and alumni and appreciated the call for administrative transparency with regard to the investigation.
“I personally believe in transparency and ensuring that our school and its programs follow ethical, professional and humane policies toward all faculty, staff and students. I’ve worked hard to create that ethos at Whitman, and I believe it is part of who we are as a community.”
*Due to debate’s tight-knit community and possible repercussions that could arise from being named, several sources requested to remain anonymous. Pseudonyms have been given to these sources.
read the Letter From the Editors
This article was written by Shelly Le, Rachel Alexander and Karah Kemmerly. Emily Lin-Jones and Blair Hanley Frank contributed additional reporting.
This article is the first in a three-part series about Whitman’s debate team. Part twofocuses on the Title IX investigation conducted in the spring of 2012 and reactions to it.Part three discusses the transition following Director of Forensics Jim Hanson stepping down, and what having a new, full-time coach will mean for the team.
An editors’ note accompanying this series can be found here.
In the last week of April of this year, Director of Forensics Jim Hanson announced he would be stepping down from his role coaching Whitman’s debate team in order to take a position as chair of the newly created rhetoric studies department. Hanson has been coaching debate at Whitman for two decades and has been widely credited with getting the team to its position of national prominence today.
In the weeks following his announcement of resignation, debate alumni, students and faculty have raised questions about Hanson’s decision and the administration’s handling of the change, given that a new coach had not yet been selected for Whitman’s nationally ranked team when Hanson stepped down. Many alumni and debaters have suggested that Hanson’s change of position was not a voluntary choice, a charge which he has declined to comment on.
While the college is legally prohibited from discussing the reasons why Hanson stepped down due to laws about employee confidentiality, Hanson’s decision came in the wake of greater administrative focus on the debate team. A three-week investigation by The Pioneerhas confirmed that the team was the focus of a Title IX investigation during the spring of 2012, and that other administrative concerns were raised about sexual harassment and treatment of women on the team, as well as about the supervision of assistant debate coaches, most of whom are recently graduated students.
The college’s Title IX investigation into the team has been the focus of discussions about Hanson stepping down, but the full story involves earlier concerns raised about team culture, including the treatment of women on the team.
Sexism in team culture
Alumna Kate Kight ’13, who was a debater her first year at Whitman, said she experienced sexual harassment, inappropriate comments and pressure to drink from fellow debaters and assistant coaches during her year on debate, all of which contributed to her decision to leave the team.
During her year on the team, Kight was told by a teammate, “You’ll never make it on debate because you’re a woman.”
“It was intended to be funny, but I felt [some] truth behind it,” she said.
Over spring break, the team had a tournament which she wasn’t invited to attend because she had been less involved than some other debaters. Still, she was home for spring break and the team was staying near her hometown, so she went shopping with a friend on the team who attended the tournament. The friend told her that in the hotel room the night before, team members had been discussing her body, commenting on the size of her breasts and discussing the outfits she wore and whether they were helping her get more points with judges.
“That was obviously really hurtful to be objectified that way,” she said.
Kight was not sexually active yet as a first-year, and while this was never an issue among her section-mates and other friends at Whitman, she said her debate teammates reacted negatively and continued to bring up her lack of sexual experience.
“At the time, I was just really embarrassed because people reacted so strongly,” she said. “I started acting more sexual because I felt that’s what was expected of me.”
Rising senior Tiffany Lewis, who debated for Whitman from 2010-2012 and later transferred to Western Kentucky University, felt that female debaters on the policy team were treated differently from their male teammates. Specifically, she felt that women were discouraged from partnering with other women during her time on the team.
“There was a sense that pairing females together would lead to too much cattiness. I never heard someone calling males on the policy team catty,” she said. “There have been multiple women on the team, just not partnerships [of women] …When it comes to partnering two girls together—that didn’t happen very often.”
Lewis felt she couldn’t always go to Hanson when she had concerns about sexual comments made toward other female teammates and financial concerns about not being able to afford Whitman.
“Females on the team, who may go to Jim crying for certain reasons, [would] be brushed off for being emotional, rather than [him] saying, ‘This is a problem that I need to address,’” she said.
Because of her frustrations with debate culture and financial issues, Lewis eventually left the team.
“My current experience with the military, Marine Corps and army personnel, which have been considered to be one of the most sexist organizations in the United States, has been, overall, less sexist than my experience on the team,” she said.
Hanson said he has an open door policy, and he encouraged all students to bring concerns they may have to his attention. He also said that he has never told anyone he or she may be emotional or reactionary.
“I believe it is important to listen and understand student concerns, and I always take action to correct and resolve them,” he said.
