***image1*** Southwestern College teaches future therapists peace, love and understanding. Lately it's had anything but.
It looks like a perfect night at Southwestern College.
Outside, a blood-red sun slips behind the school's tiny, south-side campus. Inside, students and faculty mingle in a classroom, nibbling on egg rolls, empanadas and fresh grapes. Others share cigarettes and quiet conversation in the college's garden courtyard while Louis Armstrong's gravelly voice scats softly from the stereo through the warm summer wind.
The gathering is to celebrate a collection of student artwork; Southwestern has offered master's programs in art therapy and counseling since 1979. But it is the school's curriculum and philosophy that have created its reputation as a unique institution. The curriculum is grounded in the philosophies of thinkers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Carl Jung and John Dewey, with a dash of new age, holistic theory thrown into the mix. The school's philosophy premises that an individual's understanding of his or her self can lead to universal understanding of humanity.
Messages of emotional, psychological and spiritual health are expressed artistically
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throughout the school: a Buddhist prayer flag hung on a doorknob, a white placard in a window proclaiming, "Trust is birthed in openness. Truth can only be heard in this place." A sculpted cast of a woman lies in the center of the library, a
note pasted to her pregnant belly: "The best part about evolution in this wondrous mystery is that the secret to evolve is to love."
But in a small nook of the library, a hand-drawn portrait stands out from the rest of the exhibit. The portrait shows a woman's face split in two. The right side is young and attractive with a rush of black hair and a happy smile.
The left side is noticeably older. Thick, gray locks shoot out from her head like wild weeds. Her face contorts in abject horror.
Below the portrait is the following caption:
"Combing the snakes out of our hair."
And, despite the apparent serenity surrounding tonight's celebration, this portrait is the one that illustrates the
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current state of Southwestern College.
Five months ago, the school erupted in a vicious civil war that pitted faculty members against each other and the school's board of trustees. As of this week, the school has a new board and a new president.
The firestorm centered on an administrative decision in early spring to demote popular teacher-and interim president-Katherine Ninos, who was even temporarily banned from campus,
sparking public outcry from faculty and student supporters. Ninos speaks this week with SFR about this chain of events and her perspective.
While support for Ninos has been front and center, up until now the other side of the story has been
as elusive as eternal happiness. But SFR has learned that Southwestern's board members see the school's environment in a vastly different light, so differently that last week-following another round of student protests-the
entire board quietly, and with no public statement, resigned.
Following the mass resignation, former board chairman Gil Frith offered to SFR his interpretation of
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what is really happening at Southwestern and why, at one point during the last few months, he even sought outside consultation to address what he describes as an extremely unhealthy, cultlike environment.
Needless to say,
this is not quite the milieu one expects from an institution training a future generation of therapists.
In fact, many say the past five months at Southwestern have traumatized students.
"Here are these teachers who I put up on a pedestal, and I am seeing now that they are just as vulnerable in getting caught up in personality conflicts as the rest of us," student Kate Latimer says. She adds: "Even the masters get tripped up. Even the masters are human. Gandhi had a terrible side to him."
Katherine Ninos isn't Gandhi, but she's certainly the most
popular, and probably most influential, faculty member Southwestern has ever had. Lately, she's also the most controversial.
A board licensed
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mental health counselor, Ninos is a striking looking woman in her 50s with black hair, olive skin, green eyes and a mesmerizing gaze.
Ninos graduated from Southwestern in 1981 after moving from upstate New York and has worked at the college since. She developed one of Southwestern's most notable courses, called "Psychology of Consciousness," in which students probe their own
backgrounds by taking on the roles of inspirational historical personalities called "light figures." For many at Southwestern, Ninos has become a light figure herself.
"Katherine has been a constant and caring presence. She has this ability to just be with someone and cut through the chase," student Teri Richards says. "It's not only about her being this great woman. It's about how she can reflect that back to me."
So it was an easy fit for Ninos to fill in as interim president when, in December, 2004, Marylou Butler announced she was stepping down after nine years at the helm.
Of the large pool of candidates
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who applied for the job, Dr. Bradford Keeney stood out-for both his charisma and credentials.
Keeney is affiliated with some of the more prominent psychotherapy institutes in the country and has published approximately 30 books, many of them critically acclaimed and focused on shamanism.
"He was highly published and extremely knowledgeable in traditional mental health as well as alternative and indigenous practices," Carol Parker, chairwoman of Southwestern's counseling program, says.
In December
2005, backed by most faculty, staff and students, the board hired Keeney for the $90,000-a-year job.
It should have been a time for the whole school to breathe a sigh of relief but, for Ninos, life was about to get complicated.
She says she held two meetings with Keeney in February and March of this year to help the incoming president address pressing logistical matters. According to Ninos, Keeney showed
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scant interest in discussing these items. Instead, she says, he wanted to talk about changing the college's name and logo, and possibly relocating the school to a new campus.
