SAN BERNARDINO - Say you're a Cal State San Bernardino student and you think one of your professors is sexist. He's made a few comments in class and seems to be tougher on the women than he is on men.

So, you decide to file a discrimination complaint.

It sounds simple.

But contrary to its title, the Discrimination Complaint Form isn't meant to handle most discrimination complaints only discrimination outside the classroom.

OK. This was inside the classroom.

Try academic grievances.

Wrong again. Unless you have a specific grade or academic decision to contest, it's not an academic complaint.

Try academic personnel.

Bingo. If a teacher says or does something inappropriate but grades fairly, that office handles the complaint.

This complex process might be the reason so few complaints are filed each year. So Professor Elsa Valdez and Associate Professor Mary Texeira are pushing the university to create a clearinghouse to oversee and keep statistics on all diversity-related complaints.

"It's not like it's going to resolve everything, but it's a start,' Valdez said. "At least you'd have a process in place.'

On top of the complaint process, the university also has a policy addressing intolerance and bias-motivated harassment. But the policy doesn't specify to whom a student should report harassment.

Faculty and staff have an entirely different process. They generally file complaints through their unions. But some things, like intimidation, might be handled though Academic Affairs or Academic Personnel.

To an outsider and many insiders the process is highly nuanced. Students can be directed to several different places before finding the proper place to complain.

"It's a wild-goose chase, and most people don't have the time or energy to pursue it,' Valdez said.

The current maze keeps students silent, Valdez and Texeira said.

"The average student doesn't know what to do,' Texeira said. "It's all kind of a mystery.'

Even Tom Rivera, who handles academic complaints, said he had "no idea how discrimination or harassment is handled.'

"I just know about the academic area,' he said.

Part of Craig Henderson's job at the university is to help direct students with complaints to the right place.

"If anyone in the university, students especially, thinks something has gone wrong, they should be encouraged to ask people until they find someone who will help them,' Henderson said. "I guarantee there is a process in the university no matter how hard to find to deal with it.''

The process

Once the proper office and process are established, the burden of proof is on the student making the complaint. Allegations and complaints without proof won't make it to a formal hearing.

But often there isn't hard evidence.

"It's just your word against theirs,' Valdez said, "and how are you going to prove that?'

In both academic and non-academic complaints by students, the informal process has two steps: talking to the offending person and, if that doesn't help, meeting with that person, his or her boss and the next-level supervisor.

In the formal process, both parties present documentation for panel review. An academic panel has three tenured professors and two students. Non-academic panels also include staff members and administrators.

If the panel decides the grievance warrants a hearing, both parties present their arguments and the panel makes a ruling.

"It takes a long time,' Rivera said, adding that coordinating schedules is sometimes difficult.

The panel's decision can be appealed to the campus president.

Only a handful of complaints make it to the formal process each year, Rivera and Henderson said. No one tracks how many complaints involve accusations of discrimination.

If a professor is found to have given a student a grade that is too low, for example, the university doesn't note why the low grade was given. Racism, sexism, personal dislike, bad day it doesn't matter.

"The end result is what counts,' Henderson said.

Some say the complaint procedures favor the university.

"It's not weighted to take care of complaints,' Cross Cultural Center coordinator John Futch said. "It's weighted to protect.'

Even when the process works, many say it takes too long.

Alumna Dee Ortega, 53, wanted to see people of color represented in the theater department. When she attended Cal State San Bernardino, she said, only one or two plays presented each year offered a Latino focus. Filing a complaint, she said, was confusing and slow.

"I was given a lot of runaround,' Ortega said.

Eventually, she took her concerns directly to campus President Al Karnig.

"He was responsive to my problems and did show concern and did do something about it,' Ortega said. "But I had to go through the flawed process to get there.'

But, Ortega said, there is now a Latino theater class and plays are more diverse.

"I had to go through an awful lot to get there that's the problem,' Ortega said. "I had to fight. It should not have taken the whole year.''

Possible solution

To speed and smooth the process, some on campus suggest creating an independent office to oversee all diversity and discrimination-related complaints. They say it would simplify the process and allow the school to keep statistics on diversity concerns. Statistics could show trends and point out problems.

"We have a right to know,' Texeira said. "Students have a right to know. I don't have any data. That's the frustrating thing. We don't need names. We don't want to embarrass anyone.'

This proposed discrimination office could take the form of an ombudsman who, according to the United States Ombudsman Association, is an independent, impartial and credible person who receives and investigates complaints.

"There is an ombudsman system,' Karnig said. "In each one of our divisions and colleges there are individuals who serve as the contact to try to solve issues in the most expeditious way.'

But it is not a true ombudsman system, some say.

