by Wes Wynne
Consider the following contrasting views, advanced today from the same establishment in American society. Women are the full equals of men, if not their betters. They can serve with distinction in military roles, they can pilot fighter planes with dexterity, they can manage police work and firefighting with the greatest of talent. But then the establishment begins to speak from the other side of its mouth. Women are fragile creatures who must be protected from men who might, by a rude comment or two, create an "intimidating, hostile, or demeaning environment." We are not speaking here of unwanted sexual advances, groping, or blackmail. The behavior being proscribed today by some feminists is whatever stray comment that might be a little off-color, churlish, or rude. To joke about sex in the workplace has become a dangerous game; to display a calendar portraying super-models is now intolerable, even in an automotive body shop.
No one is defending bad manners - that's not the issue. The issue is that we are being led to accept the notion that women who face such mild treatment at the hands of employers or instructors suffer intolerably; that they are liable to experience weight loss, spend sleepless nights, fall into despondency. The paradox here is evident: sure, argue the feminists, women can go into combat situations guns ablazing and fight with the best; nonetheless, let slip a sexist joke and we just fall to pieces.
Signs of the Times
"Campus feminists have made the American campus a less happy place, having successfully browbeaten a once outspoken and free faculty." - Christina Hoff Summers, author, Who Stole Feminism?
The schizophrenic tendency of modern feminism might merely be laughable were it not accompanied by a religious zeal to extricate heretics and a corresponding lack of courage among those who should have the guts to say, "Enough!" One of the most frightening academic trends in recent years has been the endangerment of open expression and academic freedom by a witch hunt hysteria which seems to pervade much of the feminist agenda. Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz refers to the expansive definition of sexual harassment preferred by radical feminists as a "back-door assault on freedom of speech." Again, Dershowitz is not referring to justifiable attempts to prevent bosses or teachers from coercing sexual favors
The paradox here is evident: sure, argue the feminists, women can go into combat situations guns ablazing and fight with the best; nonetheless, let slip a sexist joke and we just fall to pieces.
from subordinates, but a much broader effort on the part of feminists to define sexual harassment in terms of speech "of a sexual nature which has the purpose or effect of creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive environment."
Such a definition is on its face at odds with traditional standards of law. An alleged perpetrator need only say something that has the effect, in the mind of a woman, of creating what she considers to be an offensive environment. If the woman takes offense, or feels intimidated, then regardless of the intentions of the man, sexual misconduct has occurred.
Dershowitz comes to this issue with a minor horror story of his own. He writes, "A group of feminists in my criminal-law class threatened hostile-environment charges against me because of the way in which I teach the law of rape. They found the atmosphere of my classroom hostile because I spent two days discussing false reports of rape and because I made arguments in favor of disclosing the names of complaining witnesses in rape cases. Despite the fact that the vast majority of students wanted to hear all sides of the important issues surrounding the law of rape, a small minority tried to use the law of sexual harassment as a tool of censorship."
Readers may by now be accustomed to hearing of such Orwellian events occurring at zoos like Harvard and Berkeley, but such neo-fascist plotting is not expected here. In fact, the excesses of the political correctness movement have largely been kept in check at UT, until now.
In April, 1997, local broadcast media, along with the Daily Texan and the Austin American-Statesman, ran stories reporting a case of sexual harassment brought against UT sociology professor Joseph Lopreato. The alleged victim, twenty-nine year old Jodi Park, enrolled in a tutorial class with Professor Lopreato in the fall of 1996. As the Statesman reported, she dropped the class and later complained that Lopreato described graphic details "about his relationship with young women, including a former student; commenting on her figure; inquiring whether her boyfriend was a good lover; inviting her to dinner; and asking her to travel to Italy for 10 days when his then-girlfriend backed out."
Lopreato denies making any graphic comments or inquiries to Park and insists that other parts of her story are based on gross misinterpretations of his remarks. In her complaint, Jodi Park made no assertion that Professor Lopreato ever touched her
Given the weakness of the evidence and the politics of the sociology department, the question arises as to whether the complaint might actually have been fueled more by long-standing animosities having little to do with Jodi Park or her experience with Dr. Lopreato.
or propositioned her or behaved in any fashion which would to a reasonable person be construed as a demand for or request for sexual favors. A perusal of the official Report obtained by Contumacy reveals not a single instance where Park attempted to give clear notice to Lopreato that she was displeased with his remarks or considered them sexually inappropriate.
