Reporters tipped off college

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This article was published 14/11/2017 (2895 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If it wasn’t for reporters in Manitoba alerting them to Steve Kirby’s past, Boston’s Berklee College of Music said it wouldn’t have known about the allegations of sexual harassment.

In a Boston Globe story on Monday about a campus forum on sexual assault and harassment Monday at the prestigious music school, Berklee president Roger Brown told the hundreds of students gathered that Kirby was placed on leave within 24 hours of being notified in September and fired a day or two ago after the school completed its investigation.

Brown also acknowledged that Berklee administrators contacted two of Kirby’s references before hiring him but failed to check any official sources, such as the University of Manitoba’s human resources department.

“That is a mistake,” Brown said in the Boston Globe piece. “We should probably do that going forward.”

Kirby, 61, quietly retired in June from his 14-year career at the U of M and then was hired by Berklee. Its president, Brown, acknowledged in the Globe story that had it not been for reporters in Manitoba alerting Berklee about Kirby’s past, administrators there would not have known about him allegedly sexual harassing a young woman at the U of M.

The American-born jazz professor first went on leave early this year while, unbeknownst to the community, the university was following up on a female student’s claim she had been sexually harassed. An internal report revealed investigators believed all the student’s allegations “had merit.” Kirby then retired.

The U of M has told the Winnipeg Free Press that any investigation it may make into complaints against a staff member has to remain confidential because of provincial privacy laws.

Under the institution’s respectful work and learning environment policy and its sexual-assault policy, the university has said it cannot confirm whether a complaint has been made, nor whether it is investigating a staff member, in order to protect confidentiality for all parties.

The U of M policies, it said, were developed after consultation with the university community.

In Boston on Monday, Berklee president Brown told the hundreds of students at the forum that the renowned school has terminated 11 faculty members in the past 13 years for sexual misconduct. The meeting on Monday followed a Boston Globe story last week that chronicled incidents since 2008 in which students reported being assaulted, groped, or pressured into sex with their teachers, according to court documents and interviews with more than a dozen people.

Berklee’s president told the standing room-only crowd inside a 1,250-seat theatre Monday that he promised to “root out” abusive behaviour.

“We are not going to tolerate it,” Brown is quoted as saying in the Boston Globe story.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca