No comment.

The silence is hurting my ears.

I’ve gotten so many nice, supportive messages as a result of sharing this story, I haven’t been able to keep up with all of them. (I do intend to circle around. I have read them - all the comments, emails, DMs - and yes, they really do mean a lot.)

It is a starkly different picture than what is happening on the ground here at ESM, friends. Here there is total. silence. Loud silence. The kind of silence I remember at the dinner table when I told my parents that I had a girlfriend and we were getting married.

Just this week, I walked past a table of my colleagues sitting outside at a coffee shop - twice, in plain view. Those guys (yes, those guys) averted their eyes so hard, I almost offered them eclipse glasses.

Later, I sent this email to all the faculty grading me this semester:

I imagine most of you have read the story I wrote about my experience this year by now. If not, you’ll find it here. 

There have been a lot of costs - my time and attention among them, and to say that my workload became chaotic is an understatement. Sharing the story publicly has been very, very difficult in itself, although necessary, in my view. 

My work is behind in a lot of ways, and I have obligations to each of you which I may or may not be able to meet by the end of the semester. Taking an incomplete on some of my coursework is possible or likely. 

I think it’s important to be open about the costs of these situations, right down to putting grades in the grade book. I’ve now had many current and former students reach out to me about how their own work has suffered in similar situations - including some who dropped out of Eastman all together, solely from the fallout of reporting harassment, not very long ago. I have seriously considered it myself. 

The response? Some forms to fill out.

That whole thing about sexism, misogyny, and Eastman’s decades of indifference leading many women to drop out of Eastman entirely, including, possibly, myself?

No comment.

I have sent some of those faculty actual honest-to-god incomplete forms. I listed the reason for the incomplete as “harassment and retaliation; institutional tolerance for sexism and misogyny; collective indifference and inaction,” with appropriate deans and advisors cc’d.

No comment.

I wrote an open letter to Eastman, which I sent directly to Dean Jamal Rossi and every member of Eastman’s senior leadership. I know many others have written in as well.

No comment.

Those are just the most recent examples. It has been like this for an entire year.
This is from a January email I sent to Eastman’s orchestral conducting studio:

I've been disappointed by the studio's response in this situation. I've gotten support and concern from many, many people. Not a word of it came from my studiomates, even at the earliest stages.

You'll face a situation like this again, personally or professionally. And it's very important to think about where you're placing concern, where you're placing responsibility, and why. 

The response?

Continued silence.

And if you think that’s a culture problem, keep in mind that, more than once, I have seen every member of the department walk out of the room when I stepped on the podium - led by its faculty.

I have seen faculty, administrators, and students alike zip their lips and throw away the key over and over again. I have heard loud silence. Bizarre silence. Self-serving I-don’t-want-to-get-involved silence. Troubling, culty we-don’t-talk-about-that silence. Not questions. Not alternate points of view. Certainly not support. Just silence.

I’m not sharing all this to vent personal grievances. I’ve seen this other places - so many women have. I share it because it’s so easy to support women in a hashtag yet so normal to quietly shut them down in real life. Too many people assume that in 2024 - in places filled with polite, over-educated people - these things don’t happen anymore.

They do. They absolutely do.

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