While he has never personally observed sexual harassment on the team, Hanson said he would be sure to take steps to remedy these problems if he observed them.
“I take such concerns very seriously and I do not tolerate inappropriate behavior by team members or coaches. Consistent with the school’s policies, I report any such concerns to the College, and I follow the direction given to me,” he said.
Alumnus Ethan Robertson ‘13, who was a debater on the parliamentary team from 2009 to 2011, said he only heard one moment of obvious sexism on the team, when a male debater told a female debater that only men can debate well. The woman responded quickly by spitting in the male debater’s face. After that, Robertson said he didn’t notice as many sexist comments toward women, whether subtle or overt.
“That’s not the best example of people trying to fight sexism, but it is an example of the fact that people knew the culture was there and were trying to stop it,” he said. “Even though some teammates and coaches may have said things that would have been sexist, there were people actively fighting against it. I don’t think sexism was a direct result of Jim’s behavior.”
Although Robertson only recalled one explicit incident, there were also many times he was unsure whether potentially sexist comments made by fellow team members were meant jokingly or seriously. This confusion occasionally put him in uncomfortable social settings with his teammates.
“There were some comments that were made about women, in general, but I think they were just trying to be offensive … things like ‘women are lesser than men’ or ‘women can’t do things that men can,’” he said. “It’s really hard to parse out when they’re being ironic, when they’re just trying to get a rise out of you and when they’re saying something that they actually believe.”
Robertson was particularly struck by how quickly he began to accept these comments as normal. Aspects of debate that had seemed problematic to him when he joined the team as a first-year, such as drinking with coaches and observing casual sexism, quickly became a regular part of participating in debate.
“Looking back on my time at debate, certain things seemed okay, and seemed that they were just a part of debate then, but now looking back on then, it’s like, ‘Was that okay? Was that a thing that I should have done?’” he said.
Fighting sexism in debate
Some debaters experienced differences between Whitman’s team culture and debate culture on a broader scale. Alumna Emily Cordo ’02, who was a policy debater for four years, said that the overall culture of debate was incredibly sexist during her time on the team, but Whitman was an exception to that trend. At tournaments, she was persistently sexually harassed by the coach of another team, and eventually she decided to file a complaint about it at nationals. Although the complaint could have been risky for the team, Cordo said, Hanson fully supported her decision to take action.
During her time debating, Cordo said that judges and other debaters were often dismissive of women. For instance, on male-female teams, judges giving comments would occasionally attribute all statements made to the male member of the team, even if the woman was the one who actually said them. In response, the Whitman team developed a habit of responding to judges’ “He said …” by yelling “She said!” as a group.
The majority of current debaters interviewed for this article felt the team culture was no more sexist than society as a whole, and several also said that team culture has become more inclusive during their time on the team.
Debater Jean Erickson* said that because team members are so conscious of the way they speak, they are actually more likely to avoid sexist language than non-debaters are.
“It’s less of an issue than it would be on, say, a sports team. Sometimes the atmosphere is very locker-room-esque, but that’s a problem with broader social structures, not just the team,” she said.
She pointed out Hanson took her complaints of sexism on the team seriously.
“I think Jim has been very responsive, especially in recent years. Once when some team members were making some sexist jokes, I approached Jim about it, and he had me fill out a form immediately. He wants to know about these issues. It’s silly if people think that Jim is the problem, because he loves this team and this campus,” she said.
Many sources agreed that Hanson addressed their concerns regarding sexism on the team. Rising sophomore policy debater Meritt Salathe approached Hanson this past semester because she wanted to remain in her current partnership, and she felt he was attentive to her concerns.
“My partner and I are both women. We wanted to keep debating together because I think it gives women a better chance when they’re partnering with other women. Jim respected our wishes, and we’re still partners. He listened to everything we said in partner meetings, and he tries to give women good partners and make sure they’re winning too,” she said.
Cordo agreed that while she was on the team, Hanson created a supportive atmosphere that allowed women on the team to thrive.
“He gave us such confidence that [our gender] didn’t matter with the Whitman team, that we could demand to be treated better,” she said.
While rising senior and parliamentary debater Paige Joki similarly believes that the wider national debate community does have room for improvement regarding sexism, she also thinks that Hanson and other members on the team have been vigilant about enforcing gender equality on the Whitman debate team.
“Jim does his very best to make sure that we feel comfortable on the team, and that we feel respected both on the team and in the wider community,” said Joki. “I think the team is doing a great job, not just expecting its members to behave in [exclusive] ways, but also holding people accountable if someone says something wrong.”
