A Belated Response to a Libelous Tale: Jezebel, Student Press, and the Intentional Misrepresentation of Material Facts

These notes are provided in response to a libelous and professionally damaging story which appeared in Jezebel on April 7, 2016. They are intended to correct and supplement the record about the discontinuation of funding for The PauwWow which was and is the student newspaper of Saint Peter's University in Jersey City, New Jersey.

The student staff of The PauwWow published a "special issue" of the newspaper for Saint Valentine's Day (February 14, 2016). No sooner did the issue appear than complaints began to pour into the Offices of the President and Provost from mortified students, parents, faculty, staff and trustees. 

The Jezebel story paints the Provost (me, at the time) as the sole villain in a story which bears little resemblance to the truth. The Provost was not the only person who raised serious concerns about the quality and direction of the student newspaper after the publication of the Valentine's Day issue. 

The Valentine's Day issue was the topic of an extended discussion at the level of the President's Cabinet. During that meeting the President ordered the Provost to "shut them [the newspaper] down and make them cry." It was never the intention of the Provost to do either. 

The editor, Olivia Monahan, was called before a full meeting of the Student Government Association. Several students in attendance pointed out to Ms. Monahan that the newspaper appeared to be advocating unsafe sexual practices. Ms. Monahan provided no satisfactory response to that or any other criticisms of thew newspaper or her editorship. 

It was Saint Peter's University's Student Government Association that soon after defunded the student newspaper and not the Provost. The student newspaper did not update their charter or by-laws for years. The faculty advisor to the newspaper, Ernabel Demillo, took only partial responsibility for that and laid the bulk of the onus on several generations of student editors, but only behind closed doors. 

Student leaders of the newspaper did not participate in student governance and ignored repeated entreaties from the Office of the Dean of Students to update the newspaper's handbook, charter and by-laws for years. 

The Jezebel story also fails to note that Fr. Rocco Danzi, SJ was in attendance at the Provost's meeting with the newspaper staff and faculty advisor to the newspaper. Fr. Danzi serves the University as VP for Mission and Ministry. The Jezebel story is based entirely upon the testimony of the newspaper's former editor whose version is both unreliable and incomplete.

The Provost was informed by the Director of Communications and University Legal Counsel that he was not permitted to respond to Jezebel's requests for comment.  When the story first appeared, dozens of students commented on the story online and offered facts which were at variance with Ms. Monahan's version of events. These comments, which were overwhelmingly supportive of both the Provost and the steps taken by the Student Government Association, were scrubbed from the story by Jezebel because they called the veracity of the story into question.

Nowhere in the Jezebel story does the author disclose that she had a prior personal and professional relationship with Olivia Monahan. 

The Provost never told the newspaper's masthead staff that they were "bad writers." The Provost told the students that their lack of copy-editing and proofreading was making them appear to be bad writers. There's a difference.

After Olivia Monahan stormed out of the meeting in the Provost's Office, the two other student editors left as well. Shortly thereafter, Professor Ernabel Demillo told the Provost the following:

1.  Demillo was almost denied tenure because members of the University's Promotion and Tenure Committee informed her that the consistently poor quality of the student newspaper, over many years, did not reflect well upon her record of service to the University. 

2.  Demillo admitted to the Provost that she was never "hands on" with the newspaper because of her other professional commitments as a broadcast journalist. It was Demillo herself who repeatedly used the words "neglect" and "negligence" to describe the quality of her faculty advisement of the newspaper.

3.  Demillo expressed relief (her word) when she was informed that she would be given a new assignment. That assignment was to create a digitally based production facility for student video and broadcast work. The assignment included released time and a stipend.

4.  Demillo expressed gratitude to the Provost for her new assignment. Demillo never raised the issue of student free speech during or after her meeting with the Provost. 

5.  Demillo only became a "free speech champion" after resentful colleagues bullied the President into stripping her of the course release time and stipend which he, the President, authorized the Provost to confer in the first place. 

"The Clearing in the Woods" by L. E. Sissman

Behind this cabin, children, is an oak,
The nearest of the circumstantial ring
That stands and counts its rings and keeps its score
In hundreds, children, hundreds, just beyond
The picket of our eyes both day and night.
Look out this window at the clearing: it
Is daytime, and its space is limitless.
Look out this window, children, now that night
Has lain among us: nothing, you can see,
Spreads all around us in its unknit skeins.
Yet there are oaks, their torsos rife with rings
Begot of waiting, just beyond our ken,
Beyond the bourne of consciousness, where we
Lay down our senses on that unnamed day
When those oak sentries let one pass, and he
Comes straight across the clearing to take one
Of us back of beyond. No, it is true:
I know because my father told me so,
And one day, to insure that I believed
What he had said, and to preserve the state
Of things as they must be -- the cabin, then
The clearing, then the woods -- one came for him.