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Courtesy of the Yale Department of Music

In the mid 1990s, Jeanine Tesori decided to live temporarily in an empty lighthouse on Lake Champlain, completely alone. The lighthouse was fully functioning, but its lamp had been moved to the edge of a nearby jetty. When she finally emerged from the lighthouse after 10 months, she left with a near-complete score of her first musical, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” 

Since then, Tesori, a lecturer of musical theater composition at Yale’s Department of Music, has written four Tony-nominated Broadway scores — “Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center,” “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” “Caroline” and “Shrek the Musical” — in addition to two Tony-winning scores — “Fun Home” and, most recently, “Kimberly Akimbo,” a musical about a lonely teenage girl who suffers from a condition that gives her the appearance of an elderly woman.

Tesori’s initial encounter with music began with her family piano. The piano was a world that “just made sense” to her. 

“It occurs to me when I work with young people in music, that there is an innate wisdom that every young person has. They just do. I don’t think it can always be expressed in language, but it can be expressed in intention or directionality,” Tesori said. “There’s just this natural impulse and natural matching. Sometimes when we teach people, we almost take the saran wrapping of their natural abilities away and put something on top of them.” 

Instead, Tesori encourages her students to embrace their inherited musical gifts, a lesson inspired by the oral music traditions of folk music. On the first day of classes, Tesori always poses a question to her students: “Who are you bringing into the room with you?” 

Tesori’s teaching philosophy is then to give direction to these parts of the students’ musical identities. The key is to help students’ ambition meet their skill level, said Tesori. 

“What’s your ancestral pull? What is the culture that you’re from, that you want to explore, if you want to explore that? Who is here with you? Because you are not here alone, you are many, many things that create your point of view — you’re writing from a specific place,” Tesori said.  

For Tesori herself, she brings her own specific combination of inspirations into the room: her Italian heritage and storytelling, musical styles of neo-traditionalism and directors with whom she’s worked — namely, American playwright and director, George C Wolfe. 

According to Tesori, Wolfe has warned her not to be deceived or trapped in musical beauty, teaching her that beauty is a product of music and not a source. 

Instead, Wolfe encouraged her to be aware of the intentionality and politics of her musical choices. 

“When we were first working together, he would say, ‘What are you doing with your left hand?’ And because I had been trained as a pianist, you can easily smoke people by just sort of being fancy with your hands,” Tesori said. “And I thought, ‘No director ever asked me what I’m doing with my left hand.’ But what he was saying was, nothing is neutral. Nothing is neutral: every prop, every measure, every left hand, bass note. Of course, you’re free to choose anything. But if you start listening to the piece, it starts telling you what it wants.”

When Tesori writes dramatic music, there are two things that interest her: a compelling storyline and characters who have yet to take center stage in the canon of musical theater. “Fun Home” centers around the voice of a queer female protagonist — the first of its kind on Broadway. In the opera “Blue,” an African American family faces tension as the son confronts his police officer father for upholding an oppressive police system. 

Fellow Musical Theater lecturer Joshua Rosenblum ’83 MUS ’85 applauded Tesori’s ability to create “three-dimensional, fully-fleshed” characters on stage. As a fellow lecturer who teaches part-time and works professionally in the musical theater industry, Rosenblum has emphasized how lecturers’ professional work outside of the classroom can influence their teaching inside the classroom. 

“When you’re at Yale, you assume that your teachers have a certain amount of experience and a certain amount of expertise. And I think you’re all sort of programmed to accept what they say, almost by habit,” Rosenblum said. “But if you see that they are out in the field and actually practicing the art and being successful enough to get shows produced, then you’re even more inclined to say, ‘Oh, this person actually is a so-called ‘expert,’ and so maybe I better pay attention to what they have to say.’” 

To Natalie Brown ’25 and many other students, Tesori is a “fairy godmother” of sorts. Brown, who is a singer-songwriter in addition to being a full-time student, first encountered Tesori while taking “Advanced Composition for Musical Theater.” 

When Brown wrote an adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide,” Tesori helped Brown contact the estate of Shange and put her in touch with WME, Brown’s current agency. 

Brown particularly emphasized Tesori’s generosity and excitement to help young students as something rare and rather unexpected in the world of commercial musical theater. Furthermore, she stated that Tesori’s confidence in her students’ artistic abilities manifests in the way that she teaches them. 

“She really tailored the class to meet us where we were at, instead of having a prescribed curriculum and kind of forcing us to focus on specific things that might not have fit as well with what the class needed at the time,” Brown said. 

Over the course of Tesori’s career, some things have changed and others have not. She told the News that her thought process and the way she dresses hasn’t changed since age nine. 

What has changed over the years is her approach to taking criticism: she’s learned to generally give “less of a fuck,” while taking constructive blows when she needs to. 

