Every whistleblower takes a chance. And every whistleblower knows that reporting the covered-up bad news may not “land” with anyone or be taken seriously, perhaps officially smothered at the start. But what makes all whistleblowers (up on that high reckless wire) the most daring actors-of-principle – is retaliation. Retaliation shows up sooner or later, in one form or another.
Witness what happened to Cindy Gilbert, a registered nurse at the student health center on the University of Southern California campus. Nurse Gilbert, after observing the longtime sexually predatory behavior of a health center gynecologist, Dr. George Tyndall, observing his violation of protocols in his abusive treatment of female student patients – tried to report this aberrant behavior to her superiors, but got nowhere. Then she reached out to the Title IX agency on campus, the Office of Equity and Diversity a.k.a. the OED - and met with similar indifference, though a half-hearted investigation ensued. In 2013, the investigation was closed for “insufficient evidence of “any university policy violation.” Gilbert persisted, her reporting growing more urgent. She was backed up by twenty-five years of student complaints about Dr. Tyndall, including staff discovery of his collection of photographs of patients’ genitals.
As a last resort, Gilbert reported Tyndall to the USC Relationship and Sexual Violence and Prevention Services: the rape crisis center. The center staff listened to her– and agreed to help her. Then someone anonymous reached out to the LA Times.
The Los Angeles Times followed up about Tyndall -- and Gilbert’s whistleblowing - and ultimately its reporters won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing the rogue gynecologist – along with the USC administration and its refusal to act on those years of appalling reports.
When Tyndall’s victims brought lawsuits against USC, its administrators paid a billion dollars to avoid the negative publicity of going to court –despite its phalanx of lawyers. A billion dollars was the highest pay-out to sexually-abused victims recorded. Not even Michigan State with the same patterns of “denial, inaction and “information suppression” re sexual assault (MS State in similarity had accepted a 2014 investigation of Larry Nassar by the school’s Title IX office that exonerated him) paid as much to victims – and Michigan State’s administrators were charged, including a university dean, later arrested.
Cindy Gilbert was promised a promotion for her role in bringing Tyndall to justice. But that promotion never happened.
John Manly, a lawyer who represented Tyndall’s victims in court said the following: “And the institution did nothing to stop it. They made excuses, they ignored whistleblowers.”
Yet no administrators were brought into court to defend their lack of action on the student victims’ behalf. Instead they began to retaliate against Cindy Gilbert.
She told the LA Times reporter, Paul Pringle, (whose recent book, Bad City provides a history of scandals and cover-ups by USC’s administration) that she gradually was ostracized, a slow-moving cancellation. Pringle notes that she was now viewed “as a troublemaker, a loudmouth” – she had embarrassed the administration by her ethical stance. Her promotion “reward” was rescinded. Her work came under criticism, her supervisory responsibilities gradually taken away. Representatives of H.R. insisted on a meeting with her, during which she was accused of having spoken inappropriately to a co-worker. Cindy Gilbert recognized the cancellation-in-progress. Eventually, she was forced to resign.
If a whistleblower believes that a reward is coming her way, as promised by an administration that has already proven itself to be corrupt, the nature of the “reward” may prove shocking. An institution that retains power over a whistleblower after its exposure as wrongdoer -- finds a way to express its “gratitude” to the outspoken in the following way – ostracization as a means of insuring future silence.
I would never compare myself to the heroic Cindy Gilbert, yet I was aware, even before I was hired by USC, that this was an institution that would protect itself from revelations about the obvious wrongs on its campus. And what it might do to “big mouths”.
Its own bylaws offered insight into how it might handle nonconformist “reporters”. USC claimed that it was not a university, but rather, as per its bylaws, “a corporation that may refer to itself as a university”. This indicated the manner in which an historically-autonomous faculty would be reduced to cowed employee status by “H.R.” tactics based on the “rules” of corporate lawyers.
The “traditional” university, ideally, with its self-governing faculty, would have relied on free thought, debate and critical insight and its own “in house” adjudication to resolve differences – a corporation offers no such recourse, though sham faculty-representative bodies are all appearance and no power.
Any employee acting in a manner threatening to the corporate bottom line –walked a dangerous path.
Am I exaggerating? Here are some thoughts. I moved from Manhattan with my actor husband in 1982. We both loved New York City – but I was pregnant with our daughter and we’d decided to raise her in Los Angeles. Mostly.
I had not intended to apply for a teaching job. David was a successful actor, but this meant he was gone a lot on location, I often felt like a single mother. Still, around 1986 or 1987, when I was offered a lectureship in poetry at USC, I accepted the job. I missed teaching, as it turned out. I’d taught in several graduate programs from Columbia to NYU to the Iowa Writers Workshop – and on Riker’s Island - and I’d authored several books, gathering some awards and prizes.
