Dartmouth College settles a sexual harassment lawsuit for more than $70 million
Earlier this month, Dartmouth College announced that it has settled a contentious federal lawsuit with nine women who sued the school over sexual misconduct allegations for more than $14 million. In their lawsuit, the women, who were Ph.D. candidates, as well as graduates and undergraduates, alleged that professors William Kelley, Paul Whalen, and Todd Heatherton harassed and touched women inappropriately, often while out partying at bars or at their homes where one hosted hot tub parties. Kelley and Whalen are each accused of assaulting a student after a night of drinking, attempting to seduce women under their supervision and retaliating against those who rebuffed their advances in the Department of Psychological and Brain Science.
Dartmouth said it was unaware of the allegations until it was alerted by scores of female students. Post such expensive consequences, Dartmouth is now planning to launch several initiatives that seek “to rectify current problems and prevent future issues.” People will mistakenly look at the large settlement and believe that surely these women have been made whole. However, people must understand that when a woman reports harassment, her goal is to make it stop. Moreover, she is hoping that the activity of actually reporting the harassment does not lead to retaliation or further suffering.
What could have been done before this issue became litigious?
(#1) Deal with the department’s culture: According to the article, the Department of Psychological and Brain Science was known for its “animal house, boys club” culture. Who knew psychologists and brain scientists like to get wild and crazy? But, unfortunately, when the problem is company culture, you have an issue that is going to take some time to resolve. Culture is deeply entrenched and is made up of the unspoken rules that dictate decisions. Changing it is like reducing an elephant to fit inside of a Poodle’s dog house. Undoubtedly, something drastic has to happen! This requires brave leadership and the commitment to foster a courageous culture. Humans change only when the current system no longer works for us. People who embody toxic behavior must be eliminated — even the top performers. In the case of the Dartmouth professors, one was known to bring in $20 million in research funds. That seemed like a nice piece of change until his actions generated a price tag of $70 million.
(#2) Develop comprehensive policies/procedures and train the staff to ensure everyone understands them: Dartmouth’s policies and procedures were subpar. They were either non-existent, narrowly-focused, or not enforced. Many of the events happened off-campus at bars, professor’s homes, private hot tubs, conferences, and parties. Dartmouth needed a procedure that clearly outlined that off-premise harassment is considered within the college’s boundaries. While some of the harassing conduct did not occur on campus, the relationship between the students and their professors are always within an academic-related context — regardless of location.
(#3) Educate staff on proper forms of exchange: The women suffered from a “quid pro quo” form of harassment. When the behavior was reported, the students felt unsupported by the administration. Additionally, the professors threatened them with retaliation if they told, citing “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you,” or “Your honors thesis just got a lot harder.”. When they didn’t comply, they were taken off of projects, or their academic work was penalized. This makes the professors guilty of quid pro quo harassment. Quid pro quo is the promise of educational benefits or the removal of threatened adverse academic actions conditioned upon a woman’s affirmative response to sexual demands of one in a position of authority.
(#4) Develop procedures that help victims: The women had nowhere else to go. There was a lot at stake. Schools must provide adequate means to report acts of harassment. These women were hard at work on doctoral, master, and bachelor degrees. The reporting procedures didn’t protect the women.
Now the college president, Philip Hanlon, said that Dartmouth plans to create a single sexual misconduct policy and include processes for dealing with violations. It also will start mandatory training on the federal law barring gender discrimination, and put more resources into mental health. When people talk about the cost of compliance, I always shake my head because the cost of non-compliance is unfathomable — a few thousand dollars vs. $70 million.
Besides Dartmouth’s monetary loss, these brave young women have lost more than most can imagine. Colloquially, someone will say, “It’s not brain science.” In this case, it is actually was. These women represent the best and the brightest, yet, instead of their claim to fame being about using nanotechnology in the brain, they have made national news because they were on the unfortunate end of sexual misconduct at that hands of their professors. One young woman stated, “it’s sad to know that I came tp Dartmouth to come out as a brain scientist, but instead, I am coming out as a victim.”
Dartmouth failed. Don’t be like Dartmouth.