UC Berkeley Vows to Fix Campus Sexual Harassment
On April 5, the University of California, Berkeley, appear a abode of a macho babysitter in a apprentice abode who allegedly watched a woman shower. The academy aswell appear the case of a macho affliction specialist who beatific animal emails to a changeable student. In ahead appear reports, an astrochemistry abettor allegedly affective the bend of a alum student, and a law academy administrator at the celebrated academy had accepted to consistently kissing his abettor as a way of “thanking” her. |
| UC Berkeley Vows to Fix Campus Sexual Harassment |
But on Monday, two alum acceptance who aswell plan at the university accomplished the action of filing complaints with the California Administration of Fair Employment and Housing alleging that the academy bootless to abundantly handle their letters adjoin adroitness affiliate Blake Wentworth, who they say fabricated bawdy and evocative comments to them and afflicted them inappropriately. One of their attorneys says the university’s anew appear initiatives are insufficient.
Erin Bennett and Kathleen Gutierrez, Berkeley alum acceptance who authority jobs at the university, say that Wentworth, an abettor abettor in the Administration of South and Southeast Asian Studies, addled them and created a adverse plan environment. They aboriginal complained to the academy in March 2015, according to their complaints, and as the university investigations connected to annoyance on, they absitively to book with the state.
“It seems like a lot of of the attention…
has focused on the student-on-student bearings of animal aggravation or animal assault, but there’s not abundant absorption focused on the adroitness associates agreeable in animal harassment,” says R. Michael Flynn, one of the attorneys for Bennett and Gutierrez. “It’s a advancing problem, a abortion to authority advisers answerable for animal harassment.”
In her complaint, Bennett says the declared aggravation began in abatement 2014 and has aback led her to yield medical leave from her studies. “Dr. Wentworth’s conduct began by subjecting Ms. Bennett to conversations of a animal attributes and animal innuendos, which again escalated to inappropriate touching,” the complaint says. He appropriate she accompany a one-on-one chic with him and allegedly said acquirements the Tamil language, its subject, would be “better than sex.” Wentworth had aswell allegedly placed his duke on chastening and on her amateur and addition time and “alluded to things he would do if Ms. Bennett were his wife.”
Bennett says she appear the behavior to the academy in March 2015, and in June 2015 Wentworth allegedly active a no-contact charge at Bennett’s request. But she disagreed to the agreement because it allegedly did not say how far abroad he bare to accumulate from her. So she did not assurance it. In October, according to the complaint, the university issued a abode adage Wentworth’s behavior was “unprofessional and apparent poor claimed boundaries” but did not aggregate animal harassment.
Gutierrez, who formed in Wentworth’s department, says he subjected her “to conversations of a animal attributes and animal innuendos” and “inappropriate affecting and proposals for dates.” He allegedly fabricated comments about a bawdy animal practice, accomplishing drugs, his annulment and “visiting a band club and accomplishing drugs off a stripper’s body.”
“I could lose my job over this,” he allegedly told her. “I would acquaint you, but I’m just so admiring to you.” Gutierrez says she approved to altercate the comments with him, but he would not accept and his acknowledgment was to acutely corruption her career. One of those conversations larboard her activity “numb and abominable for days” and afflicted her work, she says.
In March 2015, Gutierrez complained to the university. In October 2015, according to the new complaint, the academy said in a abode that Wentworth had “made unwelcome, animal advances (or alternatively a exact comment), abundantly astringent to aggregate behavior of a ‘sexual nature,’ that afflicted and interfered with [Ms. Gutierrez’s] plan and education.” But the academy did not conduct him.
“We would like to see the university yield animal aggravation and animal abandon seriously,” Bennett said at a columnist appointment and beef on Monday. “This agency that the action of advertisement becomes survivor-centered. This agency that the university authenticate affair for the survivor by responding quickly. This agency that those who are amenable for administration cases of animal aggravation and delinquency are trained.”
Gutierrez alleged on others impacted by the school’s “culture of intimidation, harassment, blackout and abhorrence of retaliation” to appear advanced and allege out adjoin calumniating faculty.
Wentworth—who holds a doctorate from the University of Chicago and is an able on Tamil literature, and whose résumé includes stints at Yale, Cornell, Northwestern, the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin–Madison—has ahead denied the allegations. He did not acknowledge to Newsweek’s email gluttonous comment.
Bennett and Gutierrez are calling for UC Berkeley to “hold answerable the perpetrators of animal aggravation on campus with constant and proportional penalties” and accepted the academy anon blaze Wentworth.
In a account afterward the account of Monday’s filings, UC Berkeley fabricated assurances of its charge to creating a “welcoming, safe, admiring and across-the-board community.” The university aswell said it had reassigned Wentworth’s classes to added advisers and ordered him to “avoid proximity” to at atomic one of the complainants. “The case” charcoal beneath investigation, the academy said, and could aftereffect in Wentworth’s dismissal, admitting a backer could not affirm which of Wentworth’s cases that referenced.
Susan Kaplan, a New York–based advocate who specializes in abode animal aggravation and has represented respondents in Title IX cases, says that in animal aggravation cases involving two students, “you’re ambidextrous with humans who are amusing equals in a way. You don’t accept the disparate age cogwheel or access differential.”
However, if the aggravation involves a apprentice and adroitness affiliate or a apprentice agent and an agent who is senior, she says, a complainant generally worries, “What if I don’t accept sex with him, or what if I don’t play forth even if it’s not aggressive, apparent sex? What if I don’t play forth with his flirtations? Will I lose continuing or my job?”
