Reactions to UR’s $9.4M settlement (Campus Times)
Extract:
Ann Olivarius, one of the lawyers for the complainants, called the settlement a triumph.
“You don’t go around paying $9.4 million if there isn’t a problem you want to solve and you would [otherwise] be on the hook for a lot more than that,” she said. “They spent a lot of money, when all we wanted to do was improve the campus and make it safer for students.”
Responding to a Campus Times inquiry, a University spokesperson pointed to a list of policy changes made in the wake of or in response to the scandal. Some of the changes include a revision to misconduct reporting documents and new mandatory bias training for faculty. The Office of Equity and Inclusion was also created in response to the Jaeger scandal.
Olivarius also praised the complainants for their actions.
“There are the people who made the University of Rochester a great institution,” she said. “They were the talent, gift, and genius of the University of Rochester. This is what they did for UR. They only wanted to improve the institution.”
Olivarius also noted that “thank you” payments of money from the settlement were sent to around 20 people who had been affected by Jaeger’s alleged sexual harassment.
“I didn’t go into this whole thing as a crusader,” Aslin said. “I wasn’t a firebrand looking for problems that I could solve. I was simply confronted with what I felt was an intolerable situation and I was responding to it as best I could.”