(When reached on his cell phone, Keeney declined to comment on this story.)
"The things he really should have paid attention to, he wasn't. He was very vague with me, almost baiting me," Ninos says. "He wasn't interested in the mission of the school."
Ninos subsequently raised her concerns regarding Keeney at a March 8 faculty meeting. Twenty days later, she was called before the board to explain herself. According to Ninos, unofficial minutes taken at the faculty meeting misconstrued her statements as unsupportive of Keeney.
Shortly thereafter, Bradford Keeney resigned-six months before he was scheduled to publicly take
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office at Southwestern.
Following Keeney's resignation, the board demoted Ninos from interim president to vice president. Chairman Frith told Ninos that she had undermined the board's authority by going to the faculty first with her concerns about Keeney.
Robert Waterman, the school's
co-founder, says he, along with Marylou Butler, urged a different course of action to the board.
"They took issues with Katherine and seemed to be set against her. They got too entrenched in their own
pride." Waterman says. "We offered them advice, but they systematically ignored us." (Butler would not comment for this story.)
The board then placed Alan Brody, Ninos' friend and another popular teacher at Southwestern, as interim
president.
For Ninos, who hired Brody a decade ago, his appointment appears to have hit a nerve.
"You'd think Alan would understand
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compassion," she says. "He is always very soft-spoken, really gentle, ethical, caring about you. I was really surprised."
Surprise soon
turned to shock.
On April 13, Ninos found a letter from Brody in her mailbox placing her on administrative leave, advising no official contact with employees and banning her from campus.
Word of Ninos' exile tore through Southwestern. Faculty, students and staff alike were stunned-some even wept openly in the college's hallways. "It was such a violation of Katherine's rights," Janet Schreiber, chairwoman of Southwestern's grief and loss
department, says. "This was all done without due process. It was astounding."
Ninos insists she did nothing to provoke Brody's orders. In the days that followed, her classes were
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cancelled and Ninos says her locks were changed and personal e-mails and voice messages erased.
On April 14, Brody sent out a campus letter that offered little more in the way of explanation:
"I know it must be particularly frustrating to hear from me that I cannot disclose any details of the change of employment status for Katherine. I feel that I must be totally protective of her privacy and confidentiality." (Brody declined, via a telephone message, to comment for this story, citing "legal and moral" reasons.)
Brody's attempt to quell the rising emotions at the school went nowhere. Students and faculty loyal to Ninos had no intention of backing down.
The following week, during the late
afternoon of April 19, students attended a public vigil for Ninos. Meanwhile, the board was in a meeting on the mounting crisis. The meeting resulted in a vote to reinstate Ninos as vice president; Brody would serve at her side.
That evening Ninos returned to
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campus
flanked by adulating students and faculty. The scene-as described in local papers-was one of triumph.
But just because Ninos had returned to Southwestern didn't mean the college was back on course. On
the contrary, faculty and students had gone on the offensive with the board, and Ninos, while having returned, had her own list of demands.
"I told the board that I'm not setting foot back on that campus as long as Alan Brody is there,"
Ninos says. "Gil had a rage attack and told me that no one should humiliate
Dr. Brody. I said, 'You take a founder of the school, who has built this whole thing, humiliate her, throw her off her own campus, silence her to her community-but for God's sake, let's not humiliate Dr. Brody!"
Indeed, the board's impetus remained unclear to many, and none of its members were talking.
Until now.
When Southwestern's students picketed last week, they chose
the office of Gil Frith as their locale. Indeed, Frith is the least popular guy on campus these days.
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A lawyer, Frith is loud and intense. An avid hockey player who sometimes peppers his speech with Canadian "ehs," Frith is more inclined toward legal jargon than spiritual or psychological vernacular. He was invited to join the body nearly three years ago.
"I had nothing in common with the school," he says flatly. "But I wanted to give back to the community. It was a
totally new experience for me."
Frith was voted board chairman in March after chairwoman Jonnalyn Grover stepped down. From the beginning, it was clear that Frith and Ninos had serious problems communicating.
After Frith became aware of the problems between Ninos and Keeney, he held a series of separate meetings with
each of them, as well as with Robert Waterman, Mary Lou Butler, Alan Brody and Academic Dean Larry Dettweiler. Dettweiler was among those faculty who showed the board notes of the infamous March 8 faculty meeting, Frith says. (Dettweiler
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did not return repeated calls to his home.)
Frith was stunned by what the meetings uncovered.
"I was amazed at the amount of passion, the amount of vitriol," Frith says. "It was clear to me that there were long-standing, deep divisions within the faculty and staff and that people were profoundly bitter and angry at each other."
