THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, May 8, 1995 TAG: 9505080040
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MIKE HADLEY, CAMPUS CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: WILLIAMSBURG LENGTH: Medium: 51 lines
The College of William and Mary said in court papers released last week that it should not be held responsible in a graduate student's sexual harassment lawsuit against the college.
The student, Karen Veselits, filed a $2 million lawsuit last month in U.S. District Court in Newport News complaining that William and Mary mishandled her complaint against a tenured professor. Her suit said the professor made numerous advances toward her and, after she rebuked him, issued a ``punitive'' grade.
She said in the suit that the college should be held liable because it ``took no meaningful action'' after a William and Mary committee found evidence of harassment.
But the college, in response papers filed April 11, said that it had ``maintained and administered a procedure . . . adjudicating the plaintiff's complaint fairly and thoroughly.''
The response said that Veselits did not receive a ``punitive'' grade and, in fact, got a B-plus from the professor. Anyway, the college said, it should not be held liable because the school has ``no direct and immediate control over an individual professor's grading of a student's academic work.''
William and Mary also filed a third-party complaint asking that the professor, not the college, be held responsible for any money awarded to Veselits, including attorney's fees. But Veselits' lawyer, Eileen Wagner of Richmond, said Friday that she would ask Judge Robert Doumar to throw out the request.
Doumar recently unsealed William and Mary's papers, which identified the faculty member as tenured history professor Ismail Abdalla. Abdalla could not be reached for comment, but he was quoted in the Virginia Gazette as saying, ``I deny everything.'' Peggy Shaw, a spokeswoman for the college, declined further comment.
Meanwhile, the college's Committee on Graduate Studies approved a resolution suggesting that the American studies department review the ``gender climate.'' Veselits took Abdalla's class for her doctoral work in American studies.
Robert Scholnick, dean of graduate studies, said the vote was not related to the suit. ``The committee wanted to appoint a committee with the suggestion that it may bring in outside people to campus to help assess the gender climate,'' he said.
KEYWORDS: LAWSUIT SEXUAL HARASSMENT COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY by CNB