UBC’S SEMESTER OF TROUBLES
Campus controversy grows as novelist suspended over ‘serious allegations’
• It has been a strange, unsettling semester at the University of British Columbia, one of Canada’s largest post- secondary institutions, where nearly 60,000 students take courses on a busy main campus surrounded by forests and water, now shrouded in mysteries.
The school’s president, Arvind Gupta, resigned under curious circumstances in August, just 13 months into a five- year appointment. No explanations were provided to faculty and students; into the vacuum rushed rank speculation, including suggestions of racism. The impacts have been hard felt. The chairman of UBC’s board of governors, a banker and major benefactor, was caught in the con- troversy. He resigned last month.
The gloom on campus lifted Tuesday, when UBC announced it had surpassed an ambitious fundraising goal, collecting more than $1.6 billion in donations from business groups, individuals and alumni.
The school is apparently flush with cash. Cause for some celebration, at last.
But misgivings returned Wednesday, when UBC’s dean of arts released a terse memo noting that Steven Galloway, an associate professor and chairman of the university’s acclaimed creative writing program, has been temporarily suspended from duties with pay, pending an internal investigation into “serious allegations.”
The university will not explain what sort of allegations have led to Galloway’s suspension; however, the dean’s memo encouraged anyone concerned about their “safety and well being” on campus to contact UBC’s counselling services and school authorities.
Galloway, 40, did not respond to an interview request Thursday. An award- winning novelist, he has spent his entire academic career at UBC, enrolling as a student in its creative writing program in the 1990s.
The Kamloops, B.C., native found some early success, selling to a publisher his graduate thesis, a novel called Finnie Walsh. After graduating with a master’s degree, he found a position as a part- time UBC writing instructor.
Galloway was eventually made an associate professor at UBC and last year was named chairman of its creative writing program. He has published four novels including an “international best-seller” called The Cellist of Sarajevo. His latest novel, The Confabulist, was re- viewed in the National Post last year and was hailed as “a stunning achievement.”
Since his suspension was announced Wednesday, some of Galloway’s friends and colleagues have come to his defence. Novelist Angie Abdou suggested on Twitter that speculators and rumour-mongers had best keep it zipped. “There has been no investigation into the Steven Galloway allegations, so why don’t we tweet what we *do* know about him? Smart, funny, kind,” she wrote.
Fair advice, but UBC may have already cluttered things up. As of Wednesday, Galloway had reportedly not been told what the “serious allegations” were about. The absence of any information — beyond loaded references to student safety — in the school’s memo means assumptions will be made. Some will be false, and those will be difficult to erase.
But this is how UBC seems to operate. In August, the university chose to announce Gupta’s resignation as president in a vague, late afternoon news release that went like this: “The University of British Columbia’s Board of Governors re- gretfully announced today that President Arvind Gupta has resigned to return to the pursuit of his academic career.”
That didn’t satisfy many faculty members, staff and students, nor taxpayers who help fund the place and felt they deserved to know why Gupta had abruptly left.
Jennifer Berdahl, a professor with UBC’s Sauder School of Business, raised questions on a personal blog. She speculated Gupta had “lost a masculinity contest among the leadership at UBC, as most women and minorities do at institutions dominated by white men. President Gupta was the first brown man to be UBC president. He isn’t tall or physically imposing.”
Berdahl soon received a phone call from UBC board chairman John Montalbano, who said her blog post had upset him, very much. Berdahl blogged again, claiming she’d been pressured to shut up.
UBC hired a lawyer to investigate; her conclusions were made public last month. Berdahl’s academic freedom had been compromised, the lawyer decided. As a result, Montalbano quit.
Such a confusing episode. Matters still haven’t been cleared up. Now another mystery has left people shaken on campus; they’ll just have wait for the next penny to drop.