VOLUME 109, ISSUE NO. 17 | STUDENT-RUN SINCE 1916 | RICETHRESHER.ORG | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2025
‘COLLATERAL DAMAGE’: Houston’s top horn musician allegedly harassed Rice students for decades.
And the school knew.
ILLUSTRATION BY THE BARBED WIRE
Rice University’s famed horn professor William VerMeulen abruptly retired last spring amid a swirl of sexual misconduct allegations. But dozens of students and industry insiders say “the administration has known for 30 years” — and failed to act. RIYA MISRA
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF This story has been published in collaboration with The Barbed Wire, a Texas-based digital news outlet. Read the story online now at thebarbedwire. com, and later at ricethresher.org. This story contains descriptions of sexual trauma that may be triggering to some readers. Visit RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network), which has a 24/7 hotline and helpful resources. The National Sexual Assault Hotline can also be reached at 800-656HOPE (4673). Myrna Meeroff hadn’t had a seizure in four years. But in 1995, on her first day of graduate classes at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, she had one. Recovering in the hospital, she missed the beginning of the semester. She entered the French horn studio a week behind her peers — “compromised in every way,” she said. Meeroff’s horn instructor, William VerMeulen, invited her to lunch off-campus in
what seemed to Meeroff like a gesture The touching continued in lessons, of goodwill. VerMeulen gave her a lay Meeroff said, even as other male studio of the land and caught Meeroff up on members watched. Though her previous missed material. He reassured her teachers sat across from her as she about her absences and even offered to played, VerMeulen sat next to her. He find her opportunities with community often touched her stomach, without orchestras, she told the Thresher.. permission, to ensure she was breathing Everything would be alright, she deeply enough for her belly to expand. remembered him saying. Then, she He’d rest his hand on top of her thigh, said, he placed she said, letting it his hand on her stay for too long. thigh. “When the Why is this hand is on your man touching thigh?” she told me in any the Thresher. way? Meeroff “That has nothing remembered to do with music thinking. It whatsoever.” gave her pause. Meeroff had Other teachers Corin Droullard a sheltered had touched her SHEPHERD MASTER’S ’19 childhood — “the during lessons, music was my placing their heads on top of hers to life,” she said — and she sometimes hear the horn’s sound — weird, she wondered if VerMeulen’s behavior was a said, though not sexual — but this was figment of her imagination. She’d been different. She forced herself to brush it told he was one of the best teachers off. in the field. That he had the ability to
I had heard, ‘If you’re a girl, don’t go to Rice.’
SPECIAL PROJECT
‘COLLATERAL DAMAGE’
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make stars out of his students. “This was going to be the defining moment that was going to get me the career that I wanted in music,” she said. She wore pants to lessons, moved her chair, practiced at home in her apartment — quiet rebuffs to his repeated advances. “Once he realized that he wasn’t going to get anything from me,” Meeroff said, VerMeulen began “systematically destroying my confidence.” Meeroff said he ranked her last in auditions. He gave her parts she felt he knew she couldn’t do, then would “berate me for not being able to do it to his satisfaction,” she said. Beat down, she slowly stopped attending classes. Because she was afraid of losing her spot in the studio, Meeroff said she didn’t report the behavior, or dare say the words “sexual harassment” out loud. But she felt sure others knew. “They saw what was happening, and they couldn’t help me without running the risk of, you know, having their career destroyed,” she said.
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