U.S. dismisses WNC sex complaint

A sexual harassment complaint filed against Western Nevada College was dismissed by the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights on Monday. However, one regent is calling on the college to be more accountable.

"(The Office for Civil Rights) has reviewed the college's decision on the internal grievance, as well as the evidence which was considered by the college in support of the determination. OCR's review indicates that the college's actions in regard to the grievance were consistent with OCR's investigative and legal standards. Therefore, in accordance with our complaint resolution procedures, we are deferring to the decision reached by the college and will not pursue this allegation further," says the letter, signed by Monique Malson, deputy chief attorney for the Office for Civil Rights.

Mark Ghan, WNC's human resources vice president and legal counsel, said he was happy with the determination.

"It's good news," he said. "We believed we conducted a thorough review, and I'm pleased the Department of Education deferred to our determination."

Regent Ron Knecht said he was relieved to hear that the complaint had been dismissed, but he still is calling on his fellow regents in the Nevada System of Higher Education to join him in requesting increased transparency from Western Nevada College.

The complaint was filed by WNC student Karen Royce in December, alleging that Human Sexuality professor Tom Kubistant had crossed boundaries in teaching the class, in which he assigned students to write about their personal sexual activity in journals and directed them to masturbate and document their experience.

Ghan responded that Kubistant did not closely read the students' journals and that while masturbation may have been a suggestion, it was not an assignment.

Instructors at other colleges reviewed the curriculum at the request of the Nevada Appeal and said they believed it crossed a line of propriety for the classroom.

An independent investigator hired by the college determined that Royce's complaint was unfounded.

In an email that Knecht sent to members of the Board of Regents and representatives of the college, he criticized the administration for the manner in which they handled the process.

"It strongly appears that (Western Nevada College) and (Nevada System of Higher Education) are so hunkered down in anticipation of litigation due to a complaint by a female student that they have abandoned academic openness, accountability and duty to our students, families and communities," he wrote in the email. "The response of WNC has been very disappointing to them and to me in that it has studiously failed to address in any way these concerns. Instead of being open and accountable - as academic and all public institutions should be - WNC and NSHE have been as closed and non-responsive to these concerns of the public as they could be."

Knecht said he had read the course description and syllabus, and, from that, would not have concluded that students would be asked to share personal information or engage in certain sexual activity.

"The better response would be to post online and timely for each course and section a complete syllabus, assignments and other hand-out materials, etc. so that we are appropriately open and accountable to students, their families and the public," he wrote. "That is, we need to do our duty to all the folks that pay for higher education via Nevada taxes, fees and tuition and to whom we owe openness and accountability."

Knecht pointed out that the class fulfills a basic core requirement at the college and argues that it should be held to a strict academic standard.

"It is inappropriate to mix academic instruction with counseling or therapeutic practice - which is exactly what such assignments, in their essence, tend to do," he wrote. "Another reason to maintain clear separation is that therapy and counseling activities may well dilute or distort the instructional role that is central to the mission of a college such as WNC."

He asked that the topic be added to the agenda for the Board of Regents meeting on March 1-2 for further discussion.

"I'm sure you appreciate, as I do, the complexity of this issue and the competing or even conflicting interests involved," Knecht wrote. "In view of them, it would be appropriate to have staff and the institutions summarize and describe their current practices and efforts to promote openness and accountability - and the problems and limitations that they encounter or anticipate in doing so. That will give us a good starting point from which to move forward."

Royce could not be reached for comment.