Testimony Continues in Fourth Day Of Discrimination Suit vs. Harvard

In the fourth day of testimony before a federal jury on a discrimination suit against Harvard, witnesses for plaintiff Charlotte Walters said the University had dealt unfairly with her and with her union.

Walters, who in 1979 became the second woman employee of the Facilities Maintenance Department, charges that the University failed to punish a co-worker who harrassed her in 1980. She is also suing two of her former supervisors for negligence and harrassment.

The case has been under litigation since Walters left Harvard in September of 1981. At that time she filed complaints with the state and federal anti-discrimination agencies and began a grievance procedure against the University.

Thomas Jones, Walters' former boyfriend, testified yesterday that his relationship with the plaintiff ended when trauma from harrassment on the job changed her personality beyond recognition.

"It wasn't the same person I got involved with two years before," Jones said. "She became a lot less animated--really withdrawn."

In cross-examining Jones, attorneys for the University tried to show that Walters' separation from him, and not her job conditions, caused her emotional problems. Under questioning from Harvard attorney Allan Ryan, Jones said Walters had not mentioned her problems at work to him after their estrangement in 1981.

Allen McWade, a representative of Operating Engineers' Local #877, said he had noticed similar changes in Walters around the same time. He also said the University had made unprecedented demands of Walters when she filed her grievance in 1981

"The University refused to settle Ms. Walters' grievance unless she agreed to drop the complaints she'd filed with the EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] and the MCAD [Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination]," McWade said. "Never in my 17 years of experience had I run into that."

Harvard attorneys represented the University's action as a routine effort to settle several complaints at once. They also questioned McWade's ability to remember conversations held with University officials eight years ago.

"Are you absolutely sure," Harvard attorney Natasha Lissman asked McWade, "that what they were saying was, 'Harvard refuses to settle unless you withdraw the complaints with the EEOC and MCAD,' and not maybe 'Charlotte Walters, you have the same complaints at Harvard as you do at the EEOC and MCAD--let's settle them at the same time'?"