Dive Brief:
- University of Massachusetts Dartmouth is giving up on appealing rulings in a 10-year-old faculty discrimination case that has cost the school almost $1.2 million.
- Lulu Sun, a faculty member in the English department, formally complained to the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination in 2004 and 2006 that UMass Dartmouth didn’t promote her to full professor because of her gender and race.
- She won her case in 2011, when the university was ordered to make her a full professor. When the school appealed and lost, a second decision handed down in May cost the school an additional $500,000 in legal fees and $300,000 in interest and penalties, The Herald News reported.
Dive Insight:
Even $1.2 million later, the university’s web site still lists Sun as an associate professor. In the 2011 commission ruling, UMass Dartmouth was ordered pay her about $155,000 in back pay-- the difference between her salary and what she would have received with the promotion-- and $200,000 for emotional distress, in addition to a $10,000 civil penalty. The commission’s ruling stated that not only was Sun passed over for promotion while others with comparable qualifications were moved up, but she was also the victim of retaliation from administrators because she didn’t withdraw her request for promotion and she filed the discrimination complaint. Sun joined the university in 1994, starting as an assistant professor, stepping up to assistant professor after three years, then receiving tenure.