Theater Students React! from MWSU Campus Watch on Vimeo.
After one student, clearly feeling disgruntled following remarks Interim Dean Laura Jefferson made at last semester’s theater banquet, sent an anonymous letter to University President Jesse Rogers, Jefferson stepped down.
Despite the tough personnel decision, Rogers said everyone involved exhibited a great deal of professionalism.
“We were very fortunate to be dealing with the Laura Jefferson’s and Elizabeth Lewindowski’s of the world. They really are ahead of us and as soon as they thought about it, the situation pretty much resolved itself,” Rogers said.
As word traveled, theater students wanted the public to know that they stood by Jefferson.
Senior theater student Cassie Toft said, “We are essentially a family in this theater and to see part of our family become – be attacked like this, it’s so heartbreaking, and it’s just sad.”
Another senior theater student, Timothy Green, said, “The letter, I don’t believe should have been sent. I believe if someone felt that strongly about the jokes we were making at a theater banquet – jokes given in merriment, meant to make people laugh, then you should have said it at the theater banquet after the first joke was said.”
Freshman theater student Christopher Phillips-Henson said, “Writing a letter like that with – as negatively as it was written, I felt was just not necessary and it made Laura out to be the kind of person she isn’t.”
Maxwell Norris, another senior theater student said, “I think overall, it could have been handled better by the person that sent out the letter. I mean, I understand, but Laura Jefferson is also one of the best people I know.”
Senior theater student Nicole Neely said, “There’s so much love in the department, even now when everyone’s so hurt – especially now. And I think it just hurts us because we don’t know who it is, we don’t know who feels so strongly about it I guess. It’s just very hard to see our professors look at the aftermath and be affected by it.”
Theater students are now working on their next performance: God of Carnage, a play Jefferson is directing.
