Greenfield Community College has been thrown into turmoil in recent weeks over the revelation of a previously unreleased report from a consulting firm that questioned the commitment of campus leaders to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
On Monday, the college’s faculty-and-staff union said they voted nearly unanimously to hold a vote of no confidence in Provost Chet Jordan and President Michelle Schutt over the matter. The union will also present Schutt a list of demands for re-establishing trust. Leadership of the Greenfield Community College Professional Association, or GCCPA, accused Schutt of burying the report, denying its existence, and then fighting to keep the full document from the union. The report, an unredacted copy of which The Shoestring has obtained, detailed several alleged instances of racist behavior from unnamed administrators and accused Jordan and Schutt of “incapacity and performativity” when it came to racial-equity work.
“The report is extremely upsetting for its portrayals of senior members of the Administration who seem ignorant of or only superficially committed to the work of anti-racism,” Trevor Kearns, the GCCPA president, said in a statement on behalf of the union’s executive committee. “An astonishing number of Cabinet members seem confused about basic concepts such as ‘equity’ and ‘race.’ Several administrators are accused of committing racialized harm.”
Jordan did not respond to an email requesting comment. A third-party PR firm working for the college informed The Shoestring that Schutt declined an interview, though she did answer written questions.
In a hastily called special meeting of the college’s Board of Trustees to discuss the matter early Monday — several days after the GCCPA released the full report to its membership — Schutt said that diversity, equity, and inclusion, which is often referred to collectively as DEI, continue to be a priority for her administration. She told trustees that the school initially hired RE-Center Race & Equity in Education, a Hartford-based consulting firm, in March 2023 after two failed hiring searches for an administrator to lead DEI work on campus. RE-Center had begun interviewing college staff and administrators, but Schutt terminated the firm’s contract in November before the consultants had spoken to students. The college had pre-paid the firm $60,000 of an anticipated total contract cost of $112,900, college records show.
“Unfortunately, in practice, their consulting model, process, and philosophy did not create a learning model [or] coaching opportunities for growth as we expected,” Schutt told trustees.
In particular, Schutt said that during a listening session, when one campus participant asked if DEI should consider economic status or class, a consultant said that was a “racist question” rather than neutrally working through the differing perspectives on that issue. Schutt also pointed to an incident when a white college administrator, during a discussion of an art exhibition on campus that included the N-word in its title, used the full title, including the slur, in discussion with the consultants.
“In no instance in this conversation was the word used as a slur or directed at an individual,” Schutt said. “The consulting team focused on the traumatizing nature of the use of that word with their staff instead of coaching the team member on how to potentially manage or address the N-word issue, including the use of the N-word in art and literature, and how campus leaders can address questions and concerns that will arise and may impact academic freedom.”
Schutt said that she found it concerning that the consultants wanted to treat some questions from the campus as personnel issues rather than educational opportunities, and that the firm was unwilling to make changes GCC had asked for in their approach and staffing. Schutt referred to the report RE-Center ultimately sent the college as “opinion, incomplete, and in some cases inaccurate” — a document she said was created months after the college had terminated its contract.
“I believe this document to have been created out of frustration of a canceled contract and to insulate themselves from a potential request from GCC for a refund on work that had been paid for but had not occurred,” she said.
RE-Center did not respond to an email Monday morning requesting comment. Schutt did not answer a question from The Shoestring as to why that firm was hired over others.
In RE-Center’s report, the firm came to three conclusions: that at GCC there is “a pervasive ideology that increased diversity is the end point of and primary path to equity,” that the college lacks “a shared power analysis,” and that “there is campus wide dissatisfaction around leadership’s practices of transparency and methods of communication.” They accused the college of “a culture of distrust, individualism, and siloing of DEI work.”
“RE-Center must not be used to justify excuse-making, fragility, discomfort, and abandoning what was expressed as a commitment to BIPOC campus community members and community members from historically excluded identities,” the firm wrote about GCC ending its contract with them, using the acronym for “black, indigenous, and people of color.”
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At Monday’s board meeting, Schutt faced criticism from trustees and Kearns — who was allowed five minutes to speak at the end of the meeting — about why they had only seen the report in recent days. RE-Center had sent the document to GCC in March.
“I’m deeply troubled that this is the first I’m hearing about any of this as a trustee,” board Vice Chair Anthony Worden told Schutt. “It just seems like as a body, we should have heard about this months ago.”
Initially, Schutt had declined the faculty union’s public records request for RE-Center’s report. The college’s response to that public records request in early May referred to the document as “unsolicited self-serving material from ReCenter that while using the word ‘report’ was not a report within the terms of the previously-terminated contract and was rejected by the College as ultra vires and unauthorized.” The college went on to say that RE-Center had not shared any of the underlying data from their work.
“Accordingly, no documents sent by ReCenter following termination of its contract are factual work product and any release would inhibit the ongoing DEI work by the College,” the response read.