“Sometimes I read something, and I think, ‘Wow, I did do that. That is a party trick. I have to stop doing that.’ [I learned] the humility to just say, ‘I don’t do that well.’ That’s why I like doing dumb stuff that I’m not good at, because it’s good to not be good at something,” Tesori said. “Especially at higher institutions of learning, it’s good to feel not in the know all the time. It’s good to play, it’s good to do something that you’re a complete beginner at, including what you’ve mastered.”

Tesori’s future may find direction in her own history.

She has always been interested in telling an “Italian story” — particularly one that embodies the lived and diverse experiences of Italian American communities. 

“I haven’t found the story yet. I have ideas that are running — my roots are in Sicily, the small towns around Palermo and Stromboli. [But] I just haven’t found it yet,” Tesori said. “I hope that I get to do that.” 

In her early career, Jeanine Tesori was known as Jeanine Levenson.

Tempo’s time

Waimea Intermediate band Tempo won the Nelson edition of the Rockshop Bandquest, the nationwide live music competition for intermediate and primary students. In second place was Ahurei from Broadgreen Intermediate with Obsidian from St Joseph’s School third. Princess from Ngatimoti School won the best original song, and Tiahomairangi Manawa-Pounamu Tawha from Ahurei won best vocalist. A total of 15 bands performed at the Theatre Royal on Monday night. Judge Reece Milton said there were so many talented bands that made it challenging as a judge. “It’s great to see so many young people still passionate and performing music. Everyone that performed last night has a bright future in New Zealand music.” Almost 300 bands took part in events around the country, with the results of the online final to be announced on September 21.

Infrastructure funding

Three Nelson City Council projects have received a combined $1.6 million in the most recent round of grants from the Government’s Tourism Infrastructure Fund. The fund recognised the impact extreme weather events, such as in August 2022, had on local infrastructure and visitor numbers, and prioritised funding to help support communities to restore and upgrade tourism infrastructure to assist in their recovery. The three council projects that received funding are the Marina Promenade, receiving $1,130,066, the Montgomery Square Toilet Renewal, receiving $295,412 and Marsden Valley Trailhead Facilities, receiving $235,370. Mayor Nick Smith said the Marina Promenade fitted well with planned developments for additional boat berths and a new sea sports facility in Akersten St, and Nelson gaining port of entry status for international recreational vessels. “The visitor industry is vital to Nelson’s economy and has taken a huge hit through Covid. These investments in tourism infrastructure help in the recovery,” he said.

Business awards

Twenty-four businesses have entered this year’s Nelson Pine Industries Nelson Tasman Chamber of Commerce Business Awards. Chamber chief executive, Ali Boswijk said the number of award submissions was heartening. “I’d like to think we can see this as somewhat of a business barometer. Reflecting that despite ongoing challenges that are squeezing New Zealand businesses, locally there are still plenty who are navigating their way around and through these things, and are finding strength and confidence in the process.” The entries are: Apex Accounting, Boost Your Learning, Dancing Sands Distillery, Digitella Marketing, Esolar, Harvest Kitchen, Hybrid Bikes, Golden Bay Solar Farm/JB Hills, Keetrax, Kimer Med, Milestone Homes, Move Good Now, NZAW Ltd, OneFortyOne, Pete’s Natural, School Strike4 Climate Whakatu, Smart Business Centre, TBI Health, The Barden Party, The Cooper Group, The Food Factory Charitable Trust, Tim’s Garden, Transform Your Life Within, Under the Hood BBQ. The black-tie awards dinner will be held on Friday March 1 next year.

Construction awards

Two civil construction projects in Nelson have won national recognition. At the 44th Civil Contractors New Zealand Hirepool Construction Excellence Awards in Auckland, Fulton Hogan’s repair and upgrade of State Highway 6 between Nelson and Blenheim won the national award for projects with a value of between $5m and $20m. The highway was damaged by intense rainfall in August 2022. A 120-strong labour force completed the project in record time,- just ahead of the Christmas holiday period. Judges congratulated Fulton Hogan, noting the meticulous planning and rapid completion of a project that would normally take 18 months. Water and pipeline business Interflow were highly commended in the category for projects with a value up to $2m for their project to reline an abandoned 1.1km sewage pipe through the Waimea Estuary. The project ensured the obsolete pipe could be reused and increasing Nelson Regional Sewerage Business Unit’s (NRSBU) sewerage handling capacity. Judges praised Interflow for their smart thinking and innovative approach, which they said saved NRSBU over $4m.

LL Cool J, who just headlined a terrific hip-hop concert at Chase Center in San Francisco last week, is one of the many stars set to perform at the #MauiStrong benefit on Sept. 8.

