Academic Senate does the right thing

If there’s one thing the David Stachura situation at Chico State needs right now, it’s action — reassuringly swift action taken by leaders to reveal facts and put people’s minds at ease as this suddenly awful semester approaches an end.

Thank goodness Chico State’s Academic Senate is doing just that.

Putting fact-based reasoning above emotions and the well-being of people on campus ahead of everything else — a refreshing change of pace in this sad affair — the Senate voted 34-1 Wednesday to ask California State University trustees to conduct an independent investigation of their campus leadership’s handling of Stachura’s sexual affair with a student and his alleged threats to shoot colleagues.

It’s the right move. If ever a situation screamed “How in the world did we get from there to here?” it’s this one.

To recap, a university investigation found in 2020 that Stachura had a consensual sexual affair with a graduate student whom he supervised, a violation of university sexual harassment policy.

Research by Thomas Peele, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist covering this story for EdSource, showed Stachura was the sixth employee of the CSU system found to have engaged in an inappropriate consensual affair in the past five years. The other five (including three at Chico State) had all either been fired, or resigned.

So why was Stachura allowed to stay despite violating this bedrock principle of ethical conduct? Well, to listen to Chico State administrators on the campus-wide forum Monday, it was largely because they weren’t sure if they would prevail in a lawsuit or appeal. Instead, after just a one-third-semester suspension, they let him go back to work — right alongside people who had witnessed and reported his unethical behavior.

That decision set the stage for two highly uncomfortable and often-toxic years — a situation that came into public view not because the school did anything else about it, but because journalists looked into it.

In a restraining order filed last year, Stachura’s estranged wife, Miranda King, told a

Butte County judge in writing that Stachura told her he wanted to kill the professors who had cooperated in the investigation against him. Peele’s investigation also found receipts for ammunition Stachura had purchased on Oct. 15, 2020 — the same day he found out his appeal of the suspension was denied.

Then, in perhaps the most chilling moment of this emotionally charged week, a biology department lecturer said that Stachura — whom she’d considered a confidante in years past — had talked to her about getting a weapon and going on a campus shooting spree, quoting him as saying, “If I wanted you guys dead you’d be dead. I’m a doer.” She said he also told her “If I do go on a shooting spree maybe I’ll pass your office. I am not sure.”

“I am truly terrified of this man,” she said.

One graduate student said Wednesday that the relationship between Stachura and the other woman — basically a peer of hers — was “more than obvious” and the entire year had been filled with “very scary rumors.” In a powerful statement, she described a “constant state of fear” and asked administrators “How could you just sit there and do nothing but reward the behavior?”

Great question. While students, faculty and staff went to Holt Hall every day fully aware of the allegations surrounding a man they were still forced to interact with — at least, the ones who hadn’t left Chico as a result — the university seemed more concerned with making sure Stachura’s privacy was protected.

Yet even that appears to have been avoidable.

David Loy, legal director of First Amendment Coalition, told Peele the university did have the basis to reveal the threats. He noted when there is “reasonable cause to believe the complaint is well-founded, public employee privacy must give way to the public’s right to know.”

“There is clearly nothing more substantial than a threat to shoot” people on a college campus, Loy said Wednesday, citing state court decisions where allegations of misconduct were disclosed in the public interest.

Instead, here we are, with a terrified campus in turmoil and Stachura on 60 days’ paid leave — the longest “punishment” he’s received to date.

The Academic Senate will vote again today, casting aside some concerns that their rules may have “bent” a little to turn around the request so quickly — concerns that were put into perfect focus by Professor Chiara Ferrari of the Media Arts, Design, and Technology Department.

“I’m just gonna say one thing just to keep it real,” Ferrari said. “If we allowed a faculty member, who had intercourse in his office, to work at this university, I’m pretty sure we can suspend the rules.”

How did we get from there to here? Who decided to keep Stachura employed after not only the sexual affair with a student, but the alleged follow-up threats directed toward at least three different colleagues? And why?

The answers to those questions are long overdue. Let the independent investigation begin.