Last July, Asian American studies Lecturer Yuko Iwamoto Franklin said she received a "Welcome Back" letter for the fall semester 1994 from the department. As a routine, she called the office in August to find out her class assignment schedule. She said the secretary told her over the phone she was not reappointed to teach any classes and would not be coming back to school. The reason, she said, her position was terminated.
Franklin, who had lectured since spring 1991, said she was "squeezed out" from the department, not because of the budget cuts or her job performance, but because of the office's ethnic politics.
Last September, after she found herself jobless, Franklin filed a formal grievance against the university, claiming two faculty members in the department discriminated against her.
Franklin charged that Marlon Hom, the department chair, and Lorraine Dong, his wife and a full-time associate professor on a tenure track, wanted to "get rid of" her from the department because they disagreed with her views on interracial relationships and because they did not like the fact that Franklin is a Japanese native, married to a white man.
According to Franklin, about 30 Japanese-American community leaders and students who took Franklin's class wrote letters to the university, asking to reinstate her.
Pat Bartscher, head of University Counsel, could not comment on the grievance because the case is still pending. But she said after the first level of meetings, the university sees no merit in Franklin's charges.
Ann Robertson, a faculty rights advisor for the California Faculty Association which is handling the case for Franklin, said, "The case is not resolved at this moment."
She said that the grievance is about to be discussed at the final level of meetings and that the teachers' union is still conducting its independent investigation of the case.
At the end, if no resolution is reached with the university, the school and CFA will go to a formal arbitration (a campus version of a trial-like process to settle disputes), Robertson added. Judges for the arbitration will be selected by representatives from both parties.
Charges of discrimination emerged
According to Franklin's grievance, a pattern of discrimination against her started more than two years ago in early 1992 when Franklin and three other teachers -- including Dong -- were asked to develop a new course: Asian American Women.
Although Dong was originally assigned to teach this class, Franklin guest-lectured for Dong six times without pay.
After Franklin lectured on a topic of interracial relationships, a controversial subject in ethnic studies today, Dong disagreed with her views, she said.
"Dong questioned my 'ethnic politics' and told me, 'Look, we've spent a lot of time building this department to make it a group of apples, and we don't want any oranges.'"
Franklin added, "She (Dong) told me that my idea on interracial relationships is not ideal in the department."
Franklin said that she supports interracial relationships and that an individual should have a right to choose whomever she or he wants to have a relationship with.
"You can't stop somebody from falling in love, you know," she said. "My focus is how to make it (an interracial relationship) work, how to respect each other."
"I realized later that in this department, it's more like ethnocentric," Franklin said. "They promote ethnicity. So that anybody, especially if you have anything to do with whites, they treat you like their enemy."
Franklin met with the three faculty members, including Dong, who developed the course to clarify this issue, but actually the meeting turned nasty, she said.
"In the meeting, she (Dong) said to me, 'your teaching materials are too white,'" Franklin said. The books Franklin was using for her class were written by Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese Americans.
"Suddenly, I felt like the enemy," Franklin said.
The claim of a "falsified" evaluation
Three months after the argument with Dong, Franklin received her yearly teaching evaluation for her regular class, Japanese American Personality. The form was written and signed by Hom, then head of the department's hiring and promotion committee.
Hom wrote on the form, "Excellent numerical evaluation for AAS 335 (Japanese American Personality); some written comments/suggestions from students in regards to her perspective on race relations."
Franklin's students gave her an excellent review, but she was puzzled by Hom's comment about race relations since she did not remember her students expressing such remarks in the class. She also wondered if the comment had any negative connotation.
So Franklin checked her personnel file and found out that none of her students wrote anything about race relations.
"I was shocked," Franklin said. "Hom's evaluation was completely false."
She claimed Hom "falsified" the form by adding the comment after he was informed by Dong, who disagreed with her views on interracial relations.
Copies of the original student evaluations obtained by the Golden Gater showed that none of the students mentioned race relations.
Over a period of two months, the Golden Gater tried to obtain Hom and Dong's side of the story by calling and visiting their offices many times in order to provide fair and balanced coverage. But Hom and Dong never reached the paper for comments.
The initial complaint was filed
On March 18, 1993, Franklin filed an initial departmental complaint -- not the formal grievance -- against the department, accusing Hom and Dong of nepotism and discrimination.
According to Franklin, after she filed the complaint, she met with Bartscher, the university's legal consultant, and Phil McGee, Dean of the College of Ethnic Studies, to ask them to help resolve the issues.
She said that Bartscher asked McGee to "clean up the house" because Hom was about to become the new chair of the Asian American studies department in September 1993 and because Dong was on probation to become a full-time professor.
"He (McGee) himself checked the student evaluation and comments, and then validated what I was claiming," Franklin said. McGee told Franklin he would ask Hom about the evaluation.
Despite the promise by McGee, she said, "I waited, but nothing happened."
McGee was not able to comment on the grievance because it is still under investigation and because it involves personnel matters.
George Woo, then chair of the department, told Franklin to "drop the complaint" at an "off-the-record" meeting, she recalled.
Franklin said although she was "scared," she did not drop the complaint, hoping the problems would be solved.
Franklin being "squeezed out"
After Franklin filed the complaint, she was labeled as a "trouble maker" and an "outsider" in the department, and the process of being "squeezed out" began, she said.
Franklin, who earned her Ph.D. in psychology in 1992, said she was "ignored" by the department every time she applied for other opening classes besides her Japanese American Personality course. The open classes went to less qualified candidates, she added.
Franklin said, in January 1994, she was not given any opportunity to apply for the open course, Japanese Americans in the U.S., because she was not notified about it.
The chair did not post the position in the department or notify her about it, and that was a violation of the agreement with the teachers' union and of the faculty manual, she added.
Franklin said the position went to someone who had "little teaching experience and community involvement."
In August 1994, after Franklin, who had not missed any classes and had been consistently given excellent evaluations by students, discovered that she was finally "squeezed out," she learned her old class, Japanese American Personality, went to someone else.
Franklin, who had been paid about $580 a month during her career, said she believes that the decision to terminate her position was because of the discrimination against her, not because of budget cuts or economic reasons.
Although she agreed that several lecturers were let go during the last fall semester and that some classes were canceled, she said there were a total of 47 courses taught in the semester. And that is the exact same number of classes offered in the previous semester, she added.
Four classes were canceled, but four new courses were created.
Also the department hired a new lecturer for the semester, and new courses were given to two junior lecturers who were less qualified, she said.
With no more classes to teach, Franklin, believing the complaint was not properly investigated, filed a formal grievance against the university last September, asking to be reinstated to the department with full back wages.
Franklin, hoping to come back to school to teach again, said, "I would promote ethnicity, but not necessarily ethnocentricity."