I am writing on behalf of Vassar’s Board of Trustees and Administration to correct the following inaccuracies from the letter to the editor, entitled “Women Professors Counter Bradley,” dated September 27th, 2023.
The assertion that Vassar has “agreed to” conduct an “independent compensation analysis” is not accurate. Rather, President Bradley, “invited our Faculty Compensation Committee to participate in selecting a third-party compensation analysis firm to use our data and assess pay equity relative to our salary policies and practices,” as written here.
The current invitation from President Bradley for the FCC to participate in selecting a third-party compensation analysis firm arose directly as a response to faculty requests at the September 13 faculty meeting to make salary data transparent. It was not raised as an attempt to litigate the lawsuit in public, as the letter stated.
It should be noted that this was not the first offer to work with the FCC on compensation matters. When the FCC requested greater data transparency last spring, President Bradley proposed that Vassar Human Resources join the discussion about faculty compensation; this would have included an external compensation analysis firm, one of which Human Resources has engaged for other analyses.
Vassar’s legal counsel has advised President Bradley not to discuss the lawsuit in any detail and not to take any actions that would be outside of the normal progression of the case through the court system. The actions taken by President Bradley have been in fulfillment of her duties as president of the college, in an effort to continue to oversee the day-to-day operations of Vassar.
Sincerely,
Shay Humphrey
General Counsel, Vassar College
While you say that “[t]he assertion that Vassar has “agreed to” conduct an “independent compensation analysis” is not accurate,” the recent NY Times article states: “Last week, Dr. Bradley said in a statement to The New York Times that Vassar had agreed to allow a faculty committee to hire an independent compensation-analysis firm to examine salaries, and would act on the findings.”