Hooker v. Tufts University, Civ. A. No. 78-2871-N.

• Citation: 581 F. Supp. 98
• Decision Date: 30 September 1983
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 78-2871-N.
• Parties: D. Dawn HOOKER, Plaintiff, v. TUFTS UNIVERSITY, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Massachusetts

581 F. Supp. 98

D. Dawn HOOKER, Plaintiff, v. TUFTS UNIVERSITY, et al., Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 78-2871-N.

United States District Court, D. Massachusetts.

September 30, 1983.

Nancy Gertner, Silverglate, Gertner, Baker & Fine, Boston, Mass., for plaintiff.

Alan D. Rose, Danielle E. deBenedictis, Nutter, McClennen & Fish, Boston, Mass., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OF EVIDENTIARY DECISIONS

DAVID S. NELSON, District Judge.

The purpose of this memorandum is to record and to clarify the Court's position on various evidentiary rulings made during the course of the trial of this case in April and May of 1983. As the trial progressed, every effort was made to coordinate and to render consistent the necessarily multiple rulings. Substantial effort was also made prior to trial to anticipate objections to certain controverted evidence and to render in limine and conditional rulings which might assure an orderly presentation. Despite these attempts, innumerable objections founded on conjunctions of old arguments and new strategy intruded. At times, the sophistry tended to obscure any underlying understanding of my tentative rulings. Therefore, although much of the reasoning contained in this memorandum has already been communicated indirectly to the parties and is available on the record, in view of the complexities of the trial evidence I exercise my discretion to elaborate upon and hopefully to clarify these rulings.

Two fundamental theoretical questions have coursed through the evidentiary disputes in this case. The first is the issue of comparisons. A key aspect of any Title VII plaintiff's prima facie case is an attempted comparison of the treatment she received at the hands of a defendant with that received by others similarly situated. Given that this comparative information or data may well be necessary and appropriate for both parties to an employment discrimination action, it was necessary to determine what categories of employment decisions on the part of defendants were truly comparable and therefore relevant.

Each side attempted to foreclose this exploration by suggesting that certain decisions were per se incomparable. Specifically, plaintiff wished to exclude other tenure decisions made during the 1974-75 academic year on the grounds that only employment decisions in the allegedly unique physical education department itself were truly comparative. Similarly, defendant advocated exclusion of all non-tenure employment decisions made in the department during the relevant period, arguing that the special nature of the tenure decision renders it unique. As outlined below, the Court declined to accept either view.¹

The second theoretical question is analogous, and goes to the "background of discrimination" doctrine of Title VII law. Given that plaintiff is allowed to present certain general information about the treatment of women at the institution, in order to suggest a discriminatory climate bearing on defendants' intent, McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 36 L.Ed.2d 668 (1973); Sweeney v. Board of Trustees of Keene State College, 604 F.2d 106, 113 (1st Cir.1979), (Sweeney II), I must determine which categories or qualities of evidence serve this purpose and the appropriate latitude for defendants' rebuttal. I will exhaust these issues by addressing each major dispute in turn.

PEDARI DECISION

In December of 1974, as a result of Tufts' restructuring of its physical education program, a new position was created. Entitled Director: Programs in Physical Education/Dance, Athletics, and Recreation Intramurals (PEDARI), this was primarily an administrative position geared to coordinating the diverse aspects of physical education at Tufts. In principle, individual coordinators or chairs of the three key areas —Physical Education/Dance, Intercollegiate Athletics, and Recreation and Intramural Athletics—would report to the new Director.

Plaintiff suggested that similarities in the job descriptions for the PEDARI directorship and plaintiff's faculty position rendered Tufts' handling of this decision comparable within the meaning of Title VII and therefore admissible. Although not immediately persuaded on comparability, I found that the PEDARI decision certainly contained enough potential in this regard to warrant additional consideration. I thus overruled, at least temporarily, defendants' standing objection to the admissibility of any non-tenure employment decision. In so doing I reserved for later my consideration of the uniqueness of tenure in academia and the broader question of Title VII enforcement in the academic or professional context.

