Kemp, State of Georgia Settle at $1.08 Million

The state of Georgia paid Jan Kemp $1.08 million Monday, avoiding another trial. Earlier this year, a federal jury found that she was fired by the University of Georgia for protesting preferential classroom treatment of athletes.

After an agreement was signed by lawyers for both sides and approved by U.S. District Judge Horace Ward, Kemp left the federal courthouse with a check from the state.

Under the agreement, Kemp will rejoin the Georgia faculty July 1 as co-coordinator of the English section’s Developmental Studies program.

The jury awarded Kemp $2.58 million but Ward later reduced the award to $680,000. Kemp could have forced a new trial on punitive damages by refusing the reduced amount, and negotiations for a settlement began.

Kemp got $79,681 to make up the wages she lost after her firing in 1983, $400,000 in punitive damages, $1 for loss of professional reputation and $601,318 for mental distress.

Her salary at Georgia is to be $30,356, an amount that includes raises she would have received since her firing.

As she waited for the agreement to be signed, Kemp said that the money was not as important to her as reinstatement to her job, and that she expects to be welcomed warmly by faculty members when she returns to the Athens campus.

“The faculty has suffered through this police state for 19 years,” she said. “I’m a hero (to them).”

But she wondered out loud how she would be received by those who testified against her at the trial of her lawsuit. “That’s their problem . . . ,” she said. “I’ll treat them graciously.”

Kemp sued two university officials for firing her, after she protested preferential treatment of athletes. Named in the suit were Virginia Trotter, the school’s vice president for academic affairs, and Leroy Ervin, associate vice president in charge of developmental studies.

Attorney General Michael Bowers said that the settlement would be paid from the state’s multimillion-dollar self-insurance account and that neither defendant in the case would be required to pay damages.

Under the settlement:

--Neither Kemp nor Trotter and Ervin may be discriminated against or given preferential treatment by the university in the future. Kemp told reporters, however, that she wants Trotter and Ervin “off my campus.”

--Kemp will share the English coordinator’s job with current coordinator Ruth Sabol. If Sabol leaves the post, Kemp will hold it alone.

--Kemp will have seven years to earn tenure. University rules require professors with doctoral degrees to leave if they do not earn tenure within seven years, but Kemp’s previous five years of service will not be counted against her tenure deadline.