Former CSU chancellor failed to protect victims
SAN DIEGO — Joseph Castro was the first Mexican American to be named chancellor of the California State University System. He was also apparently the last person on Earth to hear about the #MeToo movement.
Last week, the CSU board of trustees announced that it would pay Castro about $400,000 in salary next year as part of a settlement agreement.
Castro resigned on Feb. 17, just two weeks after a devastating story in USA Today reported that he had — in his previous job as the first Latino president of California State University,
Fresno — mishandled years’ worth of sexual harassment, bullying and retaliation complaints against a senior administrator who was hired at his behest.
In fact, Castro bungled the matter so thoroughly that two possibilities come to mind: either he believed Frank Lamas, then-CSUF vice president for student affairs and enrollment management, was innocent; or he wasn’t the type to take seriously sexual harassment claims.
Other women, including a former CSUF professor, claim that Castro ignored their complaints of sexual harassment against other individuals.
The Castro-Lamas affair reeks of one university crony taking care of another. According to multiple press accounts, including the USA Today article, an internal investigation found that Lamas sexually harassed a subordinate and engaged in abusive workplace behavior from 2014 to 2019.
#MeToo gained national fame in 2017 when former film producer Harvey Weinstein was accused by multiple women of sexual harassment and sexual assault.
It seems that Castro didn’t get the memo. In 2020, he quietly worked out a settlement that enabled Lamas to leave Fresno State with a $260,000 payout. The agreement barred Lamas from ever again working in the CSU system, but he did walk away with a glowing letter of recommendation from Castro so he could find work elsewhere. Castro’s letter failed to disclose the university inquiry supporting allegations of sexual misconduct.
Lamas now lives in Florida where he is self-employed as a higher education consultant.
Feel like you need a shower? Too bad. We’re not done wading through this swamp.
Just a few weeks after orchestrating Lamas’ send off, Castro was named chancellor of the California State University System. Encompassing 485,550 students and 55,909 faculty and staff spread across 23 campuses and eight off-campus centers, the CSU is the largest four-year public university system in the United States. Castro’s salary was $625,000. After 13 months, he resigned.
Castro got a sweetheart deal. He will be an “adviser to the board” for one year, drawing a salary of $401,000. He will also keep his prized “retreat rights,” which allow him to join Cal Poly San Luis Obispo as a tenured professor as early as February 2023.
The settlement prevents Castro from suing the CSU system. This is not nothing. There are those who say that Castro was denied “due process.” He claims that the Lamas settlement was blessed by CSU officials.
No doubt, Castro should have taken more punitive action toward Lamas. Also, his Ph.D. is obviously not in media relations. When the USA Today reporter called for his side of the story, Castro’s office claimed that he only had a few minutes to talk. For journos, that is like pouring gasoline on the flames of curiosity.
But CSU officials also made a mess of things. What happened to their accountability?
Lastly, we cannot forget Lamas’ alleged victims. The women must be heard.
I don’t know Castro. Although we are both Mexican Americans born and raised in Central California, we’ve never met. But as someone who knows something about being the first and only, I was rooting for him against stiff odds. While white men who foul out get multiple at bats, for Latinos, it’s one strike and you’re out.
That’s how it is with Latinos who break barriers. One minute, you make history. The next minute, you are history. Expectations are impossibly high. The one thing you’re most likely to do is disappoint. And, you carry the extra weight of having to set a blemish-free example for millions of people you’ll never meet.
Folks like my mom. In September 2020, I called to tell her that Castro had been named CSU chancellor. “Wow,” she said, her voice cracking, “That’s such an honor.”
And a great story. A Mexican American son of Central California farmland gets a bachelor’s degree at the University of California at Berkeley and a Ph.D. at Stanford University. He navigates the snake pit of higher education to become the first Latino president of Fresno State and then the first Latino CSU chancellor.
Unfortunately, as you learn in my business, not every story that starts out good has a happy ending.