Student board representative reports an orchestration of student votes against FOIA, adviser
Steven Neiheisel, vice president for enrollment and student services, influenced student members of The North Wind Board of Directors to vote against Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and ultimately the reinstatement of assistant professor Cheryl Reed as adviser of the student paper, according to Mary Malaske, student representative and secretary of The North Wind board.
Malaske believes the vote on Friday, April 3 to oust Reed as adviser was influenced by Neiheisel as retaliation for the string of FOIAs over the last year, critical stories of NMU administration and certain inaccuracies by the paper. She feels Neiheisel has been out to get Reed from the start.
“[Neiheisel] brought up Cheryl [in a Jan. 14 private meeting],” Malaske said. “Cheryl being the new adviser, and coming from investigative journalism and coming from Chicago, it was very clear, in my personal opinion, I am pretty sure it has been his plan to get Cheryl Reed fired.”
Malaske approached Reed immediately after the April 3 Board of Directors meeting and told Reed she felt that Neiheisel orchestrated the student vote.
Malaske said Neiheisel requested to have a private meeting with her in January to discuss the student paper. It wasn’t discovered that the meetings occurred until a student told Marquette Social Scene. The North Wind FOIA’d emails on April 6, 2015 previously FOIA’d by Brice Burge at Marquette Social Scene after Malaske talked to Reed. According to the emails, Neiheisel set up private meetings with all the student representatives of the board the week of Jan. 11, the first week of the winter 2015 semester.
Student representative to the Board of Directors Pearl Gaidelis denied being asked to have a meeting with Neiheisel, but the emails show differently. An email from Bergman dated Jan. 12, 2015 stated, “Pearl: Steve Neiheisel would like to meet with you regarding The North Wind. Could you please email me times you are available this week, or call me at 227-2000 to set up a time for the meeting.”
Gaidelis replied, “Yes, I am available Monday, Wednesday, Friday after 4 p.m. Tuesdays after 11 a.m. Thursdays 8 a.m.-11 a.m. or anytime after 2 p.m.”
According to the emails, they set a meeting date for 4 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 14.
Gaidelis declined to comment regarding the Board of Directors. Similar emails were sent to Board Chairperson Aubrey Kall, Vice-Chair Eric Laksonen, ASNMU- appointed representative Troy Morris and Malaske.
Executive Director of the Student Press Law Center Frank LoMonte said there are some court interpretations that state it is a violation of the Open Meetings Law to hold a series of closed door meetings for purposes of determining the outcome of a vote.
“There was a ruling back in 2008 from the Michigan Court of Appeals in a case that involved the city of Marquette in which the court ruled that holding a series of pre-meeting meetings among members of the City Commission could violate the Open Meetings Act,” LoMonte said. “If you’re holding these meetings for the purpose of undermining the act and having discussions that should be taking place in open session then that absolutely could be a violation.”
Malaske said Neiheisel seemed adamant the meeting happen that week.
“I got an email [and] when I didn’t respond to the email, I got a phone call,” Malaske said, “and then after the phone call, he had [Chairperson] Aubrey [Kall] Facebook message me to set up a meeting with him so we could meet that week. It was very urgent that we meet with him that week.”
According to Neiheisel, the meetings were to review the rules and the bylaws of the board. He said the meetings were not private because administrative assistant Carol Bergman was present. Bergman is not a member of the board. The individual meetings were never discussed at official board meetings.
Reed said the tone from student representatives shifted at the Jan. 16 Board of Directors meeting.
“What Mary said made sense to me because it was the [Jan. 16] meeting when the students seemed to become hostile toward me,” Reed said. “Previous to that we’ve had what I would characterize as civil disagreements.”
Neiheisel thought the meetings in his office were innocuous.
“There were, as I think everyone is aware, some new challenges during the winter semester and I thought it good to start the semester before the board meeting with everyone familiar with the bylaws and their roles,” Neiheisel said.
In that meeting with Neiheisel, Malaske said the vice president reiterated a passage in the bylaws, urged her to vote down The North Wind’s FOIA request for administrators’ emails and spoke critically of Cheryl Reed, the adviser of the student paper.
“He had [The North Wind Board of Directors] binder and he basically went to the page in the bylaws that said that [the editor] is responsible to the board for the tone of the paper,” Malaske said. “He went over that line at least three times, basically telling us that we have control over the tone of the paper and it is kind of like our say in The North Wind.”
