School Will Pay $83,400 Over Sexual Harassment : Settlement: The California Maritime Academy agreed to the payment last month but the president of the facility tried to keep it quiet. Budget hearings led to its disclosure.

In the latest of a series of events surrounding sexual harassment charges at the California Maritime Academy, the school has agreed to an $83,400 out-of-court settlement with a former female food service employee who charged that she was subjected to verbal and physical sexual abuse.

This episode follows several months of turmoil for the state-supported academy in Vallejo. The school has been sharply criticized by members of the Legislature and by the National Maritime Administration for allowing female students to be sexually harassed on the 1988 and 1989 cruises of the training ship Golden Bear.

Although the settlement with the campus food worker was agreed to last month, it became publicly known only last week when Assemblywoman Jackie Speier (D-South San Francisco) questioned retired Navy Adm. John J. Ekelund, the academy’s president, about it during a hearing on the maritime school’s budget.

Ekelund said that in order to avoid more bad publicity, he did not make the settlement public, even to his own board of governors.

This did not sit well with board member Phillip C. Kazanjian, a Glendale attorney, who said: “This was a major expenditure of public funds. The board has authority over budget matters--the board should have approved it.”

But Ekelund said in an interview that board members “were well aware of the lawsuit and knew we (he and academy lawyers) were seeking a settlement. . . . I regarded the making of the settlement as an operational matter,” within his authority as president.

Board of Governors Chairman Bruce Johnston agreed. “That’s his responsibility, he’s the CEO (Chief Executive Officer). All he has to do is advise the board.”

But Kazanjian disagreed. “What else does he consider ‘operational’?” he asked. “Trips to Europe? I intend to ask the state auditor general for a complete audit of Maritime Academy spending in recent years. . . . (Ekelund) has been playing fast and loose and only telling us what he wants to.”

Ekelund said the $83,400 for the court settlement will be paid from the academy’s regular budget.

However, the president will have to find another source to reimburse the state $1,440 for a February letter he mailed to Maritime Academy alumni, urging them to “let key legislators know of your support” for the school.

Legislative Counsel Bion M. Gregory determined that the letter was not a “lawful expenditure of state funds” and Ekelund said he would reimburse the state with money from the Maritime Academy Foundation, which is supported by private donations from alumni and others.

Meanwhile, the Golden Bear has returned from its three-month 1990 training cruise and “basically, all went well and there were no major problems,” said Tom Kilpatrick, dean of students at the Maritime Academy.

Kilpatrick said two students were dismissed from the cruise and expelled from school because of drug offenses. But Johnston, the board chairman, said, “That’s not bad, if you’ve got 225 on board--they’re not all angels.”

Both Johnston and Kilpatrick said they knew of no sexual harassment incidents this year.

But Kazanjian said he has been told there were at least five or six serious incidents during the cruise.

“Something went on on that cruise that they don’t want us to know about,” he said. Kazanjian said he will ask for a full accounting when the board next meets on May 11.

Ekelund resigned as president of the academy in January, saying, “It is apparent that the academy is seriously threatened unless management changes are made.”

Johnston said the board hopes to pick a successor early this summer. So far, he said, 60 people have applied for the job.

Meanwhile, Speier is pushing budget language and legislation that would:

* Require more aggressive recruitment of female and minority students, to change the Maritime Academy from “an enclave of white males.” (Ekelund said current enrollment is about 13% female and 15% minority.)

* Insist that the annual budget be approved by the board of governors, not just by the president and his staff.

* Ask the California Postsecondary Education Commission to study the possibility of folding the Maritime Academy into the California State University system.

Speier also has introduced a bill that would require the governor’s appointments to the board of governors to be subject to confirmation by two-thirds of the state Senate.

“It’s somewhat ambitious to think we can educate the Legislature and the public about the California Maritime Academy in just six months,” the assemblywoman said in an interview, “but they are under fire and they know it and we are not going to relent in our determination to make them shape up.”

BACKGROUND

The California Maritime Academy is one of half a dozen schools around the country that train men and women to become licensed officers in the U.S. Merchant Marine. The state pays about $7 million of the academy’s $9.7-million annual budget. The school has 400 students.