Social pressures
In addition to sexist language, several ex-debaters also cited pressure to drink alcohol as one negative aspect of the social culture of debate.
Because Kight was one of the only team members who didn’t drink, she said the team often put her in situations where she felt unsafe.
At tournaments, the team frequently went to parties held by students at the host school. Kight said that once she was driven to an off-campus party by team members. As the night progressed, most of the people there were smoking marijuana, and she started to hear whispers that the police were on their way. She wanted to leave, but because someone had her driven there, she didn’t know how to get back to the hotel, so she felt she didn’t have a choice other than to stay at the party and hope nothing bad happened.
Kight stressed that the social culture of the team made it practically impossible for non-drinking debaters to avoid students who were drinking.
“Every time we were in a hotel, people had alcohol, people had marijuana on them,” she said.
Even though she didn’t drink at many of these tournaments, Kight said she was concerned because she was underage and her name was on the hotel room with the other students. The combination of sexual comments directed at her and heavy drinking also caused her to feel unsafe.
Robertson said pressure to drink was exacerbated by the fact that the assistant coaches employed while he was on the team often purchased alcohol for team parties and drank with debaters.
“I remember coming to Whitman and being pretty surprised at the fact that the assistant coaches were partying with the rest of the team, but over time, that became fairly normal for me, and it didn’t feel as out of place as it initially did,” he said.
Whitman student Nicole Seibert*, who stayed with the team as a prospective debate student, said she experienced a similar atmosphere during her time with the team. She recalled attending a party during debate prospective student weekend. The party had been listed on the schedule she received of the day’s activities as “fun,” so she felt it was likely that Hanson and other coaches were aware that the team had some type of party planned, though Hanson said he has always discouraged debaters from serving alcohol to high school students.
Although the weekend was supposed to be a welcoming event for prospective students, she said the party made her feel isolated.
“People were hanging out and playing beer pong and people were just drinking and talking, not really talking to me, so I just felt uncomfortable,” she said.
While she didn’t experience overt pressure to drink, Seibert felt as though the social setting made it difficult not to.
“It wasn’t like they were saying, ‘You have to drink this 40 or you’re a pussy.’ It wasn’t overt pressure … There was definitely a sense that everyone else was drinking and it was expected that I would,” she said.
Team members were also passing around marijuana at the party, and though she didn’t especially want to smoke, she did so to feel welcomed and included by the team.
“It wasn’t like I wanted to be smoking at the time, especially not with a bunch of people I didn’t know, but … they also weren’t really making an effort to include me in their conversations. So I thought it would help me loosen up, or help me be a part of that group somehow,” she said.
Like Kight, she felt she was put in a vulnerable position because she was unfamiliar with the campus and didn’t know how to get back to the residence hall she was staying in for the weekend.
“If I had wanted to leave at that point, I wouldn’t have been able to figure out a way to get home. I really did want to leave. I pretty much wanted to leave from the moment I got there,” she said.
A debater at the party offered to walk her home. At that point, she was both high and drunk, which made her very disoriented. She remembered him making a comment that she looked cold, then saying, “Let’s get you inside,” before leading her back to his room, which was in a different residence hall from the one she was staying in.
“I didn’t really know where we were. I sort of took him at his word,” she said. “We were in his room sitting on his bed. Before I really knew what was happening, he started making out with me and groping me.”
She told him to stop and to take her back to her room, which he did. She did not report the incident to anyone.
Hanson said he was unaware of any incidents where prospective students had been sexually assaulted, and said he would have reported them to the college immediately if he had known. He also said he was not aware of any instances of prospective students drinking with the team.
“We have always followed the instructions provided by the admission office for prospective students. I have always discouraged situations where high school students were exposed to alcohol,” he said in an email.
Although she ended up coming to Whitman, Seibert also never felt comfortable on the team or like she fit in to the team culture. She said there was a joking atmosphere on the team, and teammates regularly made sexist and racist comments and brushed them off. She recalled a teammate once referring to Arabs as “angry towel heads” during practice.
“I was brand new on the team so I didn’t want to be that girl who’s like, ‘Actually, you guys are being assholes right now.’ I was put in an uncomfortable position, so I didn’t say anything,” she said.
Seibert ultimately decided to quit the team a year after she joined.
Kight had a similarly negative experience with her first year on debate. She felt she was expected to hang out with other debaters constantly, and her desire to be involved in other activities on campus was viewed as a sign of her being insufficiently committed to the team. Although many debaters view the tight-knit nature of the team as a positive aspect of their debate experience, Kight said that atmosphere made it much harder for students who didn’t want to party or drink as much to participate.