Nevertheless, in April the University ruled against Lopreato, citing him for sexual harassment. He has been ordered to undergo sensitivity training and is barred from teaching female students in tutorial classes during the upcoming year. He is appealing the decision. Meanwhile, Jodi Park, who claims she couldn't sleep and lost ten pounds through the ordeal, was by April feeling well enough to hold a press conference and go public with her accusations. We assume Austin-area attorneys were among those tuned in.
It is known that Joseph Lopreato is considered an intellectual renegade in the sociology department and that his theoretical orientation challenges the views of other departmental faculty, including Professor Susan Marshall, who introduced much of the hearsay evidence that comprises the case against him, and Debra Umberson, an associate professor who is the wife of Jordan Steiker, the UT law professor who served as Jodi Park's counsel during the University's investigation. Given the weakness of the evidence and the politics of the sociology department, the question arises as to whether the complaint might actually have been fueled more by long-standing animosities having little to do with Jodi Park or her experience with Dr. Lopreato.
Precious New Roses
"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." - Henry Adams
One thing should be stated here explicitly: What I have to say about Joseph Lopreato and the case in which he is now unfortunately involved I am saying on my own. This article has been written neither at his instigation nor with his knowledge or approval. The first time I saw the man was in his classroom on the second day of my first year as an undergraduate at the University - 1985. All I knew about him then was his rank: full professor in the sociology department, and his educational provenance: Yale. I recall his entrance into the class: deliberate, almost preening steps down to the lectern, and a wry, curious smile into the faces of the thirty or so students attending. Whatever he began by saying that day was said with an inimitable Italian accent and an equally inimitable set of physical mannerisms that were as foreign as they were compelling. At times during the many lectures to follow, snapshots would have revealed what appeared to be poses from a mannerist painting, or images of a character from some melodrama, indeed, almost a caricature of a European professor I had seen in old films: temperamental, intellectually intimidating, sometimes frighteningly intense, occasionally demanding to the point of harshness. But from the first lecture I recall word-for-word only one thing: in summing up, he looked into the audience and called out to us, "My new roses. My precious new roses."
There was a charisma about him and an excitement regarding the research he described in that hour, and with those words I became intellectually captivated by a man who more than any other was to shape my undergraduate career. My goal that day became to earn his admiration. I would strive to be his finest rose. I became an outstanding student in the class, and by the beginning of the following semester we had gotten to know one another. Unlike many professors who fraternize little, if any, with interested undergraduates, Dr. Lopreato, who was divorced by that time, would frequently have a few of us over to his house. His office hours, typically scheduled in the late afternoons, would sometime extend to the dinner hour, and to invitations to join him for the evening meal. I lived in Jester Center and was flattered when he would call, as he sometimes did, just to chat and to ask about my life.
One Tough Cookie
"You can't bullshit me because I'll flunk the hell out of you for it." - Joseph Lopreato
Over the span of four semesters in the late 80's, I took two classroom courses and two tutorials from Dr. Lopreato, a choice that would have been unfathomable to some of his students but equally desirable to others. Joseph Lopreato is one of those types about whom few people have moderate opinions. Whereas many students in the classes were enthralled by him and enjoyed his teaching greatly, some others despised both. Some complained he treated us like high school students. An element of truth exists in this. There was never any hint of faux egalitarianism in his class. He was the professor and you were the student. He assigned seats, he took attendance, he was bruisingly humiliating to those who showed up late or talked out of turn, and frankly, he sometimes appeared as a prima donna.
One occasion he entered the classroom and began, as usual, by asking a question about the reading assignment. No one could answer. He made one or two further inquiries which were followed by more silence. Then with an indignance that cut to the core, he said that what we were all wit
The master of five languages, an athlete, a logician, an expert in 19th century English literature, the author of eleven books and scores of scholarly articles and reviews, Dr. Lopreato comes as close to being a Renaissance man as a twentieth century denizen can hope to be.
nessing was "a tragedy, a tragedy of national proportions." Thereupon he took leave of us, five minutes into a 75-minute class. Two days later he began his lecture by saying, almost bashfully, "I'm not pissed off any more." For the remainder of that course there was always someone who could answer the questions.
