Women on Yale faculty blast weak penalties

NEW HAVEN — A report issued by the Yale Women Faculty Forum claims that sanctions against faculty members who have been found guilty of sexual misconduct often do not punish the offender substantially, and that graduate and professional students, who are most often the victims of sexual harassment by faculty, need better protection from potential abuse.

The report was compiled by examining 128 sexual misconduct complaints made against faculty members since Yale began reporting all such complaints in 2011. The 128 were all those for which case summaries were included. Ten others were not included.

Of the 128 cases, 103 were for sexual harassment, with 40 percent of those based on inappropriate comments made to the complainant, 12 percent for unwanted advances and another 12 percent for violations of Yale’s consensual relations policy. Two complaints were for sexual assault.

Yale’s policy on sexual relations between “teachers” and students forbids any sexual relationship with an undergraduate student and states that teachers “must avoid sexual relationships with students over whom they have or might reasonably expect to have direct pedagogical or supervisory responsibilities.”

“I personally feel there should be a blanket ban on dating students, no matter what.” Claire Bowern, chairwoman of the Women Faculty Forum

While there were sanctions imposed for sexual misconduct by faculty, the report said, “these sanctions are often invisible. We recognize that it can be difficult to make sanctions public while protecting the confidentiality of the complainant, but the culture of secrecy around harassment allows respondents’ behavior to continue.”

In fact, some sanctions could be considered as “awards (such as suspension from teaching, leaving more time for research), that are indistinguishable from other life transitions such as retirement, or that add to the workload of others in the respondent’s department while failing to address the harassing behavior (such as reassignment of committee duties),” the report said.

In 22 cases, the forum’s report stated that the outcome “had a sanction that might be described as a ‘penalty’ or disciplinary sanction of some form. … However, only six appear to involve a penalty that had a material negative consequence for the respondent, such as loss of pay. The rest were either status penalties like removal or suspension from leadership positions, or ‘monitoring.’”

Among the 22 penalties, seven were “written punishment,” two involved “loss of leadership position,” in addition to six suspensions, one arrest, two resignations, two relieved from teaching duties and two losing responsibilities.

In its recommendations, the forum said, “Sanctions need to be more visible. It is important that the University is both taking action, and is seen to be doing so. We recommend that the Title IX Office make a clear summary in each semiannual report of the disciplinary sanctions resulting from cases.”

In addition, the authors expressed concern about graduate students and those in the professional schools (such as medicine and law), as well as postdoctoral students. A total of 57 cases (44.5 percent) of complaints against faculty were brought by graduate and professional students, 23 by undergraduates and four by post-doctoral fellows.

“Thus, nearly two-thirds

of faculty involvement with Title IX as respondents involve issues where the target of behavior is someone over whom they have both power and potential academic supervisory responsibility,” the report said.

It stated that graduate, professional and post-doctoral students may be afraid to report sexual harassment because of retaliation, which is not always apparent. While there was only one case of retaliation reported, a faculty member could retaliate by writing an unfavorable recommendation letter or by negatively reviewing a grant application, even after the student has left Yale.

“Post-docs are yet even more reliant than graduate and professional students on their advisors for advancement. This creates a strong disincentive for them to report problems,” the report states.

“It’s difficult for us to do things unless we know about problems,” said linguistics professor Claire Bowern, chairwoman of the Women Faculty Forum and a co-author of the report, on Friday. Otherwise, issues aren’t addressed “until they get beyond the point where they become difficult to solve,” she said.

Bowern said interpersonal relationships and scholarship should be part of the same discussion. “If we reward individuals for academic excellence and we make it easy to get that academic excellence by exploiting others, then it’s a problem,” she said.

Bowern said she believes the consensual relations policy does not go far enough. “I personally feel there should be a blanket ban on dating students, no matter what,” she said.

While confidentiality is important to protect the person making the complaint, Bowern said, “it allows the perpetrators to flourish … because of the shroud of confidentiality.”

Yale spokeswoman Karen Peart issued a statement saying, “We are working with the Women Faculty Forum to further explore all of their recommendations, which pertain to departmental culture as well as institutional programs.”