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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)

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HARASSMENT BACKLASH | PAGE 1, 2, 3
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California seems an unlikely center of sexual harassment controversy. Situated in a one-stoplight town in rural southwestern Pennsylvania, the 5,300-student college boasts grassy knolls and a venerable history of higher learning in placid environs. "For almost 150 years," Armenti writes in his welcome letter to prospective students, "this institution has been a beacon of hope and an island of tranquillity in a very turbulent world. This university has witnessed and survived the Civil War, two World Wars, the Great Depression and countless other challenges in its long and magnificent history."

With his mane of gray hair, Ph.D. in physics and predilection for silk suits, the middle-aged Armenti hardly seems a likely champion of women's issues. But in recent years he has become an ardent crusader against sexual harassment on campus. There are several reasons for this.

Like many of his colleagues around the country, in the 1990s Armenti became increasingly afraid of lawsuits. In 1991 Congress amended Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to allow plaintiffs in sexual harassment cases to sue their employers. Chilled by the thought of mammoth attorneys' fees and bank-busting legal settlements, administrators and trustees decided that it was better to err on the side of caution, adopt stringent rules against sexual harassment and move swiftly at the first whiff of scandal. "It wouldn't take many more settlements like that to bankrupt us," Armenti said after shelling out $600,000 to settle the Chawdry case. "When we don't follow the Justice Department order and take sexual harassment on campus seriously, we can expect six figures taken out of our operating budget."

Armenti had also grown increasingly sensitive to women's issues. Soon after taking office he hired as his special assistant Dolores Rozzi, a onetime sexual harassment expert in the Clinton administration and a big believer in the need for more female deans. In recent years Armenti has made repeated statements about protecting university women from Bob Packwood wannabes and other campus lechers, and he also came to see a sexual harassment crackdown as a way of endearing himself to students, satisfying university trustees worried about their institution's financial health and getting back at faculty critics who have accused him of interfering with undergraduate grades and admitting student athletes with criminal pasts and shoddy academic records. But in his drive to expel "predators" from campus, the president made several serious missteps, running roughshod over professors' rights, sullying their reputations and violating fundamental tenets of due process. Take, for instance, the case of Bob Brown.

In early 1996, Cheryl Gray, a graduate student in the school's Education Counselor program, accused Brown, a professor, of cavorting in public with one of his students. When Brown got wind of the accusation, he confronted Gray after one of her classes. Most witnesses said Brown was restrained during the encounter, but Gray thought otherwise and complained to administrators that Brown had threatened her. Armenti conducted what by most accounts was a hasty investigation into the matter, and on May 9 of that year, a month after the Justice Department filed suit in the Chawdry case, he fired Brown. "I am persuaded that whatever mental or personality condition may have led you to the despicable behavior described above," the president wrote the professor that day, "it is not something that is easily treated or rectified ... and is one of the most evil things that someone can do at an institution of higher learning."

N E X T_ P A G E .|. Going on a sexual harassment fishing expedition