The YouTube livestream event also inclues Gretchen Rhodes featuring Mick Fleetwood and Friends, Ziggy Marley, Lukas Nelson, Nathaniel Rateliff, Fred Armisen, Sarah McLachlan, Ryan Bingham, Stewart Copeland, Kai Lenny and more.

The 120-minute event takes place on will air on Ziggy Marley’s official YouTube Channel on September 8th, 2023, at 2PM HST / 5PM PST / 8PM EST on Sept. 8 at https://yt.be/mauistrong.

“Funds raised will support two crucial causes: the Maui Strong Fund, which provides immediate and long-term recovery aid for the people and areas devastated by the Maui wildfires; this can be done directly on the livestream watch page by clicking the DONATE button. And MusiCares, a charity supporting the health and welfare of the music community through preventive, emergency, and recovery programs. Additional proceeds from the soundtrack inspired by this event will be delivered to #MauiStrongFund and MusiCares,” according to a news release.

Bright Idea

Officials in New Delhi, India, are preparing for the G20 summit next week, and no detail has been left unaddressed, Reuters reported. For example: Rhesus monkeys are a menace on many of the city’s streets, often attacking pedestrians. The monkeys cannot be harmed or removed by law, so the government has installed life-size cutouts of langurs — bigger primates with black faces — around the city to scare the monkeys away. The New Delhi Municipal Council has also employed “30 to 40” people who mock the langurs’ sounds so that the monkeys will believe they are real. “We … are already seeing a positive impact,” said Satish Upadhyay, the vice-chairman of the NDMC.

It’s Come to This

New Yorkers have become accustomed (some grudgingly) to the ubiquitous odor of cannabis on city streets and in parks, the Associated Press reported. In fact, as spectator Diane Patrizio of Southampton, New York, stood in line at Court 17 at the U.S. Open, she remarked, “It’s everywhere. But what are you going to do?” Court 17, which is situated on the periphery of the Flushing Meadows complex, lies right next to Corona Park, and on Aug. 29, the court “definitely (smelled) like Snoop Dogg’s living room,” said player Alexander Zverev. “The whole court smells like weed.” In fact, eighth-seeded Maria Sakkari complained to the chair umpire. However, the USTA found no evidence that anyone inside the facility was smoking, and Sakkari said the odor didn’t affect her loss to Rebeka Masarova. “I mean, it’s something we cannot control because we’re in an open space,” Sakkari said.

News That Sounds Like a Joke

Barbara Haverly, 62, of Mount Dora, Florida, was running a routine errand this summer when things suddenly got out of hand, The Washington Post reported on Aug. 23. Haverly had stopped at the city library to return a book, but the line was rather long, so she dropped it into a drop box as she’d done many times before. But as she pulled out her hand, she felt a sharp pain in her left middle finger. The top of the finger, starting just below her fingernail, had been torn off. “I was in shock,” she said. Library staff called 911, and one employee got into the book box to retrieve the top of her finger. Doctors performed surgery but were unable to reattach the fingertip. Haverly is still dealing with the aftermath of the incident; she said she is depressed and can no longer do yoga or play the ukulele. Meanwhile, the library has placed a sign over the box that reads, “Please do not place your hand inside this book drop.”

Irony

Two employees of television outlet Univision Chicago who were filming a piece about armed robberies in the Windy City were robbed at gunpoint around 5 a.m. on Aug. 28, The Washington Post reported. The reporter and photographer were in the Wicker Park neighborhood when an SUV and a sedan pulled up and three suspects “wearing ski masks and displaying firearms” jumped out. They took the photography equipment and personal items, returned to their cars and fled. The suspects are still at large; no injuries were reported.

Unmanaged Expectations

Officials at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point hyped an event scheduled for Aug. 28, tweeting the night before and livestreaming the festivities a la Geraldo Rivera: the opening of a time capsule from the late 1820s. The Washington Post reported that the box was installed at the base of a monument to a Polish military engineer who aided the U.S. during the Revolutionary War. But when archaeologist Paul Hudson lifted the lid, his high hopes flew away like dust in the wind. “The box didn’t quite meet expectations,” he said. Hudson found … silt. However, upon further examination, Hudson uncovered a small and puzzling treasure: six silver American coins dated between 1795 and 1828 and one Erie Canal commemorative medal. “When I first found these, I thought … it would have been great to have found these on stage,” he said. Hudson said he would analyze the remaining sediment to find out whether other items inside had been destroyed by moisture.

Build the Wall!

No, not that wall. In Norway’s Arctic region, workers are rebuilding a reindeer fence along the country’s border with Russia because the animals keep wandering over the line to find better pastures for grazing. The barrier is 93 miles long; only about 4 miles require repair, the Associated Press reported. But the work is challenging because workers cannot step into Russian territory lest they be charged with illegal entry. Russia has charged Norway huge fines for the days the reindeer grazed in a natural reserve. The work is expected to be completed by Oct. 1.