All of this was in stark contrast to the laid-back and familiar air of many liberal arts classes of the late Eighties. In Lopreato's classroom, there was no interest in how you "felt" about an idea, or what your "opinion" was unless it was backed up by logical thinking and reliable evidence. The exams were the same way. The day before one midterm, I recall that Lopreato, with characteristic bluntness announced, "You can't bullshit me because I'll flunk the hell out of you for it." He asked questions and he expected answers, and not just any answer - the right answer. Once during a class discussion a student said something remarkably dumb and Lopreato's stinging reply nearly brought tears. A bit much, perhaps, but a friend of mine who is now a successful attorney called the Lopreato ordeal the best undergraduate preparation he could have possibly gotten for law school and trial work. In the real world, dumb mistakes have real consequences. You learn not to make dumb mistakes in Lopreato's classes.
There is another reason why some took course after course from the man. In all my studies, I have never, anywhere, encountered a man as brilliant and learned as Joseph Lopreato. They are around, to be sure. The University does have two Nobelists, and a much larger number of inductees to the most prestigious scholarly societies. However, many of these men and women are unquestionably narrow specialists who achieved excellence in their fields at the expense of intellectual breadth, a characteristic which Lopreato possesses in abundance. The master of five languages, an athlete, a logician, an expert in 19th century English literature, the author of eleven books and scores of scholarly articles and reviews, Dr. Lopreato comes as close to being a Renaissance man as a twentieth century denizen can hope to be.
On top of this, the man is a classic American success story. He is an immigrant who taught himself English before going on to Yale. He served in the Army, and is a proud father and grandfather whose walls are covered with family photographs. Placing great value in education, he raised a daughter who is now an engineer and a son who is obtaining a Ph.D. in biology.
His influence was superb preparation for the demands of graduate school, but after returning to UT as a doctoral student in 1992, my personal contact with Dr. Lopreato was limited. There has been a regular exchange of Christmas cards, an occasional bumping into one another on campus, and a picnic one afternoon in 1994 with some mutual friends. But it seemed prudent to keep a distance. From our two years of close association, there welled painful memories beside the pleasant ones - memories of a man who could sometimes be cutting in his criticism and draconian in his harshness. My time with Lopreato had been marked by many arguments on matters both academic and social, arguments which he invariably won and which I sometimes retreated from with a sense of pathetic inadequacy.
During my first semester under his teaching, he had once asked me what I intended to do. I told him blankly, "I want your job." At that time in my life a college professorship was a golden chalice which seemed both sublime and on the periphery of my reach. In truth it was neither, but Lopreato was the man who most embodied what I needed to become in order to attain what he possessed. Thus he had become an intellectual father figure, and there remained a residue of almost Oedipal resentment deep down.
Confronting the Father
In the autumn of 1996 as I was completing my coursework for the doctorate, I decided that it was time to revisit my old mentor. A lot of water had passed under the bridge over the years, and much had been learned. I had reached the stage in my academic training where I was preparing to leave the nest, so to speak, and continue my journey with the entrance credential into the academic world. A graduate seminar listed in the fall catalog was "Sociological Theory," his forte, and close to my core personal interests. The seminar would be conducted as a group conversation among a handful of students, with Lopreato in the role of moderator and participant. The paradigms would be far ranging, from human sociobiology to classic social theory, and touching on topics as diverse as leadership, suicide, consciousness, race relations, sex roles, and the history of science.
During the course I had two opportunities to give presentations. The first was on a book that a decade earlier I had given up on in frustration. It was a neo-Freudian treatment of death by Ernest Becker, who was a friend of Lopreato's and who was awarded a Pulitzer for the work shortly before his own death. Whereas ten years earlier I struggled to the point of frustration with the book's themes, now it seemed a relatively easy task to outline its arguments. At that point, and at others during the semester, I represented myself as well or better than I would have hoped. During one memorable evening toward the end of the seminar, Lopreato and I entered into a somewhat heated argument on a topic related to the sociology of ethnic relations and I emerged the victor. Perhaps it was just a fluke, but it was enough for me. I had slain the dragon within me and at that moment, signally, commanded the respect of a scholar of whom previously I could only request indulgence.