"You can call something an ombudsperson and it's not necessarily going to do what it's supposed to do, which is to give people a comfort zone to make complaints and for that person to direct them to the right place,' Texeira said.

A true ombudsman neutral and independent could look into each complaint without having to answer to a particular university department, Rivera said.

"That person would be able to advocate for anyone on campus,' Rivera said. "The way we have it is not in the true line of what an ombudsman is. It seems like every administrator is a ombudsman. How can you be an ombudsman when someone is attacking your program? I don't know what our thinking is on that.'

Karnig plans to meet in October with union representatives about a new ombudsman structure focused on students, faculty and staff concerns. But he's made no promises about changing the current structure.

Rivera said creating a single office to handle discrimination complaints would be a "good idea.'

Still, he said, "The grievance policy is a good policy. We haven't had any problem with it.''

Bias on campus

Someone scrawled swastikas and racial slurs inside a campus building early this month, but racism on campus isn't generally so blatant. Still, some students and professors say subtle racism, sexism and prejudice against homosexuals permeate certain colleges and departments.

"It's not overt, but there are definitely problems,' said sociology major Theresa Brannon, 20. "Like any campus, we have problems that need to be mended.'

This doesn't shock Karnig.

"It is absolutely conceivable that at any large institute there are 2,000 employees and 17,000 students and 60 buildings and whatever else here that not everything is perfect or ideal,' Karnig said. "But, to my knowledge, there isn't a single faculty grievance alleging racism that's active on campus.'

Accusations of racism tend to be anecdotal tales of unfair discipline and firing practices, of black and Latino students being accused more often of cheating and other infractions, of intimidation.

Some campus groups can get away with bending the rules, Texeira said, while others get in trouble "if they forget to cross a T.'

"There is a double, triple and quadruple standard,' Texeira said.

Untrue, said Louis Fernandez, provost and vice president of academic affairs.

"We have to be very careful to treat people the same way,' Fernandez said. "We are very careful to follow the rules.'

Some people, Fernandez said, might say things are biased just because they don't agree with the outcome of a complaint.

"When things don't go one's way, one tends to say they weren't treated fairly,' Fernandez said.

Texeira and Valdez both say their experiences with racism and sexism on campus made them realize the complaint process was inadequate.

"I was bullied for two years by a man who would come to my office and yell and scream at me and did this to other women at least three that I know of,' Texeira said. "We went through all the formal process. The worst that happened to him was a letter was put in his file and he was given tenure. He made my life absolutely miserable for two years.'

Personnel matters are confidential. So the person making the complaint might never know if or how a person was disciplined.

"This is one of the harder things for people to swallow,' Fernandez said. "They want to know exactly what happens. All we can tell them is we looked into it and handled it appropriately.'

Valdez said she has complained about a hostile work environment to the union and to her dean. Nothing was ever fixed, she said.

"Basically they tell you it's a figment of your imagination,' Valdez said. "We keep getting told, 'There's nothing we can do. Our hands are tied.''

Many students turn to Valdez and Texeira with problems.

"When you teach these classes about social inequality, you become a magnet,' Texeira said.

But most of these murmurings never become filed complaints.

"There's a climate of fear suggesting you can't speak out,' Texeira said. "(For instructors) the carrot is always the job I'm going to lose my job; they'll make things miserable for me; I'm not going to get classes I want.'

Likewise, she said, some students are afraid of being given bad grades or other forms of retaliation.

Students at an April protest were told if they wanted to complain to Karnig about something, they had to come individually and couldn't bring a representative.

"How intimidating is that?' Texeira asked.

Faculty representation

Black, Latino and female students might be less intimidated, some say, if they had more representation on the faculty and in the administration. Three of every four Cal State San Bernardino professors are white.

"There are very few faces that mirror myself, that reflect who I am,' said communications major Alise Clouser, 22.

Not all students see a gap on campus.

"It's pretty diverse,' said liberal studies major Rosina Chavarin, 21.

Race isn't the only representation issue. Men account for 60 percent of instructors and about 60 percent of academic deans. All but one associate vice president or associate provost are men, as are the vice presidents and the president of the university.

But 60

percent of Cal State San Bernardino students are women.

Campus officials say they are trying. Cal State San Bernardino counts on nationwide searches and drawing in large candidate pools to bring in as many minority applicants as possible, Fernandez said. But state law prohibits the university from hiring based on ethnicity.

Still, the California State University system continues to hire mostly white professors, according to a report by the California Research Bureau released last month. About 70

percent of new hires between 1996 and 2001 were white.

During the 2001-02 academic year, Cal State San Bernardino hired about 41 new professors. Thirty were white, six were Asian, three were Latino, one was black and one was an "other nonwhite.'

Fernandez called that a good year, but added, "We'd like to do better than that.'

