California IN BRIEF : SANTA CRUZ : UC Officials Assail Harassment Report

UC Santa Cruz officials said a federal report on campus sexual harassment is filled with errors and omissions. University officials responded in a 22-page letter to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights report that charged that UC Santa Cruz did little to assist female students who complained of harassment, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. “We simply didn’t have our day in court,” UC Santa Cruz Chancellor Karl Pister said. “The prosecution made its case and the defense was never called.” Among other things, the government’s report misquoted some people, gave incomplete or inaccurate information about disciplinary hearings and portrayed campus officials as being more sympathetic to the accused than to victims, the letter said. The civil rights office’s regional director, John Palomino, declined to comment on the May 13 letter. The university has agreed to improve the process for handling sexual harassment charges, but officials have been reluctant to sign a “voluntary resolution plan” until the alleged errors in the report are corrected. UC Santa Cruz could lose federal funding if found to have violated Title IX, the 1972 federal law prohibiting gender discrimination in education.