Bishop Sisk, Chair of the Board of Trustees of General Theological Seminary has posted a letter to the alumi/ae of GTS. The Association of Theological Schools accreditation Commission visits General Seminary this week as well:
To: The Rev. Dr. R. Scott White
Members of the Alumni Executive Committee
Alumni/ae of The General Theological SeminaryFrom: The Rt. Rev. Mark Sisk
November 20, 2014
Thank you for the thorough report of your meeting with Bishop Shin on November 5, 2014, received on November 19th. I deeply appreciate the obvious love you have for General, especially during this difficult time of both crisis and possibility.
Please know that the Executive Committee (EC) and Board of Trustees hear you. We are painfully aware that this has not always been evident by our prior response, or lack thereof, to you as a group. For that we apologize. As a way of explanation, though not excuse, we were overwhelmed and blindsided by the faculty letters to us dated September 17th and September 25th and by the public campaign which immediately followed.
Prior to receipt of the letters, the EC knew there were some serious ‘communication issues’ between the faculty and Dean through a phone call made by two faculty members to a board member who is not on the EC. The essence of that conversation was conveyed to me. In turn, I raised the issue with both the Dean and Prof. Good. I asked them to address this issue between the two of them directly. I received no indication from either party that this conversation was not going to happen. In addition, one faculty member expressed unhappiness with the Dean to an EC member in a private conversation, but it was not shared with the EC or Board until after September 20th, as it was believed to be a private communication. Nothing approaching the gravity of the situation was shared prior to the letter of September 17th.
The Board had no mechanism in place to respond to an internal crisis of the proportion that rapidly unfolded on social media and with our alums, students, faculty, staff, and many interested parties. When I received your emails, it was along with 300 other emails or more, for which I was ill-equipped to deal. As I said to you earlier in the month, I am deeply sorry for this failure to communicate and promise to do all in my power to see that this breach of communication, and therefore trust, does not occur again.
The Board’s mandate to the Dean was a simple one – close the $3 million per year operating budget shortfall while at the same time putting in place a shared vision and mission that is both sustainable and viable. Simple, yet very complex to execute. For General to remain viable and vibrant, major changes must be made that involve hard decisions and programmatic change. That was and is the Board’s mandate to Dean Dunkle.
In order to execute rapid decisions that must be made in a climate of financial uncertainty, the Board out of necessity, empowered the EC to act between board meetings. Without the ability to be nimble, the severe financial difficulties of the past would have repeated themselves to the detriment of all – faculty, students, alumni and the Episcopal Church as a whole.
That being said, the Executive Committee did not and would not have acted in isolation from the full Board on the recent decision regarding acceptance of faculty resignations. Before the EC acted, a full Board conference call was held in which an overwhelming number of board members expressed their agreement with the EC’s proposed action. Without that overwhelming support, the EC was not prepared to act, even though, according to the bylaws, they had the authority to do so.
The GTS bylaws were written following nine months of Board study with former InTrust President Dr. Douglas Lewis, and were unanimously approved at the May 2014 Board meeting. They were discussed with faculty present and were immediately posted on the GTS website, following approval in October of the minutes of the May Board meeting.
Your report raises many helpful and salient points which we hope to address as we work together toward reconciliation, but without further delay we would like to address your concerns regarding legalities. As the body with fiduciary responsibility for General Seminary, when we receive a letter containing numerous legal phrases and therefore legal ramifications, we have no choice but to respond very carefully to protect the institution.
In immediately addressing the clear legal concerns raised by the eight signatory faculty in their September 17th letter, we believed and still believe, we properly addressed the important legal issues that they had raised. The EC, on behalf of the Board, promptly authorized a thorough investigation of the allegations against Dean Dunkle. The highly regarded independent law firm of Covington & Burling conducted the investigation; graciously they donated their time pro bono. Many hours of investigatory interviews were conducted with essentially the entire faculty (with the exception of Dr. Mullin), many seminary staff, a number of students and the Dean. Reams of documents were reviewed. Their investigation found that the most egregious allegations regarding alleged statements made by the Dean were uncorroborated and legally deficient.
The second letter from the eight faculty dated September 25th, with its additional and overt legal language, placed the Board in an even more difficult position. This letter essentially forced a legal response. It did so by insisting that all future communication be conducted through their (unnamed) legal representative. Further, concurrent with the arrival of that letter, I received another, previously unmentioned and unpublished letter, from the attorney representing the eight faculty. That letter was exceedingly hostile; there was simply no ignoring its clear legal threat.
With all of this being said, the returning faculty, the remaining faculty, the Dean, the Board of Trustees, alums and staff have all been called to a reconciliation process: the returning faculty, the Board and the Dean have formally committed themselves to the process.
Our ultimate hope is in God, with whom all things are possible. We submit ourselves to this process and to the growth and learning that can occur through it for the sake of the institution we all love.
We look forward to working with you.
In Christ,
The Rt. Rev. Mark Sisk
Chair, Board of Trustees
The General Theological Seminary
More on accreditation here.
Photo Credit: Randy OHC/Flickr CC (http://bit.ly/1ryPA8o)
posted by Ann Fontaine