Why I Can't Support the Appointment of Catherine Spear to UC's Systemwide Office of Civil Rights

Published March 18, 2024

Mar 18, 2024

USC Vice President of Equity, Equal Opportunity and Title IX Catherine Spear from university website from 2020 (Photo by Michael Spear).

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March 18, 2024

Letter to President Michael V. Drake, M.D., University of California

RE: Appointment of Catherine Spear to UC's Systemwide Office of Civil Rights

Dear President Drake,

I read with both alarm, and some relief your announcement appointing Catherine Spear to lead the University of California’s Systemwide Office of Civil Rights dated March 14, 2024. Alarm that this person is being elevated, but also relieved that she will no longer be the University of Southern California’s Vice President of Equity, Equal Opportunity and Title IX. Spear’s tenure at USC has seen a continuation of secrecy and mistrust towards the campus community, including a critical failure to disclose any data to date that would allow an independent observer to reach a clear conclusion despite this being explicitly required by USC’s resolution agreement regarding Dr. George Tyndall (OCR Docket No. 09-18-6901).

Section VIII B. is unequivocal, USC is supposed to while the Resolution Agreement “is in effect,” which it is, have “the Title IX Coordinator “provide a written report to the President, Provost, and Chairman of the Board of Trustees regarding the status of the implementation of the plan, including the actions taken an assessment of their effectiveness as well as proposals for the next academic year.” Most importantly, USC is supposed to “provide similar information to the University community in an annual letter to the community.” This hasn’t happened once since the Agreement was signed on February 21, 2020.

As Daily Trojan journalist Christina Chkarboul noted in covering this appointment, that Spear’s supervisor Senior Vice President for Human Resources Felicia Washington now promises transparency, writing about interviewing Washington: Though she spared details: “Though she spared details, Washington said EEO-TIX plans to publish a report to the USC community in the near future to provide a glance into its work and promote transparency.” Where has it been for the last four years? Washington further says, “We are looking forward to providing the community with information and there’s a part of me that wants to say, ‘Stay tuned,’ because I think it will be exciting,” but where was that excitement in the aftermath of a the largest sexual abuse settlement in higher education history?

My experience with both Spear and Washington is that after the ink was dried, they failed to effectively supervise the implementation of the Resolution Agreement consistently and instead while keeping all information secret, failed to protect the USC community. The only numbers disclosed relating to the topic of sexual violence at USC, under the Clery Act show little improvement since their arrival despite multiple blowouts including most notably a scandal over the failure to issue timely warnings to the USC community in October 2021 after drug-facilitated sexual assaults occurred on Fraternity Row.

USC President Carol Folt would admit to a “troubling delay” and after canceling an in-person meeting with students instead hosted a Zoom “town hall” with Washington, Spear and Senior Vice President and General Counsel Beong-Soo Kim in which a story was presented that the campus director of Relationship and Sexual Violence Prevention Services had never alerted Spear as Title IX coordinator to the reports, but instead went to 4 other USC offices. Watching this in my office at the time inside USC’s administration building, this explanation seemed flimsy at best. I still do not believe that Catherine Spear was not informed of these drugging’s by Dr. Brenda Ingram, who headed the RSVP office and that her omission from those informed was deliberate and designed to protect her reputation.

I have heard allegations that Ingram was later removed for objecting to lapses in the Title IX process at USC and has subsequently received a financial settlement in exchange for her silence. Separately, multiple employees have come forward to allege that the datasets behind this show what we all know as a community, that not only are there delays in USC’s Title IX process, but that this is used by design to end complaints. USC’s Title IX process is supposed to be separate from its legal interest, that’s the first part of the Resolution Agreement, they aren’t supposed to “report, either directly or indirectly, to the General Counsel” for this reason. After posting it online, USC now conceals the Zoom recording.

Even before Spear’s arrival in August 2020, I was concerned that Washington was not sincere in her desire to make USC change in the right way, but instead sought to do so in an incomplete way. USC hired Moira Mulroney to head up its compliance efforts, an apparent friend of Washington’s who did not even live in the State of California, instead residing in Pennsylvania. For asking these questions, Washington directed Mulroney and a VP of Employee Relations, Louis Gutierrez to intimidate me in three Zoom meetings in June and July of 2021 and in a write-up for asking questions about the Agreement, specifically changes to our Workday performance evaluations to allow us to report. After I complained about this in August 2021 in writing to Spear she refused to protect me from retaliation. I attempted to assist Spear in making sure that the Resolution Agreement was implemented, and assisted her office with campus directory updates despite not being protected from retaliation. In September 2021, I discovered that USC had failed to send out its annual Title IX Notice. After confronting Washington and Spear about this, they finally took action sending the required Notice to the University Community.

I noticed other issues with the Agreement, which almost entirely lets off the administrators responsible for failing to stop George Tyndall. So I attempted to use the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights complaint process to protect myself from retaliation and secure the full implementation of that agreement. OCR would decline to intervene in my case while at the same time turning around and holding USC accountable for failing to implement other parts of the Agreement in January 2022.

