The Site Visit Report
Philosophy profs: CU-Boulder
shouldn't have shared private info
Philosophy profs: CU-Boulder shouldn't have shared private info
They say privacy around complaints keeps perpetrators from public scrutiny, makes whole department look bad
By Sarah Kuta, Camera Staff Writer
Posted: 02/23/2014 03:00:00 PM MST
Updated: 02/24/2014 12:10:20 PM MST
Some faculty members in the philosophy department at the University of
Colorado say they're concerned that three outside consultants tasked
with studying the climate of the department were given access to
confidential files regarding sexual harassment and discrimination.
University administrators acknowledged the investigators from the
American Philosophical Association Committee on the Status of Women
Site Visit Program were given access to files within the Office of
Discrimination and Harassment that are typically considered
confidential.
Administrators said the three investigators all signed a
confidentiality agreement, which said they would not disclose what they
read without written authorization from the university chancellor.
"In their roles as consultants for the university, the site visit
investigators had access to relevant CU employees and relevant
documents that helped them assess the climate of the philosophy
department," CU spokesman Ryan Huff wrote in an email. "As part of
their assessment, the site visit team met with the Office of
Discrimination and Harassment director, signed confidentiality
agreements and were given access to the ODH files."
Under the Colorado Open Records Act, public institutions are required
to deny the inspection of sexual harassment files to the general
public. However, CU officials said that because the site team
investigators were performing an administrative function for the
university, they were not acting as members of the public.
The confidentiality agreements were signed by Valerie Hardcastle, Peggy
DesAutels and Carla Fehr, the women who co-wrote a 15-page report
released last month describing sexual harassment, bullying and other
unprofessional sexualized behaviors within the philosophy department.
The findings of the report led the university to suspend graduate
admissions into the department until 2015 and bring in an external
chairman.
Members of the department, who said they were told to keep quiet about
the report, were shocked when the university released the document
publicly last month.
Perpetrators protected from public scrutiny
Professor Michael Tooley said he takes issue with how vague the report
is about the 15 complaints filed against members of the department
since 2007. Because of the confidentiality agreements, the
investigators were not able to describe any specifics of the complaints.
The result, Tooley said, is a report that negatively portrays an entire department.
When a formal investigation under the Office of Discrimination and
Harassment is completed, only the complainant, respondent, chancellor
and decision-making authority, often the department chairman or dean,
are allowed to read the office's findings.
Only the respondent and decision-making authorities are allowed to know
what, if any, disciplinary action is taken because of confidentiality
around personnel matters.
Tooley said it's strange that the university has such strict rules
about confidentiality around harassment and discrimination, but then
gave the site visit investigators access to confidential files.
"On the one hand, they seem to have these very strict rules of
confidentiality, and then they allowed these three strangers to come in
(and see the files); that seems to be incredible," he said. "I would
say that even if it's not illegal, it seems highly unethical."
Tooley said he also wondered why the site team investigators were able
to give the number of complaints, but not a breakdown about how many
complaints underwent formal investigations, how many of the complaints
involved the same offender, and how many investigations resulted in a
finding of a violation of policy.
DesAutels, director of the site visit program, declined to comment, citing the confidentiality agreement.
Philosophy instructor emerita Diane Mayer, who is retired, said she
wondered why the university can't find a way to protect the identities
of complainants, while holding the perpetrators publicly accountable.
The site visit report described a lack of transparency around
disciplinary processes, which led to an "extremely harmful rumor mill."
Mayer said if the university could hold perpetrators publicly accountable, it might deter future offenders from acting.
"The actual perpetrators should be held accountable long before some
climate study has to be called in to give recommendations and these
drastic measures have to be taken," Mayer said. "There has to be some
method by which a department can really be punitive about people who
are sexual harassers, including if they're tenured. There has to be
some way for the university to address these issues ... ."
CU has fired a few tenured professors, for various reasons, in its
history. In 2004, the university fired R. Igor Gamow, a tenured
chemical engineering professor, for moral turpitude after allegations
of sexual harassment and assault.
Lora Blakeslee Atkinson, executive director of Moving to End Sexual
Assault, said assuring survivors of sexual assault and harassment that
their identities will be protected plays a vital role in the recovery
process.
"They're concerned about people finding out, and our culture has a lot
of victim-blaming still of survivors," she said. "When survivors feel
that they do not have confidentiality, it makes them even more
reluctant to report."
CU: Team used a 'broad scale of input'
Attorney Steve Zansberg, president of the Colorado Freedom of
Information Coalition, said an argument could be made the university
was fully within its rights by releasing confidential documents to the
site team investigators but then may have violated the open records law
when it released the site team report publicly.
Zansberg said if personnel or sexual harassment files, which are exempt
from inspection under the law, are summarized or analyzed in a
subsequent report, that document is also protected under the law.
He also said releasing the report without releasing the data used to
create the report does not give the public, or members of the
department, a chance to verify the validity of the report.
"It's incumbent upon them to allow the public to monitor and assess the
legitimacy of those findings," he said. "We routinely say that when a
government entity affirmatively discloses information and then
withholds the data upon which that information was based, that's
contradictory to the purposes of having an open records act. It becomes
very difficult for the university to say, 'Take these three
researchers' word for it.'"
CU spokesman Bronson Hilliard said the university does not feel it has
violated the law either in sharing the confidential files with the site
team investigators or by releasing the report publicly.
"There's much more material in (the report) besides things that are in
the individual files," he said. "The report's writers went out of their
way to take a broad scale of input from interviews with graduate
students, with faculty, with undergraduates, with the deans, with
department chairs."
Hilliard said he hopes victims of harassment and discrimination won't be deterred from reporting.
"I hope that victims would take away . . . that the institution is
acting and taking strong actions to remedy situations that might
possibly have given rise to whatever it was they complained about," he
said. "We want to take actions, we want to take situations that are not
working for individuals and groups of people and make them better on
the campus."
Contact Camera Staff Writer Sarah Kuta at 303-473-1106 or kutas@dailycamera.com.
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