When an ASU undergraduate reported being sexually assaulted on campus in February, ASU police and administrators gaslit and silenced her, and refused to stop harassing her when she requested they communicate through her lawyer when the student was recovering from COVID-19.
Phoenix New Times–Arizona State University is under investigation by the federal government for sexual discrimination and retaliation in a case that raises questions about how the university protects students who report retaliation from other students.
Earlier this month, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) notified ASU that it was opening an investigation for potential Title IX violations in the case. The probe began when a graduate student filed a complaint with the government alleging the university had fostered a “sexually hostile environment” by failing to address reports of retaliation by the student’s lab peers after she reported a professor for harassment.
ASU’s alleged failure to intervene reportedly led the student to switch to work in a lab on another campus, at the expense of her research and access to professional opportunities.
AZ Mirror — Arizona State University claimed last month to have received $250,000 from alleged sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, but a new report details additional donations to the school totalling more than $2 million.
BuzzFeed News reported that the donations were made to the Origins Project, which was headed by former ASU Professor Lawrence Krauss, who retired after a BuzzFeed story last year revealed allegations of sexual harassment.
The State Press uncovered unprofessional, inappropriate behavior by ASU School of Film, Dance and Theatre faculty Micha Espinosa, who encouraged students to pretend to breastfeed/”find the nipple” while disusing her own experiences breastfeeding:
Multiple students described an exercise where they were lying on their backs with their legs spread and knees to their chest, a position known in yoga as the Happy Baby Pose. Espinosa instructed students to “find the nipple” by sucking on one of their knuckles while in the position. On one occasion, two students said she made a comment about her son making her nipples bleed while breastfeeding as she led the students through the exercise.
School of Transborder Studies professor Marivel Danielson is accused of similar sexual misconduct in 2019. She was cleared because she claims the behavior occurred after her accuser graduated; the behavior began when the accuser was an undergraduate in Danielson’s “Queer Performativity” course, and continued throughout Danielson’s direction of the student’s Barrett Honors thesis.
Lawrence Krauss is retiring after he was found to have violated ASU’s sexual harassment policy and a Dean recommended his termination. He remains on paid leave until May. For a complete list of allegations against Krauss, click here.
ASU says “it is inconceivable how a faculty member in the course of carrying out his work responsibilities could believe that the conduct would ever be appropriate,” but professors at ASU’s Barrett Honors College have gotten away with similar sexual misconduct over the past 20 years:
Eric Susser exposed himself to students on campus in 2002, suggested to Study Abroad students they have a threesome with him, and sexually harassed multiple students during mandatory office hours, but was not fired until 2012; on a Study Abroad trip in 2008, Jacquie Scott touched a female student inappropriately, and grabbed a male student’s hips and forced him to dance with her while insisting he was the “younger version of [her] husband.”
Trigger warning: suicide, attempted murder, domestic violence, gun violence, alcoholism
Intimate partner violence victims sometimes do not realize they are being abused until the abuse is glaring and impossible to ignore. Professor/student relationships are ripe for abuse because they begin with an imbalance of power and often an imbalance of brain development and life experience.
Minutes before Barrett Honors professor David Conz died by suicide, he shot at the student he was dating through a door, the bullet missing her by four inches.
ASU continues to mishandle sexual assault cases. April 2018 an undergraduate reported being sexually assaulted on campus, but 6 months later her case drags on and ASU officials are making excuses for ignoring her:
“I constantly would check in for updates and my answer was always the same,” she told ASU State Press. “I was told that other reports were still being taken care of and that my report would be finished as soon as they could.”
“Time after time, I began to feel hopeless,” she said. “I felt like I didn’t matter and that my case wasn’t important enough as it had been going on for so long and still is as of October 2018.”
On July 31, 2018 an Arizona State University investigation concluded that professor Lawrence Krauss violated ASU’s sexual harassment policy when he groped a woman at a conference. He has yet to be fired.
Update 1/11/2018: Petition victory! Brooke’s rapist is permanently expelled and can no longer appeal! From Brooke:
“Thank you all so much for your support and your comments that helped me get through this. Your signatures made a difference. This fight is far from over, but it was good to finally see some justice served here at ASU after 9 months of fighting. No one should have to go through this, and I will continue to fight.”
For more on ASU rape culture and future petitions, follow Sun Devils Against Sexual Assault on Facebook (Fb.com/asu.sdasa), Twitter (twitter.com/asu_sdasa), and WordPress (https://sundevilsagainstsexualassault.wordpress.com/).
Thank you to all who signed the petition!
Grooming refers to a series of behaviors by abusers to ensure that victims and people around them accept abuse as normal and desirable. ASU professors have been known to groom and sexually abuse students for decades. ACD 402 exists to protect students from faculty abuse, but students and faculty do not receive training on this policy.
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