When this investigator first 

contacted her, Richter alleged 
that one of the first things he told 
her was that he was surprised 
she was reporting Trevor. The 
investigator allegedly said he 
had worked with Trevor after 
Trevor reported Richter and 
the other faculty member to 
OIE and — according to Richter 
— the investigator said Trevor 
was a “great guy.” One of the 
individuals contacted by The 
Daily confirmed that Richter 
shared this story with them at 
the time.

“After he said that, I just 

checked out,” Richter said.

As 
a 
result 
of 
these 

frustrations, Richter said she 
decided to take a step back from 
the investigation in late May 
2018. Over the summer, she 
heard little from Trevor. 

However, with Trevor poised 

to 
take 
over 
as 
Hopwood 

Director in Fall 2018 and to 
move into an office adjoined 
to the Hopwood Room, one of 
Richter’s supervisors contacted 
Trevor around this time to 
request that he wait to move 
into the office until the end of 
summer, according to an April 
25, 2018 email obtained by The 
Daily. The supervisor advised 
him to delay his move to create 
a “more comfortable working 
environment” 
for 
Richter, 

who was still working in the 
Hopwood Room. 

Trevor wrote back that he 

took issue with the suggestion.

“(Y)our email is obviously 

unsettling to me as it implies 
that 
my 
presence 
in 
the 

Hopwood 
Director’s 
office 

would make Emma Richter 
uncomfortable,” Trevor wrote 
in response.

Ultimately, 
Richter 
said 

that Trevor moved into the 
office at the beginning of 
the Fall 2018 semester, but 
problems 
continued. 
With 

Trevor officially stationed 
in the director’s office and 
without 
any 
enforceable 

measures 
preventing 
her 

from having to see Trevor, 
Richter said the situation 
worsened. 

To avoid further encounters 

with Trevor in the Hopwood 
Room, Richter said she took 
three weeks off of paid time 
off in October 2018. She also 
took a week off of her classes, 

due to mounting stress of 
being unable to avoid Trevor 
in the workplace. The Daily 
was provided documentation 
of this time off in both cases. 
At the end of the month, 
she 
also 
reached 
out 
to 

OIE to continue with the 
investigation process. 

Richter alleged that she 

also continued to encounter 
Trevor 
outside 
of 
the 

Hopwood 
Room. 
In 
the 

Spring 2019 semester, she 
was working a part-time job 
at Literati Bookstore, which 
frequently 
partners 
with 

Helen Zell for events and 
readings. Richter alleged that 
Trevor continued to try to 
interact with her in the store. 

“(Trevor) 
would 
insert 

himself into places that I 
was, or conversations (I was 
having),” Richter said.

After 
one 
Helen 
Zell-

affiliated 
event 
in 
April 

2019 where Trevor was in 
attendance 
and 
allegedly 

tried to interact with her 
— which a former Literati 
employee 
was 
able 
to 

independently corroborate — 
Richter said she approached 
the owners of Literati with 
her concerns. The owners 
contacted Trevor and asked 
him to no longer visit the 
store, according to Richter.

Two employees of Literati 

in April 2019 confirmed that 

Trevor was asked not to enter 
the store and was added to 
an internal list of banned 
customers around this time 
as a result of complaints from 
Literati staff. The owners 
of Literati did not respond 
to 
multiple 
requests 
for 

comment. 

Richter graduated from the 

University at the end of the 
Spring 2019 semester. The 
OIE investigation of Trevor’s 
conduct did not conclude 
until almost a year after her 
graduation 
in 
the 
Spring 

2020 
semester. 
According 

to Richter, the experience 
and 
ensuing 
reporting 

process consumed more than 
a third of her three-year 
undergraduate career.

“It was really like a full 

year of my life, dealing with 
so much pressure, dealing 
with school, dealing with 
needing to keep multiple jobs 
and doing a thesis and also 
trying to have friends, while 
also being pressured by these 
professors who harassed me,” 
Richter said. “It became my 
whole life, in a really awful 
way, and took away so much 
from that time in my life.”

“It’s changed my life 

forever”

Over the course of 2018, a 

Helen Zell alum and former 
staff member of the program 
alleged 
that 
her 
close, 

occasionally boundary-pushing 
friendship with Trevor quickly 
devolved 
into 
months 
of 

retaliation and attempts to get 
her fired. Trevor stepped down 
as the director of Helen Zell at 
the end of the same year. 

The former staff member 

spoke on the condition of 
anonymity, citing privacy and 
safety concerns. In this article, 
she will be referred to as Kate.

In 
interviews 
with 
The 

Daily, Kate alleged that this 
retaliation 
began 
after 
she 

sent Trevor an angry email 
in January 2018 calling him 
out for what she considered 
“obnoxious” behavior. 