Further, Frith says that Keeney cited Ninos as the main reason why he wouldn't lead Southwestern; Ninos' failure to get along with Keeney played a major role in
her demotion.
"The board felt like if there was a problem [with Keeney] it should have been brought to us
immediately," he says. "The board was not comfortable with her conduct."
Ninos says that she actually spoke with three board members about Keeney and scheduled an appointment
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with Frith. Frith says he never heard from her.
With the presidency vacant, Alan Brody looked like the answer to the school's current problems-at least to Frith. Brody appeared to have stayed out of the fray, Frith says, and was calm and respectful. The board voted to make Brody their new interim leader. Problem solved.
Or not. Frith was on vacation in Palm Springs when Brody called and told him that the situation at Southwestern had become intolerable. Ninos wasn't falling in line with Brody's orders, and Brody wanted permission to place her on administrative leave. Frith told Brody that it wasn't the board's call and that Brody should do what he thought would bring peace to the school.
Again, Frith's perception of backbiting amongst the college's administration shocked him to the core.
"People at Southwestern are always saying 'Namaste'-[Ninos] does this too," Frith says, referencing the yogic
peace greeting while clasping his hands together in prayer. "But they all
seemed to hate each other. I couldn't believe it."
Ninos responds that she'd tried to
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schedule meetings with Brody to remedy the situation.
"I wanted to talk about things, but he would never anchor down. All he would do would be to send out these confusing memos," she says.
Very quickly, it became obvious that Ninos' banishment was a colossal mistake. With the school in an uproar, the board voted to bring Ninos back.
"This was the most stressed-out situation I've ever seen," Frith says. "My goal all along was to turn down heat."
But it was too late. The week of May 29, something happened that would shift the nature of the conflict. That week, Frith says the board received word of a possible group suicide at Southwestern in protest.
"What do you do when you hear something like that? Do you call the police, the sheriff's department, the DA?"
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Frith says.
Frith combed the Internet for experts on cults. He also explained the circumstances to several therapists from around the country, who told him they believed there was a cultlike atmosphere at the school, Frith says.
Ex-board member Patricia Murray confirms Frith's assessment and says she herself recommended a counselor to go out to the college.
Ninos denies hearing anything about this. She says that a Southwestern staff member had
informed the board of "a lot of trauma about the board's treatment of everybody"; nothing was said of group suicide.
Patrick Thomas, the board member initially contacted by the Southwestern staff member with concerns about the rising tensions on campus, backs Ninos' story. He says he never heard a group suicide mentioned but, rather, there was discussion of a staff member who was potentially suicidal.
"It may have gotten blown out of proportion," Thomas says. "My understanding was that there were people at the school feeling distraught."
That's also the version given by Dru Phoenix, Southwestern's admissions director, who called Thomas in early June to request counseling for staff who'd been traumatized by the upheaval at the school. While Phoenix acknowledges she told Thomas
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of a staff member who could potentially be suicidal, she never mentioned a word about any group suicide.
Though nothing ever came of the warning, Frith remains convinced of a "cult-like atmosphere" or a "blind fatalism" at Southwestern.
Again, Ninos adamantly disagrees with Frith's assessment.
"I've no idea what Gil is talking about. We are an ecumenical school. We have statutes of Buddha and Christ and all kinds of different representations. If they want to translate that into a cult, that's ridiculous," Ninos says. "It shows a lack of understanding of what the college represents, in terms of how the spiritual dimension is important to the therapeutic process."
With the suicide threat, talk of a cult and students and faculty clamoring for their resignation, the board was through. A
decision was made to resign en masse, but only after a clause was included that protected them from a lawsuit.
"Things were getting too personal," Frith says.
For Frith, that meant threatening phone calls to his home, he says.
"Watch out," a voice on the end of the line said to him. "Be careful what cup you drink out of," said another.
For Patricia Murray, it meant watching
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Southwestern's future dictated by what she saw as a small group that wielded disproportionate power.
"We got many calls and e-mails of support from people who told us that the silent majority was very concerned about what Katherine and the minority were doing," she says.
Patrick Thomas too has been deeply affected by his time on the board.
"It has been really
disturbing," Thomas says. "I've done a lot of volunteer work for non-profit boards. This experience really left a negative taste in my mouth."
Frith, a man who clearly is used to getting his way, seems shell-shocked by the ordeal. Heavily criticized by Ninos' camp for his interminable stubbornness, Frith lives up to his reputation and notes that he wouldn't have done anything differently.
When asked whether he ever wanted to reveal to Southwestern's students why the board was taking the actions it took, Frith nods his head vigorously:
"Hell, yeah!" he says. "I wanted to say, 'Wait, you guys! I've got the most incredible story to tell you!"
If Southwestern's plight were a Greek tragedy, the part of the
chorus would by played by the college's students.