“We couldn’t really band together because all of our reactions were to find friends elsewhere,” she said.
Eventually, Kight’s negative experiences and the team’s expectations led her to quit. She made her decision close to the end of her first year.
“I wasn’t going to be able to function with the kind of social life it seemed to require of me,” she said.
Responses to party culture
Hanson said he supports students who choose not to drink. In addition, he said the team has taken steps to curtail inappropriate use of alcohol. In the past, the team has had a policy which prohibits students and coaches from having more than two drinks in the evening while at debate tournaments.
Team members also have the opportunity to socialize at alcohol-free debate-sponsored events. When alcohol is present at these sponsored events, students are expected to follow the rules outlined in the Whitman Student Handbook.
“I sympathize strongly with the students who choose not to drink, as I do not drink alcohol. I lead by example, and I readily support students who have made this choice,” said Hanson. “Our program has discouraged excessive drinking at tournaments since I have been director.”
In September 2012, the college made changes to the two-drink policy to simply state, “Coaches are expected not to party with students and should always conduct themselves in responsible and appropriate ways.”
Hanson said that if he observes a violation of team policies, or if a student or coach notifies him of a concern, he has appropriate ways of dealing with the situation.
“The typical response is to address the particular situation and, where appropriate, to not allow the student to compete in the next tournament,” he said.
Kight’s and Seibert’s experiences were several years ago, and many current debate students interviewed for this article agreed that drinking was not specifically an aspect of debate culture, but rather part of college culture in general. Alumna Miranda Morton ’13, who debated on the parliamentary team for four years, was adamant that the team is not an exception to the Whitman norm.
“I think that college is a time when all young people find themselves in situations where they can experiment with alcohol or they can choose not to do that. At Whitman there are plenty of people who drink and plenty of people who don’t drink. That’s the same thing on the debate team,” she said.
Joki also believes that when criticizing the debate team, people often look at the way debaters behave at social events not actually sponsored by the debate team and then may see their individual actions as a reflection of the entire team.
“The difficulty I see lies in the administration’s failure to differentiate people’s actions as individuals and people’s actions as debaters. So I think that there is a conflation oftentimes that students, no matter what they do, are always debaters,” said Joki.
Morton emphasized that while some debaters do drink alcohol together, they also often find opportunities to socialize with one another without consuming alcohol.
“There is pressure on the team to spend time together, and that is to grow a community and to make sure we’re not together just in an academic setting, so that when we travel together, we know each other and feel comfortable with each other. That has nothing to do with the use of alcohol; in my view, it is often facilitated with things like dinners, movies or softball,” Morton said.
continue to part two
Whitman’s Title IX investigation into the debate team began in the spring of 2012 after the administration received a report that a Whitman assistant debate coach had sexually assaulted an assistant coach from another school at a tournament.
While Title IX, which was signed into federal law in 1972, is best known for requiring schools that receive federal funds to provide equal funding to athletic programs, its provisions reach far beyond the realm of athletics. The law states that no person should be subjected to discrimination at a federally funded education program based on sex. According to the Supreme Court, those provisions extend to prevention of sexual harassment at institutions governed by Title IX as well.
In a 2011 letter, the U.S. Department of Education reminded educational institutions that sexual misconduct falls under the purview of Title IX and that it is the job of each institution to investigate any claims of sexual misconduct as a part of its compliance with Title IX.
The same letter required schools to designate an employee as the Title IX coordinator, responsible for overseeing any investigations into complaints made under that statute and for rectifying any situations that make students feel unsafe. In response to this directive, Associate Dean of Students Clare Carson was appointed Whitman’s Title IX administrator during the summer of 2011.
The sexual assault case reported to Whitman involved Lindsay VanLuvanee, who was chaperoning the Pocatello High School Debate Team at the Whitman High School Debate Tournament in the fall of 2010. After hanging out with friends at Whitman, an assistant debate coach offered to give VanLuvanee a ride home. VanLuvanee ended up staying at this coach’s house, and she fell asleep watching television with him. VanLuvanee then woke up to the assistant debate coach sexually assaulting her.
VanLuvanee says that she chose not to report the incident to the Whitman administration or local authorities, and she actively hid it from Hanson because she had had a former unrelated, uncomfortable incident reporting a case of sexual assault to the police. However, someone later reported the event to the college without her knowledge or permission. VanLuvanee doesn’t know whether the person who reported it was a debater, a coach or someone else, or when the incident was reported.
When the investigation began in the spring of 2012, VanLuvanee was phoned for a conference call with a Title IX investigation board that asked questions regarding the event and how comfortable she felt reporting sexual assault to the Whitman administration. In addition, the board asked VanLuvanee if she felt that Hanson’s response to the incident was sufficient.
