California college president resigns amid sex-abuse fallout 2nd spill in weeks at NW Indiana plant prompts precautions
SAN JOSE, Calif. – The president of San Jose State University resigned
Thursday after the university agreed last month to pay $1.6 million to 13 female student-athletes whose complaints about being sexually assaulted by an athletic trainer were mishandled.
Mary Papazian, who served as the university’s president since July 1, 2016, will step down at the end of the fall semester on Dec. 21, officials announced Thursday. Federal prosecutors found that the university failed to adequately respond to reports of sexual harassment and assault that started in 2009 – exposing additional student-athletes to harm for more than a decade.
Federal investigators also found the university retaliated against two employees, including one who repeatedly alerted school officials about the trainer.
“The health and safety of the SJSU campus community remains a priority for me and our university,” Papazian wrote in a letter to the campus community announcing her resignation.
PORTAGE, Ind. – A second spill in less than two weeks at a U.S. Steel plant in northwest Indiana sent an oily sheen onto a Lake Michigan tributary, prompting officials to close some nearby lake access as a precaution.
The sheen was detected Thursday morning on Burns Waterway outside the U.S. Steel Midwest plant in Portage, but by evening it was no longer present on the tributary, said company spokeswoman Amanda Malkowski.
She said an existing boom had contained the sheen in an estimated 120square-foot area, The (Northwest Indiana) Times reported.
U.S. Steel temporarily idled the plant about 30 miles east of Chicago, as a precaution, but operations had returned to normal by Thursday night, she said.
The Indiana Department of Environmental Management was investigating, spokesman Barry Sneed said.