“I cautioned him against any interaction that could be construed as intimidating and retaliatory,” Taylor said.

Killip says that Knowles and Taylor put the faculty in a impossible “catch-22” in which Phelan and her colleagues could not confront their accusers or even hear the charges against them, further aggravating an already strained relationship between VES faculty and staff.

“If these complaints were ever adjudicated, they would never rise to the level of an abusive work environment,” Phelan said. “It’s an abusive work environment to the faculty. You have the dean removing the chair based on allegations that had not risen to the level of formal complaints...and can’t be rebutted. You have the people who complained sitting in their offices and you can’t ask them because that would be harassment. The faculty is miserable and feel very undermined and demoralized.”

The “catch-22” led Phelan and Killip to be suspicious of the staff who were installed against their objections. Phelan told The Crimson that she felt like the new staff were put in as a “surveillance team” instructed to report back to University Hall, an assertion which Foster denies.

Phelan and Mitchnick say they felt betrayed by the new employees.

“You can learn not to swear,” Mitchnick said, “but to betray the trust of the people you work with? For Michael [Lawrence] to [forward the “fuck” email to Personnel] was treacherous.”

Three current staff members say that many of the department’s permanent faculty no longer say hello to them in the Carpenter Center since Phelan was removed.

“We’re seen as these little rats, that we were just sent by FAS to spy on Phelan,” Wells says.

A Revolving Door

A staff member says he felt resentment from faculty members who overwhelmingly opposed the restructuring.

FAS Personnel conducted an internal review of the 29-member VES staff last year which resulted in the departure of two longtime former staff members, Kathleen Chaudhry and former finance manager Karen Brown, and brought in four new staffers with extensive academic administrative experience. Six months later, each of the four new staff members had complained to FAS Personnel about the working environment in the VES department.

The restructuring also led some faculty to resent the external interference.

“It used to be a very friendly department,” Killip said, “but Personnel’s involvement changed things considerably.”

The new staff say they were perceived as outsiders with no loyalty to the department and had to suffer the stigma of replacing longtime employees.

But faculty and continuing staff alike say that VES was in such a state of administrative chaos before the restructuring that University Hall had no choice but to intervene.