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New assistant dean of admissions at MWC addressing colleagues' concerns over her background. Date published: 12/4/2002
Rita Thompson never thought she'd cause an uproar by becoming Mary Washington College's assistant dean of admissions. But a previous job as national spokeswoman for Concerned Women for America, a conservative Christian women's group that actively opposes such things as abortion, pornography and gay rights, recently has raised some professors' eyebrows and sparked a flurry of e-mails. "It was definitely a surprise to me," said Thompson, a former member of MWC's board of visitors who worked in admissions at the Georgetown University Law Center for seven years. "They don't know who I am because I'm so new. Nobody even called to ask, 'What is your philosophy?'" Stephen Watkins, associate professor of English, linguistics and speech at MWC, noticed her role with Concerned Women for America when college officials sent a campuswide e-mail saying she'd been hired. "I checked their Web site, which confirmed what I already knew--which is that they are aggressively anti-gay and take strong, fundamentalist positions on issues," he said. Watkins said that was worrisome because Thompson had been the public face of a group with views that run counter to the college's community values statement. The document--which is posted in every classroom and on the Internet at www.mwc.edu/pres/mission/values.htm--states that MWC refuses to tolerate discrimination based on, among other things, sexual orientation. He sent a mass e-mail to let his colleagues know of Thompson's role in Concerned Women for America and said they could check out its views on its Web site, www.cwfa.org. About 30 people e-mailed Watkins back. Some expressed shock that Thompson had been hired to recruit students for MWC; others said she was entitled to her opinions, he said. Professors Stephen J. Farnsworth and Christopher Kilmartin also sent campuswide e-mails expressing similar concerns. "There's a difference between privately held opinions and public statements," Kilmartin, a psychology professor who does sexual harassment training on campus, said yesterday. "This person was a spokesperson for an organization that some people consider a hate group." Thompson--whose focus will be on recruiting athletes, minorities and foreign students--responded to the e-mails by saying she does not personally support everything Concerned Women for America stands for. "I wrote back and said, 'We want to know which ones, because you're going to be making public statements on behalf of us,'" said Kilmartin.
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