CARZO PROMOTION

Rocco Carzo, Tufts' football coach and a tenured professor in the physical education department, was recommended for promotion by the Tenure and Promotion Committee (T & P) in 1982. Plaintiff offered this employment decision as comparable to her tenure review. Given the PEDARI ruling, admissibility of the Carzo promotion file necessarily followed. This decision was directly connected to the tenure and promotion process at Tufts, subject to the criteria within that process, and might well be relevant to plaintiff's prima facie case. It is obviously a closer fit than the PEDARI directorship. Professor Carzo was a male colleague of plaintiff's, engaged in some similar although also some distinct activities within the department. He was a key member of the Tufts physical education program and thus his profile and Tufts' treatment of him are both potentially probative of defendants' treatment of Hooker.

1974-75 TENURE DECISIONS

Tufts' Tenure and Promotion Committee reviewed twelve other candidates for tenure during the 1974-75 academic year in addition to Dawn Hooker. Defendant sought to admit the results of these other decisions, along with certain references to the T & P's general approach and process that year.

These are perhaps the most obviously admissible of all. Tenure is a decision made university wide. A majority of the key actors involved in plaintiff's case were also involved in these other decisions. The so-called "standards," i.e. the level of rigor with which the tenure criteria were applied, although allegedly increasing from year to year would reasonably be expected to have remained constant within that year's decisions. Both male and female candidates were involved, and they met with varied fates. This is the heart of Tufts' defense, and rightly so. Plaintiff's central theory, that the physical education department was a species unto itself, is actually a rebuttal, albeit a creative and somewhat plausible one, of this core premise.

I find plaintiff's cited authority to the contrary unpersuasive. None of these cases mandate a general premise for exclusion of cross-departmental comparisons. For example in Lamphere v. Brown, 685 F.2d 743 (1st Cir.1982), where the issue was not tenure but salary this Circuit declined to consider cross-departmental comparisons. However, this was on the basis of ample testimony that departments at Brown were completely autonomous in salary setting, and that therefore no valid university-wide comparisons could be drawn. Plaintiff here argues that as departmental recommendations carry considerable weight in Tufts' tenure review process, and as some testimony suggests that the degree of rigor for applying the tenure criteria may vary somewhat from department to department, this case is identical. I disagree. Tenure at Tufts is purportedly based on a university-wide standard. The Tenure and Promotion Committee itself draws these comparisons between candidates. I therefore find that the Court may validly consider making these comparisons as well.

TENURE AND PROMOTION DECISIONS FOR OTHER YEARS

From the perspective of comparability these decisions obviously have attenuated value. The composition of the T & P changes from year to year. Moreover, it has been suggested that the level of rigor in applying the criteria has risen steadily. However, their perhaps minimal probative value as direct evidence of discriminatory motive need not foreclose their potential value as background or indirect inference of intent. (see below) Thus I initially excluded this evidence, but was willing to entertain it if it were presented with proper foundation and in a concise format.

The approach to these four decisions is a simple one. For purposes of threshold admissability, each party received the benefit of the doubt. Plaintiff was allowed to present the PEDARI position and Mr. Carzo's promotion as decisions implicating candidates who were similarly situated and defendants were allowed to present the other tenure decisions that year. This is in keeping with the parties' respective theories of the case and allowed me to reserve my final judgment on comparability pending the conclusion of the evidence. As to the quality of the evidence available, each side was free to refer to the complete files of these decisions, in order to attempt to flesh out the appropriate inferences of motive in each case. That is to say, once the files were admitted, the parties were free to litigate each of these 11 other tenure cases, the Carzo promotion and the PEDARI matter if they so chose.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION REPORTS

There can be no doubt as to the admissibility of these employment reports to establish a climate of discrimination. Sweeney v. Board of Trustees of Keene State College, 569 F.2d 169 (1st Cir.1978), vacated 439 U.S. 24, 99 S.Ct. 295, 58 L.Ed.2d 216 (1978), reaff'd 604 F.2d 106, 113 (1979). This ruling was established early in response to defendants' First Motion in Limine. The difficulty arose when plaintiff herself attempted to impeach one report's treatment of coach/lecturer positions. While the characterization and actual implementation of coach/lecturer positions may well be relevant to plaintiff's claim, the manner in which Tufts reported these positions to the EEOC is at best collateral. To the...