Audio Recordings of Key Meetings Between Deans and Professor Add New Development to Ongoing Lawsuit

Olivia Silvey ’25
Editor-in-Chief

Previously unreleased audio recordings obtained and verified by the Tripod via an anonymous source provide more clarity on key elements of the ongoing lawsuit against Trinity College and Dean of Faculty Sonia Cardenas. In 2023, Trinity’s Academic Freedom Committee (AFC) found Cardenas and then-Associate Dean Takunari Miyazaki to have committed acts of maladministration against engineering professor John Mertens. The findings of the AFC largely relied on what took place in two meetings occurring in 2022 between Cardenas, Miyazaki and Mertens. The recordings and their transcripts are of the two meetings. 

The audio recordings are an impactful development in the lawsuit due to Mertens’ claims that Cardenas and Miyazaki attempted to pressure him into retirement during these two meetings by using a 2021 climate assessment (a climate assessment is when an outside lawyer interviews everyone in a certain department to assess shortcomings of said department.) The claims referencing these 2022 meetings solely consisted of firsthand accounts without hard evidence such as audio. Now, these recordings provide primary evidence of the exact conversations which occurred. 

In the January 2022 meeting, Cardenas told Mertens that the climate assessment report identified him as the primary issue within the department. She went on to say that “there’s strong suggestion that [the nondiscrimination policy] has been potentially violated” by Mertens because of his “egregious” behavior uncovered in the climate assessment, and that administration can “expect complaint[s].” Cardenas said that the report found evidence of “bullying,” “harassment,” “inappropriate behavior” and preventing the department from retaining students by Mertens, but refused to say what the exact contents of the report were. As previously reported in the Tripod, lawyer Scott Roberts, hired by Trinity College to investigate the allegations in the report, later found no evidence substantiating these accusations in his 2023 investigation. As stated in Mertens’ complaint to the courts, the lack of substantiated evidence further supported his belief that the “climate assessment was merely a pretext for retaliation by Cardenas.”

In the January meeting discussed above, the deans briefly discussed the option of accelerated retirement for Mertens, instead of phased retirement (when a tenured faculty member slowly decreases the amount of classes taught and pay received over two years leading up to full retirement). At the February meeting, Mertens asked if the allegedly damning report would be sealed if he chose accelerated retirement. This would mean the allegations would never be investigated by the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, which handles cases of nondiscrimination. Cardenas responded that, given that he would not be at Trinity anymore if he chose retirement, “I don’t think we [would] need to do anything with it, in terms of submitting it to DEI.” 

When the deans brought up Mertens’ retirement in the same January meeting, Cardenas suggested the “accelerated retirement” plan that she said other faculty members had chosen previously, due to the pandemic. The details of this accelerated plan were not discussed until later in the February meeting, when Cardenas stated that Mertens would need to decide on retirement in less than two days. This was because of the deadline to submit faculty names to the Board of Trustees for emeritus status. She then explained that once she shared the report “starting next week,” the deans “lose control of the situation, including emeritus status.” Mertens asked if the deans were suggesting retirement to anyone else in the department, and Cardenas said they were not because “my report doesn’t point me in that direction.” In his complaint filed in court, Mertens stated that he had not expressed any interest in retirement before these meetings. 

It is unclear in Trinity’s Faculty Manual on what the proper procedure is for moving forward with climate assessments, especially without any formal complaints submitted to the Dean of Faculty, which is the first necessary step to take action against a faculty member. In her December 2022 response letter to the Academic Freedom Committee, who had conducted their own investigation into Mertens’ complaints against the deans in 2022-23, Cardenas stated that with Mertens, the deans “followed the exact same procedure in the case of the other climate assessment – speaking ahead of time and individually to both the chair and another faculty member, before releasing an executive summary.” Cardenas is referencing a 2020 climate conducted in the Classics department. Mertens’ court complaint references the other climate assessment as well, alleging that “this was not the first time Trinity had used a climate assessment involving Attorney [Kevin] Kinne to pressure a tenured faculty member to end their career at Trinity. During the first climate assessment of the Classical Studies Department being conducted by Attorney Kinne a tenured faculty member abruptly resigned her position and left the college.”

When asked to comment on the development, Cardenas referenced the last statement submitted to the Tripod by the College in spring 2024, which states “The College does not intend to litigate the lawsuit in the press. The College’s position on the claims will be spelled out in detail when it files its official response in court.” 

In response to a request for comment, Mertens told the Tripod: “”The audio recordings are definitive proof of what happened. I hope the facts will spur our faculty to adopt the recommendations in the October 2022 Ombud reports to strengthen our guardrails and reduce the likelihood that this abuse of power will ever happen again. And more importantly, to rise up to protect the existence of the position of Faculty Ombud.”

These recordings are not publicly filed with the court, and instead were exchanged amongst each party the week of Sept. 9 as part of the discovery process, when each party shares evidence with the other in preparation for trial which is set for February 2026. It is not yet clear how the recordings and other discovery items will affect each party’s strategy. 

This is an ongoing story.