Concerns about procedure
VanLuvanee feels that the questions she was asked during her conference call with the Title IX board placed her in an uncomfortable position.
“Some of the questions they asked me felt very inappropriate. For example, a lot of the questions were focused on Jim, as opposed to the actual person in question or the event itself,” she said. “I felt like I was forced to place judgement on Jim and the team; it felt like the questions required more speculation than perspective and facts that I could offer.”
Other debate members were also called in to answer questions regarding the former assistant debate coach, as well as the general atmosphere of the team and Hanson’s role as debate team director.
Parliamentary debater and rising senior Paige Joki was also called in to speak with the Title IX board. She said that she had been told the college needed help regarding a hiring decision for the debate team. After she went in for questioning, the board told her the hiring decision had been made, but they had questions to ask about the assistant coach who had sexually assaulted VanLuvanee and about the team culture as a whole.
“I ultimately felt that when I was notified that I wasn’t in there for an employment decision, that I had been lied to,” she said. “I felt like they were using authority in a way that was inappropriate to begin with.”
Additionally, Joki felt the questions asked by the Title IX board were uncomfortable and accusatory toward Hanson and the team.
“There were a lot of intentionally leading questions to incriminate Jim unfairly,” she said. “If I said no to a question, I felt like they kept re-wording questions and pressing for a different answer.”
She spoke to Dean of Students Chuck Cleveland about her frustration with the types of questions she was asked. Cleveland confirmed that he spoke to two or three students who had concerns about the questions they were asked and the way the investigation was handled, and he discussed these frustrations with the board.
President George Bridges said he was unsure whether students were called before the board under false pretenses or whether such a practice was standard, since he was not directly involved in the investigation. Carson, who was directly involved, declined to comment on any portion of the investigation.
Nicole Seibert*, the debater who was sexually assaulted as a prospective student, was also involved in the investigation. She felt it was well conducted, and it allowed her to voice some of her concerns about the way she had been treated on the team.
“I have felt nothing but supported and heard by [the administration] in that process,” she said.
She told Carson about being sexually assaulted as a prospective student and said the board was receptive and sympathetic to her concerns.
Investigation follow-up
VanLuvanee was much less satisfied. Following the investigation, she said she never received a follow-up from the Whitman administration. She feels that the administration used her case to scrutinize Hanson and the debate team members’ decisions and actions.
“Since my involvement with the investigation, it caused me to feel a lot of guilt, because I feel that it was handled so poorly, and that it’s still being handled poorly,” said VanLuvanee. “But Jim has always assured me that no one has ill feelings towards me on the team, and he always made an effort to make sure that I was comfortable and safe.”
VanLuvanee also said she was unhappy because one of her main concerns after being sexually assaulted was whether she would have to interact with the coach in question at future debate events, including at the Whitman National Debate Institute (WNDI), where she was planning to work that summer. The administration was unable to answer that question for her.
“They told me that they could not disclose this at that time … Beyond that, I had to rely on hearsay from Whitman debaters and searching for his [the coach's] email address on emails that I would be getting about the WNDI,” said VanLuvanee.
VanLuvanee was not told who else was investigated, whether the board talked to the assistant debate coach or when the investigation was over. She was also not given access to the board’s final report on the investigation. During and after her conference call, she was not asked whether she wanted to press formal charges against the assistant debate coach.
Joki was also dissatisfied with the lack of follow-up she received and with the administration’s lack of clarity about what would be included in the investigation findings.
“I asked specifically what things I said would be in the final investigation report, because I was unsure whether it would be taken into context. None of the things were recorded … Our quotes would be seen as anonymous, but even then it’s like, ‘Look, if you’re going to use something I said, I should be able to check it,’” Joki said. “Title IX is a wonderful process that is supposed to empower people to speak up, but that was not the type of process that took place at this school in this circumstance.”
Following the investigation, staff at the 2012 WNDI were required to attend a four-hour sexual harassment training put on by Whitman staff members. VanLuvanee believes this was one result of the Title IX investigation but said the orientation made her and many of her other coworkers extremely uncomfortable. The training also used a hypothetical situation to demonstrate sexual harassment that appeared to be based on her sexual assault.
“I felt that it violated the confidentiality that was promised at the beginning of the interview that had happened, because they used an example from my interview without my consent,” said VanLuvanee. “It was triggering for me, because it was like ‘Hey, remember this one time that you were sexually assaulted on our campus? Well, we’re going to bring it up in the four-hour mandatory meeting.’ And then, it violated any sense of anonymity or privacy with it, because obviously it was in a room full of my peers that were very close to the situation, and it became apparent because people asked me about it after the fact.”
