All 19 members of the debate team at Bates College in Lewiston resigned on Feb. 16 leaving a laundry list of grievances about the team’s faculty director, The Bates Student reported.
In an open letter, the members of the Brooks Quimby Debate Council pointed to the organization’s director of debate, Professor Sammi Rippetoe, whom they blamed for creating “an uncomfortable, harmful and inequitable team culture” and failing to meet her “professional responsibilities.”
The members claimed to have heard comments by Rippetoe that they described as “harmful, disparaging, or discriminatory” and said Rippetoe chose team members for debates in an arbitrary manner “without input from the team.”
In response to the open letter, 55 alumni of the debate team signed a letter to Bates’ dean of faculty voicing concern for Rippetoe’s “detestable, inequitable behavior, potential misuse of finances, and irresponsible conduct relating to international travel,” the newspaper reported.
The letter from the student members claimed that Rippetoe spent a “disproportionate amount of the teams’ budget by booking a 6 day trip to Oxford for a two-day tournament and bringing her husband using BQDC funds who did not coach or judge.”
The letter went on to say that Rippetoe and her husband were only present for the opening announcements and the end of one round.
Additionally, the alumni referred to “bad faith comments about students by faculty leadership — particularly those influenced by race,” which they called “unacceptable.”
In 2023, the Brooks Quimby Debate Council was separated from Bates College and began operating semi-autonomously with faculty guidance from Rippetoe, with whom things went well at first, the club’s acting president Tosca Neumann told the school newspaper. But, according to the resigning members, Rippenoe pushed the school to give the director of debate — herself — more authority over the group.
In response to the allegations, the college told the newspaper, “The allegations made in the open letter are serious, and the college is fully committed to reviewing them thoroughly, engaging with our students and faculty, and finding a productive way forward. This will take some time. It should be noted that the college remains steadfast in our commitment to debate at Bates.”