Re: 4/7/00 - Levin voices 'regret' after mass e-mail about 20/20
Levin voices 'regret' after mass e-mail about 20/20
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BY MICHAEL BARBARO
YDN Staff Reporter
Published 4/7/00
Ten hours after alumni circulated an audacious e-mail petition calling for high-level administration resignations over Yale's role in an ABC News investigation into the murder of slain Davenport senior Suzanne Jovin '99, University President Richard C. Levin Thursday expressed regret for "any offense" officials' statements on the show caused Jovin's family and friends.
Levin's comments marked the first time he has weighed in on the growing controversy over Yale's handling of ABC's March 1 broadcast. It was also was a major concession to six Branford College alumni who e-mailed more than 4,000 Yale students early Thursday. But it failed to address key demands that Yale's Vice President and Secretary Linda Lorimer and Deputy Director of Public Affairs Tom Conroy be asked to resign and that the University and its governing body repudiate statements attributed to Conroy on the "20/20" broadcast.
ABC News reported that a Yale spokesman, later revealed to be Conroy, told producers that bringing more attention to the murder can "only hurt Yale" and that Yale wants to put the Jovin murder behind it.Conroy has repeatedly denied making the remarks, but ABC sources stand by their reporting. Lorimer, who oversees the Office of Public Affairs, has admitted the Jovin family warned her about the remarks a month before the show aired.
In their five-page e-mail to students, the Branford alumni -- Todd Enders '97, Daniel Choquette '97, Michael Blum '98, Niko Smrekar '98, Christopher Ray '99 and David Harris '00 -- urged undergraduates to request the University apologize to the Jovin family for the remarks and acknowledge "a failure in the leadership of the Yale administration" in handling the ABC's media inquiries.
"We, as students and alumni, do not expect the University administration to do the impossible," the alumni said in the e-mail. "However, what we do expect is that the Yale administration conduct itself with grace and honor with regard to the Jovin family . . . we think we can all agree that the University's actions are reprehensible."
In his prepared response, Levin said the statements attributed to Conroy "were not consistent with the recollection of their supposed source" and "do not reflect the beliefs of any University official."
Levin added, however, that "I regret any offense they gave to the Jovin family, their friends, and any others."
Responding to the statement last night, the petition's authors expressed satisfaction with the concession -- one of six resolutions they drafted -- but insisted Levin should go further by seeking the resignations of Lorimer and Conroy. They also insisted that the the Yale Corporation, the University's highest policy-making body, convene an investigation into the administration's decision not to release Jovin's graduate school letters of recommendation to her parents.
The Jovins could not access the confidential letters until the state's attorney requested them from Yale.
"As much as I am satisfied with the fact that the University has finally issued an apology, clearly there has been some major mismanagement in the most senior levels of the administration," Blum said last night from his San Francisco office. "I strongly feel it's Levin's job to ensure that something like this can never happen again. And given the fact that Conroy and Lorimer have proven incapable of handling the situation, I still feel they should be asked to resign."
Neither Lorimer nor Conroy was available for comment last night.
The alumni also called on students to respond to the e-mail petition to affirm its six resolutions, promising to forward all remarks to a senior member of the Corporation.
But Levin cautioned students against responding to the petition.
"Students in Yale College who are thinking about signing [the petition] ought to think carefully -- since they are being complicit in the defamation of some outstanding people," Levin said last night.
Some of the alumni, while welcoming Levin's statement, said they were troubled by the language of Levin's statement.
"If [Levin] is saying the statements on "20/20" are not consistent with what Conroy recollects, then he is waffling," Enders said. "He apologizes, but he is defensive. The administration doesn't seem to have gotten it right yet."
The fate of the mass e-mail petition, an unusual and rare tactic for those outside of Yale, is unclear. The petition's signatories -- two of whom typed in about 5,000 names by hand and sent out 500 e-mails with ten names each Wednesday night -- said they thought the best way to push the administration was to take their message directly to students.
"For me it came down to the question, what is there that one could do that has not been done?," said Smrekar, reached at his office in Ljubljana, Slovenia. "We have tried everything to get the administration to act on this issue."
About 15 percent of the e-mails did not reach students because the e-mail addresses were lifted from copies of the Old Campus, which does not include full names.
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