UCLA responds as professor accused of sexual harassment returns to campus
His ‘return’ five months ago today coincided with a fellowship in Europe
It’s been 5 months as of today since the return of Gabriel Piterberg, who in 2015 was suspended for spring quarter without pay for allegedly sexually harassing two graduate students. His suspension, beginning in March of 2015, coincided with a fellowship in Europe.
UCLA has been accused of putting off their settlement at that time in order for him to be able to to take this fellowship, therefore preserving the academic integrity of both Piterberg and UCLA.
Additionally, many of the UCLA faculty in the History department wrote a letter after the announcement of his return, expressing their alarm and concern for this matter. Many students also have expressed their concern, many protests called for his removal from UCLA, urging the university to hold to what they themselves have established as a “no tolerance policy” for sexual violence and assault.
When asked to the new freshmen this year what they thought of the case, it sparked an immediate discussion:
Sanjay Shukla, 18, Physics
“Interesting how UCLA has a zero tolerance on sexual assault and this fool is some exception.”
Cody Ketchem, 19, Economics and History
“On the real though I think it looks bad on UCLA’s end to even affiliate with a professor whose reputation is questionable. A university should strive to have ethics and morals beyond reproach, and you can’t do that with questionable staff”.
Emilie Woltering, 17, Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Environmental Sciences
“It would’ve been so much safer to fire the accused sexual assaulter than to be sorry and have it happen again,”
Sam Wolf,18, American Literature and Culture
“If students don’t want him here, the university needs to respect that. Safety comes first”
This is coming from freshman who have been the most recent participants of the university’s orientation program. In said program, students spend an entire morning learning about the “zero tolerance policy” against sexual assault and violence that UCLA promotes.
Zhouyu Qian, 20, Mathematics of Computation
“Innocent until proven guilty is an ideal. But in the real world, what actually matters is not the actual court but the court of public opinions. It’s easy to generate news coverage for negative news like a lawsuit being filed and difficult if the lawsuit is dropped or found by a court to be not guilty. This is exactly the reason why we don’t want him campus. Not exactly ‘rule of law’ but its reality”.
As for the issue of transparency in the case, in which UCLA did not release the decision until this year (a year after the original case) and have yet to release their actual investigation.
Sienna Pillsbury, 17, International Development Studies
“That’s definitely a huge issue, it goes against everything the university should be working to uphold”.
And indeed, it is. Universities thrive on the accessibility of knowledge, all types of knowledge, including about the workings of said institutions. UCLA especially prides itself on being “a microcosm of the real world”, everyone has heard that phrase sometime or another here.
So what exactly would our university like to represent here?