COLOMBIA – The University of South Carolina announced on Tuesday that it removed David Voros from his teaching duties this spring in response to a couple of recent lawsuits that accused the art teacher of sexually harassing his fellow instructors.
“Professor David Voros will not be teaching at the University of South Carolina this spring,” wrote university spokesman Jeff Stensland in a statement on Tuesday morning. “Instead, he will be assigned to other functions outside the classroom until further notice.”
The university move follows weeks of public pressure from student activists who pressured the school to fire Voros and other USC officials who, they said, have allowed the full professor to harass and intimidate students and teachers in recent years.
The school has faced criticism for continuing to employ Voros since at least 2018, when a former graduate student, Allison Dunavant, filed a lawsuit alleging that the painting teacher subjected her to “unbearable” living conditions and sexual advances. during a study trip abroad in Italy after she found the painting teacher having an affair with another student.
The case highlighted how the USC deals with allegations of sexual misconduct against a professor at a time when colleges are working harder than ever to show that they are taking these accusations seriously.
The lawsuits filed by Dunavant and two of Voros’ former colleagues, Jaime Misenheimer and Pamela Bowers, accuse officials at the USC’s Equal Opportunities Program Office and the School of Visual Art and Design of not properly investigating the allegations against Voros and waiting for years as he retaliated against women who complained about him.
Students say the allegations show that the USC should review the way it accepts and investigates these complaints. An online petition calling for Voros and other officials involved in the case to be dismissed had collected more than 2,200 signatures by Tuesday.
The lawyer for Voros’ accusers says the case also shows how the stability system protects established teachers.
“Stability is a powerful thing,” said Columbia lawyer Samantha Albrecht. “I really think that effective teachers may have more protection at times than is necessarily useful.”
Efforts to reach Voros, which earns $ 81,681 a year at USC, for comment on Tuesday were unsuccessful.
Stensland said the university could not comment further on the Voros case because it is a personal matter and because of the pending lawsuits.
Protection of tenure
Firing a full professor is not easy.
The concept of stability was designed in 1940 to protect the academic freedom of experienced and successful teachers and to protect them from pressure or retaliation for exploiting controversial research. Effective teachers can be fired only for certain serious infractions, including sexual misconduct.
But the process of kicking a full professor is a lengthy one. It is a two-step process that a good defense attorney can drag on for months or years.
It requires the school to investigate the allegations and determine that they are valid or reject them. A mandate panel, usually composed of faculty members, would then decide whether the teacher’s mandate should be revoked as a result of these conclusions.
“In most universities and college systems, the rules give teachers more tools to defend themselves,” said Chris Slusher, a lawyer from Missouri who defended students and teachers accused of sexual harassment and misconduct.
Voros’ accusers claimed that the university did not seriously investigate the professor and often ignored the complaints.
“There was no real investigative process,” Dunavant said of his case.
USC spokesman Stensland said he could not provide further details about Voros’ case or confirm that the USC is conducting an investigation into the complaints against him. But he said the university is not aware of any complaints against Voros other than those made by Dunavant, Bowers and Misenheimer.
He said Voros’ new duties while he is out of school next spring “are still being determined”.
‘A powerful voice’
Colleges across the country have struggled with the same problem, as allegations of sexual misconduct against teachers have become more common in the #MeToo era.
Earlier this month, the University of Washington sacked a professor, the former director of its youth scholarship program, after discovering that he exploited his position for “inappropriate sexual conduct” with a 17-year-old student in the program.
Last year, Dartmouth College settled a federal lawsuit filed by nine women who accused the school of ignoring years of harassment and aggression by a trio of professors in the psychology department. The Ivy League school agreed to disburse more than $ 14 million to students who could prove they were abused.
The Academic Sexual Misconduct Database, established in February 2016, recorded more than 1,000 cases of documented allegations of sexual misconduct at U.S. universities, including the 1992 discovery that former USC President James Holderman made sexual advances in his students favorites.
