Williamson denies bullying, says her direct style clashed at Winthrop

Editor’s note: Jamie Comstock Williamson was fired in June 2014 after just 11 months as president of Winthrop University. Since then, she has declined to answer questions about her dismissal, including the reasons Winthrop board members gave for terminating her. In late May, The Herald met with Williamson and her husband, Larry, over two days in Florida. This is the third of a five-part series from those interviews.

Winthrop trustees gathered blistering employee statements about former university President Jamie Comstock Williamson’s alleged bullying in an attempt to discredit her, Williamson claims.

In firing Williamson last summer, trustees accused the university’s 10th president of hostile and unprofessional behavior that caused Winthrop employees to become “fearful” of her.

Williamson believes all but one of the negative employee accounts were written after she was suspended. The board used them in an attempt to further “discredit” her, she says.

Several of her former colleagues told her later that they refused to participate in the Winthrop board’s request last June for documentation of alleged unprofessional behavior, Williamson claims.

Winthrop officials issued a statement to The Herald last week calling the campus employees who came forward last year courageous. Trustees stand by their decision to fire Williamson, and the school “is prepared to defend (board) action in the appropriate legal forum,” the statement says.

While serving as president, Williamson said, she at times likely appeared angry or stressed, and she did interact with her staffers in a “direct” and “firm” way.

But, she said, “If you ask those same people if they think (I) should be fired for it, most of them would say no.”

In speaking with The Herald recently, Williamson declined to respond to the specific allegations found in about 30 pages of documents Winthrop provided to the newspaper last year.

She said the university has not provided to her copies of the employee statements. The Herald had previously provided to Williamson’s attorney copies of the employee allegations referenced by the newspaper.

Williamson said she doesn’t want to “further embarrass” the Winthrop employees who made the statements. Still, she says, in many cases, her account of interactions are different than what employees alleged. Williamson said she took notes on interactions with some employees while at Winthrop as personnel documentation but that notebook had been removed from her office by the time she was allowed back into the president’s suite after she was fired.

Through an Freedom of Information Act public records request last year, The Herald obtained copies of employee statements that outline about 12 alleged incidents involving Williamson. The university removed employees’ names before releasing the records.

Winthrop trustees told The Herald they spoke in June 2014 with about 10 university employees who had worked closely with Williamson. According to Winthrop’s records, many staff members claimed that the former president made them cry and that she yelled at them on campus in front of other people.

One employee claimed Williamson yelled at her for not having enough file folders and then “stomped” away and threw something against the wall in her Tillman Hall president’s office. That alleged incident happened on June 28, 2013, three days before the president officially took office.

Employees who provided statements to the board last year did not, at the time, “know Dr. Williamson’s future and would have been put in a very difficult position should she have remained as president,” Winthrop officials wrote in a statement last week.

Williamson: Senior team was willing to defend her

Williamson was fired after 11 months on the job. In a “notice of termination” letter to Williamson, Winthrop trustees wrote: “You have repeatedly engaged in explosive, berating, demeaning, hostile, condescending, rude and other unprofessional behavior.”

Trustees also claimed they had “cautioned” Williamson “against such behaviors.” The letter continued: “Despite your assurances that such behavior would cease, you have persisted in conducting yourself in this manner to the detriment of others and the university.”

Williamson argues the trustees did not provide her with a written notice of such concerns, as her employment contract required.

She says Winthrop trustees discussed with her during a closed-door meeting in February 2014 what they considered appropriate behavior in Southern culture. Williamson claims the trustees were “vague” and never mentioned concerns about how she treated employees. Winthrop has refused The Herald’s request for meeting minutes from the board’s executive session with Williamson.

Williamson says she wouldn’t characterize her actions at Winthrop as verbal abuse or mistreatment toward any employee.

The former president and her former attorney have said many senior-level employees were waiting outside the trustees’ meeting on June 13, 2014, to speak on Williamson’s behalf. It appears they weren’t invited in that afternoon.

After nearly six hours behind closed doors on June 13, including one hour with Williamson, trustees voted to suspend her. Two weeks later, Williamson was fired.

The board action came three months after the president’s week-long inauguration celebration.

