{"id":29282,"date":"2025-10-14T12:39:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T16:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/munciepostdemocrat.com\/?p=29282"},"modified":"2026-03-17T23:05:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T03:05:12","slug":"to-preserve-ball-states-reputation-brian-gallagher-needs-to-resign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/munciepostdemocrat.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/14\/to-preserve-ball-states-reputation-brian-gallagher-needs-to-resign\/","title":{"rendered":"To Preserve Ball State\u2019s Reputation, Brian Gallagher Needs To Resign"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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To Preserve Ball State\u2019s Reputation, Brian Gallagher Needs To Resign<\/span><\/font><\/span><\/h2><\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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10.14.2025 \/ Op-Ed \/ Stella Allen<\/u><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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As of January 2026, Brian Gallagher was promoted to Chair of the Board of Trustees of Ball State without any input or approval from students or faculty at Ball State.<\/i><\/span><\/p>

\nBrian Gallagher\u2019s disgraceful time as CEO of United Way closely mirrors his time on Ball State\u2019s Board of Trustees. And why shouldn\u2019t it? He never had to publicly admit or apologize for his actions there, so why wouldn\u2019t he continue doing the same things here? But what exactly did he do at United Way?<\/span><\/p>\n

To start at the beginning, Brian Gallagher was made CEO of United Way Worldwide in 2009, where he held his position until 2021, according to the Associated Press<\/span><\/a>. During his time as CEO, United Way was described as having a sexist culture where it was \u201crun like a boys club, where women have to work harder to get ahead\u201d as reported by Emily Peck on HuffPost<\/a><\/span>. Qualified and loyal women were constantly overlooked for promotions, which were instead given to underqualified men. This was far from a new problem. Gallagher was simply following a long history of sexism and CEO scandals at United Way.<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s not hard to see why, from 2019-2020, three women filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in, speaking out about experiencing sexual harassment from various men within the company. Subsequently, in 2021, over 20 female employees sent a letter to United Way\u2019s Board detailing their experiences facing harassment and discrimination at the company, detailed on Candid\u2019s Philanthropy News Digest<\/a><\/span>. Despite these many testimonies, none of the alleged sexual harassers faced any sort of punishment. Some were even promoted after.<\/span><\/p>\n

One woman that spoke out, Lisa Bowman, was chronically under-supported for months as her team members were slowly transferred to the supervision of the person who inappropriately harassed Bowman. She was even directly ordered by Brian Gallagher to fire one of her subordinates without any stated reason after that employee also spoke up about harassment.1 <\/span>These were clear retaliation attempts that Bowman later realized were aimed at getting her to quit. When they didn\u2019t succeed, she was abruptly fired in 2020 for no reason other than \u201cher position was no longer needed because [Gallagher had] hired someone else to handle her role\u201d recalls Lisa Bowman in an interview with HuffPost<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

On top of this, United Way retaliated against its own vice president for labor participation, Ana Avenda\u00f1o, who was fired after the President of the AFL-CIO complained to Brian Gallagher about her work on sexual harassment within the labor movement. Emily Peck reports<\/span><\/a> that the AFL-CIO, one of United Way\u2019s oldest fundraising partners, had local labor leaders that were \u201cpropositioning and groping female United Way workers\u2026hired to coordinate union fundraising.\u201d Like Bowman, these women were ignored or faced retaliation when they spoke out about these issues to their local United Way leadership.<\/span><\/p>\n

Consequently, it must be understood that Brian Gallagher played both an active role in defending the perpetrators and retaliating against the victims while passively encouraging a culture of sexism that ignored discrimination against women. Even though United Way conducted internal and external investigations in 2021 that concluded the claims of sexual harassment and discrimination were unfounded, they have been accused of being one-sided and incomplete. According to a HuffPost article<\/span>, nearly all of the women, victims, or former employees involved were not even contacted for the investigations, which were also missing records of HR complaints and email and text threads. Clearly, the investigations were meant to repair the company\u2019s image rather than address the systemic issues behind its sexist culture.<\/span><\/p>\n

Additionally, over thirty-three local United Way chapters sent letters to their Board of Trustees in 2021 expressing their loss of confidence in Gallagher\u2019s leadership, Emily Peck reports. They stated, \u201cTo accept the conclusion that United Way Worldwide bears no fault or responsibility, you would have to believe that a number of former employees got together, created an untrue story and gave up their jobs (in some cases)\/risked them (in other cases) and decided to drag United Way Worldwide through the public mud. That seems like a lot of effort if you are happy and feel valued in your job.\u201d Around a month later, over 220 local chapters committed to withholding their dues to United Way in protest of the scandal and overall culture of sexual harassment, Peck reveals<\/span><\/a>. The women who spoke up were met with such broad support from their co-workers, evidencing how prominent United Way\u2019s culture of sexism really was and calling into question the company\u2019s innocence in these matters.<\/span><\/p>\n

When Gallagher was finally pressured into resigning in 2021, he never had to acknowledge his harmful contributions to this scandal. Instead, he was paid $1.5 million dollars in the final year of his employment, according to The Nonprofit Times<\/span><\/a>. Shockingly, throughout this scandal, he had been quietly serving on Ball State\u2019s Board of Trustees, having been appointed in 2017 and serving all the way up into the present day, as seen in this Ball State University announcement<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

