Napolitano tells UC panel on sex harassment to try again

University of California President Janet Napolitano rejected a committee’s conclusion Monday that UC policies on sexual harassment and assault are adequate and that faculty and students simply need to be better informed about what they are.

“The (committee’s) recommendations do not provide sufficient improvements to ensure that investigations in these cases are efficient, effective, and timely,” or that discipline is “proportionate to the seriousness of any substantiated conduct,” Napolitano wrote to the 10-member committee of professors, administrators and students, whose report was issued Monday.

[...] Napolitano implemented four of the committee’s recommendations, including prohibiting campuses from discarding discipline records of faculty who sexually harass or assault students and colleagues.

Yet, the report revealed that across all 10 UC campuses, only one case of sexual misconduct in the last three years had been brought to an Academic Senate hearing of peers for a possible revocation of tenure.

In that case, Rob Latham, an English professor at UC Riverside, was referred to a Senate hearing on campus for violating UC policies on sexual harassment and drug use.

The Academic Senate’s tenure committee voted to demote him and place him on two years of unpaid leave, according to Inside Higher Ed, an online newspaper.

Meghan Warner, a UC Berkeley senior who serves on a sexual violence prevention task force also convened by Napolitano, said she is pleased that the UC president didn’t simply accept the idea that current policies are working.

“I see more problems with the implementation of existing policies ... rather than absence of, or gaps, in current policies,” said Hare, who is also chairman of the UC system’s Academic Senate.