Medill Dean John Lavine issued a statement Wednesday apologizing for "poor judgment" in using an anonymous student quote that has raised controversy inside and outside the journalism school.
The letter appeared the day after a statement from 17 Medill faculty members called the situation a "crisis" and demanded an explanation from Lavine.
In a Feb. 11 column in The Daily, Medill senior David Spett had raised questions about Lavine's use of an anonymous quote in a letter in the Medill alumni magazine.
Lavine said the quote was from a student praising a marketing class, but Spett said he contacted all 29 students in the class without finding the source of the quote.
Since the column appeared, Lavine has denied charges of fabrication, saying the quote came from an e-mail he had deleted or notes he could not find.
"I have been in journalism for more than 40 years as a reporter, editor, publisher and educator," Lavine wrote in an e-mail to Medill students and faculty Wednesday evening. "I do not make up quotes."
Medill Prof. David Protess, who helped create a faculty statement issued Tuesday, called Lavine's e-mail "a positive first step, but only a first step."
The faculty statement will continue to circulate and gather signatures, he said.
As the controversy has unfolded, some faculty members have raised questions about the process of writing the statement and the reporting on which the inquiry is based.
Prof. Jack Doppelt, who teaches a law and ethics course, and Prof. Steven Duke, the head of Medill's newspaper sector, declined to comment on why they had not signed.
Other professors did not see the e-mail in time to add their names or, like Prof. Ava Greenwell, needed to think it over more.
Prof. David Nelson, who also did not sign, said a meeting should have been held before the statement was released to the media.
"When you have a situation that is considered to be controversial or a crisis, it's incumbent on the faculty to call a full faculty meeting," Nelson said.
The 2004 Medill bylaws prescribe the procedure for calling a special faculty meeting but never require one.
Along with the statement, the faculty wrote a letter to Lavine, Provost Dan Linzer and NU President Henry Bienen, calling for a meeting, Protess said.
There were other concerns, Nelson said.
"The odds of getting 29 for 29 (students in the class) - not great," Nelson said. "As a reporter, I would say that's not possible."
Protess pointed out that the dean had commended Spett in his original statement to the faculty.
"This issue is not about the character of a Medill student," said Protess, adding that Spett's work in the column reflected his work in Protess's investigative journalism class. "It is instead about whether the dean of our school should adhere to the same standards we demand of our students."
The possibility of a reporting error also worried professor emeritus Roger Boye.
"I'm not trying to cast any doubt on (Spett's) work," Boye said. "Maybe it wouldn't hurt for somebody to re-call everybody to make sure they are absolutely certain."
Spett said he contacted 26 people by phone and three by e-mail.
"If they have names of people in the class, I'm more than willing to tell the exact time and date I talked to them," he said.
The professors who did sign represented a broad cross-section of Medill faculty, Protess said: professors from Evanston, Chicago and Washington, D.C.; undergraduate and graduate; tenured and non-tenured.
There was one exception: No faculty in the Integrated Marketing Communications program signed
Greenwell said she hoped the controversy would be resolved soon so Medill could "get back to the business of teaching journalism."
"I think this has become a huge, huge distraction, for both the school as well as those of us who are teaching in the classroom," she said.
libbynelson@northwestern.edu
a-palleschi@northwestern.edu
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