While people might not have known about his influence, its effects are definitely present. As the Vice Chair, he has significant impact in the University\u2019s decisions and sets the standard for what\u2019s acceptable, detailed at Ball State\u2019s Board of Trustees page<\/span><\/a>. For him, that has been a standard of sexism and unaccountability. Anonymous students have shared accounts where they have personally faced or witnessed sexual harassment from their superiors while employed at Ball State. When they reported it, nothing happened. They were, quite reasonably, scared to come out publicly due to possible retaliation and losing their jobs. While Gallagher did not have any direct part in these events, it is clear that the same sexist culture he presided over at United Way has been allowed to fester at Ball State by those in charge.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ball State\u2019s dishonorable choices don\u2019t end with Gallagher, however. In 2024, Ball State hired Michael Connor, despite knowing that he had illegally broken into the home of Tiffanie Williams, an innocent woman, and brutally attacked her in 2020, reported on here by the Indy Star<\/span><\/a>. Williams is still facing legal battles to this day while Connor has since faced no punishment. Quite the opposite, as he was still hired at Ball State. Despite a petition on Change.org<\/span><\/a> for Connor’s removal reaching over 1,100 signatures, Ball State\u2019s Board of Trustees has stayed silent, mirroring Gallagher\u2019s strategic silence at United Way when it came to enforcing their code of ethics.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just like at United Way, when people chose to spoke out about the issues, Ball State has chosen to either remain silent or retaliate, even against their own students. Feminists for Action orchestrated a letter writing campaign to the Board about this issue in the Spring of 2025. A petition for Brian Gallagher\u2019s removal<\/span><\/a> has 1,145 signatures. These actions mirror the letters from local United Ways chapters and employees to their Board detailing a loss of confidence in Gallagher. It is clear that Ball State students do not trust him to make decisions in regard to their safety, money, or university. Ball State chose to ignore their students, not even making a formal statement.<\/span><\/p>\n

In response to the Board\u2019s deliberate choice to remain silent, a group of students attending their Board of Trustees meeting in Spring of 2025 forced the Board to publicly face their betrayal of Ball State\u2019s own professed values. When these students spoke up, asking the Board how long they were going to ignore various issues, including Ball State\u2019s investments into companies aiding Israel in its genocide of Palestinians\u2014as reported by Ball State student Cooper Archer<\/span><\/a>\u2014and Brian Gallagher\u2019s membership on the Board of Trustees, they were pulled out of the meeting, arrested, and held in jail for over 5 hours, which can be read about at Ball State\u2019s Daily News<\/span><\/a>. This directly mirrors Gallagher\u2019s retaliation against female employees at United Way in an effort to silence them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just this past month, another protest was held at a Board of Trustees meeting by Ball State students advocating for the removal of Brian Gallagher and other issues, including the removal of Michael Connor, support for Suzanne Swierc, and divestment from genocide. Filling nearly the entire meeting\u2019s viewing area, it was one of the largest protests to attend a Board meeting yet. When the meeting was ending, Board Chair Rick Hall made a seemingly impromptu announcement about Brian Gallagher. He claimed that the students\u2019 accusations were either incorrect or flatly untrue, cited the aforementioned investigations as proof of Gallagher\u2019s innocence, and brought up the Board\u2019s positive relationship with Gallagher as evidence of him being a good person.<\/span><\/p>\n

These were all the exact arguments used by both the previous Student Trustee and the current one when they were reached out to about this issue. It is important to note that the Student Trustee is not democratically chosen but rather selected by the governor, which is also true for the rest of the Board of Trustee members. However, it is the first time the Board has issued an official statement, breaking their strategy of silence. Rick Hall stated that this would be the last time they would address the issue, but the student protestors\u2014responding to Hall with boos and shouts of \u201cShame!\u201d\u2014took his statement as a sign that the Board was beginning to cave under almost a year of organized pressure from students.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is evident that this issue, both at United Way and Ball State, is unresolved and ongoing. Brian Gallagher is still serving on Ball State\u2019s Board of Trustees, and Lisa Bowman is in the process of suing United Way. For every second that Brian Gallagher remains a part of Ball State, its reputation as a safe space for learning, and the reputation of its students\u2019 degrees, are being undermined. Once Bowman\u2019s case is heard in court, the United Way scandal will once again be brought into the spotlight and, consequently, so will Gallagher\u2019s employment at Ball State.<\/span><\/p>\n

In order to avoid this, Ball State must follow in United Way\u2019s footsteps and let Gallagher go. Such similar issues occurring at both United Way and Ball State demonstrate that we need a similar solution. He needs to resign or be fired in order to protect student\u2019s safety, Ball State\u2019s reputation, and keep Ball State in accordance with their own supposed values of Excellence, Integrity, Social Responsibility, and Beneficence that they promote on their website<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Notes:<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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1. Bowman, Lisa. “Harrasshole: A Cautionary Tale of My Time at America’s Favorite Charity.” 2022. pp. 141-143.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To Preserve Ball State\u2019s Reputation, Brian Gallagher Needs To Resign 10.14.2025 \/ Op-Ed \/ Stella Allen As of January 2026, Brian Gallagher was promoted to Chair of the Board of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_header_footer","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/munciepostdemocrat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/munciepostdemocrat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/munciepostdemocrat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/munciepostdemocrat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/munciepostdemocrat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29282"}],"version-history":[{"count":56,"href":"https:\/\/munciepostdemocrat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34861,"href":"https:\/\/munciepostdemocrat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29282\/revisions\/34861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/munciepostdemocrat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/munciepostdemocrat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/munciepostdemocrat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}