The janitor for Seymour Hall, where my office was located before I retired from Northern State University, came to work during the dark Monday morning hours on Nov. 1, 2004, (5 years after I retired) and found the body of a young professor of German at the doorway. There was a gunshot wound in the back of his head. The weapon was found in a dumpster in the parking lot 40 feet away. The coroner called the death a homicide. After a year and a half of haggling among officials, the police declared it a suicide. This declaration was made after some kind of expert organization was called in to examine the case. The report of that organization on which the decision was based was withheld from the public.
I had been introduced to the professor, Morgan Lewis, a few weeks before his death by a former colleague. Lewis was looking for information from a professional organization in which I was active and wished to set up an appointment to discuss it. Lewis not only taught at Northern State University, but at Aberdeen Central High School, where he had my son in class, and at a Hutterite colony. However, the appointment was never arranged before Prof. Lewis' death. I had no idea what he wished to talk about, but he indicated that his interest was with the organization which had provided legal assistance to me when I was involved in collective bargaining for the faculty.
Even though the death was eventually and officially declared a suicide, many people in the community had reservations about the declaration. A partner of Dr. Lewis was the beneficiary of a life insurance policy Lewis had. Such policies do not pay when the subject of the policy commits suicide. The partner went to court over the policy, and people thought the trial would reveal facts about the death. But the partner and the insurance company reached a settlement out of court. So, there was no information about the settlement and no further information about the death and the investigation of it.
Ten years after Lewis' death, the local newspaper interviewed professors and law enforcement personnel who had worked the case in a review of it. The story revealed no information that had not been reported before. But it renewed discussions about the case and reminded me of some talks I had with a newspaper reporter about it and how troubled he was about its handling. There was never a coherent presentation of the evidence which explained the dismissal of the case as a suicide nor any attempt to reconcile conflicting testimony. The reporter was particularly agitated that another professor was apparently present in his office in the building at the time of the incident and was not interviewed in a timely manner. Our discussions were largely about South Dakota's terrible laws that allow government officials to control and withhold information that the public has a right to know in most other states. We commiserated over the handling of the case in that regard.
The doorway at which Lewis' body was found was one I went through multiple times a day as I went back and forth from my office. The building became, to me and some others associated with the campus, a kind of memorial to the tragedy which remained unsettled. Seymour Hall was eventually demolished to provide space for a new dormitory, so the setting and landmark is no longer present to serve as a reminder of the death that took place there. People on campus and in the community observed that the college and the investigators seemed anxious to eliminate any reminder of such a woeful event. However, questions remain unanswered and unsettling, as the story on the 10-year anniversary demonstrated.
The main unanswered question was not about how Prof. Lewis died, but why the authorities did not report the information on which they based their decision. Some journalists and teachers of journalism and government participated in a study and found that South Dakota law is restrictive about open records and in comparison with other states gives government officials almost total discretion over what records will be made public. They advocated that South Dakota adopt a freedom of information law.
In 2009. the legislature did revise its public records law, but the revision amounted to a shuffling around, not an expansion of public access to information. Nothing changed that would provide information on how or why Morgan Lewis' death was determined to be a suicide. Law enforcement agencies were still protected from disclosing information that reflects their competence and feasance. The law specifically exempts:
(5) Records developed or received by law enforcement agencies and other public bodies charged with duties of investigation or examination of persons, institutions, or businesses, if the records constitute a part of the examination, investigation, intelligence information, citizen complaints or inquiries, informant identification, or strategic or tactical information used in law enforcement training.
In Illinois, where I worked as a journalist, the law gives law enforcement the power to withhold a record only if a case is pending and has restrictions which are quite different:
An agency may not deny access to records on grounds that they contain confidential or non-disclosable information; the agency must delete the confidential and non-disclosable information and disclose the remainder of the record.
As far as the South Dakota public is concerned in the Morgan Lewis case, they cannot have the information to resolve the case in their minds. That's the law.
