College Hall, Vermont College of Fine Arts, Wikipedia image
Faculty and students at the Vermont College of Fine Arts are struggling to balance freedom of expression with emotional sensitivity in the wake of a controversy over the public reading of a sexually violent story at the college last January.
At a New Year’s Eve event, faculty member David Jauss read an unpublished work of fiction that featured a graphic, violent rape scene.
Some members of the audience, made up of program faculty and students, were upset by the reading because they were not warned of its graphic nature. They say they felt they could not vacate the room as a senior faculty member read a graphic description of a rape scene because school protocol discourages people from leaving in the middle of a reading.
Jauss’ reading, which occurred during an annual MFA in Writing residency, has sparked a heated debate at the arts college about whether audiences should be warned ahead of time about readings that could “trigger” emotional reactions from victims of violence.
Immediately after the reading, several students and faculty, including some who say they have experienced sexual violence or other trauma, said the story had a negative impact on them.
Three female faculty in the MFA in Writing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts resigned in connection to Jauss’ reading that night and what they view as an inadequate response from the college’s administration.
Thomas Greene, the president of the Vermont College of Fine Arts, said the administration cannot discuss personnel issues.
Tom Greene of the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Courtesy photo
“We’re a graduate fine arts college,” Greene said. “Art sometimes will provoke, and it will cause complicated feelings and responses to it, and I think that’s OK. At the same time, I think we have an obligation to make sure this is a safe environment for students. We’re going to make it very clear to people that they should feel free to leave any lecture or reading. That’s come out of this discussion.”
He stressed that no students have left the program over questions about the college’s handling of the matter.
The reading
Jody Gladding, a well-respected poet and a longtime MFA faculty member, is one of the instructors who left the college earlier this year.
Gladding recalls that when Jauss got up to read, he said that he had not read the story in public yet, and something to the effect that it was probably a good thing, because he might have lost his job. He meant it as a self-deprecating joke, that the story was “not up to par.”
“He proceeded to read a very graphic rape story in which a female doctor leaves her clinic, is described in pretty unattractive terms, middle-aged, overweight, not described as a sex object in any way (and) is followed,” Gladding said. “She stops to get something at the store, and gets back in her car and there’s someone in her back seat with a gun saying to her to drive. It switches back and forth between the mentality of the attacker and the woman. He forces her to go to the lot of an abandoned development and rapes her. It’s a graphically described rape scene. She wakes up and puts on her clothes.”
Jody Gladding resigned as an instructor in the MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Courtesy photo
Gladding sat in front of the room for the reading, and later she heard that several members of the audience had left the room in tears.
“What I heard was there was general outrage and outcry in the dorms afterward,” she said. “The next morning, a student reached out to me at breakfast, a new student, basically, like ‘What the f*** was that?’ Basically if that is what happens here, I’m leaving the program, something has to be done.”
Gladding said she was placed on probation for speaking out in support of students and staff who were upset about the reading and then resigned.
“I can’t work under such threats. I can’t teach for an institution so bent on denying the message of this winter’s residency and silencing the messengers,” Gladding wrote in a letter that was posted on an alumni-created website
that documents the chain of events.
Visiting faculty member Tracie Morris, a New York-based experimental poet and African-American writer, also resigned in protest.
Morris was shocked by the New Year’s Eve reading.
“I was in shock,” Morris said. “I thought, ‘I can’t believe what I am listening to.’ It was like the bell was tolling, but it wasn’t a good thing,” she said. “And then I gave it a moment, I was like, ‘Wait a minute …’ You try to be deliberate and you try not to shoot from the hip. I just left and I walked quietly back to my little room and I was like, ‘What?’”
Morris said she and the other two writing faculty who resigned “were sort of relied upon [by the college] to expand, not just identify, aesthetic diversity” in the program.
Tracie Morris resigned as an instructor in the MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Courtesy photo
The word “diversity,” according to Morris, was ultimately applied by the administration to the fictional description of a rape.
“The administration actually took that term and said that the guy that was reading the rape story was representing ‘aesthetic diversity,’” Morris said. “Violent rape and misogyny is not expressed in every aspect of culture.”
Morris quit three weeks after the reading.
“I can say in a general sense the reason I resigned is because I didn’t feel that I was supported as an experimental woman of color who was recruited to bring diversity to VCFA,” Morris said.
Jen Bervin, also a member of the MFA in Writing poetry faculty, resigned at the end of the semester in April because she didn’t feel supported by the college.