News You Can Use

Back off that accelerator if you’re driving through Coffee City, Texas, about three hours north of Houston. Why? The town, with about 250 residents, has 50 full- and part-time police officers, KHOU-TV reported on Aug. 30. The town’s budget reveals that it collected more than $1 million in court fines in 2022, which were the result of more than 5,100 citations the officers wrote. And there’s a tantalizing twist: Most of Coffee City’s officers had been suspended, demoted, terminated or discharged from previous law enforcement jobs, for reasons including excessive force, public drunkenness and association with known criminals. “I’ve never seen anything like that in my professional career, and I’ve seen a lot,” said Greg Fremin, a retired Houston Police Department captain. But Coffee City’s police chief, JohnJay Portillo, disagrees: “There’s more to just what’s on paper,” he said. “I try to look at the good in everybody and I believe everybody deserves an opportunity.” Even so, the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement has an open investigation into the tiny community’s big law presence.

The Passing Parade

Lee Meyer of Neligh, Nebraska, altered his Ford sedan a few years back, cutting out half the roof and the passenger-side door and adding a farm gate, so that he could drive his Watusi bull in the Kolach Days Parade in Verdigre. (A Watusi bull, for you non-Nebraskans, has large, long horns, similar to a Texas Longhorn.) The bull, Howdy Doody, hitched another ride with Meyer on Aug. 30 on U.S. 275, but the Norfolk police weren’t having it, People reported: “The officer performed a traffic stop and addressed some traffic violations that were occurring with that particular situation,” Capt. Chad Reiman said. “I don’t know why he was doing it that day. I can honestly say that I haven’t seen anything like that before.” Meyer was asked to leave the city and return home with Howdy Doody.

Don’t Mind Them

• In Fairfax County, Virginia, on Aug. 22, a man entered a 7-Eleven store and displayed a knife, which was the least interesting part of the robbery, Fox5DC-TV reported. The man, who was described as Hispanic, was wearing a black cowboy hat upon which perched two parrots. Another parrot was riding on the man’s shoulder. The suspect escaped in a blue SUV with an undisclosed amount of money, police said.
• And in northern England, an unnamed driver was issued a traffic offense report by police after he was observed motoring along the M62 with an African gray parrot on his shoulder, The Guardian reported on Aug. 30. “Animals should be in suitable carriers/restraints so that they don’t interfere with your ability to drive safely,” police posted on X.

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Kanye West has found himself in another legal dispute, this time against a person who has been leaking his music online.

As per court documents accessed by Radar Online, the Yeezy boss has filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court against a defendant listed as “Does” for releasing his songs on social media without permission.

The account in question goes by DaUnreleasedGod across platforms and is allegedly responsible for uploading footage of Ye in the studio as well as numerous unreleased tracks, one of which features Rihanna and Pusha T.

The Chicago native claims to have “suffered significant financial losses and damages as a direct result of the Defendants’ actions. In addition, the Defendant’s actions amount to the theft of a trade secret. Ye’s musical composition, with its distinctive arrangement and unique elements, constitutes a trade secret due to its economic value, secrecy, and the efforts taken to safeguard it.”

The illegitimate releases began in May this year and continued into August, and West is now demanding a permanent injunction from those responsible.

The legal drama is never-ending for the Graduation hitmaker. New reports indicate that he and his wife are now being investigated over the “obscenities” that took place during their recent boat ride in Venice, Italy.

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Photos and videos surfaced late last month of Kanye baring his butt cheeks, with his wife Bianca Censori spotted with her head in his lap in a sexually-suggestive position. According to the Daily Mail, Venice police is now looking to take action following the couple’s apparent intimate moment in public.

The driver of the boat has been identified and is expected to be questioned about what he saw, while police are also asking photographers to hand over the images that were taken.

A Venice police source told the outlet: “There are standards of public decorum that have to be followed by tourists and locals alike and any breaches are severely punished. The images of West with his trousers down while in a taxi as he and his partner crossed the lagoon were seen all over the globe.

“You could clearly see his trousers were half down and we have received complaints from people who witnessed it. Now we have identified the driver of the boat and we will be asking him what he saw as well.”

The 12 faculty members had just experienced one of the most tragic things to ever happen at the tiny college in the Mississippi Delta. Their department chair, Karen Fosheim, had been beaten to death in her home. Her stepson, then 14 years old, confessed to killing her. 

It was on Green to hire a new chair for the grieving department. That day in August, she said she’d finally settled on someone to do it: Kent Wessinger, Ph.D. 

A self-proclaimed “people scientist,” Wessinger has been called by one professional development group the “world’s foremost authority on workforce trends and solutions.” The tagline for his consulting company, the Florida-based Retention Partners, which focuses on millennials in the workforce, is “attract, engage and retain.” 