When a full-time tenured position in Creative Writing came up, there were just two of us finalists. I had known the other candidate for some time, we were evenly matched in terms of books published and teaching experience. While the English department met one afternoon to cast votes to decide between us, my phone rang. It was someone I knew – a once-chair of English, who had “imported” the other finalist, as his mentee. He was calling from the hall outside the meeting, asking me to withdraw from the race, because I was, he said, “behind in the vote.” I told him no, and that I was a qualified candidate and a race was a race. Unless, I said, my competitor had been given tenure at his last job. I asked if he had. There was a long pause and then a very subdued “yes”. I withdrew. (I did not have tenure at that point, though I'd turned down tenure track jobs.)
But that “yes”, as I heard later, wasn’t the truthful answer. And though I was offered another position in the near future, I had been given a lesson in how the back room boys club worked –there was no viable “university doctrine of fairness.”
USC, founded in 1880, hired not a single woman in upper administration until the year 2010, when a female provost was at last appointed. Between those dates, according to the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Campus Climate surveys, (most recent national surveys in 2015 and 2019) USC’s statistics on sexual predation and “non-consensual sex” were among the worst on college campuses.
Fraternity Row was notorious in inspiring decades-long accounts of date rape and drugs mixed in unsuspecting victims’ drinks at parties and there were rumors of young women who had been sexually assaulted by “legacy” frat boy sons, whose fathers were donors, ‘bought off” via NDA agreements.
Sexual predatory behavior by professors toward students was depressingly common. The preyed-on students, without power in these situations, looked for help, with little forthcoming. There was nowhere to turn.
As recently as December 2021, a “drugs & party sexual assault” scandal erupted on The Row – resulting in broad campus protests – unusual for USC, where protests rarely occur. An investigation, as always, was promised – and, as always, no investigative report was ever issued.
Since I became known as a feminist and a little bit of an outspoken voice on campus – I found that almost immediately, young women came to me with complaints of sexual harassment – or worse. When a “Title IX office” popped up - I sent them, one by one, to that site, which was supposedly there to help. I didn’t know how else to advise.
Back in 1990, there was a knock on my office door. One of my students, a creative writing undergraduate, stood there in tears, disheveled and distraught, when I opened the door. She told me, and subsequently told a colleague, another female professor, the same ugly story. She had gone to see a male faculty member in his office - she alleged that he had closed the office door and “the worst” happened.
At that time, there was no Title IX office or other agency to which this student could be referred, but both my colleague and I agreed that we had to report what had happened. The male faculty member later showed up in my doorway, swaying, seemingly somewhat intoxicated, trying to convince me that the student was lying.
The next day I spoke to the then-Chair of the English department, who laughed and mentioned that he “knew that girl” and that she “wore transparent blouses in the halls” and thus he could understand why one of the professors had been seduced by her.
But my colleague and I persisted – and found ourselves finally, in the then-Provost’s office with the Provost, the college dean, a representative of Affirmative Action, my colleague, myself and the “accused.” The student had by this time, dropped out of school and disappeared, shamed. The meeting didn’t last long. My colleague and I gave the student’s testimony, the Provost held forth about “never again” -- and for his “punishment” – the male professor was told he should have “peer counseling” with me! (A joke indeed, but when I tried to meet with him, he laughed, remarked on his innocence and stalked off)
Think about what happened to nurse Cindy Gilbert, who reported a monster – and how she was punished for her courage. My undergraduate writing student had also revved up her courage to report what had happened to her, then fled in shame, while her alleged aggressor suffered no consequence and went on to academic glory.
I continued to “forward” (to the provost’s office and others) the complaints of students who were the statistics of national campus surveys. Later, in 2014 when I published an Op Ed in the LA Times about how the university was becoming corporatized, jokingly "recommending" Justin Bieber as an addition to our ongoing “celebrity hires” (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dr. Dre!) – the satire hit home. I received over a hundred emails from faculty, staff, even administrators - all agreeing that the university was being led in the wrong direction. (One semi-serious email suggested that I use a mirror to check under my car for planted bombs.)
Not long after this, major USC scandals hit the press – including the Tyndall scandal. On one hand, this journalistic exposé led to the welcome resignation of the “ka-ching CEO” university President. On the other hand, it also led to the miscarriage of justice that “cancelled” Cindy Gilbert. And instead of the public investigation of the administrators who had knowingly colluded in covering up the corruption, certain outspoken faculty members, including senior women professors, including me, were investigated and sanctioned for trivial “offenses” – as a distraction from the real “crimes”. We were effectively cancelled.
When one of my graduate students complained to me in 2015 about the racist and misogynist remarks in the classroom of a male professor who had been practicing his disturbed version of teaching for some time – it was the same male faculty member who defended him and attempted to keep me from speaking out about him in support of my grad student.
It was the same individual who somehow turned my attempts at helping students into the suddenness of my students turning against me. It was he who initiated the investigation against me, when it appeared that former accusations against him – had caught up and were going to finally sink him.
There may never be justice in this world, but knowing that whatever is wrong can be addressed and described may in fact look like a writer’s revenge, but that isn’t it. It is just a writer’s refusal to shut up – the ongoing energy of the outspoken -- who resist what the bastards try to impose as truth when it is not.
Jean Paul Sartre: “Every word has consequences. Every silence too.”
Becoming a Whistleblower
Wow. Just wow. Thanks for writing this.