Word: topoles
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...March 1993 Lisa finally told another English professor about the affair; encouraged by assistant ombudsman Gulbun O'Connor, Topol charged Woodfield with sexual harassment. A university ethics committee supported her allegation that Woodfield had abused his academic power. The embattled professor resigned last April, after admitting that he once slept with Topol and engaged in "unethical conduct," though he has denied the other details of their affair...
...Topol has since taken her case even further, in a gesture that is rattling the teeth of campus administrators everywhere. Topol had heard rumors that Woodfield had been in trouble before, and she began asking questions. Before coming to Penn, she learned, he had taught at Bates College in Maine, where some students had also accused him of harassment, but he was allowed to leave quietly in 1991, with the recommendations that helped him land the Penn...
...Topol has since filed civil suits not only against Woodfield and Penn but against Bates as well for failing to warn Penn of Woodfield's record. Having supported her before, Penn has reversed course: in a pretrial memorandum filed in February, Penn charges that the affair "grew out of her strong sexual attraction to and romantic feelings for Woodfield." Penn has asked for her diary to prove her consent; meanwhile, says Topol's lawyer, Alice Ballard, Bates is trying to get records from her psychotherapist...
...midst of this furor, the Penn faculty executive committee has called for tougher rules against faculty-student romances; it wants to amend the policy that calls such relationships "unethical" so that it would prohibit professors from dating students under their supervision. For her part, Topol doubts this will do any good. "I can't imagine how any student would come forward after seeing what Penn has done to me," she says. "Penn's response has done nothing but make the wounds deeper and more painful...
...police state. But the universities that have tackled this issue are actually engaged in a practical--rather than an ideological--enterprise: they are trying to prevent lawsuits. In fact, in this era of heightened sensitivity, the legal pressures are coming from all sides. Even as Penn wrestles with the Topol case, another Penn professor, economist David Cass, is charging that the university has sexually harassed him by asking him about his relationship with a former student and then denying him a post to head the department's graduate program. Last week Cass was busy circulating a petition...