An example of retaliation
A fear of retaliation is, almost every time, the reason people cite when I ask them why they are afraid of speaking their mind about any given subject at Central. Before I go into the various ways in which CWU staff and faculty have shared with me why they fear potential retaliation, I want to talk about an instance where I myself have seen what I would consider retaliation, and its effects. Earlier in my time here, there was someone who spoke up about what I would consider to be a minor campus issue. After they did, I didn’t hear from them for quite some time. I later found out, while reporting on an unrelated incident, that it was because they had been effectively barred by both their boss and a member of university administration, with the threat of transfer or termination, from ever speaking out
again.
I met with them in private again last spring to talk about the situation, and they were visibly fearful the entire interaction, constantly looking around to make sure nobody saw them talking to me. To this day they fear speaking their mind, and even more so speaking with student media. One staff member echoed a sentiment about a fear of retaliation in an interview I had with them for an article about policy at Central. “It’s very hard to prove retaliation, but a lot of staff share the same sentiment. It is widely known not to speak up. Staff prepare for backlash even just to speak up in interviews,” they said. I have had multiple staff and faculty members describe their fear as not being part of the “united front” that Central has asked them to participate in. Oftentimes, their concepts of retaliation are abstract, just the loose idea that by sharing their thoughts, they would be open to potential punishment, whatever it may be. The most common fear I’ve heard expressed is what I would describe as career stagnation. The idea being that by speaking out they would lose future career potential at Central, never being able to achieve promotions and while not having been directly punished, they would effectively be stagnating themselves to whatever position they currently hold. I’ve also had staff describe retaliation to me as increased scrutiny on their departments. For example, one person described how the buildings they work on started to get more inspections, and the inspections got harsher in their assessments. In turn, their inspection scores went down. Because of that the university can give the staff warnings, eventually write-ups, and then they can terminate them for cause. Staff have also described other forms of retaliation they say they could envision happening to them at CWU, such as being transferred to a non-unionized position, or having their hours either reduced or moved to situations that no longer work for them. I reached out last spring and fall to various staff and faculty who originally shared these experiences with me about commenting on this story, but unanimously they expressed that their fears of retaliation outweighed their want to talk about this topic that has caused them strife. Despite their personal fears, they affirmed to me that this story is something they would like to see published.
Culture over time
A key question that has come up again and again in my conversations is when did this perceived culture of fear originate at CWU? Staff that have been with the university for longer periods of time have alleged to me that a culture of fear is not new at Central, but that it has gotten worse in recent years. One staff member in a management role alleged to me that when Central went online during the pandemic, there were weekly HR meetings hosted virtually where staff, faculty and students could ask questions anonymously in the chat box. During those meetings, anonymous staff would share “hard” questions that they had wanted to ask but never felt they could. Eventually, CWU changed the rules of the virtual meetings so that questions could no longer be posted anonymously, and after that change was made, according to the staff member I spoke to, almost all of the hard questions stopped rolling in. If people in the CWU community seemed hesitant to speak out, their concerns were reinforced by an email that was sent out Jan. 24, 2025, by previous Vice President Andrew Morse. It asked anyone speaking to any media to go first through David Leder, associate director of strategic communications at Central. The email was a reminder of Central’s university relations policies, and in it he stated their goal was to ensure “that everyone speaking on behalf of the university is disseminating information that is both accurate and consistent.” Since that email was released, our reporters have consistently faced challenges in scheduling interviews and I personally have heard from a few different professors that the email reaffirmed their preexisting fears of speaking out, and furthered fears of retaliation. This is not to say, however, that CWU’s media relations department has made it harder for us to get sources. In fact, both David Leder and Rune Torgersen, marketing and communications coordinator writer, have consistently worked to make themselves available to us as needed, coordinate interviews and help with the progress of stories.
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