My Letter from the Office of Discrimination and Harassment
Early in February, I contacted Katherine
Erwin, the Director of the Office of Discrimination and Harassment,
requesting a letter detailing any complaints that had been filed with
that office since my arrival at the University of Colorado in
1992. She responded very quickly with a letter on February 4,
2014, from which I have quoted below.
I have omitted a paragraph at the
end, which said that the letter was confidential, and that one should
not use information from the letter unless one had explicit, written
permission to do so. I then requested, and was given, that
permission.
Originally, I
had not planned to use that information on this website. On
February 27, however I received a letter from a friend and colleague,
which convinced me that I should post the relevant information.
My colleague's letter contained the following paragraph:
"I wanted to let you know that, certainly contrary to your intentions,
a number of faculty around campus are wondering if you are one of the
bad guys in the department, even perhaps one of the harassers. This is
because you have been so visible (in the Daily Camera
recently) in criticizing the site visit. None of these are people who
know you - I think your friends and colleagues are well aware of your
true nature. But as I move about campus, those who do not know you are
saying to me something on the order of "what about that Tooley guy? He
really looks like part of the problem" and so forth. I can assure you
that I have always firmly replied that no, in fact you are definitely
one of the good guys in that you have forwarded me information on
possible misconduct, and have not engaged in any kind of questionable
behaviors yourself. Nevertheless I feel that I should let you know, in
a supportive way, that you are probably doing yourself more harm than
good at the moment through the engagement with the site visit report.
You're certainly free to continue with these documents, and I don't
deny there were some problematic issues in terms of how it all got
handled, but as a friend, I feel like I need to let you know what the
public, pragmatic effect of this is right now on campus, and also
likely in the larger community."
A Quote from the Letter from the Office of Discrimination and Harassment
Dear Michael,
You have never been the subject of any ODH complaint. Please rest
assured that if the ODH had received a complaint against you that fell
within the policies enforced by the ODH (Sexual Harassment Policy,
Discrimination and Harassment Policy or the Amorous Relationships
Policy), you would have been notified by the ODH at the time the
allegation was received. If there had been a formal investigation or
an informal resolution of the complaint, you would have been contacted
by the ODH and given the opportunity to respond to the allegations. If
a formal investigation had occurred (which occurs in approximately 10 %
of cases), you would have received written notice that an investigation
was underway, an invitation to respond to all allegations and a copy of
the final report. If an informal resolution had occurred, you would
have been given a chance to respond to the allegations and have your
response documented in the file. The ODH would also follow up with
your chair in informal resolutions and with your chair and dean in
formal investigations.
If a complaint is brought to the attention of the ODH that does not
fall within the policies enforced by the ODH, we will refer the
complainant to another office if appropriate.
I believe this answers your questions, but if not, please feel free to call me at x55437.
Sincerely,
Katherine
C. Katherine Erwin
Director
Offices of Discrimination and Harassment and Labor Relations
303-492-0956