Wichita State student body leader, president talk; Eric Sexton to leave AD position

Eric Sexton, who has been serving as executive director of athletics at Wichita State University and vice president for student affairs, will transition out of the athletics role by the end of next semester, WSU administrators said Tuesday.

Student body president Joseph Shepard and other students had demanded Sexton’s removal from student affairs and had planned a public protest at the Kansas Board of Regents meeting on the WSU campus Wednesday.

But Shepard canceled that protest on Tuesday based on several promises he says President John Bardo made to him. One promise, Shepard said, was that Sexton would give up the athletics role to concentrate on student affairs by the end of this semester.

“This has never been about Eric Sexton as a person,” Shepard said. “It’s because in that dual role he never had time to adequately work with students.”

But what Bardo said to Shepard about Sexton was not a promise to remove Sexton from athletics, said Lou Heldman, WSU’s vice president for Strategic Communications. Bardo appointed Sexton to the student affairs role in April – and kept him in a dual role as executive director of athletics. But Bardo has said all along that Sexton would eventually transition to full time in student affairs, Heldman said.

“This is more an evolution than a sharp turn,” Heldman said. He said Sexton gave up day-to-day operations of the athletic department starting in April. Heldman also said that Sexton is scheduled for some critical work involving NCAA matters and will do those tasks through the 2016 spring semester.

Protests about the protest

Shepard on Monday had outlined a six-page list of complaints about Bardo and his administration in a letter to fellow students. He said in part that many students recently have felt marginalized and cut out of the loop on decisions affecting everything from fees to their relationship with the administration. But after meeting with Bardo on Tuesday, Shepard posted “I see no purpose for the protest tomorrow” on his Facebook page.

The planned protest was not popular with all students. Some were posting protests about the protests on Shepard’s Facebook page, and Shepard himself said some student Greek leaders were planning counter-protests. But Shepard said that when he and Bardo talked, both apologized for mistakes made, and they came to a better understanding of how to work together.

“I’ve got to hand it to him for that,” Shepard said.

Shepard said Bardo apologized because Shepard and other students had asked WSU’s finance department written questions concerning student fees and didn’t get answers even weeks later. Bardo told Shepard he’d get answers soon, Shepard said.

But Shepard said he apologized to Bardo also, acknowledging that he missed attending several meetings with Bardo and other administrators in the past few months where he could have asked those questions.

Shepard on Tuesday said Bardo made other pledges to him that led to the cancellation of the student protests.

Chapel controversy

One other promise, Shepard said, was that Bardo would apologize to students for how people were abused with harsh words in e-mails after donors, alumni and community members learned that the WSU chapel had been renovated, in part at the request of Christian groups and in part at the request of Muslim students. Shepard and other students did not believe Bardo spoke out forcefully enough to protect and defend students.

“I would not characterize what the president plans to say as an apology,” Heldman said. “But he will communicate more with the campus about what happened because it is an important subject, and it is important to have a civil discourse about this.”

Bardo has already spoken out in support of students and how some of them were abused in e-mails, including this week when the president issued a written statement to the campus, Heldman said.

“Student leaders have told me that I didn’t give them a feeling of being protected when they were subjected to hateful ‘even frightening’ emails and social media postings during the recent controversy over the removal of pews from Grace Chapel,” Bardo wrote earlier this week.

“We had university police and the university’s attorney review the communication to see if it threatened physical harm or crossed legal boundaries into criminal hate speech,” Bardo continued. “That wasn’t the case. I am sorry that people felt the need to resort to hateful speech to get their point across. That doesn’t further any educational purpose of this university.”

“The president will say more about this subject because it is important,” Heldman said. “President Bardo wants the campus to be welcoming to people of all faiths whether they are conservative Christians, or Muslims or any others.”

Shepard praised Bardo for a hire he made in a position created this week in part to address student concerns. Bardo hired Marche Fleming-Randle, the assistant dean of the Fairmount College of Liberal Arts & Science, to become assistant to the president for diversity.

This story was originally published November 17, 2015 at 1:30 PM with the headline "Wichita State student body leader, president talk; Eric Sexton to leave AD position."