Share

UC Berkeley sex scandals: Record expose rampant violations

Mulzet, who was hired in 2010, made ongoing sexual comments to the unidentified employee, touched him and created a hostile work environment, according to a November 11, 2015, university report obtained by USA Today.

Advertisement

The cases provide more clues as to how the university handles those found likely to have committed sexual harassment.

Those who were allowed to stay on include diving coach Todd Mulzet, even though he was found to have routinely sexually harassed what appears to be an athletics maintenance worker.

“Both the feeling of the meeting and the substance of the meeting will be helpful moving forward and making us better able to help both prevent and respond to instances of sexual harassment”, Steele said in an interview with The Daily Californian.

The new documents reveal that all of the employees fired as a result of sexual harassment violations were staff members; none were tenured faculty.

The report mentions 17 – 17! – other cases that were investigated by the campus Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination dating back to 2008.

School spokesman Dan Mogulof told the newspaper the relatively small number of overall cases makes it hard to say whether professors are given preferential treatment over staffers, but a new task force summoned by Chancellor Nicholas Dirks will review all the cases and their handling. Although University of California policy lists possible sanctions from least to most severe – written censure, reduction in salary, demotion, suspension, denial or curtailment of emeritus status, and dismissal – news reports in the past six months revealed that three faculty members who violated the sexual harassment policy received the lightest of the sanctions.

Cal head Coach Cuonzo Martin, right, and assistant coach Yann Hufnagel react after a basket against Oregon State in the first half of an NCAA game at Haas Pavilion in Berkeley, Calif., on Saturday, Feb. 13, 2015.

Advertisement

Hufnagel said in a post on Twitter that he would exonerate himself. Then law school Dean Sujit Choudhry stepped down to a faculty position after he was named in a sex harassment suit by his former executive assistant. You can view the full report from The East Bay Times’ public records request (which has been heavily redacted to protect the privacy of the victims involved) by following this link. Of these cases, seven employees resigned or were fired. In one, he invited the student on a “dirt smoke filled weekend of unadulterated guilty pleasure and sins” and offered to “whisper sweet nothings in your ear”. The university is reported to have attempted to notify employees prior to releasing the report. Provost Claude Steel said he also required Choudhry to see a counselor at his own expense.

Todd Mulzet