As I reflect upon these memories two things come to mind. The first is how much they mean to me. In the Eighties, as an undergraduate coming from a small rural high school and having been born to parents who never even earned high school diplomas, I regarded the attention with which Joseph Lopreato showered me as welcomed as it was unexpected. I needed the reassurance that I was in my depth, that the students who surrounded me, many being sons and daughters of professionals, did not outclass me academically as they did socioeconomically. Lopreato's presence at that time was a balm.
The second matter is much less sunny: for the very behavior which I recall so fondly, Joseph Lopreato has now become the target of accusations that have damaged his reputation and may ruin his career. Invitations to dinner, informal conversations and casual inquiries into students' lives, a charming and foreign manner that could easily be misinterpreted as sexual when it is not - all of these, in combination with an atmosphere of hostility toward an academic maverick, have conspired to blemish this university by destroying a valuable human asset who has served both the school and its students well for over three decades.
I never in all my years of knowing Joseph Lopreato expected to find myself in a position to act in his defense, and it's with no small amount of surprise that I find myself in that role now.
The Case and the University's Findings
Most of what occurred between Joseph Lopreato and Jodi Park during their class meetings of September and October of 1996 happened behind closed doors. Park was enrolled in a one-on-one tutorial course which, like most such courses, met in the office of the supervising professor. The stories of Lopreato and Park differ in detail, but not in essentials. While Park never makes the claim that Lopreato propositioned her or touched her in any way, she contends that "Dr. Lopreato's conduct was an attempt to use his position to coerce her into entering a romantic relationship." What follows are the University's main findings in regard to her complaint.
"A. Dr. Lopreato related details concerning his own current and prior intimate relationships into conversations during one of the first meetings related to Conference Course 379N."
Lopreato admits to making statements of a personal nature, but at a later meeting, after a quarrel with his girlfriend. No third party was present to corroborate the details of what was said. When I was myself enrolled in Lopreato's undergraduate tutorials, there were a number of occasions when he revealed stories about his youth, his family and his personal relationships. I didn't regard such commentary as being strange or out-of-place.
"B. Dr. Lopreato discussed Ms. Park's boyfriend during a meeting related to Conference Course 379N and acknowledged making the statement about him that "wimps make good providers and good lovers."
Park herself admits she told Lopreato that her apartment had been broken into and that she believed she was the victim of a stalking incident. Lopreato says that he asked if she had anyone who could protect her and that she replied that she had a boyfriend, "but he is smaller than the stalker and a wimp." Lopreato, recalling the sociobiological theory which Park had learned in a previous class of his, says he made a statement to the effect that wimpy men are good providers and lovers. No third party was present to corroborate the details of what was said or when. (The actual theory about wimpy males can be found in Richard Dawkin's book, The Selfish Gene).
"C. Dr. Lopreato commented on Ms. Park's personal appearance on at least two occasions during their meetings related to Conference Course 379N. Those comments concerned her appearance wearing make-up and her weight loss and weight distribution."
Lopreato says he made the comments about make-up in the context of a conversation he was having with his assistant, Ms. Hoover, on the topic of sexual selection (a Darwinian theory used to account for differences between males and females). Hoover stated she recalled the statement and that it did not appear Park was offended by it. Park claims her weight loss was a direct result of the stress Lopreato had caused her. Lopreato says he was concerned and thought there might be a connection between her weight loss and stress from Park's alleged stalking incident.
"D. Dr. Lopreato questioned Ms. Park about and commented on her plans concerning child bearing on at least two occasions during their meetings related to Conference Course 379N."
Park claims that Lopreato "seemed extremely concerned that my biological clock would expire while I pursued graduate school," while Lopreato maintains that "it was a result of questions raised by Ms. Park who seemed to be avoiding talking about her course assignment." No third party was present to corroborate the details of what was said or when.
"E. Dr. Lopreato brought matters related to the break-up of a personal relationship and the effect of that break-up on a planned trip to Italy into his meeting with Ms. Park on October 22. On the same day, he also asked her if she wanted to go to Italy."
Lopreato had in fact broken off with a woman with whom he was planning to travel to Italy. Dr. Lopreato's assistant, Ms. Hoover, stated that Dr. Lopreato had made the same offer to her in jest, and that she overheard the conversation in which Lopreato made the offer to Park. Hoover says the offer "was, in her opinion, clearly made in jest."