The Daily spoke with three 

individuals familiar with her 
experiences who corroborated 
the 
consistency 
of 
her 

allegations.

“It’s 
changed 
my 
life 

forever,” Kate said. “I’m, like, 
kind of hyper-vigilant now, 
probably forever.”

Kate said she and Trevor 

started as friends. She was 
hired for a staff position in 2016 
after completing her third year 
with Helen Zell and worked 
closely with Trevor, who had 
become director the same year. 
The two had inside jokes, would 
casually text and observed “low 
levels of professionalism.” 

Kate also said Trevor was 

flirtatious with her. She said he 
sent her suggestive messages, 
on multiple occasions sending 
her songs with romantic lyrics 
and calling them “our song.” 
(The 
Daily 
reviewed 
some 

of 
these 
messages 
through 

screenshots provided by Kate.)

Given that they were closer 

in age — Kate said she came to 
the program later than many of 
her peers — and close as friends, 
she said his actions didn’t 
strike her as inappropriate at 
the time, so she didn’t call him 
out then. 

“I can look back now and be 

like, ‘That wasn’t appropriate,’” 
Kate said. “‘He shouldn’t have 
been flirty.’”

Trevor and Kate allegedly 

maintained this close working 
relationship 
and 
friendship 

until January 2018, when Kate 
sent Trevor the angry email, 
frustrated at the fluctuating 
boundaries in their professional 
relationship. 
While 
their 

working relationship survived 
for a few months after that, 
Kate said this marked the end 

of their friendship. 

According to Kate, three 

months later, in April 2018 — the 
same month Richter reported 
Trevor 
to 
OIE 
— 
Trevor 

reported Kate to staff Human 
Resources, also contacting her 
supervisor as well as David 
Porter, 
then-chair 
of 
the 

English Department. He told 
all three that Kate had been 
unprofessional in the January 
2018 email, according to Kate. 

This marked the beginning 

of Trevor’s attempts to “ruin 
my life,” Kate said.

In 
one 
instance, 
Trevor 

accused Kate of encouraging 
Richter to report him to OIE 
because of Kate’s “resentment” 
toward 
him, 
an 
allegation 

Richter and Kate denied to 
The Daily. When Richter’s 
supervisor — who was also 
Kate’s 
supervisor 
— 
asked 

Trevor to delay his move-in to 
the Hopwood Room director’s 
office to help Richter feel 
more comfortable in the April 
2018 email shown earlier and 
printed again below, Trevor 
responded by doubling down 
on his allegation that Kate was 
behind Richter’s OIE report.

“I have reasons to believe that 

my own comportment is being 
misrepresented and that this 
could be tied to the situations 
I endured with (Kate) this past 
semester,” Trevor wrote. “ ... 
I fear that I might be in the 
process (of) being slandered 
due to the resentment of a 
staff member and that staff 
member’s 
relationship 
with 

others.”

Kate 
said 
Trevor’s 

accusations 
against 
her 

continued to escalate from 
there. Trevor also allegedly 
called the police on Kate in the 
Fall 2018 semester after her 
phone had “butt-dialed” him 
multiple times. Kate said she 
received a call from the police, 
telling her they had received a 
complaint from Trevor that she 
was harassing him.

Kate’s 
friend, 
who 

corroborated the consistency 
of this account to The Daily, 
later 
accompanied 
Kate 
to 

the Apple Store. They learned 
the calls Kate claimed were 
unintentional stemmed from 
him having been listed as her 
emergency contact earlier in 
their working relationship, the 
friend and Kate said. Kate said 
she got a new phone because of 
how alarming Trevor’s reaction 
was.

At 
the 
time, 
OIE’s 

investigation 
into 
Trevor’s 

conduct, initiated by Richter’s 
April 2018 complaint, was still 
underway. In October and after 
the phone incident, to evade 
further 
escalation, 
Porter 

and the LSA Dean’s office 
offered 
Kate 
a 
“temporary 

reassignment” 
until 
Trevor 

was no longer director of Helen 
Zell.

By the time Trevor stepped 

down from the directorship 
in December 2018, however, 
the 
experience 
had 
been 

traumatizing 
to 
the 
extent 

that Kate said she chose not to 
return.

“It’s 
stressful 
to 
have 

someone throw grenade after 
grenade at you, even if they 
don’t go off, you know?” Kate 
said. 
“Because 
he 
thinks 

they’re going to go off. Like, he 
wants them to go off.”

A “very clear double 

standard”

With 
Trevor 
as 
director 

of the Helen Zell Writers’ 
Program from 2016 through 
2018, students would have to go 
to him to report their alleged 
conflicts. 
Molly 
Dickinson, 

a former Helen Zell student, 
alleged that Trevor repeatedly 
sided with her professor when 
Dickinson 
went 
to 
Trevor 

with her concerns, resulting 

in Dickinson feeling alienated 
from the program.

