In its justification for the vote of no confidence last week, the Faculty Senate Executive Committee claimed that President Jim Wohlpart “governs by intimidation, fear and retaliation.” This culture is something I have heard described many times, firsthand, during my time as Editor-In-Chief of The Observer.

Over a dozen members of the CWU staff, faculty, and student bodies, across nearly every side of campus, have shared with me these two consistent and similar sentiments: they are scared of speaking up, and they are scared of retaliation.

During these conversations, I’ve had people point me toward, and sometimes verbatim tell me, questions they’d like me to ask administration at Central. Oftentimes, the questions weren’t things I thought people would be scared to ask, things I wouldn’t consider hard questions. They tend to fall along the lines of ‘how will x affect y,’ an example being, ‘How will lower enrollment affect my department?’

When I asked these people why they didn’t feel comfortable asking the questions themselves, I was struck by a pattern of fear regarding retaliation and exclusion. Staff have questions they want to ask, but they are too scared to do so.

Chilling open communication

I wrote my first draft of this editorial in spring quarter of 2025, and I have been sitting on it and attempting to flesh it out since. What kept me from publishing it originally, was my own fear that I might be misrepresenting opinions at CWU. However, after the latest developments within the Faculty Senate, the contents of this article, to me, have been substantiated.

Prior to the official decision to hold a vote of no confidence against Wohlpart, 49 faculty members signed a petition and submitted it to the Faculty Senate Executive Committee. The petition expressed the various opinions of the faculty that led to a vote of no confidence, with a key reason cited being a culture of fear created by Wohlpart at CWU.

The petition openly described the climate of fear and intimidation that I have heard described repeatedly by various staff and faculty members, stating, “faculty report a leadership climate in which disagreement is met with intimidation, personal grievance and retaliatory behavior, creating a chilling effect on open communication.”

An example of retaliation

A fear of retaliation is, almost every time, the reason people cite when I ask them why they are afraid of speaking their mind about any given subject at Central. Before I go into the various ways in which CWU staff and faculty have shared with me why they fear potential retaliation, I want to talk about an instance where I myself have seen what I would consider retaliation, and its effects.

Earlier in my time here, there was someone who spoke up about what I would consider to be a minor campus issue. After they did, I didn’t hear from them for quite some time. I later found out, while reporting on an unrelated incident, that it was because they had been effectively barred by both their boss and a member of university administration, with the threat of transfer or termination, from ever speaking out

again.

I met with them in private again last spring to talk about the situation, and they were visibly fearful the entire interaction, constantly looking around to make sure nobody saw them talking to me. To this day they fear speaking their mind, and even more so speaking with student media.

One staff member echoed a sentiment about a fear of retaliation in an interview I had with them for an article about policy at Central. “It’s very hard to prove retaliation, but a lot of staff share the same sentiment. It is widely known not to speak up. Staff prepare for backlash even just to speak up in interviews,” they said.

I have had multiple staff and faculty members describe their fear as not being part of the “united front” that Central has asked them to participate in. Oftentimes, their concepts of retaliation are abstract, just the loose idea that by sharing their thoughts, they would be open to potential punishment, whatever it may be.

The most common fear I’ve heard expressed is what I would describe as career stagnation. The idea being that by speaking out they would lose future career potential at Central, never being able to achieve promotions and while not having been directly punished, they would effectively be stagnating themselves to whatever position they currently hold.

I’ve also had staff describe retaliation to me as increased scrutiny on their departments. For example, one person described how the buildings they work on started to get more inspections, and the inspections got harsher in their assessments. In turn, their inspection scores went down. Because of that the university can give the staff warnings, eventually write-ups, and then they can terminate them for cause.

Staff have also described other forms of retaliation they say they could envision happening to them at CWU, such as being transferred to a non-unionized position, or having their hours either reduced or moved to situations that no longer work for them.

I reached out last spring and fall to various staff and faculty who originally shared these experiences with me about commenting on this story, but unanimously they expressed that their fears of retaliation outweighed their want to talk about this topic that has caused them strife. Despite their personal fears, they affirmed to me that this story is something they would like to see published.

Culture over time

A key question that has come up again and again in my conversations is when did this perceived culture of fear originate at CWU? Staff that have been with the university for longer periods of time have alleged to me that a culture of fear is not new at Central, but that it has gotten worse in recent years.

One staff member in a management role alleged to me that when Central went online during the pandemic, there were weekly HR meetings hosted virtually where staff, faculty and students could ask questions anonymously in the chat box. During those meetings, anonymous staff would share “hard” questions that they had wanted to ask but never felt they could. Eventually, CWU changed the rules of the virtual meetings so that questions could no longer be posted anonymously, and after that change was made, according to the staff member I spoke to, almost all of the hard questions stopped rolling in.

If people in the CWU community seemed hesitant to speak out, their concerns were reinforced by an email that was sent out Jan. 24, 2025, by previous Vice President Andrew Morse. It asked anyone speaking to any media to go first through David Leder, associate director of strategic communications at Central. The email was a reminder of Central’s university relations policies, and in it he stated their goal was to ensure “that everyone speaking on behalf of the university is disseminating information that is both accurate and consistent.”

Since that email was released, our reporters have consistently faced challenges in scheduling interviews and I personally have heard from a few different professors that the email reaffirmed their preexisting fears of speaking out, and furthered fears of retaliation.

This is not to say, however, that CWU’s media relations department has made it harder for us to get sources. In fact, both David Leder and Rune Torgersen, marketing and communications coordinator writer, have consistently worked to make themselves available to us as needed, coordinate interviews and help with the progress of stories.

In the fall of 2025, and again following the recent Faculty Senate vote, I asked both Leder and Torgersen to comment on this editorial, and Torgersen offered the following responses to my questions.

“First, I think it’s important to note that, as a university, we are by necessity a very complex institution … This means that my experience of what people feel they can and cannot speak out about will be drastically different from that of someone employed elsewhere on campus,” Torgersen stated in the email.

“In my time with CWU, I have never once felt compelled to silence through fear or intimidation. I’ve taken concerns and frustrations straight to the head of my department, where they’ve been met with an open mind and a listening ear, often resulting in change taking place,” Torgersen continued. “My perception is that CWU, as an employer, is keenly interested in learning and growing, and to that end, welcomes honest feedback at every level.”

However, the previously discussed sentiment of fear and retaliation only grew stronger in my conversations with various staff and faculty about commenting on university issues. I’ve had experiences asking staff questions about simple, localized issues at Central that they didn’t feel comfortable answering because of the chance someone might not like their opinion about it.

Two staff members and one faculty member have also denied or ignored interview requests in their school emails, only to then reach out personally, off school channels, to talk to me about how much they want to say but that they feel they never could because of how it might affect their careers at the university.

When I started writing this editorial two quarters ago, I was working solely off the conversations and experiences I have had during my time as Editor-In-Chief of The Observer. But now, the recent grievances cited by the Faculty Senate have underscored what I have heard directly from faculty, staff and students.

You can contact The Observer at [email protected]. You can also personally reach me at [email protected], and if you wish to speak anonymously, we remain open to hearing new perspectives. As stated in the Society for Professional Journalists Code of Ethics, we “reserve anonymity for sources who may face danger, retribution or other harm, and have information that cannot be obtained elsewhere.” When we grant anonymity, we will always explain why it was granted.