arges of sexual harassment against a
Belmont administrator. A court subsequently awarded them nearly a
million dollars in compensatory and punitive damages.

So many sex discrimination cases were initiated by Belmont staff that
the new administration created an entire unit to investigate and put
out fires.

Diana applied for unemployment compensation which the Belmont
administration opposed on the grounds that she was discharged for
dishonesty. At the State Employment Service hearing, Diana submitted
the Judge's Order and the LOD from the Attorney General.

Although the entire upper administrative wing of the personnel
department appeared to testify against her, the Employment Service
hearing officer decided that she had been unfairly terminated. She
drew unemployment checks for only a few weeks. They enabled her to get
by until plans for self-employment could be formulated. Continuing in
her teaching career was out--no references would be forthcoming from
her last employer. She started a small delivery business from her home
and with that, her friends and Social Security, she managed all right.

Chapter 41

Igor O'Toole put his scrapbook aside, then stood up and stretched.
Back at his work bench, preserving, repairing and reconstructing the
tomes of human accomplishments, mistakes and history, he ruminated on
how the more things change, the more they remain the same.

The structure of all but the most recently birthed colleges and
universities is rigid, he observed to the roll of transparent tape he
was using to repair still another torn page. Their medieval trappings,
so obvious at historic functions, may appear invisible in other facets
of existence. None the less, these trappings still exist.

Patterned much like the society of monks, higher educational
administrations still follow a monolithic, generally white
male-dominated path even though modern times have seen the enrollment
of women students, the hiring of women faculty and even women in
central administrative posts. But it's a facade. The real discipline,
established centuries ago, is maintained and furiously guarded.

For a while, the newer laws of the seventies relating to affirmative
action suggested that there would be a break in the male bastion. Time
proved, however, that sex discrimination and sexual harassment laws
were never well enforced and were being slowly destroyed by the Supreme
Court.

Continuing his mentation, Igor