"F. Dr. Lopreato attempted to arrange at least a part of the October 31, 1996 Conference Course 379N be over dinner at the Sun Hing Restaurant."
On October 31, Lopreato was teaching the graduate seminar in which this author was enrolled. In the Report, he says he
Lopreato's theoretical perspective is still fiercely resisted by mainstream sociology and by feminists in particular. It is therefore precisely the kind of subversive scholarship for which the doctrine of academic freedom was designed to protect in the first place.
intended to meet Park at the restaurant before the seminar as a matter of convenience. (When I was enrolled in his tutorial courses years ago, Lopreato would occasionally make such offers of dinner. He always paid, too.)
"G. Ms. Park did not understand the nature of the Honors program or the role and scope of the conference course with Dr. Lopreato which caused her to believe that he should be involved with advising her on her thesis."
The University investigator was convinced that the twenty-nine year old Park did not understand what she was supposed to be doing in Lopreato's course, which had nothing to do with her Honors Thesis. About this, the University agrees that she was confused.
Regrettably, what the University itself seems confused about, if not completely oblivious to, is the fact that Dr. Lopreato's defense against at least three of the findings used against him involve the issue of academic freedom. His commentary on Park's appearance, his reply regarding her boyfriend, and his supposed "concern" with Park's reproductive plans - clearly connect with the sociobiological theory which is his specialty and which was discussed at length in the course which Park had taken under him earlier. Lopreato's theoretical perspective is still fiercely resisted by mainstream sociology and by feminists in particular. It is therefore precisely the kind of subversive scholarship for which the doctrine of academic freedom was designed to protect in the first place. But concern for academic freedom in this case has been largely if not utterly ignored.
Are You Now or Have You Ever Been a Member of the Male Gender?
"Salem in 1692 was in turmoil. The Royal Charter was revoked. Original land titles had been canceled and others not yet secured. Neighbor accordingly looked on neighbor with some suspicion, for fear that land might be reassigned." - Christopher Bigsby
Lurking in the shadows of the Lopreato case is an academic backdrop rife with political tensions. For the past two decades Lopreato has been a renegade in the department of sociology. In direct opposition to the theorizing of most social scientists, Lopreato advocates a theoretical paradigm known as sociobiology. According to this view, social phenomena are not merely the products of human culture, but instead are the results of a complex interplay between cultural and evolutionary forces. This view owes more to Charles Darwin than to any of the classic sociological theorists. The unexpected successes of biology have led to the same sorts of tensions in the social sciences that Christopher Bigsby describes in his assessment of Salem at the time of the infamous witch hunts. The old culturalist, anti-biological claims are starting to be ignored, and an academic turf war seems to be in the making.
Marxists have frequently labeled sociobiology as reactionary. Many feminists view it as sexist because it acknowledges that male-female differences may be due as much to nature as to nurture, thereby threatening to invalidate the feminist notion that all sex differences and sex roles are the consequence of human social organization alone. During the last twenty years, the evidence, as one scholar recently put it, looks like a Superbowl blow-out, with the biological theorists being on the winning team. Of the sociology faculty who have been involved with Jodi Park's complaint against Lopreato, all have been on the losing side of this academic battle royale.
One of them is Susan Marshall, a professor who was supervising Park's honors thesis at the time Park was enrolled in Lopreato's course. The Report notes that Marshall "stated that she heard at least twelve specific complaints about Dr. Lopreato's inappropriate conduct from students over the past seventeen years, but was able to provide names and specific factual information [regarding only three of them.]" Let's not pause to ask what kind of a person would keep a running tab on matters like this and simply move to an example from the Report.
"In approximately 1987, Ms. Anne Marie Pearson, a student of Dr. Lopreato, lost a bet she had made with Dr. Lopreato and had to 'pay' by having dinner with him. Dr. Marshall said that Ms. Pearson did not consider the situation to be sexually harassing, but in order to avoid having her father, a University of Houston professor who was upset by the situation embarrass her by calling someone at The University, she got help from Dr. Marshall in planning a strategy to avoid dinner."
On its face this incident seems more like a comedy of manners than evidence for sexual harassment. I remember Ann Marie Pearson from a class we shared and recall at least one evening when she joined me and others for dinner at Lopreato's lake house. Assuming her presence that night wasn't "coerced," Ann Marie had freely consented to taking her relationship with Dr. Lopreato beyond the University's walls. Perhaps the prim Dr. Marshall is unaware of this fact, and perhaps many other facts that might give a completely different color to her allegations of "inappropriate conduct."
