University Times

An internal investigation debunked allegations that faculty in Pitt’s communication department routinely engage in consensual sexual relationships with graduate students, according to the University.

A routine external review panel, in an otherwise generally favorable report, had concluded last spring that the Department of Communication fostered a “culture in which senior faculty routinely and repeatedly have engaged in consensual sexual relationships with graduate students.”

The resulting climate created an unsafe environment for female students, the reviewers contended. Their report further criticized the faculty as generally resistant to diversity efforts, according to sources familiar with the report’s confidential contents.

The University’s policy on faculty-student relationships (Policy 02-04-03) prohibits a faculty member from having intimate relations with a student whose academic work, teaching or research is being supervised or evaluated by the faculty member.

Following receipt of the external reviewers’ report in March, Arts and Sciences Dean N. John Cooper requested that Pitt’s Office of General Counsel conduct an investigation into the allegations. Cooper said the investigation included interviewing all current and a number of former communication graduate students, all tenure-stream faculty and some non-tenure stream faculty and the three external reviewers, among others.

In a statement released Nov. 8, Cooper acknowledged that Pitt investigators had uncovered evidence of past faculty-student intimate liaisons and had discovered “allegations of harassment from several years ago,” that had been investigated and addressed, but that had nonetheless left “residual effects” on the department.

But Cooper’s statement disputed the generalizations regarding the current department atmosphere as depicted in the reviewers’ report. “The investigators uncovered no evidence of any current faculty/student sexual relationships,” Cooper stated. “And the investigation determined that the past sexual relations between faculty and graduate students within the department that allegedly determined the climate of the department could not be characterized as either routine or repeated.”

Cooper also disputed the report’s allegations that the department’s climate was unsafe for female grad students. “Most critically, the overwhelming bulk of male and female graduate students within the department do not agree with the characterization of the current climate provided by the external reviewers,” Cooper stated. He added that allegations about resistance to diversity also were not supported by the investigators’ findings.

The Pitt investigators recommended actions to avoid future mischaracterizations of the department, which are being implemented over time, Cooper stated. He declined to specify the recommendations.

In response to a question about why his public statement was not released in the interim months when he received the General Counsel report in late spring, Cooper told the University Times, “Nobody asked for a statement. And I wanted time to digest the findings of the [investigators’] report, and to work with the department in sharing these findings before I released a statement.”

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The external reviewers’ confidential report followed a routine audit that included a two-day site visit in February. Such external reviews typically are done every 10 years by communication faculty from three other universities.

Their report, which was distributed to the department’s full-time faculty in late March, was leaked to some media, including The Pitt News, which broke the story on April 15.

Subsequent stories appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (April PH/check) and The Chronicle of Higher Education (April 30).

According to the Chronicle story, communication department chair John Lyne said he had been instructed not to comment on the report.

Lyne confirmed that to the University Times last week. “But I will comment on what appeared in the newspapers,” he said. “As for the coverage this matter got, I’ll just say that the department I read about in the newspapers is not one that I recognize. There was just this amazing spiral of misunderstandings feeding on each other.”

For instance, Lyne said, Dean Cooper’s statement pointed out that the reference to an “unsafe climate” was based on a hypothetical concern posed to one external reviewer. “You have to wonder how we got from there to the stories we saw [in the newspapers],” Lyne said. “I was pleased to see that none of the graduate students who were contacted by the newspapers indicated that they were unhappy with the department.”

Lyne added that The Chronicle of Higher Education story, quoting directly from the reviewers’ report, said that “by virtually any relevant criterion, the department today is healthy and significantly improved since its last review.” Lyne further expressed relief that allegations in the reviewers’ report proved unfounded. “It was no fun being investigated by the University, but I think the dean got the answers to the questions that had been raised. I am, of course, relieved to see the dean’s public statement about his findings, and I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to comment further on that. Our concern now is to be proactive in trying to avoid further conflicts or misunderstandings.”

Regarding resistance to diversity, Lyne said that two of the 14 full-time communication department faculty are African American. “And we have faculty with joint appointments with a number of diverse areas, such as cultural studies, women’s studies, bioethics, Africana studies and history and philosophy of science. Our 30 graduate students also are a diverse group, representing a number of countries.”

Lyne added that the Department of Communication houses one of the top doctoral programs of its kind nationally and that with 650 undergraduate majors, the program is among the most popular at Pitt. “I’ve very proud of this department’s achievements,” he said. “We have internationally recognized faculty, who present all over the world, who are authors and who are editors of leading journals.”

-Peter Hart