Bartges v. UNIVERSITY OF N. CAROLINA AT CHARLOTTE

• Decision Date: 06 November 1995
• Docket Number: No. 3:94CV113-P.,3:94CV113-P.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of North Carolina
• Parties: Ellyn BARTGES, Plaintiff, v. The UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHARLOTTE, Defendant.

908 F. Supp. 1312

Ellyn BARTGES, Plaintiff, v. The UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHARLOTTE, Defendant.

No. 3:94CV113-P.

United States District Court, W.D. North Carolina, Charlotte Division.

November 6, 1995.

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Vercelia M. Young, Charlotte, NC.

Robert L. Bell, Washington, DC.

Thomas J. Ziko, North Carolina Department of Justice, Raleigh, NC.

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION AND ORDER

ROBERT D. POTTER, Senior District Judge.

THIS MATTER is before the Court on the motion of Defendant's motion for summary judgment (document # 15). For the reasons stated herein, that motion will be granted.

I. BACKGROUND

The Plaintiff, Ms. Ellyn Bartges ("Bartges"), is a former employee of the Defendant, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte ("UNCC"). Her relationship with UNCC began in the summer of 1988 when Bartges contacted Edward Baldwin ("Baldwin"), the head coach of the UNCC Women's Basketball Team, and offered her services as a volunteer Assistant Women's Basketball Coach. Coach Baldwin had a full-time paid assistant, but he accepted Bartges' offer. As a result, Bartges served as an Assistant Women's Basketball Coach during the 1988-89 season. Of course, as a volunteer she was not compensated for her services. Bartges must have done something right because Coach Baldwin allowed her to stay on in her position and offered her some compensation for her services during the 1989-90 season. Bartges was paid an hourly wage, and she received approximately $4,7000.00 for her services that year.

In the summer of 1990, UNCC sought a replacement for its Head Softball Coach, Richard Wiseman. Ms. Judith W. Rose ("Rose"), the Director of Athletics at UNCC, approached on her own initiative and asked Bartges whether she would be interested in the position. When Bartges expressed interest, Rose offered her the position of Head Softball Coach for the 1990-91 year. Bartges accepted the position.

At any rate, Rose, a woman, paid Bartges, a woman, more for her work as Head Softball Coach than Rose had paid Wiseman, the male Bartges replaced. During the last year that Wiseman served as Head Softball Coach, he also taught two courses in the University's Department of Health and Physical Education. The Department of Athletics budgeted $7,950 for his position as Coach, and the Academic Affairs budget paid him $7,950, presumably for his position as lecturer. In contrast, the Athletic Department budgeted $12,000 for the Head Coach position when it was accepted by Bartges. Also, whereas Wiseman was earning a total of $15,900 when he left his position at UNCC, Bartges received a total compensation package of $20,000.

Bartges was paid more even though she was much less qualified than Wiseman. When Wiseman was hired in 1987 he had seven years of experience as head coach of women's softball at Pennsylvania State University, and his softball team had won four league championships and more than twenty games each season in his last two years with that team. He also had eight years of experience coaching the men's basketball team, his teams had a .714 winning percentage, three league championships, and five conference championships, and he had been named Conference Basketball Coach of the Year in 1985. The résumé that Bartges provided to UNCC at the time of her appointment shows that she had no prior experience in any sport as head coach at the collegiate level, six months of experience as a volunteer assistant basketball coach at another university, six months of experience as head coach of high school girls basketball team, and no prior experience as a softball coach. Nonetheless, Bartges was paid as much or more for her work as Head Softball Coach than Wiseman, the male she replaced.

At this point, Bartges had two part-time positions in the UNCC Athletic Department, Head Softball Coach and Assistant Basketball Coach, and she had a twelve month salary of $20,000 a year. According to the budget for the Athletics Department, $12,000 of Bartges' earnings resulted from her work as Head Softball Coach, and the other $8,000 resulted from her work as Assistant Basketball Coach. Bartges served as part-time Assistant Women's Basketball Coach and part-time Head Softball Coach for UNC Charlotte for the years 1990-91, 1991-92, and 1992-93.