“The apprentice is actual accessible to the anatomy and bureaucracy of the university, and your next job, your aboriginal job possibly, is actual abased on what happens aural that incubator,” Kaplan says. “This is a career or a pre-career planning stage. You can’t attempt it.”
Other high-profile cases accept advance UC Berkeley into a civic spotlight apropos animal aggravation recently. Endure fall, BuzzFeed fabricated accessible animal aggravation allegations that four women fabricated amid 2001 and 2010 adjoin acclaimed astronomer Geoffrey Marcy, again a abettor at the school. Admitting he denied some of the allegations, he said in December, “I never advised to could cause ache and I apologize acutely for accepting done so.” Marcy retired in December, a accommodation he has said “was not triggered by the allegations” but was advised to “relieve the burden on his astrochemistry colleagues…
created by the amusing media firestorm.”
Then in March, Sujit Choudhry accommodated as administrator of UC Berkeley Academy of Law afterwards his above controlling abettor accused him of animal harassment. His behavior allegedly included “unwelcome affecting and kissing,” according to an analysis report. Choudhry accepted to hugging, kissing and affecting the woman as a way of “saying thanks.” The university begin he had abandoned the school’s animal aggravation policy, but the academy says he charcoal a adroitness affiliate there because of administration policy.
The accession of letters that the university appear April 5 names 12 employees, including Alan Wong, a beating therapist; Jeffrey Topacio, the accepted administrator of an on-campus café; Howard D’Abrera, a statistics lecturer; and Nori Castillo, an agent at the school’s startup accelerator, SkyDeck. Seven added advisers are called in ahead appear reports. The 17 absolute letters involving 19 advisers date as far aback as January 2011 and resulted in alone four firings. The blow complex resignations or added antidotal sanctions or abide pending.
Email annal acquired by the university board appearance that Scott Anderson, a affliction specialist, wrote to a apprentice that she should “get your weary-stapled ass outta bed, put on the fishnets and accomplish some money.” Addition time he wrote, “I knew it was a bad abstraction to yield Levitra afore I apprehend your email,” apropos to the erectile-dysfunction medication, and told the apprentice in the aforementioned email she’d “be acceptable at” getting a “dominatrix.” If the apprentice already emailed him adage she was cutting a miniskirt, he asked for photographs and responded, “no sex as you could not handle me.” He aswell emailed her a Wikipedia page for a animal act, according to the records.
According to the university’s analysis abode for that case, the apprentice told board she had played forth because she did not wish an affair amid her and Anderson, who told the board he had advised for his emails to be “casual banter” and attempts at humor. The academy begin him in corruption and abreast him that it advised to abolish him. He accommodated canicule later.
Flynn, the lawyer, says the 19 advisers called in the abstracts could be “only the tip of the iceberg” for animal aggravation at the university, as survivors are generally abashed to appear advanced and book reports.
Flynn aswell says the botheration is not different to Berkeley. Indeed, the University of California, Los Angeles, and Wesleyan University are a part of the schools reportedly ambidextrous with agnate claims. “It’s a common botheration in our association and too abounding workplaces,” Flynn says. “But you’d anticipate a accessible academy like UC Berkeley—especially an academy that has a history for getting a breastwork of accelerating movements and forward-thinking movements appear adequation and civilian rights—that they would accept systems in abode to anticipate this and be a baton in alteration the culture.”
UC Berkeley says it is aggravating to be that leader. Earlier this year, it appear initiatives to abode animal aggravation on campus, and endure anniversary it said it was basic a Chancellor’s Committee on Animal Violence, Aggravation and Advance to analysis the university’s behavior about animal abandon and aggravation and affair recommendations by October 15. It aswell afresh launched a website to advice survivors acquisition advice and resources. The academy aswell said its survivor abutment casework would add appropriate apprenticeship and training for freshmen and alteration students.
“We accept an obligation to advance a campus ability in which animal harassment, animal violence, stalking and any corruption of ability are neither acceptable nor ignored, but proactively prevented,” University Chancellor Nicholas Dirks and Controlling Vice Chancellor and Provost Claude Steele said in a account in March.
Janet Gilmore, a academy spokeswoman, tells Newsweek that the anew appear initiatives are different to the new Gutierrez and Bennett complaints. “[They] were an bulge of campus leaders affair with experts, frontline staff, survivors and others and allurement what could be done to accomplish a allusive appulse in acclamation animal advance and animal aggravation affairs on campus, including education, survivor assets and bigger antidotal processes.”
The added UC arrangement aswell implemented new animal aggravation behavior in January, the UC Berkeley spokespeople say, including a new acknowledgment archetypal and new online training for alum students, adroitness and staff. UC President Janet Napolitano aswell formed a assignment force to analysis the antidotal action for adroitness members, the allegation of which are due after this month.
Flynn says the school’s promises do not go far enough. “Despite the UC's claims that they accept taken able measures to end the animal aggravation problems on campus, the new announcements of action changes are not acceptable to abode the lack-of-accountability issues about aggravation by adroitness associates of acceptance and alum students,” he says.
“They came out with this new action after a advising action with the humans affected—here acceptation the acceptance and alum acceptance that accept accomplished and suffered from animal aggravation on campus,” he says. The academy said in March it had met with survivors if alive to architecture its initiatives.
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