After he pointed out this passage, he became critical of the recent FOIA requests submitted by the student paper, according to Malaske.
Neiheisel denies he brought up the FOIA issues because the vote was put on the agenda during the board meeting on Jan. 16. He claims he was unaware the FOIA would be voted on during that meeting.
“He discussed the Starbucks issue and he talked about how that was a waste of time and money, just put us in a bad light,” Malaske said. “Then he talked about the Lenovo FOIA and how all these papers were printed out and not a single story came out of it and it was just a big waste of our time and energy. He talked about how we don’t have a lot of money right now and so it wouldn’t be a good decision to keep doing these. He basically was saying about how FOIAs were a waste, just a waste.”
On Nov. 2, 2014, The North Wind requested the contracts between the university and Lenovo. Because the FOIA language said “inspect or obtain” copies of these contracts, the university asked Editor in Chief Emma Finkbeiner to come inspect the documents in the office. Finkbeiner declined and requested that she be presented with copies. The university then provided over 9,000 documents, most of which the paper did not ask for. The university said after providing the documents that an inspection would have cut down the number of documents provided, but this purpose was not made clear to Finkbeiner.
At the Friday, Jan. 16 board meeting, the board voted on a FOIA request submitted by Finkbeiner. After she was allegedly intimidated by administration to stop pursuing investigative stories in late 2014, Finkbeiner submitted a FOIA request for the emails of six administrators, including Neiheisel. The request was to determine if there was any collusion between top officials to stifle the newspaper’s voice and intimidate the student editors. The university tried to charge the newspaper for the documents.
During Malaske’s individual meeting with Neiheisel, he said The North Wind’s FOIA request for administrators’ emails would be a waste of time and money. However, what Neiheisel failed to mention in those meetings was his conflict of interest, Malaske said.
“He had been telling us all these horrible things about how big of a waste of time FOIA requests are,” Malaske said, “but [Neiheisel] failed to mention at any point during that meeting that the current FOIA request that we were to vote on included him. So he gave us all this stuff, didn’t mention that he was involved, but basically told us that we shouldn’t vote for it.”
The board ultimately voted against paying for the FOIA and Neiheisel did not abstain from the vote.
However, after a flurry of critical stories on social media and a groundswell of support for the newspaper, the administration backed down and provided the emails free of charge. When the paper received them, however, they were heavily redacted. The university cited the “open and frank communication” exemption.
Malaske feels Neiheisel’s influence has affected how the student representatives view Reed.
“I feel like a lot of the student reps, with the influence of Steve, have been holding [Reed] accountable for what the paper has been putting out, and feel like if they change her then everything changes,” Malaske said. “I don’t think that the student reps are bad people—I just think they are impressionable and Steve has had his way with them. Since they only heard one side of the story they’ve gotten so polarized in that side that they’ve become unwilling to hear the other side.”
Malaske said she tried to urge the student representatives to meet with Reed like they met with Neiheisel.
“I brought up to Aubrey that I thought we should all meet with Cheryl because we all were forced to meet with Steve,” Malaske said. “I mean obviously not physically forced, but we were all pretty much forced to meet with Steve, we should meet with Cheryl too, to get her side.”
However, none of the student representatives made an attempt to meet with Reed privately to discuss board issues. Reed and Morris met in March to discuss the definition of prior restraint, but never talked about the board, according to Reed.
Kall admits to meeting with Neiheisel, but never with Reed.
“I am not a member of the editorial staff, therefore there was no need for me to meet with the journalistic adviser,” Kall wrote in an email.
Malaske feels that the board’s job is to keep the paper running, something Neiheisel and the other board members under the influence of the vice president failed to do so on April 3.
“If you get rid of the journalistic adviser and an editor in chief, you have two blank major positions for the following year,” Malaske said. “To me that sounds like you’re trying to literally take down The North Wind.”
However, Malaske doesn’t see the student representatives who voted against Reed as ill-to-do, only misinformed.
“I think it’s important to say, I don’t think they’re inherently against Cheryl,” Malaske said. “I definitely think it’s been Steve’s influence on them. I don’t think [the student representatives are] bad people. I really don’t think the student reps are evil and out to get people, I just think they’ve been poorly informed and influenced.”
