THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 19, 1996 TAG: 9605190050
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY LENGTH: Long : 103 lines
Carol S. O'Dell, a former Elizabeth City State University math professor whose contract was not renewed after she called former Chancellor Jimmy R. Jenkins Jr. a ``racist,'' has been ordered reinstated by the University of North Carolina board of governors.
But O'Dell's return to the historically black campus should be ``a special two-year probationary appointment outside the normal tenure track,'' said Lois G. Britt, head of the UNC Committee on Personnel and Tenure.
``I'm not sure about that,'' O'Dell, who is white, said Saturday. ``It seems to me that I'd be put into a kind of non-tenured academic purgatory for two years.''
The UNC personnel committee, with the endorsement of the board of governors, directed Elizabeth City State's interim chancellor, Mickey Burnim, to rehire O'Dell in time for the fall semester.
``She will be evaluated for reappointment during the fall semester of 1997 and given notice of a decision about reappointment by Dec. 30, 1997,'' said the personnel committee recommendations.
O'Dell has requested a delay in implementing the board's decision so that she can honor her contract for the coming year at Chowan College. Now head of the math department there, she joined the Chowan faculty after her contract at ECSU was not renewed in 1994.
G. Irvin Aldridge, a Dare County attorney who serves on the board of governors, said the board endorsed the personnel committee's recommendation for O'Dell's reinstatement at a May 10 meeting in Chapel Hill.
Jenkins resigned unexpectedly last Aug. 3 and took his present job as an ECSU biology professor.
In a six-page report, the personnel committee criticized just about everyone involved in the events preceding the decision not to renew O'Dell's contract.
``Specifically we find that Dr. O'Dell was discriminated against on the basis of race and sex and the decision not to reappoint Dr. O'Dell was tainted by personal malice,'' the report said.
But the report didn't spare O'Dell, either.
``Dr. O'Dell quickly manifested a capacity for stridence, intemperance and disrespect in pursuing legitimate concerns as well as in challenging peripheral matters that did not appear to warrant her contextually excessive complaints,'' the report stated.
The troubles started, the report continued, when O'Dell objected to office space assigned to her by Dr. Sohindar Sachdev, chairman of the ECSU department of mathematics.
O'Dell said Sachdev put her in an ``office'' consisting of a table behind a soft-drink machine while less senior members of the department had better working quarters.
``This controversy about office space constituted a medium early on for displaying the capacity of both Dr. O'Dell and her chairman (Sachdev) for negative interpersonal exchanges. . . Dr. Sachdev developed and displayed an attitude of personal malice toward a person who seemed at times intent on missing no opportunity to challenge and irritate him. . . '' said the report.
Finally, in 1993, O'Dell was given shared office space with Jing Yuan Zhang, a male faculty colleague, the report said. O'Dell at the time said she outranked Zhang.
``Dr. O'Dell escalated this dispute beyond a simple grievance about allocation of institutional resources by asserting that Dr. Sachdev was motivated by considerations of sex and ethnicity in his decision-making. Dr. O'Dell is a white female; Zhang and Sachdev are Asian males.'' said the report.
Then the committee ruled:
``The only reasonable conclusion, based on the whole body of evidence, is that Dr. O'Dell was the victim of discriminatory motives when Dr. Zhang was preferred over Dr. O'Dell in the assignment of office space. The faculty hearing committee, the Chancellor and the Board of Trustees all clearly erred when they concluded otherwise,'' said the report.
It continues: ``What makes resolution of this problem so difficult is that both sides contributed inappropriately to an ever-worsening situation. ``The crux of the problem often seemed to involve profound differences about the nature and extent of change. . . in educational philosophy, change in expectations about student accomplishment; change in relationships toward women; change in mundane, day-to-day prerogatives of faculty members.
``On the one hand, Dr. Sachdev appeared to be impervious to and resentful of any suggestions from Dr. O'Dell. . . Dr. O'Dell, on the other hand, advocated an overly broad interpretation of the concept of `academic freedom,' failing in the process to acknowledge needs for normalcy and consistency as well as the authority of her supervisors. . . to insist on certain collective and uniform standards and practices.''
O'Dell's dispute with then-Chancellor Jenkins started when he said at a faculty gathering that new professors who didn't like ECSU would get help in finding new jobs.
O'Dell interpreted the remark as a ``racist'' comment directed at whites and particularly white women. Jenkins later apologized and said he had been misunderstood.
But within months, O'Dell's contract was not renewed and another white female professor, Dr. Carol Kerr, also left the ECSU campus. O'Dell helped Kerr prepare a legal protest charging discrimination and Kerr was subsequently ordered reinstated.
By then Kerr, an education instructor, had found a better job in Las Vegas, Nev.
And O'Dell had carried her grievances not only to Chapel Hill but to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. by CNB