Throughout the past five months, students like Carder Stout, Erin McConnell, Kate Latimer, Teri Richards and Edmund Holley have played a pivotal role-advising, warning, pleading with the faculty and board to hold true to
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the college's tenets.
It was the students who drafted petitions for Katherine Ninos, held the vigil on her behalf and demanded the board's resignation through a petition gathered in late May.
Their strong reaction is natural. Classes at Southwestern are an intensely personal experience. Similar to more traditional schools of psychology or psychiatry, students are required to attend 20 hours of therapy per year. That therapy is coupled with courses in various schools of psychological thought. Watching instructors violate their
own teachings so egregiously has been devastating for many.
"I've never been in a situation where I've felt so powerless," Stout says. "It's tremendously traumatizing. People would start sobbing in class because of the pressure."
Certainly, the most vocal of the college's approximately 165 students are fervent supporters of Ninos. But Kate
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Latimer is quick to point out the complexities of that allegiance.
"Katherine always told us that somebody who casts a bright light also casts a dark shadow. For as many people that love her, there are also people who don't like her," she says. "She has a relentless pursuit to the core of your issue and not everybody wants to look at their core issues."
Latimer says that Ninos' faculty rival, Alan Brody, known for his gentle demeanor, and Larry
Dettweiler, well liked for his affable personality, had their own disciples.
"After what happened to Katherine, some people would say, 'I can't believe you're questioning
Alan Brody. He deserves the utmost respect," she says. "There are people, and I am one of those people, that have been split down the middle on this."
One aspect of the conflict where students are not divided is the now-resigned board, which they see as hopelessly detached from Southwestern and the reason why the infighting festered for so long.
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"They should have been the champions of the school. But instead they had no one's interest but their own," Edmund Holley says.
As for Frith and Murray's story of the group suicide, Erin McConnell says it's hogwash.
"I never heard of such a thing," McConnell says with amazement. "I was pretty in the mix the entire
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time and never heard anything like that. It would be interesting to know where they got that impression."
Carder Stout says the same is true of the perception of a
cultish aura enveloping the school. Southwestern students may be passionate, but diverging opinions are respected too, he says.
"We're not sticking around and holding séances," he says. "We want to go out there and save the world!"
The students say they're ready to get on with
healing the school. And if Southwestern's administration, faculty and staff won't help them, they'll do it themselves.
"I feel extremely grateful that the board finally decided to hear us," McConnell says. "We've been playing a pretty active role, and we have to continue. We have to develop a new system so that this can never, ever happen again."
For now, all appears quiet on the Southwestern front. And if the
last six months was a battle, Katherine Ninos has emerged
the undisputed victor.
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Bradford Keeney never came to
Southwestern. A board of trustees whom she didn't trust is gone. Even her faculty nemeses have left. On June 17, Larry Dettweiler resigned from Southwestern as academic dean and Alan Brody has resigned as well.
"The mission of the school is to lift the consciousness of the whole planet, and I think we've been doing that," Ninos says. "As opposed to letting ourselves become part of a corporate takeover, we stood up at a time we needed to stand up. I think it's huge what we've done. We're going to show how incredible a school this is."
According to Ninos, as of June 17, after consultation with student board member Jesse Cross (who did not resign) and various Southwestern faculty, a new board was appointed.
On June 19, the board offered the presidency to Santa Fean Jim Nolan, currently the director of training for the school of psychology at Walden University, a distance-learning school based in Minneapolis, Minn. Nolan accepted the position.
"I have seen the school, the students and most of the faculty and the founders as really profound and principled leaders. So in my estimation, it's not that
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there was something fundamentally wrong with the school. It was more the relationship with the
board," Nolan says. "We plan on being more intentional about who we recommend to the board. We need to make sure people on the board read the bylaws and the history and have a sense of the mission of the school. I'm not at all clear that the board did any of that."
Southwestern may be on the mend, but the
troubling events of this year have left the college badly bruised. The night of June 14, two campus windows were smashed. Nobody knows who did it. Nobody knows why.
"My sense of Southwestern is that it's an unhealthy place," Patricia Murray says. "It's unhealthy because of lack of strong administrative abilities and because of all the turmoil, the anger and the divisiveness."
Says Gilbert Frith: "Look how many bodies there are? Look how many people have resigned or left? Doesn't that suggest that something is terribly wrong?"
In the Quimby Library, the haunting painting of the woman with
two faces still hangs on a wall in
the corner. The painting, says its artist Sandra Hareld, is inspired by the Iroquois legend of Hiawatha. In that story, the great chief Hiawatha comes upon an evil wizard with a mangled body and serpents wriggling through his hair. After Hiawatha speaks with the wizard in soothing tones, the wizard embraces Hiawatha's mission of peace. Hiawatha combs the snakes from the wizard's hair and his deformities vanish.
If only life were so simple.
Santa Fe Reporter