"A Hell of a Shock" When a Jesuit University Faces A Presidential Sex Allegation

Public Relations Quarterly, Fall 2004 by Murphree, Vanessa, Rogers, Cathy

Within minutes of the dissemination of an October 7, 2003 email message titled "Acting President Named," students, staff, and faculty members at Loyola University New Orleans, a Jesuit university with about 5,900 students searched for answers amid secrecy and speculation.1 Those who read the email in its entirety learned that the University president had resigned as a result of charges of sexual misconduct.

The e-mail explained that the Chicago Province of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) had found a complaint alleging sexual misconduct credible against Rev. Bernard P. Knoth, the university's president of eight years, and had consequently removed him from active ministry in accordance with the 2002 Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People and the accompanying Norms of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.2

A team comprised of the university director of public affairs, the chair of the Board of Trustees, a Hill & Knowlton consultant, and the interim president oversaw construction of the messages and design of the subsequent communication strategy that helped the university remain stable during this turbulent week and throughout the remainder of the academic year. By semester's end, the university was seemingly back to normal. But despite the wide-ranging success of the crisis response and little negative fallout, the crisis response contained few textbook crisis management tools. For example, there was not a specific university crisis plan in place and university public affairs staff were not part of the initial decision-making dominant coalition. Moreover, neither university administrators nor public affairs personnel expressed interest in conducting post-crisis research to evaluate the crisis communication. And perhaps most notably, the details of the allegations remained sealed at the behest of the Catholic Church so that the university's constituent publics never received details about the case.

Despite these deficiencies, the university appeared to recover from the crisis and move forward with little or no consequence. Although the long-term consequences of the crisis remain to be seen, the overall attitude of university administration and communications personnel was that the school had fully recovered just four months later. By that time, institutional stability, student and parent attitudes, student recruitment, the university image, funding, and the overall morale of the entire university community seemed to return to pre-crisis status.

The university did, however, make use of longterm relationships with internal and external constituents including students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents, and particularly members of the local media to help them alleviate the crisis. This case analysis suggests that such long-term constituent relationships can assist an organization in a crisis more than traditional crisis planning and falls in line with Francis J. Marra's theory concerning organizational and community culture, which concludes that organizational relationships can play a larger role in crisis management than a crisis plan. While most of the literature asserts the importance of crisis communications plans and their role as a predictor of successful crisis communications, Marra's analysis of crisis case studies indicates that such a plan is a poor predictor of success and that organizational or communication culture and communication autonomy are more significant variables or predictors of success.3

Crisis Timeline

In an emergency meeting the day before the email notification, Loyola's board accepted Knoth's resignation and named Rev. William J. Byron acting president under a university charter requiring that the president be a Jesuit priest in good standing. So within the span of just over 24 hours, Kristine Lelong, Loyola's director of public affairs, and her team found out about the situation, which the Chicago Province had deliberately held undercover during the investigation, and created a packet of information for all constituents and determined channels for dissemination.

But prior to Lelong's involvement, Donna Fra�che, the chair of the board, had been working for almost a week to find and retain a new president, and Knoth himself knew about the church decision on September 25. But Knoth seems to be the only Loyola representative privy to details of the allegation, which Chicago Province controlled and sealed. Members of the board did learn, however, that a former Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School student filed the complaint regarding a 1986 incident in Indiana. At the time, Knoth was principal of the co-ed high school. Leaders from the Chicago Province would only divulge when and where the incident occurred and refused to cite details about the victim, if there were multiple incidents, and exactly when the charges were made saying only that the complaint came to their attention in "the last several months."4

Less than two hours after the email notification containing a release from Lelong and statements from Byron, Knoth, and the Chicago Province, the university held a 2 p.m. press conference. Crowds of students gathered with the media, but many were unable to hear the short statements from Byron due to lack of space and confusion about the location of the conference. Students were, however, asked for responses from the local media and all who appeared in the broadcast or print news in the following days had positive response of support for the university and Knoth, although there was some concern about the school image and future.