3/22/2012: From Insidehighered: (link now fixed, thanks anon)
A federal appeals court on Wednesday reinstated a former graduate student’s lawsuit alleging that the University of Oregon retaliated against her for complaining about gender discrimination in her doctoral program. Experts said the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, if upheld, could reshape the relationship between dissertation chairs and doctoral students.
The Inside Higher Ed link above doesn’t work; here’s the link: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/03/22/federal-appeals-court-decision-might-change-faculty-student-relationship
What is surprising is that there are not more cases like this – not because the faculty act improperly, but because the administrators dealing with such issues are so astoundingly ignorant of the law. Anyone reading this decision can see that Friestad mishandled it, to the detriment of the faculty member/department involved. (The other person involved in the problem, Bentz, has no legal training either.) People like Friestad and Robin Holmes and Russ Tomlin take actions all the time that have important legal consequences, in the realm of sexual harassment for example, but they have no legal background or training. Other universities, by the way, put such administrators through a rigorous legal training when they take over; we don’t do this for any of our administrators.
Dog to Law Professor
I think its even worse than you state. I am pretty sure, for instance,
that Friestad never even bothered to seek counsel from the law faculty in this matter. So yes, our admins are poorly trained but the other half of the problem is that rarely seek advice from people more expert. Its the most closed system I have ever seen (and Tomlin wonders why his performance
evaluations were so bad …)
The Ed department has such high national rankings, yet pretty much everyone I’ve ever known who has studied in that department (~10 people) have come away extremely frustrated, abandoned or they up and quit because there was no real faculty support for them or their program. Faculty were busy elsewhere. Understandable on one level, but not if you sacrifice your students at the altar of lipstick on a pig.
Goes to show you that obsessing on getting grant money and a high national ranking isn’t all it’s chalked up to be when the rubber meets the road, so to speak.
Sad.
I’m glad it was reinstated. I read the dismissal several months ago and was shocked that the Court had made such a poor decision on someone who seems to have a strong case.