When the Cleveland Plain Dealer ran its story about the Cleveland Institute of Music faculty denouncing the school’s administration — see my last post — they hadn’t gotten CIM’s response. Hadn’t come in time.
Now they have it, and it’s pathetic:
“We are not going to go into detail about any personnel issues, but as with any situation like this one, CIM will conduct a thorough and fair investigation,” Cleveland Institute of Music spokesperson Kathleen Drohan said in a statement. “We have retained an outside, independent party to conduct this investigation. To protect the process and privacy of all involved, we do not plan to comment any further.”
That’s mind-blowing.
Normally an institution launches an independent investigation to assess one or two alleged bad actors.
But this one has to judge the entire institution. Its top leadership, everything they’ve done. And, I’d think, the board as well. Since the board chair (as you’ll see in my post) said in public that the problems at CIM were due to a few faculty malcontents.
But now 90% of the faculty have voted no confidence in the school’s administration. And, basically, everything they’ve done since taking office.
So the board chair has to be judged as well! Along, I’d think, with the rest of the board, who (or so it would seem) enabled everything the faculty is raging about.
So who receives the results of this investigation? Who acts on them?
Answer: the very people being investigated, or so it would seem.
The CIM leadership can’t comment further, because what can they say?
They stand accused of toxic incompetence by people who — surely, now — wouldn’t be so enraged, in such large numbers, unless something really was wrong.
I’ll be watching to see where this goes.