“They’ve sent clear public and private messages to the community that not all members are safe, welcome, or worthy of respect,” Bervin said. “That is not a learning environment I can ethically participate in.”
VCFA response
While Thomas Greene, the college president was willing to be interviewed for this story, neither Jauss, the author of the story in question, nor Louise Crowley, director of the MFA in Writing Program, would be interviewed for this article.
An outside mediator was brought in during the summer writing residency in July to discuss the controversy with faculty and whether “trigger warnings” should be considered at VCFA, Greene said. At some colleges, students are warned in advance about material that may be disturbing. Increasingly, “trigger warnings” are becoming part of a national debate in academia.
Greene said he deliberately didn’t attend the mediation session because he felt his presence would suppress open discussion.
Andrea Beltran, a poet and recent MFA graduate, said the July 2 meeting with the mediator was disappointing.
She said Greene’s absence from the session with the mediator was glaring, “not just to me, but numerous people in the room.”
Beltran said the meeting focused on the broader topic of censorship more than on the incident.
Beltran believes there is a simple way to advise people about potentially upsetting content that would be simple, like a movie warning.
“The following reading is going to include all of these things,” said Beltran. “It’s no different than going out to a movie, and saying, ‘OK, I didn’t know this was going to be in the movie, and I think I will leave now.’”
Simon Phillips, also a recent MFA graduate, said men, too, were upset about the reading and how it hurt people.
Phillips said he believes the victims have been blamed in how the college has handled the situation, and he hopes VCFA will make institutional changes to be more sensitive going forward.
Greene said the college is taking seriously what happened and working to find a way to address concerns, without censoring artistic freedom.
This is not the first time a reading — by a student or faculty member — has led to upset, said Greene, but it is the most vocal, deep and long-lasting period of reaction.
‘Why didn’t you leave?’
A few days after the New Year’s Eve reading, there was an unusually well-attended town hall meeting at VCFA, in which the Jauss’ reading became a bone of contention. Administrators told staff and students they could have left the reading if it upset them.
The suggestion that people should have walked out, said trauma survivor and recent MFA graduate Isobel O’Hare, “Is the same discussion that takes place for women who have been in abusive relationships. ‘Why didn’t you just leave?’ There is a feeling of paralysis that comes over you; it’s not that simple. People can’t just leave. When you’re reliving the experience, you’re just stuck there,” she said.
O’Hare said Jauss, whom she described as “actually very beloved, like a grandpa, he’s a lovely person,” attended the town hall meeting.
“He had tears in his eyes; he felt like maybe he did something wrong. He just sat there and listened (and) did not say a word.”
Gladding, who was also at the town hall meeting, said, “It was an opportunity for the program to evaluate that aspect of itself, and in my opinion, that opportunity was wasted. It could have been over by now.”
Dawn Haines, an alumna of the MFA program who was the head graduate assistant at this summer’s residency, defended the author.
“What I understand about Dave’s story is that he had a dear friend who was violently raped and he’d long been trying to write in response,” Haines said. “I know he is completely undone by the aftermath. I think many people do read for shock value. Dave Jauss isn’t one of them.”
Faculty member Betsy Sholl said, “The story was written out of empathy, in an attempt to understand such violence from the victim’s point of view, to understand what another’s experience might be. If it was disturbing, it is because it was well written and created a sense of that experience — because violence is disturbing.”
Steps taken
VCFA has created a new Committee for Artistic Freedom and Sensitivity to address concerns about the New Year’s Eve incident.
John Abernathy, a recent MFA graduate, was appointed to the committee and defended VCFA’s response to the uproar. He said the concerns were heard, and steps are being taken, but for some students, those steps are taking too long.
Abernathy said a vocal minority of students and graduates have “continued a divisive and negative campaign of partisan derision online.”
Ellen Lesser, faculty chair for the writing program, said the school is addressing the trigger concerns.
“We are sharing and airing our views and taking this as yet another chance to grow stronger, wiser and more compassionate — together,” Lesser said.
Greene, the college president, said the fact the author wrote a story does not make him the voice of his characters, nor guilty of their crimes.
“What I have said to people about this is it’s not my job to ask for a faculty member to apologize for their artwork,” said Greene. “I can’t speak to why David didn’t choose to apologize. He read a piece of fiction. And it’s fiction,” he stressed. “We live in a country that’s had a history of banning books.”
Greene said, “We are trying to figure out what the best solution is that doesn’t compromise the overarching principle of academic freedom and individual expression that we cherish above all things.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Public reading of a fictional description of a rape sparks debate over freedom of expression at arts college.