Dickinson was a student in 

the Helen Zell Writers’ Program 
from 2015 to 2017. At the 
beginning of her last semester 
in 
the 
program, 
Dickinson 

alleged that Trevor ignored her 
concerns when she brought him 
troubling communication she 
had received from an instructor 
and instead warned her against 
threatening 
the 
educational 

environment. 

(The 
Daily 
contacted 

Dickinson’s 
professor, 
who 

cited Dickinson’s privacy in 
declining to comment.)

Two 
colleagues 
of 

Dickinson’s and one friend 
confirmed to The Daily that 
she shared this story with them 
at the time, as did another 
colleague 
who 
accompanied 

Dickinson 
to 
one 
of 
her 

meetings with Trevor.

In January 2017, Dickinson 

contacted 
a 
professor 
over 

email, informing them that 
she would be absent from class 
one day due to ethical concerns 
with 
a 
course 
assignment. 

Trevor 
became 
involved 

when Dickinson’s instructor 
replied that she had reported 
Dickinson to Trevor for the 
email. The professor initially 
encouraged Dickinson to make 
arrangements with Trevor to 
drop the class. The Daily was 
provided a copy of their email 
exchange, an excerpt of which 
is printed below.

Alarmed 
by 
what 
she 

considered 
an 
“abrasive” 

response from her instructor 
— as well as the obstacle it 
could pose in her ability to 
graduate on time that semester 
— Dickinson had a one-on-one 
meeting with Trevor the next 
day, hopeful her concerns about 
how her instructor responded 
would be heard. 

Dickinson 
remembered 

printing her email exchange 
with the professor to show 
Trevor. She also brought a 
message her professor had 
sent to the rest of the class 
responding to the concerns 
Dickinson 
had 
identified 

without naming her, a copy 
of which was provided to The 
Daily. In the meeting, however, 
Dickinson said Trevor refused 
to look at the materials she’d 
brought.

“Pretty 
quickly 
in 
our 

conversation, I realized that 
he was not really a receptive 
person and not someone who 
was going to be advocating 
for my experience at all,” 
Dickinson said.

Instead, Dickinson claimed 

that Trevor lectured her about 
how her words had made her 
instructor feel unsafe.

“He magnified it into this 

very large and bizarre argument 
about the quality of open 
discussion in the classroom … 
without actually engaging in 
any specific conversation with 
me about the truly abrasive 
words that were written to me,” 
Dickinson said. 

The 
issue 
over 
one 

assignment 
spawned 
into 

additional meetings between 
her and Trevor, Dickinson said. 
Dickinson also alleged that over 
the course of their discussions 
over this conflict, Trevor would 
offer lucrative professional and 
academic opportunities in what 
felt like efforts to appease her, 
then expressed surprise or 
denied he had made the offer 
when she followed up. 

In one instance, Dickinson 

said 
that 
Trevor 
offered 

to 
arrange 
a 
workshop 

between her and one of the 
program’s high-profile visiting 
writers 
from 
the 
popular 

Zell Visiting Writer Series. 
Dickinson said this offer was 
especially appealing, given the 
complications she experienced 
in her coursework that semester 
due to the unresolved issue with 
the professor. However, when 
she followed up, Dickinson 

said Trevor did not follow 

through on that offer.

“When I actually turned 

around and asked for that, 
he just thought it was mind-
boggling that I would think 
to 
make 
such 
a 
request,” 

Dickinson said.

Kate, 
who 
was 
in 
her 

administrative 
position 
at 

the 
time, 
corroborated 
the 

consistency of this allegation.

Dickinson said the alleged 

lack of support from Trevor 
and the ensuing complications 
in her path to graduation took 
a toll on her mental health. 
She also said that it resulted 
in feelings of social alienation 
from the program as a whole.

“I 
very 
much 
retreated 

from the MFA community,” 
Dickinson 
said. 
“From 

everything, really.”

Because 
Dickinson 
said 

her concerns were repeatedly 
dismissed 
in 
subsequent 

meetings with Trevor, she said 
the experience illustrated for 
her the ways in which Trevor’s 
rules of professionalism applied 
differently to students than 
they did to faculty.

“There seems to be this very, 

very clear double standard of: 
‘We can be personal and fun and 
intimate when I say it’s okay,’” 
Dickinson said. “‘But when you 
unknowingly 
do 
something 

that I don’t agree with, then we 
pull down the jail.’”

“Their hands are often tied”

The women who shared their 

accounts said it wasn’t just 
Trevor’s alleged behavior that 
was at the crux of their negative 
experiences. 
Rather, 
they 

contended that the University’s 
reporting 
mechanisms 
were 

not prepared to handle their 
cases in a way that protects 
vulnerable parties from the 
actions of tenured faculty.

