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Female faculty members at Syracuse University received notice from the Kings County Supreme Court over both email and mail in April that a class action lawsuit regarding gender pay inequity had been settled by the university.

The lawsuit was settled in October 2021. According to a copy of the settlement agreement obtained by The Daily Orange, the total settlement fund for the lawsuit was $3,713,000.

The court will hold a fairness hearing to determine whether or not to approve the settlement on Aug. 10, before which members of the class need to opt in, opt out or object to the amount.

“It’s amazing they settled at all, but the settlement is insulting,” said Deborah Pellow, who worked for 45 years as a professor in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs before retiring in May 2021. “I know, from my own experience – the inequity – and it’s astounding.” Pellow was not one of the five named plaintiffs.

In 2017, the SU University Senate’s Faculty Salary Review Committee released a report that revealed salaries for female faculty members were generally lower than for their male colleagues.

The gap was especially noticeable in non-tenure positions. Female professors made 77% of what their male counterparts made, on average, while female associate and assistant professors made 83% of what their male counterparts made.

Denise Heckman, an associate professor in the College of Visual and Performing Arts’ School of Design, said the disparity has stuck with her, and the settlement won’t solve the issue.

“It’s always on your shoulders … this is my life. And when I retire, I’m not going to have the same money that someone else had just because they’re a male,” Heckman said. “You can’t really sweep something like that under the rug.”

The court agreed to allocate $3 million for full-time tenured or tenure-track professors and associate professors, $340,000 for full-time tenured or tenure-track assistant professors and $300,000 for non-tenure track professors and associate professors. The court allocated the remaining $73,000 for non-tenure track assistant professors.

Salaries of staff members at SU were not mentioned in the report or the class action.

One third of the settlement will go toward attorney’s fees, according to the agreement. In the class action, the law firm Outten & Golden represented the plaintiffs, five of whom were named.

All female professors, assistant professors and associate professors employed by SU between Jan. 8, 2014, through Oct. 1, 2021, may be entitled to be part of the settlement.

Jana Seal | Asst. Digital Editor

In September 2018, almost eight months after the report, then-Provost Michele Wheatly said during a University Senate meeting that the university had eliminated the faculty gender pay gap by investing $1.8 million in salary adjustments. But, while Wheatly said administrators and the deans of each college worked together to allocate the funds, some senators said at the time that some deans didn’t properly do so.

Sarah Scalese, SU’s senior associate vice president for communications, said in an email statement to The Daily Orange that the size of the adjustments was determined by the Office of Faculty Affairs, not by the deans. The deans did inform the faculty of the Office of Faculty Affairs’ adjustments, Scalese said.

“It’s quite simple. It wasn’t fixed,” Pellow said. “It depended on the deans of the colleges … the deans are the ones who are responsible for the inequities to begin with.”

Despite agreeing to the settlement, SU did not acknowledge any wrongdoing and denies the allegations made by the plaintiffs, the agreement reads.

Heckman was not a named plaintiff in the class action but received the settlement notice. She said the amount of the settlement was too low to properly address the discrepancy in pay. Though she expected it, the amount was still difficult to stomach.

“I was kind of bracing for it … but it’s still hard to read that,” Heckman said. “But, in another way, I feel really good because we need to do this. We needed to win something like that to make a point.”

Diane Grimes, an associate professor of communication and rhetorical studies in VPA, said her reaction to the settlement agreement was complicated.

“It doesn’t make us whole,” Grimes said. “Going forward, we keep organizing, we keep talking to each other, we keep trying to think about ways that we can persuade the university to do better.”

Tula Goenka, a television, radio and film professor in the Newhouse School of Public Communications, was one of the five lead plaintiffs named in the lawsuit. She was relieved that a settlement was reached but said faculty and the university need to move forward to next steps.

“This is not the end of the process,” Goenka said. “It’s only the middle, and there’s a lot to be done to make sure that we don’t fall into the patterns of the past.”

Shobha Bhatia, a civil and environmental engineering professor, said, while she’s happy that a settlement was offered, SU needs to establish the proper structures to ensure it’s working towards equity.

“It was moving in a positive direction,” Bhatia said. “The goal is to have a system in place so that we are moving in a direction where people are paid a fair amount of compensation for the work.”

Heckman said female faculty should push for change rather than be satisfied by just the settlement.

“What I think we should do now … is get together and hold their feet to the fire and say, ‘We know that this did not make up for what we lost,’” she said. “We know that, so don’t even claim that, but fix it going forward.”

Published on May 2, 2022 at 12:36 am

Contact Richard: rcperrin@syr.edu | @richardperrins2