Bridges sympathized with student concerns, but denied that the administration had any agenda when questioning debaters.
“There was no attempt by the college to microanalyze the debate team and put Jim under scrutiny. Period. I also realize that within these investigations, the topics with which we must deal and the process itself is very difficult. Feeling uncomfortable and in an awkward position is very understandable, but federal law requires us to conduct the process in a very thorough way,” he said.
Bridges was unable to comment on any particular complaints about staff conduct during the investigation because he was not directly involved in it. Both Carson and Bridges declined to share any findings from the investigation or to answer questions about specifically what the investigation was looking for when questioning students.
Title IX and other laws do not prohibit the college from publicly disclosing this information, so long as the identity of complainants is private, but the college is not legally required to share any findings. Bridges cited a college policy of protecting the privacy of people involved in the investigation as the reason for not disclosing this information. He said the college plans to share findings from an independent review of the investigation in the next few months, though with whom they would be shared and in what form had not been decided.
Hanson also declined to comment on the investigation’s findings.
Calls for further investigation
In the wake of Hanson stepping down, 135 debaters, alumni and Whitman community members have signed a petition on Change.org asking the college to conduct an independent investigation into its Title IX investigation. The text of the petition is embedded below and states that “reflexively citing ‘privacy concerns’ is an insufficient response to serious questions regarding the adequacy of the College’s approach to Title IX complaints generally and Prof. Hanson’s removal specifically.”
Call for Investigation by WhitmanPioneer
In a May 17 email to debate community members that responded to these concerns, President Bridges noted that the college retained an independent attorney, Saundra Schuster, to “provide counsel on our work involving the debate program and related matters” over the past year.
Bridges’ Letter to Debate Alumni by WhitmanPioneer
“Given our commitment to comply fully with Title IX and our belief in the importance of the debate program to Whitman, we will seek a second opinion from an independent legal expert not affiliated with Ms. Schuster or her firm in order to evaluate our response to this and any other civil rights and employment law issues that arise,” he wrote.
In response, the concerned alumni group that drafted the letter plans to write a response. Alumna Jean Tobin ’92, a member of the group, said she was pleased to see the college open to outside investigation, but that alumni still had significant concerns.
“In his letter, President Bridges asserts the importance of following Title IX. We absolutely agree. Treating individuals equally and without discrimination is an important value held by the alumni, as well as Professor Hanson. Our concern is that the actions of the administration have not prioritized those values,” she wrote in an email. “We continue to have significant concerns about the way the College conducted the Title IX investigation of the debate program and Professor Hanson. We do not believe the investigation was respectful of victims’ rights and we do not believe it was a thorough investigation. We believe a full review is called for.”
continue to part three
Following last spring’s Title IX investigation, the debate team made a number of changes in response to concerns regarding team culture. One aspect of team culture addressed was the relationship between students and assistant coaches.
Assistant coaches are almost always recent graduates, often just a year removed from being Whitman students. Despite their closeness in age to members of the team, they are hired as members of Whitman’s instructional staff and are expected to conform to the same codes of conduct as other staff members.
Former debaters Kate Kight ’13, Ethan Robertson ’13, and Nicole Seibert* all said that during their time on the team, assistant coaches would regularly drink and party with team members. Although Director of Forensics Jim Hanson maintains that he does not tolerate this type of behavior, the team attends anywhere from 22 to 25 conferences per year, of which he personally attends 14 to 16. At other conferences, team members are entirely supervised by assistant coaches.
Kight acknowledged that the team’s culture may have changed during the three years since she left, and said the growing numbers of women and people of color on the team were a good sign of movement in the right direction. Still, she said Hanson was largely unaware of the problematic aspects of debate culture during her time on the team. While she generally felt he was supportive, she also didn’t feel that she could come forward with complaints about the culture of the team without being ostracized by other team members.
“I don’t think he ever saw the impact that the culture had on us,” she said.
Kight responded to debaters who have said that Hanson shouldn’t be held responsible for the problematic behavior of other students and assistant coaches.
“That’s fine until someone like me gets hurt and isn’t able to come forward … [The team] makes it really hard to come forward. They make it really hard for people to feel safe. That’s not the kind of school Whitman is,” she said.
Ultimately, she said Hanson is responsible for the overall atmosphere on the team, including the conduct of assistant coaches.
Seibert agreed, noting that an assistant coach was at the party she attended as a prospective student, and was drinking and smoking marijuana with students. She felt that Hanson should have been aware that the team was taking high school students to a party and considered that they would be put in a vulnerable position by not knowing their way around campus.
