May The Trolls Be Happy

Eastman rot gets deeper and deeper

I was talking to my mom a few weeks ago. She had read some of the local news articles that came out when the Graduate Labor Union held their press conference about the case.

“Did you look at the comments?” she asked.

I barely looked at the articles, much less the comments, I told her.

“Good,” she said. “Don’t.”

She said that anonymous posters, identifying themselves as Eastman students, were in the comments, trash-talking my work, saying that I deserved to be expelled.

“Did you belittle students?” she asked, worried. Apparently that’s in a copy-paste comment that’s going around. I’m told it’s a bizarrely coordinated smear campaign.

Ummmm… no? I told her. Eastman’s orchestra director routinely screamed at people, so the bar is pretty low, but—no, I hadn’t “belittled” anyone.

A friend of mine told me that there were Reddit threads using the the same tactics. Posters identifying themselves as Eastman students, also anonymous.

Then I did an interview with FIRE for the profile piece they wrote recently. Will Harris, the author, asked me if I’d seen the comment sections or Reddit. No, I told him—I don’t spend time on those corners of the internet.

He brought it up because FIRE’s posts about the case started getting the same treatment. Anonymous commenters—saying they were Eastman students—taking aim at me. FIRE’s team found it weird—and illustrative. After all, they’re a free speech organization, so coordinated anonymous commenters raise some serious red flags about the school’s internal culture.

The ugliness actually started—in analog form—during my last concert at Eastman. To start with, behavior from a handful of students was… bad.

Open disrespect—toward me and even toward faculty observing the rehearsals. One reprimanded the orchestra directly, others spoke to me about the issues they saw. The behavior didn’t stop. It just got worse.

At the same time, I started getting unsolicited anonymous notes from students—likely the same students posting anonymously online now. They were hostile and pointless. Things like “your conducting is terrible.” (Maybe it is—but I’ll bet it’s better than yours.)

I read a couple. I dispatched the rest to my wife, who told me that the misogyny came through loud and clear.

Their behavior was documented through the proper channels. I also talked to the orchestra about it—hoping that addressing it directly might clear the air and end the weird note passing.

I told the orchestra that they should always feel free to raise issues about me—or, in a perfect world, any conductor—but they needed to do it appropriately. They could talk to me directly. If they weren’t comfortable with that, they should talk to the ensemble manager—exactly what they’d do in a professional ensemble.

No one did. But—the anonymous notes kept coming.

Take that behavior and spike it with some noxious Reddit steroids, and you will get the thread you find here: https://www.reddit.com/r/classicalmusic/comments/1kbm1pr/whistleblower_rebecca_bryant_novak_lodges_human/

I haven’t dug into the slimy depths of it, but I’m told it’s pretty dystopian. Comments about my appearance and my mental health. Students writing that they enjoyed watching me “fail.” All anonymous—just like the notes.

If you want to scare someone away from the Eastman School of Music, you don’t need to send them to my Substack. Just send them to an unhinged Reddit thread where they can watch the culture play out in real time.

What’s telling is this: the harassment complaint started six weeks into my first year, but for a whole year, almost nobody knew. During that time, I worked with the orchestras often. Things were productive and respectful.

There are many people who describe Eastman as a warm, welcoming place. I experienced that, too—until I made a harassment report public. Then things changed—dramatically.

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Setting aside the abominable level of humanity it displays, the online noise reveals some dangerous attitudes among Eastman students.

There are a lot of students trying to give an explanation for why I was expelled with no process, warning, or appeal. They are oddly invested in cutting through the “fake news” of a sworn statement vetted by attorneys at a national civil liberties foundation. Instead—they want to tell everyone the real reason this happened.

They’re sure it was because I gave a horrible performance, because I was toxic and grandiose and hysterical, because I had crooked teeth, because I wore way too much Chanel No. 5.

The problem is—even if all that were true—you can’t get expelled for those things. Not if the school is remotely following their own rules. Google the policies. Instant expulsion just isn’t allowed—at Eastman or anywhere, really.

It’s clear that Eastman students don’t know that. Eastman administration doesn’t seem eager to tell them, either.

If students think that a rough concert or not “fitting in” with a studio or pissing off a teacher can get them kicked out—if faculty reinforce it, if administrators are willing to pull the trigger, even though they know better: that creates an absolute nightmare of a power imbalance, one that is totally off-road from any sane, modern educational system.

And, unfortunately—that may be the point. There are other women with accounts of being forcibly removed from music schools—Eastman included—after reporting faculty abuse. I’ve heard them personally.

The EEOC complaint by a student of William VerMeulen, Eastman’s former visiting professor of horn describes that exact threat.

From my DHR filing:

In 1997, a federal filing against William VerMeulen—then at Rice University, and later a Visiting Professor of Horn at Eastman—alleged that he pressured a student into sexual activity while “continuously reminding her…of his ability to have her expelled…”

My expulsion proves that VerMeulen’s threat—or a threat by any abusive faculty member—was not empty. It clearly demonstrates that Eastman’s leadership will not only fail to stop abuse—they have no hesitation about actively participating in it.

If this is what happened to a student who followed every process, what happened to the ones who didn’t—or couldn’t?

(End of DHR excerpt)

It’s a disturbing story, and it’s one of many. Weaponized expulsions are, chillingly, not unheard of. The only thing unique about this story is the fact that I’m telling it in real-time.

I sent all the Eastman students in my address book a short email—once at the beginning of last summer, once at the end, after the school’s Title IX Coordinator threatened to sue me—telling them that the reporting processes were broken and not safe. I encouraged them to reach out to family, trusted faculty, or even the campus paper if they had problems.

There are students who think that’s why I deserved expulsion. University policy and the United States legal code take those warnings so seriously that they’re considered protected speech. At Eastman—they were “drama.”

These are all dangerous, distorted attitudes. They could be easily corrected—if there was anyone in a leadership role who didn’t share them. Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s the case.

A senior administrator warned me that students would become a “lynch mob” after I reported—and did nothing about it.

A faculty member described Eastman’s response to the situation as “inhumane”—and did nothing about it.

I’ve said bluntly that Eastman is dangerous.

I rest my case.

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When I tell people that this situation has turned me into a Buddhist, they think I’m joking. I’m not. On a psychological level, these situations are sink or swim, so sometimes you have to find new swim strokes.

In diving a little deeper into the teachings of the Buddha recently, I started doing something I’ve never done before: loving-kindness meditation. It’s always felt a little squishy to me, but in this situation, where legit anger could easily eat you alive, it turned out to be a good practice.

In the traditional method, you focus on someone—especially someone you have a hard time with—and you say, May you be safe. May you be happy. May you be at ease.

It’s simple but powerful. You can also make up your own. So I did.

My loving-kindness meditation is:

• May you feel connected.

• May you be open-hearted.

• May you feel free.

• May you be empowered.

I have, more often than you might guess, wished all those things for the people involved in this case. For John, Matthew, Kate, Reinhild, and, yes—even Neil.

So why am I posting stuff on the internet that almost certainly makes them not happy and not at ease? Well, first of all, I tried very hard not to. Eastman flatly refused to have this conversation in private. It was clear that their goal was to not have the conversation at all.

But that’s just not going to work. Because there are too many stories of students—overwhelmingly women—abused by these systems. I am one of them. And our safety, happiness, and ease matters too.

So to everyone in the smear campaign and the Reddit mob:

• May you feel connected.

• May you be open-hearted.

• May you feel free.

• May you be empowered.

Seriously. I mean it.

Because when you genuinely feel those things—you will stop wasting time posting sh*t on Reddit and start making the world a better place.

Happy weekend.