Read on Twitter
been debating if I should put this out here because the whole thing causes me anxiety. BUT, one of the quotes from the NYT& #39;s article has me rather upset. The focus on "As I’ve reflected on my actions the last few days" implies that the bad behavior was recent. It& #39;s not: A THREAD
I decided to lay out my whole experience with B/A so that people who I love and respect can understand where I& #39;ve been coming from. And also, so that it becomes obvious that this recent behavior isn& #39;t anything new.
I don& #39;t know if anything I am sharing here has legal implications for any agreements signed at the time of separation from Vanderbilt University, or for any of the other victims who sought help from her who may try to seek damages. I am only interested in further transparency.
I first met B/A in either 2004/5 when I was a graduate student at Vanderbilt University. She taught 2 lectures in one of my courses. I was taken in by her charisma and what seemed a passion for neuroscience, and thought she could be a good role model for me.
I quickly learned this was not the case. Not long after teaching us, I saw her at Target one Saturday morning and cheerfully walked up and said "Hi B/A!" In response she stared daggers at me, looked me up and down, scowled and walked away.
My thought at the time was "whatever, Zoe, not everyone is going or has to like you." We had very little, if any interactions at Vanderbilt during the remainder of my time there.
Fast forward to the SFN of 2016, I was invited to a party by a mutual friend. I knew she would also be in attendance and bc I had observed her antics on Twitter, decided to stay as far away from her as I could that night. We may have exchanged a brief greeting, I don& #39;t remember.
Later that SFN she gave me some J. Neuro writing pad and specifically said they were for my daughter. After this interaction she would attempt to engage with me on twitter a bit.
I wasn& #39;t very interested but would write back bc it was evident she was gaining a cult-like following and I didn& #39;t want to incur any wrath, figured I would just stay on the fringes.
In 2017 she sent me a DM -that I do not have a screenshot of- asking if I would share my "story" of harassment at Vandy. I explained that I didn& #39;t have one there, and that I wasn& #39;t going to share other experiences.
in August of 2018 there was an accusation of rape against a new faculty member at Vanderbilt. My PhD advisor was on the search committee for that person.
I knew through the grapevine for years that B/A didn& #39;t like my advisor due to her other dealings at Vanderbilt. I would go so far as to say this was common knowledge as I had heard it from other investigators at other institutions.
Now a word about my PhD advisor. He is one of the best people I know in science bar none. I have been out of his lab for 11 years now. He is always there for me whenever I need him. If I am 1/5 the mentor he is to my trainees, I will consider myself lucky.
On Aug 13, 2018 I had a conversation with my PhD advisor on the phone. As usual he built me up, and showed his support in the way that very few scientists ever have. I was just so happy so I made this fateful tweet in my state of happiness
Now you may, dear reader, see that I spell it "advisor" with an OR, which I feel is more formal and denotes my respect. It& #39;s not as typical as adviser. So people noted and sent to me this tweet the following morning. A person who presumably didn& #39;t know me, my CV, or my advisor
note the quote marks in the subtweet. You don& #39;t need a PhD to know when you& #39;re being quoted. It was followed by B/A responding to the Sci_bi tweet with this
These screenshots were taken by me on Sunday morning... I have the originals and I am using both in this thread for clarity I can provide all of them if needed
now something about me, I will take all sorts of abuse by people, but you come after the people I love...that is something I will not suffer fools for, so I directly called them out
Like all bullies, B/A didn& #39;t like being called out...this is when her DMs started. Also, I noticed at this time she wasn& #39;t publicaly badmouthing Vanderbilt as she had been previously wont to do.
in retrospect this is all quite interesting. I was being subtweeted everyone knew it, so her denial her is quite silly. Even more silly that we now know that she indeed was the person "dragging Winder".
Was legally precarious for her? I& #39;ll leave that up to the lawyers to figure out. But I promise you I was not the one being "obnoxious" here. She even enlisted the aid of our mutual friend -- who confirmed it was about Winder -- to try and get me to back down.
some of my favorite parts here are her saying that I could have addressed this with :Sci_bi" without including her. that it was "obnoxious, untrue, and fucks with her life." and that it was "tacky af". SHE WAS THE SAME PERSON. The gaslighting was unbelievable.
I was charitable. I went back and screenshot my original post, crossed her name out...she was still quite worried about this situation. I never "poked" anyone to support me. Someone did come to my defense only to get slammed. But again "dragging her"? they were one and the same
at the time I figured that "Sci_bi" was just one of her stooges....her rage is unbelievable considering that it was her. Clearly she did think that I was very stupid...I promise you all I am not -- hence all the screenshots -- I knew this day would come. She continued in her DMs
It& #39;s almost like she didn& #39;t know how Twitter works. You respond to threads, she made all of that thread. All the meanwhile "Sci_bi" continued as well. There is this expectation that EVERYONE knows who the bad guys are. That everyone is aware. -- continuing
There is this expectation that EVERYONE knows who the bad guys are. That everyone is aware. Sure there is the infamous "whisper network" but if you literally don& #39;t tell people, they don& #39;t know.
this may be one of my favorite gaslights....I mean she put fucking quote marks on the original tweet
regardless, I had my suspicions that this was too coordinated to be two distinct individuals back then, but no real evidence. But the bottom line is this: this is not new, this is not a "sudden" thing.
I was faculty when this shit all went down, but it gutted me. People who are my friends dismissed me. When the GoFundMe started I almost lost it. I knew that this was all going to go up in flames. And us women in science were going to be the ones to suffer./fin
