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Nancy Ferrell
[Full Interview] [Go to Full Topic File]
So, I went to the
President and met with him, and it's a good example of thinking on your feet, having a way of
helping an institution understand their best interest. I learned that anytime I work with an
institutional representative that my approach could not be like, "What's the just thing? You know
what the right thing is, it's the thing that will cost you if you don’t do it," because they're ready
to hear that; they're not ready to hear, "You ought to do the right thing.” They're very open to
"What's it going to cost you?" So, when talking with the president, I had to be aware of the fact
that he had a board of regents who probably wouldn't see anything wrong with what had
happened at the fraternity, and probably would be upset with him if he gave it much power or
much interest and that's a reality. So his first response to me was that bringing in the Justice
Department is just going to make it look worse than it is; this will blow over, things get out of
hand but they'll die down, it's no big deal. "If you come in here, you're going to make it a big
deal." That was a common response for an institution, whether it was city government, state
government, or IBM, any institution’s first response is that outside intervention is just going to
make it worse. I told him one part of what we do is voluntary; you don't have to participate with
us. I said, "But I do have an obligation to make our services available to you. Because, if
another incident occurs here and there's some other problems here, somebody in my agency is
going to call me up and say, ‘Nancy, did you offer your help?’ I need to be able to say, ‘Yes, I
offered my help but the president really wasn't interested; he thought he could handle it
himself.’" But you had to use the kind of approach that let him see what was in his interest, and
he saw a really big public relations faux pas, if something else happened, and here's this agency
who had offered to help and he resisted. So, all of the sudden he was open to our help. That's all
I needed from him, so he couldn't back out later. So, that was an interesting entry kind of a
situation.
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