The timing, Williamson claims, showed “the board was willing to fire anybody,” and she suspects some Winthrop employees felt pressured to do what trustees asked them to do.

Winthrop Board Chairwoman Kathy Bigham told The Herald last year that Williamson’s “personal conduct was part of, but not the only basis for,” her firing.

A few days after Williamson was fired, her attorney at the time sent a letter to Winthrop trustees saying some board members simply weren’t comfortable with “a woman who is direct in her approach.” She also wrote that Williamson “is not concerned with stroking personalities” and had been told before “that her direct manner was not suitable to her now Southern setting.”

Many of the incidents that suggest Williamson was rude or “berating” toward colleagues center around what employees described as the president’s tendency to get upset about her schedule or certain office procedures.

One employee accused Williamson of yelling at her about the way Christmas card envelopes had been addressed to the president’s family members. Another employee described Williamson’s behavior with her staff members as “grossly and frighteningly out of control.”

Trustees allege Williamson acted unprofessionally toward a range of people, including her senior-level advisers, clerical staff members, Winthrop faculty, and trustees. Some of the employee statements provided to The Herald last year accuse Williamson of acting unprofessionally in front of university guests, students and alumni.

Still, some employees wrote that Williamson apologized later to them for her behavior and sometimes would explain that her actions resulted from a misunderstanding or miscommunication. One employee reported “many positive interactions” with Williamson and wrote that he or she had felt supported by the president and believed Williamson had at times shown a “desire to make Winthrop a better place.”

It’s unclear whether any Winthrop employee ever reported concerns about the former president to the school’s human resources officials. Trustees have said they cannot answer that question. The Herald obtained Williamson’s personnel file last summer and found no documentation of employees lodging complaints against the president.

Politics, busy schedule issues for president

Since her departure, Williamson said she’s received dozens of emails and letters of support from people in the Winthrop community, including one trustee and multiple people from the university’s nonprofit foundation. Some of those people, she says, said they were surprised by the board’s actions and disgusted by the claims against Williamson.

She declined to release the emails or letters because she didn’t want to disclose the writers’ identities.

Williamson said part of her struggles with the Winthrop board last year may have stemmed from her political beliefs clashing with those of some trustees and the most powerful people in South Carolina government.

“I had opinions that were different than the governor and many people in the Republican Party – that would have directly affected how they perceived me,” she said.

Looking back, she said, she wishes she had refrained from making public comments and writing online blog posts “that were well-received by the higher education community, but probably too progressive to play well in some segments of South Carolina.”

One example of such a political conflict was an issue over academic freedom at two public colleges in S.C. that assigned books with gay themes to freshmen students. Lawmakers voted to remove some funding from those schools after parents and some students complained about the mandatory reading.

Winthrop faculty members and professors from several other S.C. universities took aim at the legislative move and cried foul over what they deemed an attempt by lawmakers to control curriculum decisions. Williamson, too, raised a concern, saying then that universities should expose students to the “marketplace of ideas” and encourage them to reflect on their own values and experiences.

Many local elected officials backed legislative efforts to remove some funding for schools that assigned the gay-themed books.

Williamson backed the Winthrop faculty members’ resolution asserting that academic freedom, “and the occasional controversies it can generate, is fundamental to the pursuit of truth and knowledge in all disciplines.”

If she “had it to do over again,” Williamson said, she’d do some things differently, including pulling back on public political comments.

“I was surprised to receive backlash from trustees and other elected officials for supporting liberal arts education, academic freedom, and access to education based on students’ ability to learn, rather than their ability to pay.”

Winthrop officials this month have challenged Williamson’s remarks about school trustees, saying in a statement that the former president “has chosen to hurl accusations” at the board and “appears to blame others for her own poor decisions ... rather than taking responsibility for her own behavior.”

Williamson said recently she regrets not “taking charge” of her schedule and event calendar early on “so that I could have the time I needed for critical thinking and much needed restorative rest.”

Winthrop’s challenges, she said, made her “simply afraid to rest.” But, she added, “I should have taken better care of myself, so that I could better manage the stressors I encountered.”

This story was originally published July 16, 2015 at 7:09 PM with the headline "Williamson denies bullying, says her direct style clashed at Winthrop."