California auditor: Sonoma State had one of highest rates of sexual harassment complaints in CSU system

While Sonoma State University is one of the smallest schools in the California State University System, it had one of the highest rates of sexual harassment reports per 1,000 students, a state audit found.

The report, released Tuesday, paints a dismal picture of the entire California State University system’s record of documenting and investigating reports of sexual harassment. It found that in the absence of systemwide guidelines, campuses, including Sonoma State, sometimes used “questionable” interpretations of harassment policies.

In addition, the leadership of the nation’s largest four-year university system “has not adequately or consistently addressed some allegations of sexual harassment,” State Auditor Grant Parks said Tuesday.

‘Date’ request, inappropriate comments

In one harassment investigation at an unnamed CSU school, officials found that a faculty member asking a student-worker to attend an event with him as his “date” — after talking with the student about his breakup — was not sexual in nature.

In another case, a person not affiliated with CSU reported that a male CSU employee made inappropriate comments to her at a social engagement following a professional event and “touched (her) stomach/hip in an intimate way.” The person said the CSU employee told her that since they first met, he thought they “would f**k.”

According to the audit, “the campus investigator determined that this conduct — both the comment and touching — more likely than not occurred and was of a sexual nature. However the investigator found that the conduct did not violate CSU’s policy because it was not sufficiently severe or pervasive.”

The audit comes more than a year after state lawmakers ordered a legislative review of the CSU system’s handling of sexual harassment complaints against employees at the Chancellor’s Office, California State University, Fresno, San Jose State University and Sonoma State University.

Assembly member Jim Wood, D-Healdsburg, who sits on the Joint Committee on Legislative Audit, called the auditor’s findings “very disturbing.”

Wood pointed out that the auditor found inconsistencies in how complaints are documented and investigated at the three campuses under review.

“They clearly point to challenges at the very top, which is the Chancellor’s Office,” Wood said. “There are no (systemwide) guidelines, no consistent data collection. Each campus operates as if it’s its own system.”

Wood said he hopes newly-appointed Chancellor Mildred Garcia will take the auditor’s recommendations “very seriously.”

“Whether you’re a student or faculty member or in administration, you deserve to work in an environment that is free from sexual harassment,” he said.

Sonoma State officials said the audit’s findings will help the school address harassment issues.

“Sonoma State University wants to express its concern for past and current employees and students that have faced any form of harassment,” said Robert Eyler, a Sonoma State spokesman. “With these important audit findings now in hand, we look forward to addressing the issues in the report.”

Eyler said the school has assembled an “implementation team” of campus stakeholders that will focus on audit recommendations. This includes creating a centralized strategic plan and position for prevention, education, and programming efforts on campus; revising processes for responding to other “conduct of concern” that does not fall within the nondiscrimination policy; enhancing mechanisms for conflict resolution and responding to other conduct of concern.

The school also plans to increase visibility of its Office of Prevention, Harassment and Discrimination to help the campus community better understand issues related to Title IX and discrimination, harassment, and retaliation.

‘Various problems’ discovered in 40 cases systemwide

In a statement released with the 81-page audit Tuesday at 9 a.m., Parks said his team reviewed 40 cases of alleged sexual harassment by CSU employees and discovered “various problems” with the way campuses handled cases. Of the 40 cases reviewed by the auditor’s office, 21 had a formal investigation.

State Audit of CSU's Handling of Sexual Harassment Claims.pdf

Park said his team found that campuses lacked clear rationales for not pursing 11 out of 15 cases that were closed after the intake and initial assessment process.

“When campuses did conduct investigations, we found significant deficiencies in seven of the cases, which raised questions about their outcomes,” Parks wrote.

“Further, campuses did not consistently take disciplinary or corrective action to address problematic behavior.”

The audit also found that campuses varied in how they tracked harassment reports, limiting CSU’s ability to identify and respond to concerning trends.

The CSU system has 23 campuses; 56,000 faculty and staff; and a total of 460,000 students.

43 harassment reports in four years at SSU, seven investigated

Auditors found that Sonoma State had likely used an unreasonably restrictive interpretation of CSU’s policies and did not document a complete rationale for determining that the conduct was not sufficiently severe.

Between 2018 and 2022, employees at Sonoma State, which had 7,182 students enrolled in the fall of 2021, racked up 43 sexual harassment reports, giving the school a rate of roughly six harassment reports per 1,000 students.

San Jose State and Fresno State, with 33,848 and 24,946 students, respectively, had respective rates of 2.5 and 3.3 sexual harassment reports per 1,000 students.

Of the 43 reports of sexual harassment at Sonoma State, only seven were investigated. Of the seven, only four were substantiated, the audit found. During that five-year period, seven employees were the subject of multiple reports of sexual harassment.

The audit found that the CSU Chancellor’s Office has not always ensured that campuses address sexual harassment through discipline and corrective actions.

The audit comes a day after the university system released the findings of a systemwide assessment of CSU’s implementation of programs and policies to prevent and address sexual discrimination and harassment. That review was conducted by national law firm Cozen O’Conner.

CSU interim chancellor welcomes findings, promises action

CSU Interim Chancellor Jolene Koester welcomed the findings and promised action. She said CSU’s implementation of the recommendations of both reports will “strengthen accountability” in the university system.

“We agree with and will implement the recommendations provided in the audit report, as well as those identified in the Cozen assessment, to strengthen our culture of care and compliance and advance the CSU's core values of equity, diversity and inclusion,” Koester wrote in a statement.

Unreliable data

The auditor found that campuses did not consistently count the number of reports of sexual harassment they received. Sometimes campuses counted cases involving multiple complainants as a single report.

Officials said that campus data related to the number of reports of sexual harassment was often unreliable.

Wood, the local state assembly member, said he suspects there are many more cases than what’s being reported.

“I would venture to guess, based on how challenging it is in the workplace for people, there’s a lot more that has never been reported,” he said, adding that some victims of harassment may not even bother with reporting cases.

“There could be an attitude of, ‘Why am I going to bother putting myself at risk if they don’t even take this seriously?’” he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @pressreno.