STANFORD --The federal Department of Labor has released the names of nine women in a class action complaint against Stanford that the department has been investigating.
There were originally some 30 present and former Stanford faculty and employees who joined the complaint last year. But many of those either settled or dropped off the complaint in January when the federal agency informed the women their names would be released to Stanford.
By dropping off the complaint, those women have removed any possibility of having their complaints remedied, but their original complaints may still be investigated as the agency tries to determine if there is a pattern of gender bias at Stanford.
"We have been assured that the full investigation will go forward," said Colleen Crangle, a former senior research scientist in the medical school and one of the nine whose names were released.
While the nine names were released to Stanford, they are not being released to the public, although several are known because of their public statements.
Crangle also has a lawsuit against the university which goes to trial later this month in federal court in San Jose. Crangle's lawsuit alleged gender bias and retaliation by the university once she complained about the alleged bias. The bias part of her lawsuit has been dismissed, but the retaliation portion is still before the court.
Because Stanford is a federal contractor, getting millions of dollars each year in federal research grants, the gender bias complaint is being investigated by the Department of Labor's Office of Federal Contract Compliance.
"We have been fully complying with (the agency) in terms of their requests for information," said Thomas Fenner, senior university counsel. "We have been providing voluminous documents to them, and are now preparing responses to the individual complaints, now that we've been informed of the complaints."
Fenner explained that the university has looked at its hiring patterns and other data. Then-Provost Condoleezza Rice noted last year that men and women faculty members have been reaching tenure at about the same rate--50 percent--in recent years.
"We have looked at the data, and there is no evidence of any pattern of discrimination, or systemic discrimination in regard to hiring, promotion, assignments, termination or salary, in regard to women or minority faculty," Fenner said.
"We have provided that data to (the agency). What we are left with are a number of individual complaints, to which we will make individual responses."
Many of the complaints of alleged gender bias are from women who work or had worked in the medical school.
While Fenner and other Stanford officials have maintained that no pattern of gender bias exists at Stanford, six women faculty members wrote a report in May 1998 saying that Stanford can be an uncomfortable place for some women faculty to work.
"The sense that Stanford is inhospitable to women and minorities interferes with national recruitment efforts, and this further undermines the goal of equity," the six women wrote.
Some faculty and students from the History Department also conducted a protest in 1998 over the failure of Karen Sawislak, a young history professor, to win tenure. She was later invited to reapply for tenure by President Gerhard Casper, but chose instead to enroll in law school.
She, along with Crangle and former law school faculty member Linda Mabry, wrote a letter to the Stanford University Board of Trustees late last year which was published in the Stanford Daily last week.
Their letter reads in part --"Discrimination today in places such as Stanford is best described as a pervasive pattern of acts that demean, marginalize, and exclude traditionally disadvantaged groups. These acts occur not only in hiring and promotions, but also in other less-noticed areas such as teaching assignments, mentoring, allocation of valuable resources like laboratory space or research money, inclusion on significant committees, and involvement in conversations about the management and direction of the institution.
"The present-day form of discrimination is sometimes deliberate or overtly hostile; more often it is unconscious. It sometimes consists of a single, blatant, highly-damaging act; more often it is an accumulation of seemingly trivial but persistent slights. Whatever its form, it is enormously destructive and demoralizing and should be as soundly condemned as the earlier forms of bigotry that so shocked the nation's conscience."
Letter to the Editor
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