“That’s a huge, huge oversight and indicative of serious misjudgment,” she said.
Guidelines for coaches
In recent years, Hanson has coordinated with the administration to make various changes to the contract that assistant coaches are required to sign upon being hired. This year’s staff of assistant coaches was required to sign an updated version of the contract in January 2013, which is embedded below. Among various guidelines, the contract forbids coaches from partying or drinking with students.
Forensic Coach Duties and Philosophy Sheets by WhitmanPioneer
Hanson said he works directly with coaches throughout the year to provide guidance and training so that they will meet the college’s expectations for them.
“Once selected, I work with the college to ensure that coaches understand the school’s policies regarding staff,” he wrote in an email. “I lead by example, and I ensure that assistant coaches are aware of my personal expectations about how we work with and interact with team members, and I’ve done that for 21 years.”
President George Bridges felt the expectations about coaches not partying with students are reasonable, despite the fact that many assistant coaches were members of the debate team just months before they were hired as staff.
“I believe it’s totally realistic, and I believe that the assistant coaches are employees and staff of Whitman College and have to be held to the same high standards and expectations as other employees.”
He also said these responsibilities were clearly communicated to assistant coaches.
Rising sophomore Meritt Salathe, a member of the policy team, said the administration fails to see the benefits of social relationships between assistant coaches and team members. She said that coaches often help new Whitman debaters connect with other members of the national debate circuit.
“I think that it’s difficult when looking at debate from an outside perspective to figure out what a good relationship between students and assistant coaches is. Coaches have just graduated, so they’re still involved with the community. It makes for a better team community if debaters interact and hang out with the coaches. They can introduce you to people from other teams, and it makes an inclusive environment,” she said.
Debater Jean Erickson* also emphasized that because assistant coaches are often alumni of the debate team, many friendships between coaches and students developed when coaches were students themselves. She feels that the administration has unrealistic hopes for assistant coaches.
“I’ve been very close with several of the assistant coaches, and I think they’re an important part of building team dynamics. They’re not supposed to hang out with us, which is stupid. They do, though, and they’re an important part of building the team up,” she said.
Sean Mulloy, a rising senior policy debater who has been on the team for three years, pointed out that many faculty are able to drink with students who are 21 and over, yet assistant coaches are expressly prohibited from doing the same, which he sees as a double standard.
“They have to remember that we are adults and the coaches are adults,” he said.
Rising senior Ben Menzies, another policy debater who has been on the team for three years, also noted that rules for behavior regarding drinking are defined differently for assistant debate coaches than for most other faculty or staff on campus.
“At some level, I feel that attempts to regulate the lives of adults of age are not only pointless, but ethically dubious, especially when this level of scrutiny is not applied to any other position on campus … The way in which this standard seems to be applied to debate coaches, specifically, seems to me to be an exploitation of the fact that they don’t have a way to appeal any administrative decisions—they don’t have tenure,” he said.
Administrative relations with debate
In addition to expressing concerns about the administration’s treatment of assistant coaches, some debaters have been unhappy with the overall manner in which the administration handled their investigation into the team and displeased with some of the effects of these investigations.
Mulloy said Hanson implemented a number of new rules for the team during the past year in response to administrative concerns following the Title IX investigation. While he was happy to see problematic aspects of debate culture being addressed, Mulloy felt some of these rules were either overreaching or unnecessary, including one that prohibited the team from discussing sex at debate events. Mulloy also said that while some aspects of debate culture are problematic, the team has been excessively scrutinized compared to other campus programs such as varsity athletics.
“I think there’s been a higher level of scrutiny on the debate team than on other programs at the college,” he said.
Alumna Miranda Morton ‘13 said she fully understands any concerns the administration may have had in the past and believes action to change these concerns may have been necessary. However, she was unhappy overall with the solutions to these problems.
“Any of the investigations and preliminary sessions that have happened because of different problems of the debate team I [wholeheartedly] think were appropriate and positive. If there is turmoil on the team, I think it’s the team’s job and the administration’s job to try and find a way to fix that,” she said. “That being said, I don’t think the administration has handled trying to solve any of the problems of the team in an effective manner, or in a student-focused manner.”
Mulloy understood administrative concerns about debate culture, but emphasized the improvements made by the team. He said the culture revolves less around drinking and partying than it did when he started, and the current policy team is welcoming of new members.
“We don’t pressure our freshmen to do anything. We welcome them fully as team members,” he said.