Eventually, after another request from the union, Schutt allowed them to see the report in person, but in a heavily redacted format, Kearns said. At the board meeting, student trustee Michael Hannigan said that he had also received a copy with many details blacked out, though he also received an unredacted version from elsewhere.
“There’s a lot of troubling things within the report,” Hannigan said. “I definitely share the frustration of not being informed about this until now.”
The document details what consultants said were several incidents of racism while canvassing on campus: a white member of Schutt’s cabinet interrupting and dismissing the consultants during a retreat, for example, and the one administrator’s use of the N-word four times.
“RE-Center shared the exchange with senior leadership,” the report said of the use of the slur. “A Cabinet member in a supervisory position shared that nothing would be done because of the friendship the President has with this individual who used the n-word.”
Schutt, for her part, told trustees she couldn’t talk about individuals quoted in the report because it is a human-resources issue. She also questioned the accuracy of some of the quotes included throughout the document. But she said she did speak with the administrator who used the N-word and that “the error was acknowledged, reflection was made, actions were taken that I can’t go into specifics on.”
RE-Center also criticized the college’s DEI plan, which the firm said envisioned a DEI office with a staff of one person with a job description that is “unrealistic particularly with limited agency.” The consultants said the DEI director role should be at the vice president level instead of being unpaid, stipended, or rolled into the existing duties of another senior administrator. The college’s DEI plan also called for an insufficient budget and no staff for the DEI office, the consultants said.
Speaking to the Board of Trustees, Schutt said that the college has already posted a vice president of DEI position and that a national search is underway. That person will report directly to the president, she said.
RE-Center’s recommendations to the college included ensuring that equity work is role-specific and not “person-dependent,” restructuring the president’s cabinet to make DEI work part of all of those administrators’ expectations, and creating equity goals that “shift power, not celebrate diversity.”
“The President and Provost must invest in their own learning via Executive Coaching from a trained racial equity facilitator,” the report concluded. “The demonstrative evidence of their incapacity and performativity is masking behind their perceived view that leadership at the college has always been critiqued. An ownership of the direct harm they cause and are causing must be acknowledged and addressed or it will continue to occur.”
In written remarks to The Shoestring, Schutt said she does expect to identify “personal coaching resources and participate in any team trainings with an open mind and open heart.” She said that DEI work requires trust and that timeliness, transparency, and accountability are part of establishing that trust.
“At the same time, as a College we have a responsibility to protect the privacy of individuals who participated in a confidential learning session and to assure that information that is shared is complete and accurate,” she said. “In this instance, I want to acknowledge that I could have done a better job of communicating with our community earlier and with more details about the discontinuation of the relationship with the DEI consultant and next steps.”
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Schutt said that other DEI work is also underway at the school. She told trustees that this includes everything from eliminating traditional remediation courses to lobbying state lawmakers on issues like housing, additional student funding, and free community college for all. She said the school is exploring academic and workforce opportunities in Hampshire County and just graduated the first cohort of certified nursing assistant students who speak English as a second language. She said that the college will not hire another consulting firm for DEI work.
It remains to be seen whether those steps will repair tensions on campus. In an interview with The Shoestring, Kearns, the union president, said that it took three months before Schutt even acknowledged that she had terminated the contract with RE-Center in February. And even then, he alleged that she misrepresented the reason the college fired the firm. Then, he said Schutt made efforts to suppress the report, which was paid for with taxpayer dollars.
“There’s really a culture of secrecy, of deception, and of protecting administrators to the detriment of my members,” he said.
It appears that some of the fissures on campus run deeper than just the latest debacle related to the DEI consultants. Kearns told The Shoestring that there has been significant turnover in recent years in the administrative ranks, including three presidents in the past four years. And he had sharp words for the current leadership on campus.
Speaking to the college’s trustees, Kearns said that withholding the report was just the latest example of this administration’s opacity.
“During their time here, the president and provost have managed to systematically dismantle the caring, inclusive, and collaborative culture that made GCC unique,” said Kearns, who has taught at the school for 15 years. “In its place, they have installed a culture of secrecy, dissembling, evasion, stonewalling, disrespect, and sometimes outright abuse.”
Kearns said that he and his members understand that consultants don’t always work out.
“But instead of communicating that bare minimum to the campus, and instead of advancing DEI work at the college, the president spent her time trying to hide the report from the community, and, apparently, from you,” he told trustees. “At best, her actions are evidence of poor leadership; at worst, they are evidence of institutional racism and favoritism that might protect misconduct.”
Schutt said in a message to campus Monday afternoon that the college is identifying a partner to help host campus-wide dialogues this fall to “address issues of equity, communications, and process that have come to the surface as we resolve this issue.” She said that she will “identify opportunities” to gather feedback from students, too.
Dusty Christensen is an independent investigative reporter based in western Massachusetts. He can be reached at dusty.christensen@protonmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @dustyc123 or on Instagram @dustycreports.
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