He had been the headmaster of a missionary school in Jamaica, a program coordinator at the University of the Virgin Islands, and a visiting faculty member in entrepreneurship at a university in Belize, where in 2018 or so he says he struck up a friendship with Andy Novobilski, who’d go on to become Delta State’s provost. Novobilski announced in August that he was stepping down. 

But Wessinger was not a musician. He was not even a tenured faculty member at Delta State or any university. According to his LinkedIn profile, he had never run a university department. 

Green acknowledged it was “highly unusual.” That’s why the university planned for Wessinger to have a co-chair, a music faculty member who he’d simultaneously train to eventually take over full leadership of the department.

“He is a people person,” Green said, according to a recording of the meeting. “He is very likable. I found him to be — how do I put this? He likes building relationships. He understands what we do is all based on relationships.” 

Despite Wessinger’s professed leadership expertise, his year helping lead the embattled music department did not raise morale or build bonds between faculty and students, but rather further grieved faculty who already feared for the department’s future, according to interviews with more than 16 faculty and current and former students. Multiple people asked not to be named, fearing retaliation. 

Wessinger’s legacy in the department goes beyond personal or professional disagreements. He has been accused of domestic violence — a fact that, once uncovered, didn’t sit well with faculty still rattled by Fosheim’s killing.

His appointment raises a crucial question: Did Delta bring in the right person to lead its respected music department, and did it do enough — or anything — to vet him? And, if it did know about the past claims against Wessinger, what was Delta State’s responsibility to inform its faculty and students after the trauma they had suffered? 

For some faculty, Wessinger’s decisions as department chair — made with the administration’s support — were possibly career-ending. He was involved in an attempted firing of the tenured band director, Erik Richards, a decision that a university committee recommended be overturned. He recommended denying tenure to an award-winning vocal teacher, Jamie Dahman, based in part on what Wessinger admitted, in his denial letter, was speculation. 

A third faculty member who asked to not be named was reprimanded by the dean for unacceptable conduct and saying Wessinger had been accused of domestic violence, which the dean called “defamatory,” according to a letter the faculty member sent to Human Resources. 

Students were also affected by the seeming disarray. In at least one instance, Wessinger took standard student complaints to human resources instead of following the typical process in higher education: To run them up the academic chain.

“The entire music department and the faculty were already mourning Dr. Fosheim, and now I feel like it’s just been constantly going downhill ever since she died,” said Lexie Johnson, a fifth-year music education major. “We just can’t catch a break.” 

For his part, Wessinger says that every decision he made was for the students and in consultation with Julia Thorn, his co-chair. After granting an interview to Mississippi Today in July, he stopped discussing matters related to the university, claiming Delta State had instructed him and other administrators to “have no further contact with the press.”

“All of those decisions were made out of one single spirit and that spirit was for the students,” he said in July. “We don’t want this department to die.” 

Delta State declined to comment on a majority of Mississippi Today’s inquiries, responding only to three questions a spokesperson said were not about “confidential personnel matters.” 

Wessinger’s controversial handling of the department comes as Delta State is experiencing an employee retention problem. Since 2018, it has lost 46 faculty members, more than any other public university in the state, according to data from the Institutions of Higher Learning. Last school year, multiple departments were helmed by interim chairs, though music was the only one where an interim wasn’t an expert in its speciality. 

And IHL recently cited one music degree for producing few graduates, putting it at risk of shutting down. 

“If it doesn’t work with Dr. Wessinger, it’s four months, okay?” Green told the faculty. “This is very, very temporary.” 

The Heartbeat of the Department

Like much at Delta State, the music department has seen better days. 

Its building, Zeigel Hall, which sits on the campus’ historic quadrangle, in recent years has been plagued by asbestos and a faulty elevator that’s known to trap students for hours at a time. 

The instruments are aging. The enrollment has shrunk. The band used to be renowned for producing band directors, but nowadays, students go to other schools, seeking the pomp of a traveling SEC game or the bravado of the Sonic Boom of the South. 

In the midst of this challenge was Karen Fosheim. She was, students and faculty say, the heartbeat of the department. A pianist who became chair in 2016, she had a preternatural ability for knowing what was going on in the department at all times, many said, attending every concert and remembering the names of every student. 

She was also skilled at uniting people, the chair’s most important role, recalled Mary Lenn Buchanan, Fosheim’s close friend and a retired Delta State music professor. 

This was important because musicians have notorious egos. And there was already a rift in the music department. In 2019, Richards, the band director, received tenure despite opposition from some music faculty. The disagreement had dogged Zeigel Hall ever since. 

But Fosheim commanded respect, Buchanan said, by always telling the truth. 