The university system is doing the best it can, a representative says.

"We have to look at the percentage of minorities who have attained Ph.D.s and the faculty representation at CSU,' Cal State system spokeswoman Clara Potes-Fellow said. "We cannot hire from the overall population of California. We are only hiring from the pool of individuals who have Ph.D.s. These are two different universes.'

About 19 percent of people who graduate with doctorates are ethnic minorities, according to the National Research Council.

"We understand the value of having enhanced diversity,' Karnig said.

But, he added, just as some people believe greater diversity is coming too slowly, others on campus believe minority recruitment is "going too far and too fast.'

Texeira falls into the first category.

"Diversity is important not just because we have to have these numbers,' Texeira said. "We learn more when there are a variety of voices at the table.'

The lack of minority professors may hurt student recruitment a possibility that doesn't seem lost on the campus.

The 2001-02 and 2002-03 campus material sent to potential students are almost identical. But the faculty profile on page 11 of the '02-03 book no longer breaks down the faculty by gender and ethnicity. Instead, the university highlights its 20:1 student-to-faculty ratio and high percentage of faculty with doctorates.

Some on campus think the deletion of faculty demographic information was a deliberate move to hide a campus flaw.

"They want to get away from it because they can't show what they want,' Futch said.

This spring, the letters-to-the-editor section of the campus newspaper, The Coyote Chronicle, debated the lack of Latino instructors.

One student, German Loustaunau, wrote: "This creates a problem for me as a Latino (Mexican) student. I don't feel I can develop close ties with 'non-Latino' faculty. The problem is not the faculty per se; rather I believe we have very few things in common. There are many cultural differences which inevitably create a gap between myself and 'non-Latino' faculty. Although I am not suggesting bonds cannot be created, they are uneasy.'

Another student, Daisy Barcenas, agreed: "As part of the 'minority' at CSUSB, I also feel that I have a difficult time forming close ties with some of the 'non-Latino' faculty.''

Looking back

This is not the first time diversity has been a campus issue.

In 1987, a coalition of black community leaders called for then-President Anthony H. Evans to resign over charges he was racist.

Criticism of Evans escalated when a letter he wrote to the CSU chancellor about difficulties implementing the university's Educational Equity Plan became public.

"I'm not sure just how many underrepresented students are ready, emotionally and intellectually, for a university experience,' he wrote. "In short, there are natural impediments over which we educators have limited control.'

Other complaints centered on poor recruitment of minority students and faculty and unfair employment practices.

At the time, representatives of the Westside Action Group said about 35 black members of the staff, faculty and student body spoke to them about discrimination or harassment on campus but were afraid of retaliation.

In 1995, another group accused Evans of fostering campus discrimination. The group compiled a report alleging 30 incidents of discrimination in 10 years.

So when Evans retired in 1997, the university looked for a replacement who would be sensitive to minority issues. Karnig's appointment pleased many in the local community.

Even today, many say that while some bad structures are still in place, Karnig changed the campus atmosphere for the better.

Futch said Karnig has been very supportive of the Cross Cultural Center. Texeira agreed, but said Karnig might not know enough about bias at the school.

"I'm not sure he understands how pervasive this problem is,' Texeira said. "He's a good man. I think he means well, but if he's uninformed, he needs to be informed. He needs to know.''

Diversity initiatives

Karnig says he's listening.

"It is only in the university's self-interest to solve these issues if there is a legitimate grievance,' Karnig said. "I think this has been a very supportive and sensitive institution.'

Many diversity issues are being addressed, Futch said. The University Diversity Committee has a fairly detailed strategic plan to foster diversity on campus. It has not been officially adopted by the university, but Cal State San Bernardino spokesman Sid Robinson said "it serves as a working model.'

Some people are concerned, Futch said, that the diversity initiatives aren't being implemented fast enough. But, he said, they are being implemented.

"This is a good campus,' Futch, an alumni, said. "I love this campus. This campus has so much potential.'

The Cross Cultural Center offers educational programming and a place where people can interact with people from different backgrounds.

"We're not trying to make soup out of all these people,' Futch said. If you're a tomato, stay a tomato. If you're lettuce, stay lettuce. If you're an onion, stay an onion. Let's just come together. All these parts together make a good salad.'

All campus staff members go through diversity training. Some faculty members do, but it's not mandatory.

"I'm concerned with the word mandatory,' Futch said. "But some people need to be told they have to go.' The next step

The Progressive Alliance will continue working for change at the college, Texeira and Valdez said. And the California Faculty Association's African American Caucus may address the issue later in the year, Texeira said.

"We can't turn our back now' Texeira said. "We're not going to stop. This is much too important. We think our small efforts can really change the atmosphere across California. I really think we could become a model for how to do things right.'