UT students want faculty with sexual misconduct histories fired. What’s the university’s response?

It said her environmental ethics professor, Sahotra Sarkar, was suspended for a semester in 2017 for a sexual misconduct violation after students complained that he had invited them to go swimming or pose nude.

“I did have a lot of positive feelings and thoughts toward him before I found out, and then when I heard that news, it was hard,” said Kosted, who is from Pflugerville. “I was just disappointed.”

So when a group of students stormed into Kosted’s class about a week ago to confront Sarkar and ask other students to walk out in protest, Kosted followed.

She and other students who have participated in several campus protests say they want the university to provide a list of all professors with sexual misconduct violations and to remove the professors from courses or fire them.

With roughly one week of classes left in the fall semester, they’re growing impatient and frustrated. But experts say meeting students’ demands would break the precedent of how universities traditionally handle sexual misconduct and could challenge federal and state anti-discrimination and privacy regulations.

A legal balancing act

The university hired an external firm last month and is finalizing a working group to review its policies in the wake of the actions of Sarkar and English professor Coleman Hutchison, who was disciplined after making sexual comments to students and failing to disclose a consensual relationship with a graduate student. He returned to the classroom this fall.

Sarkar and Hutchison did not respond to multiple emails and calls seeking comment.

Under Title IX, universities must respond to reports of sexual misconduct in a “prompt and equitable” manner, said David Lake, a law professor at Stetson University in Florida who specializes in the law prohibiting discrimination in education programs.

Lake said offenses of sexual violence, including rape and assault, generally result in the resignation or firing of university faculty, but consequences for sexual misconduct, such as verbal harassment, historically have not prevented professors from returning to the classroom.

Too often, remedies for sexual misconduct have been a “slap on the wrist” that allowed the behavior to spread, said Jerry Carbo, an employment law expert and professor at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania.

Hutchison was barred from supervising graduate students by himself, from consideration for promotion to full professor and from appointment to any administrative or leadership positions for two years. The university also canceled plans for him to teach two undergraduate classes in fall 2018.

UT officials told The Dallas Morning News that they do not plan to remove Sarkar or Hutchison from teaching.

“The university actively monitors their transition back into their teaching roles and checks to see if new complaints are submitted. Should new allegations of any kind surface, once reported, new investigations will be launched,” UT spokeswoman Shilpa Bakre said in an email.

Carbo said UT’s penalties appeared to be “pretty severe” and beyond the typical responses in the private sector.

Still, employers in the private sector have been able to respond more quickly or aggressively to demands for accountability because their employees, unlike university professors, don’t have tenure, said Merrick Rossein, a professor at the CUNY School of Law in New York.

But the #MeToo movement ignited a debate over what should be deemed “unforgivable” sexual misconduct offenses, Lake said.

Calls for change

Kosted dropped a research project she had started with Sarkar’s help, and Amanda Brown, a junior from Elkhart, stopped attending the class until the teaching assistant began providing separate lectures for students who felt uncomfortable with Sarkar.

Brown went to the first of three sit-ins that students organized. She said her goal isn’t to “ruin” Sarkar and Hutchison’s lives, but to promote systemic change against sexual misconduct.

“If we don’t say anything, how are we going to stop it from happening in the future?” she said.

That’s also why junior Simone Gabriela Harry said she helped organize the third sit-in. The English honors and Black Studies student from South Padre Island said some students realize the university might not agree to identify or fire all professors accused of sexual misconduct, which experts say would be unprecedented.

Concerns about the privacy of affected students generally prevent universities from disclosing details about sexual misconduct cases, Lake said.

Students are shifting their focus to requesting more transparency about the university’s Title IX and sexual misconduct procedures, Harry said. A petition with some of those demands has over a thousand signatures.

“This is about trying to engage with the system of power and trying to undo and prevent more harm within that system,” said junior Lynn Huynh of Houston, another student organizer.

The university launched a central website for Title IX reports and students’ questions about sexual misconduct last month and is expected to receive recommendations from the external firm it hired and a university working group in April.

Senate Bill 212, which lawmakers passed this year, requires universities to post at least once every fall and spring semester an online report summarizing Title IX cases.

UT officials have promised to roll out improved reporting in January, and Bakre said the university will ask the firm to review best practices for disclosing misconduct.

Student organizers say that they hope to host a community-led town hall before the semester ends but that administrators would prefer a university-moderated “campus forum.”

Bakre said UT is “partnering with students to explore every option available” to productively engage with them.

“We are focused on creating an environment conducive to a constructive dialogue surrounding issues of misconduct,” she said.