Last week, the law school community was informed that the former dean of career services would be leaving, effective immediately. The news came several weeks after an announcement that she would be taking an extended leave of absence.

Michael Phillips — a colleague of mine, and an active, respected member of the law school — thought that the student body deserved some additional information behind her departure. His was a simple request: Please tell us what happened, or please tell us why you can’t.

That evening, the Student Bar Association — the student government body at the law school — took up an informal discussion of the matter. Some of the comments made during this discussion include:

“Further, it is my argument that the actual reason why she left (although it certainly makes us curious) is truthfully not any of our business.”

“There are certainly times when we need to challenge authority and administration but I believe that in this case most people are only trying to satisfy their own curiosity.”

“We know people have strong views on this but feel like we have to balance our (SBA’s) need to be looked upon favorably by the Dean and the other administration.”

While student government must pick its fights carefully, students should have some right to expect that their representatives will evaluate their concerns and requests on their merits — not according to how they might sit with the administration. If they are important, they should be pursued, regardless of what a dean might think.

And this is important. When an administrator in charge of a critical student service departs in unexpected and abrupt manner, students have a right to be concerned.

University staff are certainly entitled to a measure of privacy about their employment. But this was an assistant dean at an elite law school who, as part of her job, was responsible for distributing sensitive academic information and procuring employment opportunities for the student body. With this in mind, her departure is very much our business, and it’s astonishing that anyone in student government could think otherwise.

There is another element to this story that is also troubling. Sometime last Wednesday, Katherine Brokaw, the law school dean of student affairs, asked Phillips to come to her office and remove his cell phone from his pocket, supposedly because he might use it to record the conversation. He was then asked to take down a Facebook page he had started in support of his cause to find out more information about the dean’s departure. More alarmingly, he was told he could be sued by the former dean if he failed to do so.

I’ve spoken to Dean Brokaw about the incident. She maintains that her concerns about Phillips’ cell phone and the legality of the site were legitimate and in good faith.

But the episode reeks of a hostility and a level of suspicion that have no place in an academic institution of any caliber, let alone in a law school that, in its own Professional Conduct Code, strongly emphasizes the values of civility and a shared sense of community.

“Mutual respect” should, at a minimum, entitle a student to the presumption that he isn’t secretly taping a conversation.

Moreover, her actions strike me as inconsistent with University President James W. Wagner’s e-mail sent to the student body last week, in which he referred to the “intellectual openness,” “personal civility” and “courageous inquiry” he believes characterize the Emory community.
Phillips’ actions, it seems to me, are the definition of courageous inquiry.

Dean Brokaw’s reaction, on the other hand, seems neither open nor particularly conducive to this sort of inquiry. When a student makes a civil request for information, he shouldn’t be made to feel out of line for posting legitimate questions in a public forum, and he certainly shouldn’t be looked upon with suspicion.

I’m not suggesting that administrators sit idly by where they feel a student is behaving in a manner that might subject him or her to liability. But administrators have an obligation, even in correcting such behavior, to ensure that the academic environment remains one in which students feel comfortable coming forward with their concerns.

In light of this incident, will other students be inclined to approach the student affairs office with their concerns in the future?

To the extent one answers this question in the negative, to the extent that student government and the student affairs office reacted instinctively to Phillips’ methods at the expense of listening to his message and to the extent that concerns of reputation or liability detracted from their ability to weigh his request on the merits, these institutions failed Phillips and the law student community in a real and most distressing way.

Dan Adams is a third-year law student from Ann Arbor, Mich.