“Unless Karen needed to tell someone they were pretty and they really weren’t, she did not lie,” Buchanan said. 

Fosheim also directed that straightforwardness toward Delta State’s administration, especially during the pandemic, which may not have endeared her to them. By last summer, a rumor was circulating that Fosheim was going to be replaced. 

That day, concerned faculty asked the university police to request a wellness check on her home in Boyle, a small town just south of Cleveland. Her husband was out of state, and though Fosheim had been responding to texts, the replies were strange, unlike her.

Worried that Fosheim’s stepson, Alseny Camara, who is Black, would feel unsafe around police, two faculty members drove over that afternoon. They walked through the home with a detective. It was freezing inside and smelled. 

Fosheim’s bedroom door was locked. The officer said he could get in via a window. As he removed the screen and peered through the glass, he saw a body prone on the floor. 

That’s when Camara ran, according to testimony from a Bolivar County sheriff’s deputy during an August circuit court hearing. Deputies using K-9s found him shortly after 9:30 p.m., hiding in the woods near Fosheim’s home. 

At the precinct, Camara confessed to killing his stepmom with an aluminum baseball bat. He was upset Fosheim, who was 57, had scolded him for trying to get out of his shift at a pet motel, according to the court hearing. He admitted he had impersonated her over text. 

Jamie Dahman, then an assistant professor of music, had checked on Camara that day while Fosheim was still considered missing. 

It still haunts Dahman that while he was talking to Camara, Fosheim was dead on the floor of her bedroom. It “sat with me for a long time,” he said, “and it still kind of gives me chills.” 

If that weren’t enough, the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees had suddenly fired the president, William LaForge, sparking fears of budget cuts across the cash-strapped university. 

And the music faculty still hadn’t heard from the administration about who would lead the department. The lack of leadership was becoming a problem. An important lock in the building wasn’t working. A new sound engineer needed to be hired. 

Frustrated, Dahman sent an email to the department. He cc’d the dean, Green, and the provost, Novobilski. Since Novobilski, whose background is in business, came to Delta State in 2021, he had earned a reputation as a stickler for the hierarchy of academia. 

The email got their attention. On Friday, Aug. 12, Green and Novobilski met with faculty. 

A recording of the department meeting, the first without Fosheim, shows it was tense from the start. Voices were strained and shaky. Their anxiety stemmed from the stakes: Chairs have immense power in a department. Everyone wanted to trust that whoever took the role would be on their side. But faculty were worried administration, particularly Novobilski, had already come up with a plan for the role without them.

When Novobilski began the meeting, he seemed to confirm that fear by noting he had in fact been working to replace Fosheim. He acknowledged he should have called a meeting over the summer.

Dahman loudly interrupted him: “May I ask why we weren’t informed of what was going on?” 

Then, a back-and-forth ensued. Novobilski told Dahman to take a deep breath. 

It ended when Green asked if other faculty wanted to speak. One teared up explaining that he would have felt guilty volunteering for the vacant role. Another said that without Fosheim, the atmosphere in the department felt more toxic than ever.

Finally, Novobilski intimated he thought the department could benefit from someone outside “the music community” given its history of division. 

“I have someone in mind, I’ll be honest with you,” Novobilski said. “This is someone I have worked with. … He has a lot of experience working with conflict resolution, mediation and he brings a lot of experience working with different groups of people, plus he’s a listener.” 

This person, Novobilski said, did have administrative experience at the “college level.” But his specialty was business. 

Dahman groaned.  

Faculty barely trusted a colleague to take the job — let alone a non-musician. One faculty member protested that he thought the department could make it work with an internal hire. Josh Armstrong, then the faculty senate president, said “this definitely feels much more like here’s your new boss, and here you go.”

If faculty weren’t happy with Wessinger by the end of the semester, Novobilski conceded, “we’ll put him to work doing something else.” 

But his mind seemed made up. Wessinger would be on campus by the end of August. 

‘People Crisis’

About eight years ago, Wessinger set out on a mission to understand the relationship between millennials and organizational structures. 

Ever since, the 59-year old Georgia native says he’s been trying to help Fortune 500 companies, churches, regional banks, rotary clubs and insurance companies — that is, “anyone who would listen” to him — solve their workforce crisis.

“I’m not just about identifying the problem,” he says in a January 2022 YouTube video titled “People crisis.” “I want to be the guy who helps you to understand what’s going on but also provides sustainable solutions for you.” 

When faculty scanned his LinkedIn, Wessinger appeared impressive at first. He was a keynote speaker at more than 30 conferences a year, the author of three books and the creator of a proprietary database on millennials. His companies had ambitious names — Create2Elevate, Generational Forces, Retention Partners. 

After a closer look, faculty didn’t understand how an accomplished business consultant had time to uproot to the Mississippi Delta. 

