On Tuesday, Feb. 28, the Daily Californian, University of California, Berkley’s newspaper, released an online article revealing 124 cases of sexual misconduct conducted by UC faculty members over the months from January 2013 to April 2016. Among the misconducted were award-winning scholars, department chairs and NCAA coaches. According to the UC President Janet Napolitano’s office, the allegations ranged from inappropriate comments to sexual assault.
Through the California Public Records Act request, a series of laws meant to guarantee that the public has access to public records of governmental bodies in California, the Daily Californian was able to obtain the UC’s Title XI investigations on the misconduct. Title XI, according to the U.S department of Education, states that, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
UCSF vice chancellor for university relations, Barbara French, said in all of the cases the university “took steps to stop the harassment, prevent its recurrence, and remedy its effects. Where violations occurred, they were addressed by appropriate actions, training, counseling and/or demonstrated improvement on the part of the respondent, or training for the department.”
Of the people accused, according to Napolitano’s office, two-thirds of them no longer work for the university. But the office does not mention whether or not they were fired. According to an article on KQED news, the UC systems released the information in order to send the message that the UC systems were making a serious step towards solving charges like these.
“It’s important to note that these cases run from January 2013 to April 2016, so most, if not all, of these cases were investigated and adjudicated under policies and procedures that are no longer in effect,” said UC spokesperson Claire Doan. “We’ve made so many drastic and significant improvements over the past two and a half years … that we are able to provide more clarity (and) more fairness … when it comes to these investigations.”
Taken from Creative Commons, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode
In the beginning of the year, the UC system took a step to improve the number of Title XI cases by hiring the UC’s first system wide Title IX coordinator, Kathleen Salvaty.
Salvaty was the former UCLA Title IX Coordinator. Her expected duty, according to the University of California Press room was to, “direct the University’s ongoing efforts to change the culture around issues of sexual violence and sexual harassment.”
According to an article by The Mercury News, while the UC officials say that the releases have created positive reforms, advocates for the victims of campus sexual misconduct are still concerned.
“Even with the new policies, faculty still have quite a few more protections than students and staff, so I wonder how much of a difference they really would add,” said Cory Hernandez, a third-year law student at UC Berkeley appointed last year to serve on a campus committee on sexual violence. “A lot of these committees aren’t getting to the root of the issue, which is there needs to be a culture change.”