*UPDATE*
Minutes after this article appeared online, Gaidelis called saying she did not realize that when the reporter asked whether she had met with “Dr. Neiheisel” that the reporter was referring to Steve. She said she didn’t realize Neiheisel had a doctorate.
On Wednesday, April 8, Malaske met with President Fritz Erickson to discuss the potential influences and wrong doings she saw and any possible action the president could take to reverse the decision of the board.
“After much discussion, he expressed to me that he did not think this was a place he should step in,” Malaske said, “because as president of the university, to go in and overthrow a mostly student vote on the board would not be a wise decision, almost like an over breach of his power.”
According to Malaske, Erickson did not think the April 3 vote was an attempt to shut down the North Wind.
“He thinks it will be tedious for us to get it back,” Malaske said, “to find a new adviser and editor in chief, but it will keep going, the cycle will continue, regardless.”
Rachelle Giuliani • Apr 21, 2015 at 5:35 pm
Thank you, Clairene Smith and Gabriel Caplett. Together you clearly expressed what I intended to say. I’m pleased that THE NORTH WIND actually investigates issues/concerns and publishes the results. That’s more than I see or hear on most media. As a former undergrad at NMU and an educator at the elementary and high school levels, I am happy to note that students are waking up, speaking up, and moving on. I recently checked the statistics and learned that over 1,500 students have left NMU since 2010. I see that as a good sign because the most effective way I’ve ever seen to be heard or protest is to boycott–a la Rosa Parks and her people. A Martin Luther King, Jr. would be too strong and a Gandhi would probably be laughed at; but Rosa Parks and her people simply stopped using public transport. The the best and only vote that counts today is the “almighty dollar”, so that is the way I vote. I support, use services, and attend programs at businesses and institutions that provide competent, ethical, respectful, professional, and user friendly products, services, and programs. Today we get further by putting our money where are mouths are. Congratulations, NORTH WIND staff and adviser, for more mature and professional journalism and responses to the situations and circumstances in which you now find yourselves.
Bob • Apr 17, 2015 at 9:08 pm
No one in power likes investigative journalism when they’re the target. They’d prefer to be able to keep their activities in the dark.
Clairene Smith • Apr 16, 2015 at 2:26 pm
One clarification- when I referred to Neiheisel having a personal invested interest in keeping the emails private and denying the FOIA request I was referring to the fact that HIS emails we’re included in the FOIA request. It was obviously a huge conflict of interest that he was able to be part of the discussion (let alone vote) of this FOIA request at all. He wanted to keep his emails out of the newspaper. Which boils down to the fact that manipulating the other board members was very much in his personal best interest. (And Even if he wasn’t concerned about the contents of some of his emails being public, I imagine he didn’t want to have anyone looking through his email regardless.)
Clairene Smith • Apr 16, 2015 at 2:05 pm
I’m usually very much a stay in the background kind of person, but I felt like I had to make an exception here.
First, the FOIA requests were too expensive? NMU is sitting on 100 million dollars. There was also another solution, an easy one: the emails could have been turned over without a FOIA request at all.
Second, regardless of whether or not the meetings with Neihesal were meant to intimidate, the simple fact that the meetings were held prior to a vote, and that Neihesal was ‘discussing’ the vote on the FOIA request when he had a invested interest in making sure those emails were not publicized, the meetings by default WERE intimidating. The students on the advisory board who went to those meetings may feel that they were not influenced by Neihesal, but anytime someone meets with his or her ‘boss’ or a higher level official, they are vulnerable and react to that vulnerability whether they’re consciously aware of it or not. In a situation like that, statements like, “Now you make sure you vote your conscience” or “I’m not trying to tell you what to do” very often convey that that the person in authority wants exactly the opposite. The tactic of going over one small part of the bylaws again and again, rather than speaking of the role of the advisory board as a whole would certainly do that. Why not review the bylaws with the entire board at an open meeting? In addition, the fact that the board member is a powerful administrator and was, in effect, acting the part of a “boss” (the suit, the office, the big desk) would certainly have the effect of influencing these students.
This is not to say it’s the students’ fault. They should never have been put in such a situation.
A previous comment mentioned that The North Wind seems like an immature teenage tantrum. The opposite is true—and it’s something we’ve all been taught: when someone decides to fight for the truth, stand up for their First Amendment Rights, and forms opinions of their own, it’s a true sign of maturity and growth. Isn’t that kind of critical thinking the very best of education?
