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Editorial
by Charity Hirsch
When UC settles a discrimination or harassment case, the
agreement routinely requires that the terms remain secret. A few of
the strongest women have been able to reject secrecy (Marcy Wong, for
one), but most are forced to live with a settlement that threatens a
$50,000 fine for saying anything about their cases.
Many of the women who have accepted such settlements need to
continue their careers elsewhere. Under the typical gag rule they
have no way to explain why they lost their jobs. If such women were
free to acknowledge that they had brought a discrimination suit or
complained of harassment, they might be branded as hard to get along
with, but at least they could show that there is another side to the
story.
Additionally, their supervisor is all too frequently the
person who harassed them or a member of the senior faculty who
discriminated against them. Such a supervisor may agree, as part of a
settlement, to provide at least a neutral reference, but when a
potential employer telephones, who knows what will be said. When a
possible new employer's interest suddenly cools, the woman is
probably correct in thinking she has been blackballed. If she could
say even something neutral like "I would prefer you depend on my
other references as my relationship with X will unfairly color his
judgment" she would be better able to defend her reputation.
When WAGE members met with UC General Counsel James Holst in
1996 he volunteered that UC was going to stop demanding secrecy
clauses in future settlements (see Newsletter, Spring 1996).
Unfortunately, this has not happened, and we don't know if he
regretted a spontaneous remark or was overruled from above. It is
understandable that UC would want to conceal the financial details of
settlements -- why give other trouble makers a blueprint, they must
think. They may also hope that by keeping the existence of
settlements secret they can conceal the ugly fact of ongoing
discrimination and harassment.
In fact, secrecy handicaps the already injured women and does
little for the University's reputation. Rather than trying to hide
the settlements, the University should put its energies into
preventing harassment and discrimination. Rather than spending
fortunes to fight the claims of women who have been harassed or
suffered discrimination, the University should settle their
complaints in a non-adversarial setting that preserves their ability
to function as scholars. And rather than forcing those women who must
find new positions to conceal the reasons why, the University should
assist them to rebuild their shattered careers.
-wage@wage.org-