College Ordered to Pay Damages in Latest Sex Harassment Case

For the third time within a year, Cal State Fullerton must make a six-figure payment in a sexual harassment case.

A jury deliberated four hours before announcing its unanimous verdict, giving assistant biology professor Sandra Banack $75,000 in damages. Two months later, a Superior Court judge awarded her attorney $236,804 in fees, bringing the amount to $311,804. Campus officials in late May appealed the jury’s March award and the fees granted to Banack’s lawyer.

Jury forewoman Gaetane M. Boutin said those involved should be disciplined, and she criticized the university’s attorney for allowing the case to go to trial at all.

“If [university officials] had done their job, we wouldn’t have had to sit on that panel,” Boutin said in a recent interview.

Two settlements the university made in March 2000 resulted from the actions of Charles B. Darke, the former director of the student health center. Pamela Losco, his administrative assistant, received $447,000. Her secretary, Debbie Melsheimer, received $100,000.

Those lawsuits alleged nearly a decade of unwanted groping, touching, exposure and provocative comments by Darke. Losco’s suit listed administrators to whom she said she had complained with no results.

Charles Reed, chancellor of the California State University system, downplayed the number of cases at the Fullerton campus. With 40,000 employees, 380,000 students and a $6-billion budget for 23 campuses, it’s inevitable that not everything goes right, Reed said.

“None of us likes these things, but they’re bound to happen,” he said. “These are problems that occur in every business organization, government and university or college throughout the country.”

The latest case is not a traditional sexual harassment suit in which someone is groped or subjected to unwanted sexual remarks. Banack’s suit claimed that the university created a hostile work environment for her because she is a woman.

The case revolves around a reprimand that Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs Margaret Atwell wrote to Banack on Aug. 18, 1998, without getting the professor’s version of the events. President Milton A. Gordon upheld the reprimand six weeks later after Banack asked for a review. Gordon could not be reached for comment.

“It was never investigated, and they wrote a letter without investigating the facts, and [the jurors] all felt the same way,” Boutin said.

Atwell did not return calls seeking comment, and university information officers referred queries to Cal State attorney Susan Westover, who represented campus officials at the trial.

Asked why the university lost the suit, Westover replied, “I think the jury thought what happened to Dr. Banack was unfair. I think they struggled with whether it had to do with her gender. We’re pretty firmly of the belief that it didn’t.”

Banack, who continues to teach at the university, said that her problems were not with other professors and that the chairperson of the biology department and the dean of natural sciences and mathematics supported her.

“She’s doing very well,” said Dean Kolf Jayaweera. “She’s good in research. She’s a very good teacher, and she’s done very well on her evaluations.”

The lawsuit involved the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, which oversees animal research at the school and reports to Atwell. The nine-person committee is made up of faculty, administrators, a veterinarian and a community member.

Banack, 37, started work at Fullerton in August 1997. She received her doctorate from UC Berkeley and first taught at Brigham Young University in Utah.

At issue were accusations that Banack trespassed on private property during a class field trip to Carbon Canyon on Feb. 18, 1998, and violated terms of her collecting permit from the state Department of Fish and Game. A key piece of evidence was a letter written to Fish and Game officials by Vickie Langille, who worked as staff assistant to the animal care committee. The letter laid out many of the charges, which Banack later challenged.

Atwell wrote the reprimand to Banack without discussing it with the professor.

“Every piece in the [Langille] letter was proven false,” jury forewoman Boutin said.

Worried that the reprimand would hurt her chance of receiving tenure, Banack asked that the letter be pulled from her personnel file. University officials declined.

“I just wanted them to fix it,” Banack said. “Your reputation is all you have as a professional. They were trying to get me fired.”

The unanswered question in the Banack case is why she became a target. Her attorney, Keith Walden, said that gets to the heart of the sexual harassment allegations. He said the other professors the committee dealt with were older, mostly male, had worked at the university for years, and had ignored many of the committee’s directives.

When a young woman came under their purview, some committee officials decided to show her they were in charge, Walden said.

“A jigsaw puzzle came together like a quilt that showed a couple of people were out to sabotage this woman, and the administration foolishly participated, either by ignorance or not doing the proper investigation,” he said.

University lawyer Westover said she could not comment on whether anyone had been disciplined over events in the case because it is a personnel issue.