The board of Outright Vermont fired executive director Keith Elston in early December, about one week following the withdrawal of $12,000 in state funding support for Outright’s in-school presentation program.

On January 17, it announced the appointment of board member B.J. Rogers as the new executive director.

David Ryan, board chair, said Elston’s dismissal was based on a number of factors, and that the board unanimously felt they wanted a change in leadership.

However, he pointed specifically to a late-night phone call Elston made to department of education commissioner David Wolk shortly after the state’s decision was made. While Ryan would not elaborate, Elston said he did phone Wolk about two days after the decision to express his frustations.

“I had read on on-line Rutland Herald article which had some quotes [in it] made by Wolk, saying that Outright Vermont was no longer doing the presentations because they were no longer effective,” said Elston. Becoming angry about the quotes, Elston decided to call Wolk about 10 p.m. at his home.

Later acknowledging the call was made at an inappropriate time and manner, Elston said he apologized both in writing and by phone to Wolk. Both agreed to put the matter behind them, said Elston.

A spokeperson for Wolk, Diane Derby, denied that Wolk ever characterized Outright Vermont in such a manner or that he or anyone else at the department ever called Outright Vermont’s board to complain about the late-night phone call. Derby said Elston’s dismissal was between him and Outright’s board, and in no way was the department a party to the board’s decision.

Only a few days later, however, Elston said Outright’s board asked him to resign. He said he refused because he wanted to let people know he was not abandoning Outright Vermont during a significant crisis. The board went on to fire him the same day.

Elston claims his ouster came as a complete surprise, and he had had no indications the board was unsatisfied with him. However, he said he had had private discussions about resigning in six to eight months to move away from the non-profit sector.

The relationship between Elston and Outright’s board was, however, not without tension. “Besides the $12,000 [loss], there were philosophical differences between me and the board,” Elston said. “I had expressed things [to them] like expanding Outright Vermont into rural areas, opposing cuts in staff or benefits, and concerns about the board’s moving the organization forward.”

Elston does admit he had become tired out by the relentless and unfair criticisms directed at Outright Vermont over the last several months. He said people were constantly claming the organization was molesting children and distributing pornography, that staff lives were threatened by people coming into their offices, and that irate parents and state legislators would not accept Outright’s answers to their claims no matter what they would say.

Prior to coming to Vermont, Elston served as the executive director of ACLU in New Mexico. He said he still loves Vermont, and that he and his partner Mark plan to stay. As for the future, Elston said he plans to take some time off, recuperate from the nine long months of attacks from the religious right, and then look for work here.

Outright’s new executive director took over in early February. Rogers had served for nine months on the Outright board and had been an admission counselor and transfer coordinator at Saint Michael’s College.

Rogers said he, like everyone at Outright, was greatly disappointed over the loss of the state funding. “The commissioner [Wolk] has assured us that his reasoning for withdrawing the funding was to put that money into the state’s own safe schools programming,” he said.

“This change by no means excludes Outright from continuing to work with schools throughout the state as we’ve done for more than a decade now,” he explained.

Sue Wilson, Outright’s Educational Development Coordinator, also said that the organization intends to continue its training in schools. She said the organization had not been receiving as many requests as in the past, but she anticipated an increase in 2001.

Derby said that one of the reasons the $12,000 in funding was redirected was a dramatic decrease in the number of schools calling Outright Vermont for its services during the last few months of 2000. Since the schools were reluctant to use Outright, she explained, the department of education wanted to make sure that these services would get into the schools through its own program.

Wilson said the state had not been in contact with Outright about setting up any kind of training program for the state’s safe schools program about issues specifically concerning gay, lesbian or other youth questioning their sexual orientation.

However, Derby insisted that Outright Vermont had been invited to participate in a training session on HIV/AIDS, and that the state did want to continue a relationship with Outright Vermont as well as other organizations.

Outright’s new executive director echoed this sentiment. “I’m looking forward to extensive collaboration and to getting the community even more involved in the cause that Outright has championed for the past 12 years,” Rogers said.

Outright Vermont faces an additional change in leadership at the end of March when Tawnya MacDonald will replace Ryan as board chair. Ryan will have served three years on the board, one of those as chair.