The Morgan Lewis case sets a precedent for nondisclosure of information at Northern State. The real mystery is why authorities choose to keep some facts a secret. What are they hiding?
A pall lingers over the Northern campus, but not from a death this time.
The most recent unexplained incidents are the departure of the president and some other officials at Northern. The head of the Northern Foundation had scheduled his retirement for April 16. That day another announcement was issued that the president of the university resigned and was departing immediately, which signaled unsettling circumstances. Since then, the director of athletics also left. The three men were involved in the fundraising which has raised $110 million to build seven new facilities on the campus. And most people know that when a person suddenly resigns from a job, it's because they were given the choice to resign or be fired. A newspaper report gave this account of the president's firing:
Lawmakers drafted a letter accusing [NSU President] Downs of fostering a woke community that suppressed other viewpoints. The letter demanded Downs put an end to the program or resign. It was being circulated among lawmakers for signatures on April 16 when the Board of Regents issued a release saying Downs was resigning “to pursue a new opportunity in higher education.”
Downs had implemented measures for diversity on the campus. This context for his resignation strongly suggests it was the result of a political intrusion into the college. If that is the case, the college's claims as an equal opportunity campus and its academic accreditation are jeopardized. The intrusion is a violation of academic freedom, " the ability of teachers, students, and educational institutions to pursue knowledge without unreasonable political or government interference."
Institutions which do not meet the standards of academic freedom as unanimously proclaimed in their statements of purpose and integrity are publicly censured by academic organizations. Northern was on the censure list of the American Association of University Professors for 22 years for firing a professor suddenly without due process. The University of Iowa, my alma mater, was on the list for two years recently for hiring a president without appropriate consultation with the faculty. During that time, professors registered their objections in many ways, and quite a number resigned. Other professional organizations take note of such sanctions and provide their members with summaries of the reputation of the colleges. Prospective faculty use the evaluations to decide if the colleges are the kinds of places where they want to work, and prospective students, their parents, and their guidance counselors refer to them to decide if it is a place worth getting a degree from. And companies maintain lists of which colleges are reputable to recruit and hire employees from. When I came to Northern, some faculty were sent to represent the college at a student recruiting fair. They were dismayed to hear some high school students refer to Northern State Junior High School. College admissions personnel polled high school teachers and counselors about why students held Northern in such low regard. They found that the censure and a publication for job hunting professors which described Northern as an "undesirable place to work" because of the few doctorates on the faculty as sources of the attitude. The college engaged in a program to change the negative perceptions of Northern. With those efforts, the censure was removed from the college and placed on the Board of Regents, who eventually came to an agreement with the AAUP for its removal. College officials and faculty reviewed curriculum and policies to address the perception of Northern as an extension of secondary school and took measures to establish it as a full-fledged institution of higher education. Admission counselors said the effort worked, as they they saw the belittling attitudes about Northern's status as a college diminish. The college stabilized its enrollment: residential students went down but were more than made up for with off-campus enrollments through extension and online offerings.
The recent incidents of sudden departures by the college's leadership raise questions in the minds of alumni, emeritus professors, and the public. The pall these questions cast over the campus is a matter of the lack of explanation for what is behind the departures. A university is a place that searches for and provides answers. That's what research means. When a university practices obfuscation, it is in direct conflict with the principles that define its function--the creation and transmission of knowledge.
Northern was never able to breach the wall of silence about what proof there was that Morgan Lewis committed suicide. It now seems unable to explain the abrupt departure of President Downs. It is either incompetent in providing answers to questions of public concern or it is a willing partner to the mendacity that was exacerbated in the time of Trump. It fails in its fundamental purpose:
" the reason you go to university is to be taught, is to learn how to think more clearly, to call into question the ideas that you came with and think about whether or not they are the ideas you will always want to hold. A university education at its best is a time of confusion and questioning, a time to learn how to think clearly about the values and principles that guide one’s life."
If a university fails in its most basic purpose, it's because the participants in shared governance are not doing their jobs in enforcing the integrity and the competence of the institution. Ultimately those jobs are the faculty's.