USC would fail to make other changes, including to its websites to even update the name of its Title IX Office from the Office of Equity and Diversity to EEO-TIX, and so with nominal support from Catherine Spear, I would work to correct numerous USC web pages referencing this unit. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights would conclude another Resolution Agreement with USC over its medical enterprise, Keck Medicine of USC, to address exactly these lapses in its communications infrastructure. I wasn’t surprised, and I would be confronted by USC General Counsel Beong-Soo Kim in the presence of Chief Compliance Officer Stacy Giwa for having taken these actions at an event in May 2022 at The Lab Gastropub on Figueroa Street.

In July 2022, I reported further retaliation from my supervisor, the Vice Provost for Academic Operations, Dr. Mark Todd to USC’s EEO-TIX office. Instead of protecting me though, USC moved to terminate me under false pretenses for having reported retaliation, for having expressed similar concerns about Accessibility Services, and for the totality of my actions to hold USC accountable for the Resolution Agreement that it signed with the force of law. People often tell me that there are failures everywhere, but USC they are an extreme version. In failing to disclose George Tyndall despite having signed an OCR Resolution Agreement in January 2018 requiring them to do so, USC failed its community.

The ongoing delays in USC’s EEO-TIX process may not be a complete aberration, but that doesn’t make them okay, nor do I believe that Spear always acts consistently in conducting investigations. After being verbally threatened by USC’s Vice President of Professionalism and Ethics Michael Blanton, “your week is about to get worse, what happened with your girlfriend, have a break up?” USC deliberately and intentionally used a Title IX complaint against me from 3 years earlier that had been fully resolved as literal blackmail in an attempt to silence me and keep me from speaking out. Spear’s investigation condoned this, with her shamefully overruling her own investigator Valerie Newcomb from including the allegation.

Newcomb would present accurate allegations on October 25, 2022 and then withdraw them at Spear’s direction two days later. After being terminated on August 22, 2022, Spear wouldn’t issue a Notice of Investigation until November 14, 2022 and after I objected to this power play, she nominally recused herself in favor of Dr. Erroll Southers, it’s ASVP of Safety and Risk Assurance, and outside counsel Rebecca Spear to investigate. After two interviews, and providing all of my documents, I wouldn’t receive any update at all for more than 2 months before USC again refused to produce accurate allegations reflecting that Title IX retaliation had occurred.

Despite refusing herself, USC’s Senior Vice President of Administration in considering my appeal again consulted with Spear, negating her prior recusal, telling me in writing that she was consulted in May 2023. Spear’s colleagues at OCR would similarly protect her, even explicitly telling me that this is what they were doing. OCR was not alerted by EEO-TIX to my case, and again this all suggests that OCR is not really monitoring USC, and that they can do whatever they want, including as I would soon discover in December 2023, when a former prospective student came forward with a Notice of Investigation documenting a sexual misconduct complaint that had taken more than 2 plus years to be addressed by USC.

After I reported on this case, USC declined to comment, and then 3 counselors from the RSVP center came forward to allege that not only had USC paid off its former Director to leave her job, but that this case, which involved a major public figure, was far from unusual. At best, they could tell me that perhaps 0%-5% of sexual misconduct complaints at USC result in any formal sanction. Without having any information about USC’s data this is hard to know, but while it may be desirable to resolve cases with alternative processes, the numbers at USC are hard to deny.

Sexual violence at USC hasn’t been reduced by Catherine Spear and Felicia Washington despite claims that at USC the rate is 1 in 3 women compared to a national average of 1 in 4 are assaulted during their time at the institution. Without USC itself releasing any data on its EEO-TIX process separate from Clery Act requirements, it’s hard to know, or assess where USC is coming up short. Before being terminated, I alerted Catherine Spear to the missing annual letters and she confirmed receipt and awareness of the issues. If Catherine is the expert, how is she failing so badly at transparency and why? Given these issues, I must oppose this appointment.

The University of California can do better than Catherine Spear. When I heard that it was Spear at Stanford who oversaw the infamous Brock Turner and Chanel Miller case, I was concerned, but everything that’s followed since has only confirmed that Catherine Spear has taken the wrong lessons from that incident. Washington and Spear seem to literally think that they can lie to the entire USC community about meeting their legal obligations despite clearly failing the test. My polite suggestion is that UC conduct due diligence and see for itself, was Catherine Spear remotely effective in implementing the Resolution Agreement and curbing sexual violence at USC, and if she has not, then rescind the job offer. So while I’m happy to see her gone, giving her the top post at UC seems not only shortsighted, but dangerous to the UC community. Where is the accountability?

I get that Catherine views me as a threat, but what threat did that prospective student pose in reporting that she was raped, and why has her investigation taken more than years to get to a Live Hearing, and only after I publicly wrote about it with case dates. My hope is that by sharing this letter publicly, more people will come forward about their experiences with Catherine Spear, at Stanford, at the University of Virginia, and at USC.

Best,

Zach

Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

Link: Catherine Spear appointed to lead UC's Systemwide Office of Civil Rights (SOCR)

Link: OCR RA George Tyndall February 2020

Link: EEO-TIX announces new leader

Link: USC Annual Security Report

Link: USC admits to ‘troubling delay’ in warning about fraternity drugging, sex assault reports

Link: USC cancels joint town hall with student groups

Link: Important Title IX and OCR Resolution Agreement Updates

Link: Voluntary Resolution Agreement Between the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights and the University of Southern California

Link: Title IX: Falling short at 50