September 2014
Columbia’s Capilano University, the administration seized a sculpture
caricaturing the university president on the grounds that it constituted
“harassment” of President Kris Bulcroft.
The Capilano
instructor who created the sculpture, George Rammell, said that the artwork,which
depictsBulcroftand her poodle as ventriloquist dolls wrapped in an American
flag, was removed from the university’s studio art building without his
knowledge on the night of May 7. When he discovered the disappearance the next
morning he said he was told by campus security officials that it had been
removed by order of the upper administration.
He subsequently
learned that the sculpture, titled Blathering On in Krisendom,had been
“partially dismantled” in the move, which raises concerns for him about the
possibility of damage: “It’s a solid welded sculpture with an acrylic polymer
casting over it. You can’t dismantle that; it’s one unit. Whatdoes that mean,
‘dismantled’?”
Two weeks have
passed andRammellstill doesn’t know; he doesn’t even know where the sculpture
is. The university administration has said that the sculpture will be returned
to him on the condition that it not be brought back to campus — a condition
that the president ofCapilano’sboard, JaneShackell, expressed
support for in a
statement[1] defending her decision to direct the removal of the sculpture, or, as she
called it, the “effigy.”
“The decision
to remove the effigy was not taken lightly, but rather was the result of
endeavoring to find the right balance among many competing
values,”Shackellwrote. She said
that while Capilano“is committed to
the open and vigorous discourse that is essential in an academic community, the
inherent value of artistic expression, and the rights to free speech and protest
that all Canadians enjoy,” it also has an obligation “to cultivate and protect a
respectful workplace in which personal harassment and bullying are prohibited.”
“I am satisfied
that recently the effigy has been used in a manner amounting to workplace
harassment of an individual employee, intended to belittle and humiliate the
president,”Shackellsaid in the statement. A universityspokeswoman said
thatShackell, rather than the president, would be speaking on behalf of the
university on this issue; Shackellwas not available for an interview on
Tuesday.
PresidentBulcrofthas come under heavy criticism for her decision last year to cut several programs[2], including the studio arts program, for which Rammellteaches, and
textile arts. British Columbia’s Supreme Court
ruled in April[3] that the Capilano administration had acted contrary to the province’s
University Act in making the cuts to courses and programs without seeking the
advice of theCapilanoSenate. The university is considering an appeal.
“The sculpture
was really made out of a need to respond to my feeling of being violated,”
said Rammell. “In Canada we used to be able to make caricatures of politicians
and they would have a good laugh over their morning coffee.”
Asked about the
board chair’s harassment allegations,Rammellsaid, “Art doesn’t harass. People
harass.”
“What they
don’t realize is they don’t have a right to control what faculty think and the
form we give to those thoughts on campus,” he said. “They’re supposed to be
encouraging intellectual rigor and deconstructive thinking, all those things
that make the university the valuable place it is. They’re not recognizing that.
I’m telling them I have every right to work on this on the campus in my studio.”
Sandra Seekins,
a member of the art history faculty atCapilano, wrote a letter[4] to the university’s boardtaking issue with Shackell’srationale for
confiscating the sculpture. “The action authorized by the Chair of the Board …
provides further proof that the people who suspended the Studio Arts and Textile
Arts programs have a minimal understanding of the role of art in our society and
no understanding of what is at stake in an anti-censorship position. The very
principles of a democracy that permits freedom of expression and free speech
have been disregarded as an inconvenient obstacle
to the
machinations
of governance,” she wrote.
Steven
C.Dubin, a professor of arts administration at Columbia University’s Teachers
College who studies art and censorship, described the Capilano
administration’s decision to remove the sculpture as “pathetic.”
“It sounds like
it was handled as badly as it could possibly have been handled. I think they
lost allcredibility when they levied workplace harassment. That’s absurd,”
Dubin said, noting that harassment usually implies a power differential in which
the harassed is the comparatively powerless figure.
“People who are
in the public as theuniver-sitypresident is and who make decisions that affect
a lot of people need to have a thicker skin and there needs to be a higher level
of tolerance for satire and caricature and so on.”
InsideHigherEd, May 21, 2014.
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