Odd defense succeeds in race bias case
December 20, 2009 by Taylor HanniganPosted in: From the Courts, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views
When a school librarian was accused of discriminating against a Filipino student, the college countered with an unusual defense – and won.
Elizabeth Santos, a student of the Peralta Community College District, said college librarian Shirley Mack discriminated against her based on her race.
Santos claimed Mack repeatedly mistreated her at the library. She said that on several occasions, Mack accused her of using library computers for personal reasons and forced her to leave.
According to Santos, things got so bad that she resorted to studying in her car if she knew Mack was the lone librarian on duty. She even transferred to another college in the district just to get away from her. Even that didn’t work – after Santos transferred, Mack was assigned to work at the library on the same campus.
The school didn’t really contest the claim that Mack treated Santos poorly. But it did say its investigation showed she pretty much treated everyone that way – and that meant she didn’t discriminate against Santos based on race.
The court agreed. The evidence showed Mack treated all students poorly. Santos didn’t counter this evidence, so her claim of race bias was rejected.
Cite: Santos v. Peralta Community College Dist.
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Tags: community college, Peralta Community College Dist., race discrimination
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December 23rd, 2009 at 3:26 pm
What a Pyrrhic victory! The college won by admitting that they employ and retain employees who treat all students badly! Come one; come all — if you have demonstrably bad behavior towards all students and documented credentials that you treat all students badly, you are always welcome at the Peralta Community College District.
And so, the employee and the employer are free to go forth and continue to treat all students badly…
Is that the message that they want to send?
December 26th, 2009 at 3:33 am
What a laugh riot this is. I guess retaining bad employees is a good way to defend against charges of bias? All I know is that our university is using current budget issues to “cut out dead wood” like this librarian, does this mean we are doing better? Ill leave my affiliation out of this post
(my colleagues know who I am)
January 1st, 2010 at 7:01 pm
It’s called tenure. It’s crippling education and protecting crazy people.
January 14th, 2010 at 7:10 am
As a faculty of color at a predominately White research 1 institution, tenure is difficult to get. It also serves as my protection (as limited as it might be) from being dismissed without a justifiable reason. However, that didn’t help the many faculty members at the historically Black Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta last Spring.