To illustrate the bizarreness of some of the other "evidence" coming from the feminists of the sociology department, consider a tidbit from Teresa Sullivan, a former department chair. Sullivan claims she once heard someone gossip that back when women students were first admitted to the sociology graduate program, Dr. Lopreato boasted he would sleep with all of them. But, according to the Report, "She said she cannot recall any details of the conversation in which she heard the story and that it is a single, isolated memory." And so it goes, example after example for six pages, of rumor, second-hand gossip and over-wrought propriety that masquerades as evidence in what's being billed as a sexual harassment case but what looks more like a set-up against an ideological adversary.
In normal court proceedings, most of the remarks obtained by the UT administration from the people referred by Marshall and company would not have been allowed in court - they constitute "hearsay". The Report acknowledges as much. In the vast majority of court cases, hearsay is not allowed because of its inherent weakness and unreliability and because it prejudices jury members. However, the people in charge of accepting the Report for the University and sentencing Dr. Lopreato - former Provost Mark Yudof (ironically, also former dean of the Law School) and Liberal Arts Dean Sheldon Ekland-Olson - were, in a sense, acting as jurors. Yet they were exposed to the hearsay and rumors collected by the administration during the course of the investigation. It was included in the Report. In fact, of the ten pages in which the allegations and responses are presented, six consist of basically nothing but hearsay brought by Marshall and her feminist allies.
The one solid instance of a former student coming forward to back up Jodi Park's complaint is Susan Sharp, now at the University of Oklahoma. Sharp claims that in 1994, while she was a student in Lopreato's class, Dr. Lopreato "knelt to pick up something she had dropped on the floor and in doing so said, 'I kneel at the feet of a goddess.' She said he proceeded to trail his fingers down her arm in a sensual manner that she interpreted to be sexual." It was because of this uninvited touch (which, as described, might possibly have made a Victorian lady blush) that the now Dr. Sharp decided to withdraw from Lopreato's class. The Report doesn't indicate anything else that Lopreato might have ever have said or done to offend this woman other than the event described. Lopreato himself recalled the event a little differently, saying that when Ms. Sharp told him he needn't pick up the item she dropped that he replied, "as mortals to the gods and goddesses." He denies the touch on her arm was sexual, noting that the event occurred in his terms, "in the middle of 42nd St.," that is, in the main departmental office.
I personally can attest to two things relating to this incident. First, Lopreato is given to making statements like "as mortals to the gods and goddesses." I've heard him make classic allusions like that before, and I don't think he was trying to seduce me. Second, Lopreato is a tactile individual by current American standards. A rub on the arm or back is a common experience around him, and is often comforting, particularly to a lost kid in a big university. The feeling of harassment evidently experienced by Susan Sharp in the departmental office shouldn't be taken as an indication that Lopreato's touch was something a typical woman (or man) would construe as offensive. In all likelihood, it was an innocent behavior that only seems deviant according to the norms of the nutty feminism so prominent in today's sociology departments. In the opinion of some of these folks (see review of Katie Roiphe's "The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism on Campus" in this issue) many women in American society are raped without even knowing it; other fringe feminists regard all heterosexual sex as rape. So it's not surprising that in an atmosphere of such hostility, innocent acts would be twisted into sexual harassment.
In fact, as Clarke University professor of philosophy Christina Hoff Sommers noted in a recent book in which she blasts academic feminism, the Modern Languages Association Committee on the Status of Women has even proposed that the definition of unacceptable harassment be expanded to include not just unwanted remarks of a sexual nature, but also:
* "easy dismissal of feminist writers, journals, and presses"
* "automatic deprecation of feminist work as 'narrow,' 'partisan,' and 'lacking in rigor'"
* "malicious humor directed against feminists"
It seems as if the definition of harassment is being pushed back farther and farther, until even mere disagreement with feminist doctrines will constitute offensive behavior. One wonders whether the Lopreato case isn't, at least in part, precisely about that issue.
