A L S O_ T O D A Y

Comics
Tom Tomorrow: "The Body's" fun facts about Minnesota

T A B L E_ T A L K

Do professors really want students to visit during office hours? Discuss the teacher-student relationship in the Education area of Table Talk

___________________

Learn the facts about sexual harrassment at BarnesandNoble.com
___________________

R E C E N T L Y

Campus groupies
By Allison Landa
Wackos, preachers and EBDs: A visit to the land of campus groupies
(12/11/98)

Breasts on the brain
By Lori Gottlieb
Putting mammary-hungry college boys to the test
(12/09/98)

Is Mike Davis' Los Angeles all in his head?
By Veronique de Turenne
He's been lionized as a prescient Marxist prophet of end-of-the-continent doom and gloom. But a growing number of critics charge that the author of "City of Quartz" has feet of clay
(12/07/98)

Getting the boot
By Jon Bowen
Kicked out of college for immoral conduct, the only son of a Baptist preacher takes a vacation from reality
(12/04/98)

In the Bad Line
By Isaac Zava
Purgatory is standing with a hangover in a queue of non-tuition paying students
(12/02/98)

BROWSE THE
IVORY TOWER
ARCHIVE

S A L O N
E M P O R I U M
FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.

Harassment backlash

BY MATTHEW DALLEK | In May 1992, the board of governors in charge of the university system in the state of Pennsylvania plucked Angelo Armenti Jr. -- then a dean at Villanova University -- from the ranks of college officialdom and installed him as president of the California University of Pennsylvania, a mid-size, oddly named state school on the banks of the Monongahela River 30 miles outside Pittsburgh. At the time the move seemed like a shrewd one: California was in need of money and students, and Armenti seemed a good bet to provide both. The director of planning at Villanova, he had a reputation as a superlative fund-raiser, a can-do administrator and an affable, articulate up-and-comer in the world of higher education.

But the newly minted president soon found himself embroiled in controversy. In 1992, the year Armenti arrived on campus, a female professor at California's business school and two department secretaries accused Arshad Chawdry, a highly regarded professor, of making crude advances toward them -- playing with their hair, kissing and hugging them, touching their breasts. At the time, the university lacked procedures for investigating such complaints, and at first Armenti adopted an evenhanded, if mediagenic, approach to the case, mixing strident pronouncement about the evils of sexual harassment with fretful laments about the decline of "collegial relationships" on campus.

But when the Justice Department sued California in April 1996 for failing to follow up on the women's claims, Armenti abandoned his middle-of-the-road stance and announced a war on sexual harassment. In July of that year, the president fired Chawdry, awarded $600,000 to two of his victims and announced new sexual harassment policies for the campus. Armenti was also busy investigating other complaints, and before the year was out the president had suspended, dismissed or demoted four professors accused of sexual harassment.

Then the roof caved in on him. In 1997, outside arbitrators began to review all four harassment cases, including Chawdry's, and in recent months they have all ruled against Armenti. They derided the president's decisions as arbitrary and vengeful and ordered him to rehire the professors and cough up back wages. Since then, things have gone from bad to worse for Armenti. Three of the president's targets slapped him and the university with hefty civil suits; California's faculty -- one of the better-paid in the nation -- is clamoring for his resignation; and a spate of articles in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has kept the imbroglio in the public eye.

But what happened at California, remarkable though it may be, is far from anomalous. At universities nationwide, male professors charged with groping, fondling and smooching are seizing the offensive, blistering accusers, suing university higher-ups and winning large legal settlements. A University of Maine professor accused of pawing a female student (he touched her on the shoulder and helped her put on her coat) received $500,000 in damages from his institution, while the University of Puget Sound recently had to pay a whopping $1.5 million to a professor wrongly accused of harassment. Such stories may have seemed surprising a few years ago, but not now. A burgeoning nationwide backlash against sexual harassment is under way, and events at California show why.

N E X T_ P A G E .|. Keeping the hungry lawyers at bay