By Bill Shaner, News Staff

Jeff Doggett, vice president of government relations and community affairs for Northeastern, resigned last Wednesday to pursue ‘opportunities in Washington D.C.’ after 19 years as a Northeastern student and administrator, he said.
He declined to comment on the specific nature of his opportunities.
Doggett’s resignation comes only three weeks after Senior Vice President of Executive Affairs Mark Putnam announced his resignation. Putnam is to become president of Central College in Pella, Iowa, in July, according to a letter President Joseph Aoun sent to faculty Nov. 18.
Doggett said he will continue to serve the university in a ‘special adviser capacity up until commencement,’ but cannot pursue the opportunities he wants to while serving as vice president.
‘This is an opportunity, having stayed at the university as both an undergraduate and a graduate and then a full-time staff person for a total of 19 years, to pursue some things down in Washington,’ he said. ‘They are once in a life time opportunities I couldn’t pursue while being 100 percent dedicated to the effort of my office.”
Doggett’s career in Northeastern government relations started as a work-study in the Government Relations Office in 1991. Since then, Doggett said he has held ‘almost every position in the department.’
In fall 2007 Doggett assisted in the arrest of several Northeastern students. Brandon Holly, a senior mechanical engineering major and one of the arrested students, said Doggett broke up a party in his apartment citing noise violations, though the music had been turned off three hours before Doggett’s arrival and the apartment complex’s other tenets did not complain about the noise.
‘In our personal encounters with [Doggett], he was extremely hard to deal with, and it didn’t seem like he was handling the situation like the liaison between Northeastern and the community he should be,’ Holly said. ‘It seemed more like a guy who was just out to get students in trouble for having parties.’
That year, the Student Government Association (SGA) had a hearing on Doggett’s role in the Mission Hill arrests. In retrospect, then-SGA president Joey Fiore said Doggett’s controversial tactics ultimately helped the students.
‘The work that Jeff Doggett did in the community was, by and large, better for students,’ he said in an interview with The News. ‘The alternative in dealing with just with the community and the city of Boston would have been much worse for students than dealing with Jeff and the police working with Jeff.’
Doggett had a particularly close working relationship with Mike Ross, city council president and councilor responsible for the ordinance known as ‘No More Than Four,’ according to Johanna Sena, a director for community relations in the council [CQ]. The ordinance bans five or more unrelated undergraduate students from living in the same house or apartment.
‘[Ross and Doggett’s] relationship is nothing but a positive one,’ she said. ‘The council president knows that whenever he picks up the phone to call Jeff Doggett, he’ll expect someone at the other end that’s willing to work with him and work with the community. That’s how their relationship has always been.’
Doggett was an active contributor to the Problem Property Task Force (PPTF) since its creation, Sena said.
The PPTF is an organization created September 2006 to ‘take back the hill,’ according to a 2007 press release. It was designed to ‘curtail disruptive and destabilizing behavior by students living off-campus in the Mission Hill residential neighborhood.’ It is comprised of elected officials from area universities, representatives from the Mission Hill community, the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services, the City of Boston Inspectional Services Department, and the Boston Police Department, according to the press release.’
Doggett said he will advise Mike Armini, vice president of marketing and communications [CQ], who will assist in fulfilling Doggett’s responsibilities until a replacement for Doggett is found. The Senior Leadership Committee, a group comprised of the president and six other high-ranking administrators, and a consultant hired by the university will review applicants for Doggett’s position. The process will likely take a few months, Armini said.
Doggett, the vice president of government relations and community affairs, along with the Office of Government Relations, is responsible for handling all levels of government, community groups and neighbors in ‘advancing the goals and mission of [Northeastern University],’ he said.
‘I could have stayed at the university for the rest of my career and I would have been very happy to do so,’ Doggett said. ‘I love the place. Over the course of my life, I’ve been at Northeastern longer than I haven’t been. But I really felt like it was time to get out of my comfort zone. Now it’s time to try something new.’