For all of the lip service given to the idea of multiculturalism by UT faculty and administrators over the past few years, I also cannot help but wonder whether a significant fraction of the reasons why these events have erupted is the simple failure (or refusal) to consider cultural difference. In some ways, Joseph Lopreato is a stereotype of the suave Italian male: the fiery temper, the sophisticated charm, the physicality of his personal behavior - all these are present in the man under fire, and all are too easily misinterpreted in the current, poisoned atmosphere of sexual suspicion and neo-Victorian mores that have penetrated American work life. The failure of the administration to account for cultural differences in the Lopreato case is, in some ways, yet another failure of the multiculturalism movement.
What's At Stake
The outcome of the Lopreato case lies in the hands of Patricia Ohlendorf and, ultimately, on the steps of the Office of the President. In the balance hangs a great deal . During the 19th century heyday of liberal education, and at some of the most prestigious institutions even still, close and informal associations between students and faculty have been encouraged as an ideal. Often, professors were provided quarters on campus, sometimes living even in the same dormitories with students and eating in the same dining halls. It was taken as a given that what professors had to teach was taught also outside the formal confines of the classroom. Their learning was declared through their constant presence and companionship.
Some remnants of this philosophy survive in the best schools. Austin's own St. Steven's Academy provides on-campus accommodations for teachers. If private secondary schools thereby encourage close interactions between students and faculty, why should a stricter standard exist for higher education, where the students are older and more mature? Now such familiarity, even in its more circumscribed forms as exist at the University, is in danger of becoming impossible. The message being sent from the Tower is: caveat instructor. The young woman coming to your office, young professor, is not an intellectual colleague but a career threat. And since men and women must be treated equally, the reasoning goes, an arm's length distance kept from members of the opposite sex should apply to the same sex as well, in the interest of equality.
In reality though, the sexual harassment rules which were supposedly designed to protect women may wind up having the perverse effect of inhibiting their advancement far more than that of men. Opportunities to engage in what could be mentoring relationships in college and beyond will be forgone, for fear of misunderstanding or false accusation. Personal relationships that are often critical to career development will be denied the chance to blossom.
What may be as sinister for the University is the knowledge that in this case it has so far acted as a witting prosecutor in a serious miscarriage of justice. Even if Professor Lopreato is guilty of the paltry charges brought against him (and I am convinced he is not), the proceedings which led to his reprimand are nevertheless a mockery of procedural justice. No court in this country would have stood for the introduction of the hearsay that so largely comprises the case against him. To this complaint the University's response is predictable: "We are not subject to the same procedural standards as a court of law," they will say, "This is an administrative matter." And so it is. But it is also a moral matter, and the morality of the University's prosecution of the Lopreato case is due for a highly public and highly critical examination.
Even if the factual findings of the administration are all true, we must also ask what the reprimand against Lopreato means about how the University regards those who pay to come here. It seems the University has confused the categories of student and child. Jodi Park is a twenty-nine year old woman, presumably sexually mature and far beyond the age at which we are expected to take full control of our own lives. All she is really alleging is that a man made a series of suggestive comments to her that made her feel uncomfortable and which she thought were intended to get her into bed. She never confronted him about this directly; in fact, she admittedly lied to avoid confronting him. Instead she ran to the administration, which willingly allowed the episode to escalate into what it is now - an embarrassing matter that may degenerate into a costly legal mess in which the University may be sued by both Park and Lopreato.
It is somewhat ironic that in this first issue of Contumacy we are demanding that the University do the exact opposite of one of the definitions of that word. We chose the title of our publication because we stand opposed, stubbornly disobedient if you will, to the icons of cultural authority in the '90s. But an older meaning of the word contumacy is the refusal to submit to a lawful summons. We fear the University may soon be forced to do precisely that in a court of law, just as it is now called to appear in the court of public opinion. The University should act quickly to do three things to resolve the controversy surrounding this case. First, it should repeal its reprimand against Dr. Lopreato and issue him a formal apology, while at the same time re-stating publicly the importance of caution and common sense in student-teacher relations. Second, it should apologize to Jodi Park for dragging her through this process for the past six months and for failing to teach by example how to resolve inter-personal disputes. And third, all parties in the administration who had any control over the outcome of the case should engage in a thorough post-mortem in order to prevent such a fiasco from occurring again. This is the least the administration should do, and if the matter ends there, the University should count itself lucky.
Wes Wynne is a doctoral student in psychology and is the editor of Contumacy.