Bartges worked hard for UNCC and was clearly committed to the success of the women's softball team. Unfortunately, Bartges' "can do" attitude caused her to run afoul of the University's regulations. The record shows that Bartges wanted to take the softball team to a tournament over the Spring Break, but her budget contained insufficient funds. For this reason, Bartges contracted with a fund-raiser to sell certain items in return for 50% of the profits. Bartges and her team did the soliciting.

Bartges never sought the permission of the University to conduct this fund-raising. Rather she conducted the whole operation outside of the University, soliciting purchases, taking in the money from product sales and splitting the profits with the fund-raiser. When Rose learned about this activity, she asked Bartges whether it had been cleared with Mark DeMarcus, Rose's assistant, as required by the University's regulations. Initially Bartges told Rose that DeMarcus had approved of the fund-raising project, later Rose learned that this was not the case.

Shortly after this encounter with Rose, DeMarcus sent Bartges a memo asking her to see him about this matter, but Bartges was too busy to meet with DeMarcus for the next three months. About three months later, on January 6, 1993, Rose and DeMarcus had a meeting with Bartges to discuss the unauthorized fund-raising. During that meeting, Bartges told them that she still had the team's share of the proceeds, over $1,000 in cash, held in a manilla envelope hidden underneath the kitchen counter in her apartment. Bartges was severely reprimanded and told that she was lucky she was not losing her job. She was also told that the proceeds from the fund-raising activity would be deposited in the University's general scholarship fund. Of course, this meant that Bartges would not be able to spend the money on a Spring Break trip for her softball team.

The next day Bartges complained to Coach Baldwin that her salary was too low when compared to male coaches at UNCC and that UNCC was discriminating against her because of her sex. Coach Baldwin told her that she could not get a raise immediately because they were in the middle of the budget year, and on January 11, 1993, Bartges filed a discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Office ("EEOC") alleging that UNCC discriminated against her because of her sex. On January 14, 1993 she wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Education alleging that UNCC's Athletic program discriminated against women's teams in violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX), 20 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq. Bartges told Baldwin that she was going to file these charges.

Later, Bartges lost her job as Assistant Women's Basketball Coach when that position was converted to a full-time position and she was not hired for the full-time slot. The reasons for the decision to make the second assistant coach's position a full-time position are disputed. According to Rose and Baldwin, they decided to make the second position a full-time position after Rose attended a conference for Directors of Metro-Conference athletic teams, the teams UNCC competes against, and learned that other women's basketball teams had two full-time coaches. Rose asserts that she decided to upgrade the part-time second assistant coach position to a full-time position in order to keep the women's program competitive. Rose and Baldwin maintain that although they discussed and agreed upon this matter in the Fall of 1992, they put off the job search until after the 1992-93 season in order to accommodate Baldwin's hectic schedule.

According to Bartges, Rose upgraded the position so that she could fire Bartges in retaliation for filing her sex discrimination claim. She believes that Rose and Baldwin never discussed upgrading the position until she filed her sex discrimination charge, and that is why Baldwin and Rose were not trying to fill the position in the Fall of 1992. Of course they were not looking for an applicant in the Fall of 1992 she asserts, they had no reason to look for an applicant yet, because they had not decided to fire Bartges in retaliation for filing her sex discrimination claim.

In any event, after the 1992-93 basketball season, Coach Baldwin began his search for a second full-time Assistant Women's Basketball Coach. Bartges applied for the position, but only after she was invited to do so by Rose and Baldwin. After reviewing over fifty applications, Coach Baldwin selected three candidates to be interviewed: Bartges, Ms. Tolonda Rose, and Ms. Joanne Boyle.

The candidates were interviewed by Baldwin, Judy Rose and Mark Colone, an Assistant Director of Athletics at UNCC. Following the interviews with these candidates, Coach Baldwin decided to employ Tolonda Rose as a full-time assistant women's basketball coach. According to Baldwin he selected Tolonda Rose (another woman) because she had three years of head coaching experience at Barber Scotia College; she had been a member of the women's basketball team for four years at UNCC and had graduated from UNCC; she understood the program and agreed with Baldwin's coaching philosophy; she was extremely enthusiastic about the opportunity to coach at her alma mater; she had good interpersonal skills; and she presented a good, professional image.

Judy Rose and Colone also recommended Tolonda Rose for the assistant coach position. According to Colone, going into the interview he was impressed by the good academic performance of the athletes Bartges worked with; but after the interview he had an...