2 UC Berkeley grad students file harassment complaint with state

Two UC Berkeley graduate student instructors — frustrated that an assistant professor who violated the university’s sexual harassment policy continued teaching — filed a complaint Monday with a state agency claiming the man created a hostile work environment for them and that campus officials did little to stop it.

Doctoral students Erin Bennett and Kathleen Gutierrez said they filed the complaint with the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing because they feel unsafe more than a year after telling campus officials that Blake Wentworth, an assistant professor in the South and Southeast Asian Studies Department, touched them inappropriately and repeatedly spoke about sex to them in 2014 and 2015.

“What happened has completely derailed my future and my education,” Bennett, 25, told dozens of students and faculty who gathered on campus Monday to support her and other victims of sexual harassment by professors, deans, coaches and others at UC Berkeley.

Bennett has been on medical leave since November and “is afraid to return to UC Berkeley because of Wentworth’s persistent harassment,” says her state complaint.

A student in Wentworth’s department, Gutierrez said in her complaints that beginning in fall 2014, the assistant professor repeatedly sought her out in the student instructors’ office where she works.