Three Central Michigan University staff returned to work this week after being placed on leave since this spring, a university spokesperson said.
The university was investigating the employees’ connections to a toxic work environment at a public relations firm where CMU students and alumni worked.
CMU hired an external investigator in March to look into its staff’s ties to Vanguard Public Affairs, which was run by CMU alumus TJ Bucholz.
University spokesperson John Veilleux said based on the information officials had seen from the probe so far, they decided to bring the staffers back to work.
CMU students and alumni who worked at Vanguard have said Bucholz bullied them and made inappropriate sexual comments while they were on the job. Bucholz had close ties to the university’s journalism department, where all three of the suspended employees worked.
One former CMU intern at Vanguard and one alumna who worked at the firm told WCMU News in the spring that university staff should have known about the environment its interns were facing at Vanguard. Both declined to comment on the reinstatement of the suspended employees.
The university never publicly identified the suspended staffers, but WCMU News and other news outlets have confirmed that they are journalism professors Steve Coon and Jim Wojcik and the student newspaper’s faculty advisor Dave Clark.
Isaac Ritchey was the editor-in-chief of CMU’s student newspaper last academic year when the suspensions were announced. He said the university never asked the paper’s staff how they were dealing with the absence of their advisor.
“It almost felt like the university let us out to dry,” Ritchey said.
Coon and Wojcik did not respond to requests for comment.
Clark said he was pleased to be back at work at CMU. He is also back on the board of the Michigan Press Association, which had suspended him when he was placed on leave by the university.
Clark said he fully supports “protecting our students and investigating any potential threats they could encounter,” but he wants to sit down with CMU President Bob Davies to discuss the process that caused him to be placed on leave for 22 weeks.
Ritchey, too, said the probe was necessary. “The university was right in investigating the three men.”
“However,” he said, “I also believe the university must now be transparent about the results of the investigation.”
Veilleux, the CMU spokesperson, said more information would come, but did not give details. “The investigation is wrapping up and the report will be forthcoming at that time,” he said.