Deb's Story
I served as communications coordinator at a well-known private university in Boston from 2007 to 2008. During that time, an assistant dean bullied me and several others at the school. For some time, I enjoyed my work and was proud to be associated with the school. However, in November 2007, I began to experience a hostile work environment under the assistant dean’s supervision with the website project. This experience involved fabricated information, contradictory directions, public belittling, and badmouthing from her, which led to my loss of sleep, high stress levels, fear of her next move, and extreme discomfort at work knowing that my character was brought into question to those not involved with the situation.
The bullying began when the assistant dean misled me. Despite her excitement for my designs, she hired a freelance designer to take over the part of my job I liked most, posing as “only trying to help.” From the getgo, however, she oversaw him and organized an advisory web committee that she tried excluding me from. When I left the first meeting early due to a scheduling conflict that I told her about, she badmouthed me for more than twenty minutes according to an attendee, saying that I was upset. I then received an e-mail from her stating that the committee decided that the other designer would redesign the graduate subsite, which I told her was my next project. I had been successfully removed from the project with no communication of poor performance.
Due to feeling that she would further mislead me and take away my work, I met with the head dean about the problem. He told me that it was a cultural issue and that issues would “would work themselves out,” with no follow-up. Once the assistant dean found out about my meeting with him, she met with him about me and brought in another web committee member to what should have been a confidential personnel meeting.
After my boss explained a month later that the freelancer would now report to me, the assistant dean’s revenge began. She belittled me in front of the group after I led several meetings and made progress, arguing over a launch date. She then gave me a formal written warning for not following procedures — that were never established — for swapping out a home page news story. This time I met with Human Resources, who simply defended management to me and later others. The head dean then responded via e-mail that someone would be hired under her to complete the website not based on my competence, but as a way to resolve issues. I told the head dean that I saw his solution as punishment for my speaking up. For months before I left the job, I felt disrespected, worn out, and humiliated knowing how many faculty and staff only heard her side of my private story. One month before I left the job, I sent a modified version of this letter to the Provost. The issue went ignored.
The assistant dean’s false accusations, sabotage, and defamation made me fear her next move and my job security. I felt useless with my web experience insulted — and deferred to people with no background in web — rather than improved. Others also felt threatened and polarized, as she moved from office to office complaining about employees’ work performances and personal lives. Certainly she could have met with me and put in writing areas where she felt I needed improvement. Instead she used manipulation to get her way and then retaliation for my speaking up.
We simply cannot continue allowing management to sabotage employees’ careers, family lives, and health in favor of their insecurities and thirst for power. We need to hold some managers accountable for their greed — their dishonest, health-harming manipulation and abuse. This bill may have prevented me and others from having to work in fear for months and would have undoubtedly increased productivity, with less turnover and less time wasted in doctor visits and sick days. Employers should be held accountable not just for racial discrimination and sexual harassment but also for abusive, harmful, malicious, and unacceptable behavior of any kind.