The College Fix

Administrators at British Columbia’s Capilano University have seized a sculpture crafted by an art instructor on the grounds that it amounted to workplace “bullying” and “harassment” of university President Kris Bulcroft.

The artwork depicts Bulcroft and her poodle as caricature ventriloquist dolls wrapped in an American flag, which administrators deemed an “effigy” and forcibly confiscated May 7.

George Rammell, the Capilano instructor who created the sculpture, titled Blathering on in Krisendom, said his property was removed from the university’s studio art building without his knowledge or consent.

Upon discovering its disappearance, Rammell said campus security told him it had been taken under an order from the university’s administration. Two weeks later, Rammell still does not know where it is.

“I see this heist as a model of the way this university administration operates,” Rammell said in an email interview Wednesday with The College Fix. “They feel entitled to make decisions behind closed doors and seize protest banners and art that is critical of them.”

Jane Shackell, chair of Capilano’s board, said the decision to remove the sculpture, made under her direction, “was not taken lightly, but rather was the result of endeavoring to find the right balance among many competing values,” she said in a statement published by Inside Higher Ed.

“No one wants Capilano to be a place where art is arbitrarily removed or censored,” she said.

But, she added, “we must also be mindful of the university’s obligations to cultivate and protect a respectful workplace in which personal harassment and bullying are prohibited.”

Shackell said the sculpture amounted to “workplace harassment … intended to belittle and humiliate the president.”

Rammell scoffed at the notion.

“Inanimate objects can’t harass, art doesn’t harass; people harass,” he told The College Fix. “If they had issues with me as an artist they could have gone through a grievance process.”

“Of course I was being cheeky,” Rammell added about his work. “In my decades of teaching I’ve always promoted art that challenges, deconstructs and encourages debate.”

He said a university should encourage discourse and dialogue, insisting “it’s not a corporation where faculty can be fired for insubordination.”

Rammell also said Capilano’s president deserves scrutiny and satire because “she’s willing to break Canadian laws and, when found guilty by our Supreme Court, she wants to use our limited financial resources to appeal.”

Rammell is referring to British Columbia’s Supreme Court ruling in April that the Capilano administration had acted contrary to the province’s University Act in making cuts to programs without first consulting the Capilano Senate. The university is considering an appeal to the court’s ruling.

But President Bulcroft has come under fire for her decision last year to cut the programs, including the studio arts program and textile arts.

Sandra Seekins, an art history instructor at Capilano, expressed her disapproval with the confiscation of the sculpture in a letter to the university’s board.

“The action authorized by the Chair of the Board [Shackell] … provides further proof that the people who suspended the Studio Arts and Textile Arts programs have a minimal understanding of the role of art in our society and no understanding of what is at stake in an anti-censorship position,” Seekins wrote.

She said one of art’s roles is “to question and challenge the status quo,” writing that it does not avoid controversial topics.

The university administration has stated the sculpture would be returned to Rammell under the condition that it is not brought back to campus.

College Fix contributor Andrew Desiderio is a student at The George Washington University.

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IMAGE: Reprinted with permission from George Rammell

H/T: Inside Higher Ed

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