Woman takes a grant, is then called a hypocrite for criticizing university

If true, then this is a worrisome attitude for someone who offers scholarships to college students. Shouldn’t college kids be encouraged to make thoughtful dissents against the institutions they find themselves in?

Even more damningly, the administration seems to conflate “promoting civility” with “quashing dissent.” Over email, the current Coastal student told me, “I’ve been reluctant to write in the school newspaper and [be] critical thereof because students have warned me they’ve been called in by administration after publishing op-ed pieces.” CCU seems to believe that belonging to or benefiting from an organization obligates one not to voice any criticisms — even when such criticisms could save students from harm. One particularly egregious example of this: the Coastal student attends the university on scholarship that’s funded, in part, by a donor from CCU’s Women in Philanthropy and Leadership organization (WIPL). Interestingly enough, WIPL is run by the university president’s wife, Terri DeCenzo. “I am critical of the organization because it has such a privileged, white, upper-class, Christian scaffolding,” the Coastal student told me in an email. Such criticism is, of course, very unwelcome.

After she commented on a post on WIPL’s Facebook criticizing CCU’s lack of communication and transparency re: campus assault, her post was deleted. She soon received an email from Ms. DeCenzo admonishing her for her lack of gratitude. It read, in part:

I am offended and disappointed at the hypocrisy you have demonstrated by your negative comments and communications via social media and otherwise. There were numerous qualified students who needed and deserved the financial support we have given.

I hope that you receive this email as an honest attempt to help you learn and grow in the realities of the real world and not put down organizations and peoples without evaluating all information.
There is no “hypocrisy” in accepting a college scholarship and criticizing that college’s administration for being intentionally opaque and negligent in its policies. You’re not obligated to love and support (or at least quietly tolerate) everything your university does. And yet: “Every time I say something, within 24 hours I get a message over email or Twitter that the administration would like to meet with me,” our source says. Wow, if only the administration spent half as much time combating rape culture as it did trying to hush up its critics.

It’s quite evident that colleges can’t simultaneously view sexual assault as a serious and pressing safety issue and a “reputational concern.” It’s impossible to fix something without first acknowledging that it’s broken, and as long as university administrations fear that they’ll take a PR hit for publicly recognizing that their sexual assault protocols are inadequate, then it’s unlikely that effective reform will occur. Pointing out a hostile sexual environment on campus isn’t an attempt to “embarrass the College,” nor is it some kind of offense. It’s part of a concerned effort to keep college students safe, which is good because that should be a priority for administrations. For instance, if the CCU administration had seen the failed Tea & Ethics panel — or the “COASTAL BEATS THOSE HOSE” headline, or our source’s critical Facebook comment — as learning moment, an indication of how uninformed some of their students are about the nature of sexual assault, they could have come up with an effective and instructional response. That would have been a true promotion of civility — not to mention great PR! What Coastal did instead (and what Oxy did as well) by trying to intimidate and silence students and faculty wasn’t civil: it was censorious and dangerous.