As a graduate student and sessional lecturer at Carleton University, I have to admit from the start that I feel a very strong affinity for the institution and have for decades. Imagine my dismay, then, when I open my morning paper and read the troubling headline: “Sex-attack victim was negligent, Carleton says.” I’ve been in PR long enough to know the university leadership had just jumped into a car and driven at top speed towards a very big brick wall. Sadly, I was right.
The headline related to a still unsolved crime (two years ago) committed upon a female student who was working in a laboratory on a weekend and was violently attacked and raped. The student moved to sue the university and the university issued a statement of defence that described the woman’s behaviour as “negligent” and included choice words like: “She failed to take appropriate or any action for her own safety.”
I suspect that, in legal terms, the statement of defence was rather a standard affair. In fact, in a follow up story, a University of Ottawa law professor described it as standard legal language and added, “There’s a case, I think, where the legal culture is just a little different from what people think.” An understatement if every there was one.
Carleton learned the hard way that what works in law is often vastly different from what works in public relations. Legal discourse, after all, aims at a single audience: a judge. It’s a discourse that is built on the notion of win:lose. It aims to win over a judge thereby ensuring the other guy loses.
The logic of public relations can and should be very different. PR has to consider a range of audiences and how each might interpret and respond to a statement. More than a judge, Carleton needed to consider audiences such as the faculty, community leaders, donors and, of course, students and their parents. At the same time, public relations discourse, when it’s done well, is not designed merely to defeat the enemy. It aims to build bridges, strengthen relationships, and set up win:win situations.
I’m not a lawyer and can’t comment on the legal wisdom of Carleton’s statement of defence against one of its own students. I can suggest, however, that the cost to Carleton’s reputation of this strategy and of the kind of language used in the statement of defence is enormous. Student, faculty and community leaders turned against the university and the media coverage was entirely negative towards the university. It was the last thing the university needed after a very difficult couple of years with controversial rehiring decisions, strikes and tragedies on campus.
Needless to say, I was delighted that cooler heads prevailed, the public relations perspective was considered, and the university settled out of court. If only that decision had been made before days of coast-to-coast negative media coverage and the erosion of vital relationships. It’s another one of those decisions by an organization that leaves me wondering, “Why wasn’t there a PR person at the table?”
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