Most notably, his experience in higher education was patchy. The administrative work Novobilski referenced at the Aug. 12 meeting appears to have primarily consisted of Wessinger setting up a satellite campus of the University of the Virgin Islands that offered remote classes, according to his LinkedIn.

They also discovered something particularly troubling. A 2012 opinion from the Supreme Court of the Virgin Islands in a divorce proceeding with an ex-wife, Robin Wessinger.

One line from the third page caught their eye: “The Motion stated that Kent ‘has been found to have committed repeated acts of domestic violence against [Robin] and was held in contempt of Court by [a Superior Court Magistrate] as a result of his continued violations of the January 20, 2010 Domestic Violence Restraining Order, which is in itself an act of Domestic Violence.” 

This concerned faculty, who were still reeling from Fosheim’s death. It made many of them distrust Wessinger from the beginning. 

Many students didn’t meet Wessinger until mid-October, almost two months into the semester, when he spoke to the recital class, according to an email. 

Piper Gillam, a fifth-year music education major, said it “felt like a sales pitch.” Gillam said he called the students in the department, who were mainly born after 2000, “millennials.” 

“In my head I was like, ‘I’m not a millennial. I’m Gen-Z,’” Gillam said. “And he was like, ‘and I know what you guys are thinking,’ and I was like, ‘OK, thank God, he’s gonna correct me,’ and he was like, ‘but you guys are millennials.’ So I googled it to see what age group am I, and it said Gen-Z, and I was like, alright, alright. I’m not trusting this man.” 

Faculty said he ignored their emails. But when they sought him out, they said he was hard to find in his office. Some meetings that Fosheim had scheduled months in advance now came with a few-hours notice from the department secretary. One faculty member said Wessinger neglected to notify them about a key deadline related to their tenure portfolio.

His lack of music knowledge was obvious, faculty said. He didn’t know what a “tone-row,” a basic composition method, was. He mispronounced the word “viola.” 

“He said, ‘Vye-Ola,’” Richards recalled. “As in Davis.”

It didn’t make faculty feel like Wessinger was qualified to assess their work. In December, with evaluations around the corner, Green extended Wessinger’s part-time contract through the spring. 

By then, faculty’s relationship with Wessinger had gotten so toxic, some started recording their interactions with him. 

Wessinger seemed to have soured, too. According to sources close to Wessinger, and a text message sent on Oct. 18 by a faculty member to Wessinger’s co-chair, he started saying that Fosheim had left a “mess” in the department that he was going to “clean up.”

His prime target was Richards, the band director. A blunt and, by his own admission, polarizing figure in the department, Richards said he had questioned Wessinger when they first met. He wanted to know more about Wessinger’s dissertation on how limited opportunities for creativity in the Caribbean contributes to the region’s socio-economic crisis. It has several misspellings, including the name of a Haitian town. 

Wessinger, according to sources close to him, talked openly about how he did not like Richards, who had other detractors as well.

On Feb. 22, Wessinger placed Richards on administrative leave pending an investigation into his “alleged contumacious conduct” – or as Webster’s dictionary defines it, “stubbornly disobedient” conduct.

About a month later, Lisa Giger, the human resources director, met with Richards’ wind ensemble class, according to a text message. She spent the session asking about the atmosphere of the class, multiple students said, and when they mentioned Richards, she had follow up questions. 

Then on April 10, Richards received a letter from Novobilski: After a “thorough investigation by the Human Resources Department,” Richards was fired. 

A university committee ultimately found that while Novobilski’s letter listed a slew of student and faculty complaints against Richards, only one had ever been formally documented. The previous administration had investigated and resolved that complaint in 2018-2019. 

The thorough investigation, the committee wrote, seemed “one-sided,” but the committee couldn’t confirm that appearance because Richards was not allowed to ask any questions, which appears to be a violation of Delta State’s policies. 

It is “completely outside of what is considered normal” for human resources to get involved in student complaints, said Daniel Durkin, a University of Mississippi professor and the president of the United Faculty Senate Association of Mississippi.

It is also “very unusual,” Durkin said, for someone like Wessinger who has not achieved tenure to evaluate applications for the prestigious distinction. 

But that’s what Wessinger proceeded to do. 

Dahman, a vocal teacher who researches Bulgarian art song, had lots of reasons to be confident. In seven years of teaching at Delta State, he had never received a low mark on his annual evaluations, according to his tenure application. He’d earned a Mississippi Humanities Council Teaching Award in 2019. His students were accepted into graduate programs, won national competitions and sang in churches and funeral homes. 

And chance was on his side. Most people who apply for tenure at Delta State end up getting it, according to an analysis of IHL data. 

