Belmont University Minister Heather Daugherty resigned on Jan. 6 after serving in the position for eight years.
Belmont has not made a formal announcement of Daugherty’s resignation. Her Belmont profile has been deleted and is no longer accessible from Belmont’s website.
Belmont, in a statement to the Vision, said “Rev. Heather Daugherty resigned last week from her position as University Minister after eight years of service to Belmont. We are grateful for everything she contributed to support our community in exploring, deepening and living out their faith.”
But Daugherty’s leaving was forced, faculty senate president Mark McEntire said.
“It was not her choice to stop working at Belmont,” he said.
During her time at Belmont, Daugherty helped spiritual life on campus and also served as the adviser to Bridge Builders, an organization focused on fostering a community space for LGBTQ+ students on campus that originally struggled to achieve recognition as a student organization.
Daugherty’s husband, Bradley Daugherty, teaches religion at Belmont.
Both declined to be interviewed for this story.
For McEntire, having no announcement of Daugherty leaving Belmont can have an effect on Belmont’s community since no reason was given.
“Typically when somebody has worked for a long time at a place and is well-respected and beloved as Heather was, there's an official announcement that they're leaving. In this case, a person disappeared from the campus with no notification,” he said.
“It creates a climate of fear and mistrust when people don't know things. This is a painful experience to have this happen to someone that we cared about.”
McEntire said he’s asked Belmont administration to release an announcement but has not heard back from anyone.
“I still think there should be a public acknowledgment, even if there's information that has to be withheld from it. We need to know about it together out loud, if we're going to process this and not have it be a whispered secret,” he said.
“It’s been silence. It’s been more than a week. An announcement starts to look quite strange when it's gone that long.”
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This article was written by Ty Wellemeyer
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