From the FWC Executive Committee

As an organization committed to advancing faculty welfare, academic freedom, and shared governance, as well as to ensuring higher education’s contribution to the common good, including the well-being of students and staff, the Faculty Welfare Committee/AAUP (FWC/AAUP) is deeply concerned about the administration’s lack of public response to the following recent events on campus -

(1) The Volleyball Incident - when epithets were publicly shouted at a Black female volleyball player from Central Connecticut State University during a game against Fairfield on September 17, and

(2) The Turning Point USA Fairfield Chapter Event - which hosted Kai Schwemmer, the Political Director of the College Republicans of America noted for his racist, sexist, and anti-semitic remarks, on campus on Oct. 8.

Both instances resulted in harmful statements that were inflicted on members of our community and on visitors to our campus, and generated a climate of bigotry, hostility, and lack of safety and welcome, all of which are antithetical to Fairfield’s Academic and Jesuit Mission and to our fundamental commitment to respect “the basic human dignity” of all people.

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As the Office of the Provost rightly asserts, “Our Jesuit mission acknowledges our obligation to respect the basic human dignity of all people, as we carry out our intellectual mission” and unequivocally commits to “identify speech acts that denigrate the basic human dignity of members of our local and global community as both unwelcome and unprotected by free speech privileges on our campus. (See Principles that Guide Free Expression, Fairfield University, Purpose Statement, Office of the Provost). However, in both instances, it is clear that institutional secrecy, lack of transparency, lack of a coordinated response, and attempts to stay neutral ended up compounding the harm experienced and facilitating the digression from these avowed Jesuit and intellectual values.

Volleyball Incident Lack of Response. Faculty, staff, students, parents and alumni have been deeply distressed that the volleyball incident did not result in any public acknowledgment by the University. Such an acknowledgment could have refocused the spotlight on the human dignity of those who experienced the harm and reiterated our commitment to welcoming and respecting guests, to thorough and transparent fact-finding, and to holding wrongdoers accountable. The Administration missed a key moment for leadership and teaching.

The facts of the investigation after the incident were not shared publicly, nor did the Administration release a statement sharing its findings, which allowed rumors to run wild and attracted widespread negative attention on social and other media. The week after the event, despite a faculty statement condemning the incident and administrative inaction signed by over 100 faculty university-wide, an administrator publicly stated of the incident that “nothing happened.” (See, as an example of an opposite response, Cornell President’s statement on Saturday, Oct. 3).

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Faculty and staff were invited to a Community Listening Session on Oct 7 by the VP of Access, Belonging, and Community Engagement, “to be heard, to talk honestly about how this situation has affected them, and to consider what we can learn from this moment and how we move forward together,” (email from Don Sawyer, Sept 30, 2026), but no institutional answers were provided nor public acknowledgments by administrators were made. Requests by faculty for fact clarification, transparency and accountability, and a public response from the University President went unanswered.

TPUSA Event and Campus Harm. Similarly, the campus chapter of Turning Point was allowed to generate rumors among students about an unpublicized event and then spring that event on the center of campus in the BCC, accompanied by extensive amplification. Students who wanted to get food, or retrieve their mail, or access other services had no choice but to be exposed to the Turning Point speaker’s ideas that have been long noted as offensive sexist, anti-immigrant, and anti-semitic and homophobic. Opposition to the event (first reported in the Fairfield Mirror) resulted in a response from the administration regarding adherence to principles of institutional neutrality and free debate. Yet a free debate of ideas is impossible when a public event is kept secret from much of the campus community, its location and time undisclosed. Instead of an open and civil conversation, campus community members were baited, harangued, filmed and subjected to surveillance as TPUSA and affiliates generated footage for a conservative outrage machine. Institutional neutrality comes into question when such a stark conservative voice, with documented practices of incivility and propaganda, is uniquely given such a prominent stage at the center of campus, to the evident detriment of the safety and well-being of other students, faculty and members of the university community.

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“Embarrassing” is a common comment that faculty, staff, and students at Fairfield have used to describe their experience at times like these, which seem to recur with unfortunate consistency. This is an experience of “moral injury,” a “disruption in an individual’s confidence and expectations about one’s own or others’ motivation or capacity to behave in a just and ethical manner.” We call on Fairfield University administrators to step up to moral leadership, and to make statements in the aftermath of incidents like these that affirm our human dignity, recognize harm, and call themselves and the university community to do better.

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​Next Steps. The FWC is conducting a review of relevant policies and hosting a series of conversations to understand what happened and what faculty can demand in order to advocate for change. As part of that effort, we invite faculty members to share comments and perspectives on the Volleyball Incident and/or the TPUSA event here, on the Google Form. There is an option on the form to indicate whether you would like your comments to be included in a future newsletter or in a report, or whether you would like to share it with FWC leadership but not have it used publicly. We are especially interested in any outcomes or goals you feel are important to consider as we draft an action plan.

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To follow up on this issue, we are hosting an in-person discussion after the General Faculty meeting on Oct. 21 at 5:00 pm.

--The FWC Executive Committee

Trainings, Meetings, & Events

Join us for FWC lunch in the Staff and Faculty Dining area upstairs in the Tully at noon on Friday Nov. 13

Meetings

• Oct. 21 after the General Faculty meeting
• Nov. 3 at 7 pm: all-member AAUP National Zoom meeting . Register​
• Dec. 2 at 3:30 on zoom

Please save the date for May 1, 2028, a national day of action for multiple unions and organizations, including AAUP. We are asking you to mention this in your planning and professional organizations, and where possible, plan to not hold work events that day.

We promote faculty welfare, broadly defined, through chapter programs and activities designed to advance academic freedom, advance the economic and professional status of the faculty, encourage faculty participation in governance, and inform the community about AAUP standards and policy statements to ensure higher education's contribution to the common good.