Last year, and in all the years I can remember, this paper was far less mature–simply covering events and writing small features and columns; I mean no disrespect to those who wrote the pieces that appeared in the paper at that time, I’m merely referring to the fact that the content of the newspaper has changed from something like a neighborhood newsletter to a newspaper featuring true journalism, something we need much more of in the media.
If there have been some headlines that were occasionally a bit over the top, well this is a STUDENT paper and as such is a learning tool as well as an increasingly high quality news source. The students who staff the paper learn as they go, as we all do. From what I can see, they’ve learned a whole lot and are dedicated to learning more and continuing to turn this paper into one that all students can be proud of.
Taiylor Wallace • Apr 13, 2015 at 1:09 am
And another thing…
It was in extremely poor taste and disrespectful for the North Wind to print the ‘Je Suis’ spread in the middle. I’m not supporting either side of this battle, but the North Wind definitely lost a lot of respect by comparing their situation to that of an office of writers being assaulted and murdered by religious extremists. You have been told to shut up by university administrators, not shot to death by terrorists.
I used to post my favorite articles from the newspaper on my wall in the dorm and in my room. After this, no more until the North Wind matures again.
Taiylor Wallace • Apr 13, 2015 at 1:03 am
This is newspaper is turning into a teenage tantrum. I read it every week hoping I’ll see some maturity on the front page and I have thus far been disappointed. It was such a great, funny, and informative publication last year.
I understand that rights have been violated. I understand that people were unfairly fired or denied positions and I completely support the North Wind’s anger. What I cannot abide by is the childish way the North Wind is whining about it all. You were treated unfairly, yes, but instead of continuing to dig at the administration for justice, take justice for yourselves. I’d be completely behind the scrutiny of the administration if only the North Wind did its proper research and fact-checking rather than reporting opinions and unfounded allegations like a supermarket checkout-line tabloid.
I’m really disappointed in this newspaper and the administration both for being so childish to one another and to the university as a whole. I hope that there will be people on either end who smarten up and mature into the proper adults they are.
Lauren King • Apr 11, 2015 at 8:35 pm
Our school paper is such a joke. My friends at other schools have really cool and exciting school papers, but here I am stuck with this embarrassing joke.
Gabriel Caplett • Apr 8, 2015 at 5:43 pm
Great job North Wind! You’ve shown what the board and administration’s goals vis-a-vis the North Wind really are.
After months of the administration trying to violate open records law, preempting the North Wind with mass campus e-mails, a conflict of interest on the board voting against pursuing documents, alleged student intimidation, and now possibly getting the board to violate open meetings law and influencing them to violate the paper’s bylaws in ditching Reed, it should be clear to everyone what the administration is doing. And all because the North Wind questioned them, asked for transparency, and wrote stories that weren’t recycled NMU news releases.
Critics of the North Wind should realize the newspaper isn’t making NMU bad; it has been incompetence at the top that has led to this being a regular story in the Detroit Free Press and garnering attention from journalism groups. And all because some people around here can’t handle dissent, or even disagreement. A culture of secrecy and elitism turned what should have been working with students on routine FOIA requests and being okay with news stories that maybe were a bit uncomfortable but certainly not earth-shattering into a PR problem for NMU. NMU’s problems can’t be blamed on the students.
It’s easy to blame the North Wind for pointing out the obvious and in the process apparently making NMU’s administration look bad, but NMU will spiral out of control if the administration continues to intimidate faculty by trying to force large pay cuts while keeping their own handsome salaries, as well as failing on enrollment, branding, and figuring out what students need (shouldn’t that be the top priority?). I think this issue reflects a general unease amongst many students and faculty about where NMU is headed and concern over the capabilities of those steering the ship.
Leslie Watson • Apr 8, 2015 at 4:39 pm
The goal of any student is to be prepared for a purposeful life in whatever occupation they prepare themselves for while at college and the university. Paramount for everyone is to hone their critical thinking skills.
Our democratic society needs informed citizens. It is a serious matter we are becoming more aware of at Northern Michigan University involving our rights and the law involving Freedom of Information, Open Meetings, and the independence of the student work to investigate matters of vital importance to students and alumni.
I am shocked and concerned about the integrity of those engaged in impeding the right to know the truth. Admit to the injustice done to the program and the well-qualified advisor, and Michael Williams! Please do not tarnish our achievrments and diplomas with this public disgrace.