Employee sues U. for $1.5 million in compensation for sexual harassment

The trial of Joyce Schofield, a University employee who is suing the University for racial discrimination and sexual harassment, began Tuesday in federal court. Schofield, an administrative assistant in the compensation office of the division of human resources, filed the lawsuit last September seeking more than $100,000 in damages. But William Ewing and Deborah Weinstein, Schofields' attorneys, say she is asking for more than $1.5 million in damages. The trial began Tuesday in front of U.S. District Judge Curtis Joyner, with an all white jury of six women and two men. Schofield, who has worked at the University since 1991 claims that her supervisor, former Human Resources Communications Manager J. Bradley Williams , "used his authority as her supervisor to make her life miserable." She asserts that he constantly asked her on dates and he warned her to adopt a plantation mentality because a smart black woman would be too much of a threat and would never get ahead. And the suit says that Williams told Schofield that his boss, Adrienne Riley, vice president of human resources, "had racist attitudes" and "hated" her because she was a "strong black woman." Between January 1993 and July 1993 Schofield said she was subjected to sexual harassment, according to a court document. She alleges that Williams made several sexual explicit comments to her that made her feel uncomfortable. She also alleges that she felt constantly threatened and was afraid to complain because of fear of retaliation. "Bradley Williams talked dirty ... that's not in dispute," University outside counsel Neil Hamburg said yesterday. "He acted inappropriately. The question is what the University of Pennsylvania did wrong in this case, if anything." When Schofield filed an internal grievance concerning Williams, her complaint was ignored by the University, the suit charges. After filing her complaint, Schofield claims she was continually discriminated against, and became the subject of retaliation. She also filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in February 1994. Hamburg said that Williams supervisors gave him a disciplinary memo that warned him of dire consequences if he were to continue his inappropriate conduct. And he added that sexual and racist talked seized after the letter. According to an article in The Legal Intelligencer Schofield as been unable to work since January 1995 due to psychological stress and she expects to be hospitalized an average of 21 days until the year 2000. Hamburg told The Legal Intelligencer in July that he will prove that Schofield engaged in a "pattern of on-the-job dishonest and fraudulent conduct" beginning in 1973 when she was fired from Fidelity Mutual Bank for stealing. She later pleaded guilty to theft charges, according to Hamburg. Schofield, 43, graduated from the Wharton School with a marketing degree two years after she was has hired by the University.