You can go to our
Newsletters.
Or search for a word here:
The Perils of Sue Carole
by Charity Hirsch
Our heroine, Sue Carole DeVale, is a renowned
musician and ethnomusicologist. She has performed with the Chicago
Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic as a harpist and in 1966 was
awarded the Klaus Wachsmann Prize in Organology (the study of instruments)
by the Society for Ethnomusicology. Until June, 1991, she was also a
professor at UCLA.
Four times UCLA denied our heroine tenure in spite of four
positive votes by her department and qualifications that exceeded those of
five men who were readily promoted. When she appealed through the
University's grievance procedure the Faculty Committee on Privilege and
Tenure found that her tenure reviews contained "egregious procedural
errors" and evidence of discrimination based on departmental politics. For
example:
- Videotapes of DeVale's fieldwork on Balinese sacred rituals and
performances, which of course showed Balinese musicians rather than
DeVale, were distributed by the department chair without DeVale's
authorization; then evaluations in which this fact was pointed out were
used to oppose her promotion.
- The Committee on Academic Personnel (CAP) twice based their negative
recommendation on DeVale's failure to publish in the non-existent Journal
of Ethnomusicology; in fact, the journal is called just Ethnomusicology
and three of her articles have appeared in it.
- The editor of a journal in DeVale's field, having discovered that
professional jealousy was complicating her promotion, wrote a letter to
that effect which was disregarded by the University administration.
- When the Committee on Privilege and Tenure tried to examine DeVale's
promotion dossier, they found it had been shredded.
- Although it had been agreed that certain biased material would be
excluded, it was presented to the CAP by the department chair and by a
dean he asked to speak, resulting in the committee reversing their
majority vote in DeVale's favor to one unan-imously opposed.
After four times preparing her case and four times being denied by
prejudiced reviewers, our heroine's last hope was the law. When internal
University procedures had repeatedly failed her, she and her friends
organized a support committee (310-825-3369Ņask for Steve Fry). DeVale
then sued the University, but to everyone's horror, Judge Irving Shimer
granted the University summary judgment, dismissing DeVale's suit and
denying her a day in court.
It's time to boo the villain! Listen to Judge Shimer, at once
incoherent and prejudiced, as he spoke on August 15, 1997: "...I read as
much of this history as I could stand. ...it's clear that this thing was
handled as poorly as it could be...or there never would have been the
reversal for re-review purposes, and this has been going on a long time...
All I'm trying to get through to you is that I'm not a toady to the
University, and never had (sic) been, and never will be, although I'm an
alumnus, and a financial supporter, and I've made no secret of that
either... ...don't whistle on your way out of the courtroom..."
Judge Shimer even sought to shift blame for his decision onto the
chair(woman) of the Academic Senate Committee on Privilege and Tenure:
"If I were as offended as she professes to be...and as high up in the
hierarchy of the University as she was, I wouldn't wait to submit a
declaration in a lawsuit a year or a year and a half down the line, after
this woman had been embarrassed in that way." It's rare for P&T to
support a woman denied tenure, and therefore ironic that the judge should
try to use their support against our heroine.
In his judgment, Shimer ignores the evidence in the files of those
five less qualified men who were promoted and says "Plain-tiff's very
modest ancient (years before) anecdotal history is not sufficient evidence
to support a claim that plaintiff was denied tenure because she was a
woman, because she was over fifty or because she was interested in African
ethnic musicology, causing the tenure application to be denied for
improper reasons of age, gender or race bias." If DeVale had sued after
the first denial, or even the second, would he have complained that she
hadn't given the University enough time to correct its errors and ruled
against her for that reason?
Shimer's outrageous decision, the first WAGE knows of in which a
discrimination case has been summarily dismissed, even requires DeVale to
pay the University $8000 in legal costs (by now long unemployed, she
doesn't have it). The University offered to drop their claim for costs if
she dropped her case, but our plucky heroine wants to appeal. She doesn't
have the $10,000 that will cost, either, so she's filed pro per,
representing herself while raising the money for attorneys to help her
resist the University that has all our tax dollars to fight her
with.
Sure looks like the locomotive's going right over Sue Carole
this time.
NOTE: During DeVale's
deposition the University lawyers asked her why she hadn't completed her
book on the gamelan orchestra. DeVale pointed to the huge file box of
documents generated in the ten years she'd spent fighting four biased
tenure reviews and said 'There's my book.'
-wage@wage.org-