When Your Butt Is in the Hottest Seat

The writer is a former president

Every college president has watched the show, College President in the Hot Seat. However sympathetic we may be, we’re spectators in this blood sport, reading daily updates, playing armchair quarterback (“she shouldn’t have said that”; “that board chair is an idiot”), guessing the odds of how long, or if, they’ll make it through whatever mess they’re in. 

When the controversy ends, we read the formal statements and wait for the next episode, hoping and praying it’s not us. As much as we follow these cases and deal with minor, local issues, rarely do most people find out what it’s like to be in the hot seat. I know. I was there. 

Being in the hot seat is a lot like junior high girls' bathrooms: gossip and rumor prevail. As soon as the story broke about my crisis, I was inundated with mostly well-meaning constituents with “inside” information about what the board was going to do. 

All day, every day, everyone on campus (and off) was experiencing the same thing: “Did you see that tweet?” “Did you see the editorial in The XXX?“ “I heard that [someone with power] wants to fire—.” My phone rang constantly; it was impossible to keep up, even if I had the stomach for the 24 hours of news that kept coming.

The “insider” information was wildly contradictory: one minute I was definitely getting fired. Twenty minutes later another equally credible insider was certain I wasn’t. I knew my job was to be calm and to try to spread calm, but rumor thrives on chaos and uncertainty. 

Every campus crisis is different, but I will offer one prediction about future episodes of College President in the Hot Seat: your comms folks will be overwhelmed, no matter if your team is three people or thirty. They won’t be able to handle the explosion of press requests, tweets, phone calls, etc. National reporters will descend on campus and speak to anyone they can. They’ll show up at your home. They’ll call your kid’s cell phone. 

While I had the university’s team at my disposal and knew that I needed professionals to represent me, I hadn’t realized that I should have had all that arranged ahead of time. I thought it was sufficient to have an attorney in mind. For me, it was an impressive lawyer I had met at a conference for emerging academic leaders. He specialized in university presidents. He seemed perfect, but I hadn’t thought to establish a professional relationship ahead of time, and when I called him in the midst of my crisis, he didn’t return my calls. (I did hear from him weeks later.) So at exactly the moment that I didn’t have time to breathe, I was wasting time trying to find a good employment lawyer. 

Not only should I have had an attorney on retainer, I also should have had my own crisis communication expert, again lined up long before any crisis. The firm hired to manage the university’s response could not also at the same time manage my communications. 

The hot seat does more than burn your butt; there’s a physical toll. These crises often last weeks, and in many cases tension has built for months before boiling over. I generally had good self-care strategies and plenty of experience with stressful leadership roles. None of that mattered. 

Weeks without sleeping. A constant pain in my chest. Everyone except my closest of friends assumed I was worried about losing my job. But I wasn’t worried that I would lose a job that, frankly, seemed like it was shortening my life. No, the real, soul-sucking anxiety was for the people around me and the damage to my institution. I spent my final few days on the job trying to prepare my leadership team for what was to come. 

I was also honest with my family and warned them that this might not turn out well, but I tried to shield them from the chaos of the moment. But they read newspapers. They watch TV. They heard people say cruel and inaccurate things about me. For weeks. I could not protect them from the stress. It affected them physically. So, in the midst of my professional crisis, I was also dealing with serious medical issues within my family. 

Look: I had the right job for me at the right place. It was the most challenging and rewarding job I ever had, and it all went well, until it didn’t. In the days after I was fired, I talked with several former presidents, some of whom had been fired. Many warned me that it could take a year or two to fully recover. I was polite, but I scoffed. I just needed a few weeks of rest, maybe even a few months. 

But now, with more perspective, I see that they’re probably right. But there’s good news, too, not the least of which is that scattered across this country are former presidents ready to welcome the latest stars of College President in the Hot Seat.