Rising senior Paige Joki also noted that the team has become a lot closer and more inclusive in the past two years, in part because of Hanson’s efforts to make debate a safe space to talk about all issues. Hanson started a discussion on diversity and inclusivity in the debate community at the Whitman Swing Tournament in February 2013.
“[The discussion] really challenged me to think of the way our community operates, and to try to make improvements to those areas, to make sure other debaters of all backgrounds feel that they’re respected and appreciated in the community,” said Joki.
According to Joki, Hanson’s commitment towards issues of race, gender and sexuality has made the Whitman debate team overall more inclusive towards individuals of all backgrounds.
“Jim is one of the champions of inclusivity; he instills an ethic of acceptance in each one of his debaters and his students. In his classes, race, gender, sexuality are always at the forefront; we always consider social location … I can’t imagine someone more dedicated to understanding and enforcing these things,” Joki said.
Other debaters have also expressed frustrations with the fact that the administration seems to be focusing on past events and not on current debate culture.
“The administration needs to separate events of the past from the current conditions of the team. If there were problems in the past—especially legal problems in the past—those are not indicative of the climate and conditions of the debate team now,” said Morton. “Because it seems that the administration has very little knowledge of what’s going on with the team now, everything seems to relay back to old problems, which gets the debate team in cycles of blame.”
Morton reiterated that Hanson has been a leading proponent of the administration’s requests for changes to the debate team.
“Jim is an amazing liaison between the administration and the students. He was constantly working to implement the administration’s changes, but he faced challenges from his students who didn’t understand them. But I think he did a really excellent job of managing that,” she said.
Moving forward
Although Associate Dean of Students Clare Carson would not comment on the specifics of the Title IX investigation, she saw having a new full-time director as an opportunity to make the team more inclusive, noting that a full-time position would allow the coach to devote more time to addressing concerns.
In seeking a new director, Bridges hopes to find someone who can foster an inclusive environment.
“We also seek a director who will cultivate an environment in which students learn and develop through successful training and competition,” he wrote in an email. “As with all of our programs and teams, an essential ingredient of this environment is an atmosphere of respect that promotes the well-being and dignity of all students regardless of their gender, background and orientation, and that affords all participants equal opportunities to compete at the highest levels, advance intellectually and develop interpersonally.”
The debate team has met with the administration twice since Hanson’s resignation, and these discussions have largely been focused on creating an advisory group consisting of alumni, current debaters and a faculty member to provide input for a new director.
Menzies said he was happy with these plans for an advisory group, especially because he felt that current team members have more knowledge about debate and about the qualities of a good director than most administrators do. However, he is frustrated that choosing to involve the team more directly in the search for a new director was ever a question at all.
“While the conversations have been productive, as preliminary discussions can be, I’m very disappointed that we’ve seemed to have conversations on whether or not the team should be involved,” he said.
Morton would like to see a director who is a Ph.D. candidate at least, who has experience with debate and the administrative tools to book and plan trips for 20 or more people. She also stressed it would be a good idea either to hire an interim director or to set aside a year-long training period so that Hanson can work with the new director.
“When Jim took over as director of forensics from Bob Withycombe over 20 years ago, there was an entire year of transition, and that’s really important to maintaining the success of the debate team,” Morton said.
Debaters also hope more two-way conversation will occur between team members and the administration about hiring decisions and future administrative choices regarding the team.
“I feel that we’ve made some positive steps in reestablishing our relationship with the administration, but I still think that we have a long way to go in order to ensure that that relationship continues,” said Joki. “Like maintaining open lines of communication and ensuring that we have a staff next year.”
Menzies said in the past there have been conversations between the administration and individuals of the team or the team as a whole, but he feels the administration has not kept team members in the loop about changes to the team as a result of these conversations.
“In these conversations we were promised transparency. These conversations were followed by weeks, months of silence from the administration,” he said.
Some debaters hope communication between the administration and the team in future years can be focused more on positive reinforcement. Morton said most team interaction with the administration in the past year has been negative. Next year, she hopes there can be an acknowledgement of each other’s feelings and concerns.
“The administration has, if anything, in the students’ views, placed the students as the place to undue blame on the coaches and the students and make it harder for us to continue to be competitive and continue to learn and grow,” she said.
Hanson said he was heartened to see support from students and alumni and appreciated the call for administrative transparency with regard to the investigation.
“I personally believe in transparency and ensuring that our school and its programs follow ethical, professional and humane policies toward all faculty, staff and students. I’ve worked hard to create that ethos at Whitman, and I believe it is part of who we are as a community.”
*Due to debate’s tight-knit community and possible repercussions that could arise from being named, several sources requested to remain anonymous. Pseudonyms have been given to these sources.
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