OIE 
has 
consistently 

been criticized for its time-
consuming 
investigation 

processes. In both Richter’s 
and Kate’s experiences, they 
said 
Trevor 
continued 
and 

escalated his behavior while 
the OIE investigation was in 
progress.

“The way time works at the 

University is different from how 
it works for individual people,” 
Kate said. “It’s really easy for 
the University to just outwait 
(complainants). … Things take 
a month, two months, three 
months, you know — people 
get tired. People get distracted. 
They move on.”

For Richter and Kate, as they 

waited for the OIE investigation 
to close, their best option to 
avoid Trevor was temporarily 
leaving their jobs altogether.

Former students, including 

Dickinson, who experienced 
conflict related to Trevor’s 
Helen Zell directorship told 
The 
Daily 
their 
negative 

experiences 
with 
him 
also 

drove them away from the 
program. 

Richter, Kate and Dickinson 

each shared that they did, on the 
other hand, feel supported by 
individual English Department 
administrators in the process. 
They 
stressed 
that 
the 

English Department took the 
allegations seriously, but that 
departmental 
administrators’ 

ability to intervene on students’ 
and staff member’s behalf was 
limited.

“A thing that I really was 

struck by in my experience 
there was how intensely their 
hands are often tied,” Kate 
said. “It’s not the kind of thing 
where, you know, a few people 
can be like, ‘This is messed up. 

Get rid of this person.’ That’s 
just not how the University 
works. Maybe it should be. But 
that’s not how it’s structured.”

When asked what options 

are at a student’s disposal if 
they do not feel comfortable 
reporting to a program director 
or 
administrator, 
Fitzgerald 

responded with other routes a 
student may take depending on 
the nature of the complaint in 
a follow-up email to The Daily. 
Options include reporting to 
a department chair, the dean’s 
office of a particular college 
or OIE. Fitzgerald emphasized 
that OIE investigates issues 
“beyond sexual misconduct,” 
such as discrimination based on 
race, national origin, disability 
and religion.

In an email to The Daily, 

Porter, 
the 
former 
English 

Department Chair during the 
time of the three allegations 
reported in this article, provided 
the 
English 
Department’s 

specific mediation protocols, 
specifying 
the 
roles 
that 

departmental officers are and 
are not advised to play. He also 
commented on the distinction 
between OIE’s and specific 
department’s 
responsibilities 

when a complaint is under 
investigation. 

“Once a formal complaint 

has been lodged with OIE, 
the expectation is that OIE 
takes on full responsibility 
for 
investigating 
the 

complaint,” 
Porter 
wrote. 

“While department leadership 
is 
expected 
to 
establish 

and 
reinforce 
expectations 

for 
respectful 
workplace 

behavior and to offer support 
to 
department 
members 

who 
report 
problematic 

experiences, 
decisions 

concerning consequences for 
violations are entirely in the 
hands of the college deans.”

In Curzan’s own letter of 

reprimand 
for 
Trevor, 
she 

alluded to OIE’s findings before 
writing that she nonetheless 
found his behavior “troubling.” 
She added that his alleged 
retaliation posed concerns for 
the departmental climate.

“Research 
shows 
that 

workplaces where retaliation 
occurs 
can 
foster 
sexual 

harassment because fear of 
reprisal 
limits 
reporting,” 

Curzan wrote. “This is not a 
culture or climate that any of 
us want to have in LSA.”

Richter 
emphasized 
that, 

ultimately, this becomes an 
issue of not only individual 
student’s 
experiences, 
but 

also of diversity, equity and 
inclusion at the University.

“If I hadn’t been a young 

woman in that employment 
environment 
… 
I 
wouldn’t 

have experienced what I did,” 
Richter said. “It’s not just 
like: Bring those people to the 
room. It’s like: How do you 
treat them when they’re there? 
And if they’re treated like that, 
they’re not going to want to be 
there.”

Started 
in 
January 
2021, 

Focal Point is The Michigan 
Daily’s dedicated investigative 
reporting team and main outlet 
for 
investigative 
longform 

content. Focal Point reporters 
spend 
months 
interviewing 

multiple sources and gathering 
documents to produce complex, 
nuanced content. In many cases, 
Focal Point uncovers stories that 
those in power have sought to 
repress.

Daily Staff Reporter Julianna 

Morano can be reached at 
jucomora@michigandaily.com.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
4 — Wednesday, January 20, 2021

FOCAL POINT
From Page 3

Design by Samuel Turner

Design by Samuel Turner

Read the letters obtained by the 
Michigan Daily during this investigation 
at MichiganDaily.com