That’s why when Dahman was offered an extension on his tenure application in the fall, he did not accept it. In retrospect, he wonders if he should have. Dahman had received a verbal reprimand after his behavior at the Aug. 12 meeting, then he was put on a performance improvement plan in December. The plan required him to demonstrate “collegiality” with students, faculty, administration and campus visitors. 

In late January, the department’s tenure committee, a panel of Dahman’s peers, recommended that Dahman receive tenure, and raised only minor concerns.

Then in mid-February, Wessinger recommended Dahman be denied on the basis of his teaching and collegiality, speculating there were more “violations” than the committee knew of. Two days later, Green, the dean, also recommended denial, claiming Dahman had “aggressively pounded the table” during the Aug. 12 meeting, an allegation that is not substantiated by the recording. 

Dahman was devastated and angry.  

His feelings spilled into his annual evaluation with Wessinger and Thorn in March. Wessinger began by asking if he could record due to the “environment” in the department, not knowing Dahman was recording as well.  

Then, Wessinger revealed that he had recently taken Dahman’s students to HR and told them Dahman was on a performance improvement plan, something meant to be confidential. The students had complained about a remark Dahman had made in defense of his teaching — yet another issue that should have been resolved without HR.  

Wessinger topped off the meeting by giving Dahman low marks for teaching and service. Dahman protested, but there was nothing he could do. 

“This is my life, this is my livelihood, it’s how I support my children,” Dahman told them. “I feel like I’m being unfairly targeted because I snapped at the provost.” 

Deconstructing hope

As the fall semester starts, many students and faculty say the music department is still struggling to get out of Wessinger’s shadow, even as he has moved on to lead a new department. 

In June, Novobilski announced that Wessinger was going to be the interim chair of the Division of Management, Marketing and Business Administration. 

Some faculty made a last-ditch effort to get rid of him. They sent an anonymous letter to Daniel Ennis, the new president of Delta State, summarizing their concerns with Wessinger — the adminstration’s decision to bring him on, his lack of music qualifications, the court document that said he had “committed repeated acts of domestic violence.” 

Ennis didn’t respond to the letter, but even he has had to address the after-effects of decisions Wessinger had a hand in, like the hiring of Steven Hugley, the interim band director who made transphobic remarks on a podcast. Ennis also made the final call on Dahman’s tenure application, ultimately deciding to grant it.

A month later, Wessinger stood in a music room facing rows of empty risers for an interview with Mississippi Today. He talked about why he wanted to come to Delta State and how he had grown to care for it. Cleveland, he said, reminded him of the Virgin Islands — a place that needed help and where educational institutions are bastions of hope.

But some people had troubled him, deep in his soul. 

“My personal issues have been accentuated to tear down and deconstruct the very opportunity that every student has here in this university,” he said, sweeping his hand out wide. 

Wessinger acknowledged Fosheim’s killing had traumatized many faculty. But when he spoke about the anonymous letter, he grew agitated. He said it was full of “half truths, lies, manipulations.” He added that if Mississippi Today printed its reference to domestic violence, he was “not gonna be a happy camper.” 

“We know who they are,” he said. “Anonymous, they’re not, and libel, they are.” 

Yet Wessinger’s alleged past mistreatment of women goes beyond the restraining order that he violated in his divorce in the Virgin Islands, according to documents obtained by Mississippi Today. 

Three other women across the U.S. have been granted restraining orders against him, all based on claims of domestic violence or mistreatment. In two of those cases, Mississippi Today confirmed through court records that Wessinger either sought or received a restraining order as well. 

That was the case in Georgia, where a divorce was filed against Wessinger in 2016 in part on the basis of “fraud, cruel treatment,” which he denied. Affidavits submitted on behalf of his ex-wife, Laurie Higginbotham, allege that Wessinger wrote letters containing elaborate “false statements” that she had Huntington’s disease, and it was causing her to live in an altered state of reality. 

In a phone call, Wessinger told Mississippi Today that every person who had accused him of domestic violence was “connected” and that he had believed at the time what he wrote in the letters about Higginbotham. He denied that he had ever mistreated or been violent toward a woman, adding that if he had, a judge would have taken away custody of his children.

“Attorneys will say anything in motions,” Wessinger said. “You’re reading a motion. You’re not reading the truth. You’re reading allegations. That doesn’t make it the truth.”

Faculty don’t know about the additional allegations against Wessinger, and it is unclear if Delta State’s administration knew before hiring him. The restraining orders may not have shown up on a background check since they are not public information or were hidden in court files. 

Through a spokesperson, the president’s office declined to comment, citing personnel matters.

On Aug. 10, Ennis gave his first convocation.

“I’m here beside you to tackle the challenges we face, but today, put them aside and join me in celebrating what we do,” he said in his address. 

Wessinger wasn’t there to hear it. He was in Florida, speaking to the CEO Council of Tampa Bay, giving a speech about solving the workforce crisis.