During Killip’s tenure, the department’s administration was plagued with a revolving door at the top-VES went through three chief administrators during Killip’s four years as chair, and the position was often left vacant for months at at time.

Lower-level staff members were thus forced to run the department without guidance, resulting in VES missing FAS deadlines and not maintaining a clearly allocated and enforced budget.

“It’s old news,” a University source said. “Every year, the staff get fired.”

Staff say VES rarely met Registrar deadlines for providing visiting faculty selection and course information, and say Phelan did little to enforce those deadlines.

“Many faculty and staff complained that everything had to go through her and she wasn’t there enough,” Davenport said. “There was a lack of appreciation for deadlines in the department which I had hoped would improve but which was actually getting worse. The Carpenter Center needs a certain amount of advance publicity to guarantee attendance, and things were getting more and more last-minute.”

Under Phelan’s leadership, VES consistently made substantial changes to its course listings and faculty appointments until early June, just before the course catalogue went to press.

One source suggested that the reason Knowles replaced Phelan in March instead of June was that he was he was concerned that if the staff all left because of the environment—as many had threatened—the department would stop functioning, and there was a risk that the VES department would not report grades in time, and would not arrange for teaching staff for the next year.

Phelan says that she may not have excelled in academic bureaucracy. “[Knowles] may have a point that I don’t know how to run a department,” she said. “Why would I? Have I come up through academia?”

“Old-Fashioned” Accounting

The high rate of administrative turnover also meant that there was little oversight of an accounting system that Chaudhry called “old-fashioned and loosey-goosey.”

(Clarification)

Phelan then complained that there was no “clarity” in Brown’s budgets for the Carpenter Center.

When Knowles asked Phelan to resign, she says he accused her of financing “lavish dinners.” Phelan denies that financial mismanagement took place when she was chair.

Chaudhry says that VES members were given free reign to make professional purchases on faculty on the department’s tab.

Under former chief administrator Missy Allen, faculty and staff could easily reach into the department’s pocketbook.