After NOW’s controversial interview with Harris Institute president John Harris about the audio school’s new anti-political correctness policy, several current and former students reached out to say there was a lot more to the issue than Harris was letting on. On the school’s public Facebook page, there were multiple comment threads last week in which students and some faculty complained about outrageous behaviour by staff, and alleged that the school was not adequately addressing complaints. The discussions quickly became very heated, but Harris eventually relented and agreed to add racial and religious harassment to the policy, while keeping the sections prohibiting “shouting down of opposing opinions.”
The additions to Harris Institute’s anti-political correctness policy.
You won’t find any of that discussion online anymore though. All posts related to the policy have been deleted, and new comments are taken down as soon as they go up. But students and former students continued reaching out to media. As a result, a very different picture is starting to emerge about what led to the controversial policy.
Harris had told NOW that he’d implemented the new policy regarding “shouting down” in response to things like students complaining about the word “fuck” in the title of a guest lecturer’s book. But former student Katelan Donnelly says the new policy was created in response to a number of demands that the school create an anti-harassment policy, after there were multiple complaints about math teacher Clinton Somerton lecturing students on the sinfulness of homosexuality and abortion. The issue took on a new urgency this fall, after another teacher, Shahab Mobasher, was briefly allowed to remain teaching after being charged with seven counts of committing an indecent act, she says.
“We suggested that there be a creation of some kind of harassment policy, because at the time there wasn’t any,” recalls Donnelly, who graduated this spring, and made a formal complaint about Somerton. “The only policy there was at that point was the complaints procedure, which was completely ignored when it came to Clinton. It felt like he was ignoring our complaints even more with this policy.”
Initially it seemed like Harris was going to make changes to better deal with these types of situations, but Donnelly says students and alumni were dismayed when the school’s head began sending them anti-political correctness articles in preparation for the meeting to discuss the new anti-harassment policy. As a result, the complainants boycotted the meeting, and instead of a policy focussed on harassment, the school announced they were cracking down on political correctness.
Somerton is still on faculty, and Mobasher was eventually suspended, after Harris spent several days deciding whether to take action. According to Harris, the issues have been addressed.
“Clinton Somerton has been restricted from discussing his religious views in the school,” Harris told NOW via an email statement. “I was receiving conflicting information about the Shahab Mobasher incident and acted too slowly. I apologized to all involved. Katelan Donnelly declined to attend the meeting where the policy was discussed. People have expressed their views, a policy has been introduced and I encourage anyone with ideas or issues to contact me.”
Update – 2:08 pm, 11/23/2015: Harris Institute president John Harris reached out by email to elaborate on his comment. “Clinton Sommerton has taught and tutored a math course at Harris institute for 14 years,” he wrote. “He has consistently received excellent student evaluations with comments that he is caring and compassionate. Although his religious beliefs are protected under the Canadian Charter of Right and Freedoms, his recent comments in response to a question from a student were offensive and would be considered harassment under the new policy. The complaint was that he be restricted from expressing his religious views. He has been restricted and will be dismissed if there is a recurrence.”
Harris also says that he only recently became aware of a bizarrely homophobic 2013 email that Somerton sent former student Stephanie Bosch, but according to other former students, he’s long been aware of the teacher’s homophobic rants. Another former student, Acacia Christensen, says she complained directly to John at least three years ago.
“I was having a conversation while we were waiting for class to start about walking in Pride with a fellow student, and Somerton told me that gay people are going to burn in hell,” Christensen recalls. “This was one of my first days at Harris.”
“I was told to ignore it,” she continues. “John pretty much said something along the lines that I was going to encounter that in the business world, so to not let it bog me down.”
Other former students say that complaints about teachers have also long been ignored, and that the only forum they felt that they had available were the classroom evaluation forms, which appeared to have no impact.
“One thing that always bothered me is that we had one teacher who would use the word ‘gay’ in a weird derogatory way towards things like music gear that he didn’t like,” recalls Carly Beath, who graduated in 2008. “It wasn’t just once or twice – it was all the time. It was like his favourite derogatory descriptor.”
“I never felt comfortable enough to say anything. I was in the producing and engineering program, which had about 20-something men and three women. I already felt a bit out of place, so speaking out wasn’t something I felt comfortable with at the time.”
Harris has justified his defence of political incorrectness by saying that students need to be prepared for the reality of working in the music industry. But while the business is still very male dominated and often unwelcoming towards women, things are slowly changing, and all the former students we talked to agreed that Harris is giving students an unrealistic expectation of what is considered acceptable behaviour.
“It’s just sort of common sense that that’s not a way you can behave in a workplace,” Beath says about Somerton. “If you went into any other workplace and talked like that I’m sure that most employers would tell you that you can’t work there anymore. I feel bad for students who are being led to believe that this is the way you can behave, because this is not the way it is out in the real world in the music industry.”