Student activists have been pressuring their faculties to do more to respond to these claims. They complained about broken internal reporting systems that protect the accused and force victims to alleviate their trauma while investigations have dragged on for months, even years.
Earlier this year, under pressure from students, the University of Texas agreed to make termination the standard punishment for faculty members found guilty of sexual assault, sexual harassment, harassment or interpersonal violence. The school also became the first in the country to publish the names of teachers who had been punished for sexual misconduct.
Andrew Miltenberg, a New York lawyer who represents students and teachers accused of misconduct at colleges across the country, said colleges have every incentive to take complaints seriously.
“Student groups have become a very powerful voice,” said Miltenberg. “It is possible to hold a rally in the courtyard in front of the president’s home for students who protest against the lack of consideration given to victims of sexual assault. Or you can dismiss the accused. “
At USC, student groups such as the Feminist Collective, University Democrats and University Socialists cited the three lawsuits against Voros in a request for change.
Sophie Luna, the 20-year-old geology student who organizes the “Fire David Voros” movement, said the university’s current process to investigate sexual misconduct has done little for Voros’ accusers. She said students will consider personal protests next spring if nothing else is done.
“He’s been in this for two years and nothing has happened to him so far,” said Luna. “This is really what angered people.”
The allegations
Voros’ biography on the USC website, which remains active, indicates that he was one of the finalists for the USC Graduate Education Award in 2006 and the School’s Graduate Education Award in 2008.
At RateMyProfessors.com, Voros’ alumni describe him as a brainless genius who rarely showed up in time for his own classes and classified himself leniently.
Voros’ accusers, however, say the teacher is a bully who used his power within the School of Visual Arts and Design to forge inappropriate relationships with students, bathe teachers and students with unwanted sexual advances and retaliate against anyone who complained about his behavior for superiors.
USC liquidated Dunavant’s lawsuit in 2018 for $ 75,000.
Last month, former teachers Misenheimer and Bowers – Voros’ ex-wife – filed their own lawsuits that gave more credit to Dunavant’s claims.
According to the Misenheimer process:
Voros asked Misenheimer to retaliate against Dunavant by giving him a bad grade after the student filed a complaint against Voros related to the study trip to Italy abroad.
Voros made an unwelcome sexual breakthrough in Misenheimer in a dark closet in the school building in February 2017, putting an arm around her and whispering in her ear.
Voros retaliated against Misenheimer for complaining about that incident to superiors, giving her poor performance ratings and preventing her from teaching.
Misenheimer resigned from the university in 2017.
Meanwhile, Bowers’ lawsuit claims that she split from Voros in 2016 and divorced him in 2017 because of her “one or more” sexual affairs with students.
According to his lawsuit, Voros made “unwanted physical and sexual advances” for Bowers in his campus office after the couple split up.
When Voros found out that Bowers had complained, the lawsuit claims he became more aggressive.
Bowers claimed that Voros would stay at her door while she was teaching to intimidate her, used his knowledge of her programming to pursue her and tried to embrace and touch her in his office at the School of Visual Art and Design.
Bowers, who is on leave from the USC, and the alleged Misenheimer employees of the SVAD and the USC Equal Opportunity Programs office rejected their complaints.
In a tweet reacting to Tuesday’s news, Dunavant wrote that the school must do more.
“Great move, but he’s being protected by #uofsc for not getting fired,” she I wrote. “He continues to receive his salary, and this removal is specified only for one semester. That is not enough. It is still the USC interpreting its policies in a gray and unfavorable manner to student safety.”
Albrecht, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, said he did not know what to do with the USC decision.
“It probably should have been done several years ago,” she said. “I don’t know how long this will last or if it means that it will be removed permanently.”
Documents obtained by the Post and Courier on Tuesday show that this is not the first time the school has disciplined Voros.
In January 2019, USC Vice President Paul Allen Miller censored Voros for recruiting and taking two students to his study abroad program in Italy, even after the university denied his application to teach the course, according to a letter first published by The State newspaper. The school then banned Voros from taking students abroad or from taking their independent study courses.