In Depth:Professor files suit against UC, administrators

By Scott B. Wong
Daily Bruin Staff For one UCLA professor, the past five years have
been an endless nightmare. Now, at age 76, Andras Bodrogligeti said
he only wants to reclaim two things ““ his students and his
reputation. Today, at a status conference over his pending
discrimination lawsuit in Santa Monica Municipal Court,
Bodrogligeti hopes Judge Robert M. Letteau will grant him a court
date and the opportunity to tell his story to a jury. Bodrogligeti,
who has taught Turkish studies at UCLA to more than 8,000 students
for over three decades, alleges that high-ranking university
administrators have tried to coerce him into resignation in order
to eliminate the Turkish studies program and make way for their own
“political agenda.” “What they wanted to do was
shut down a program,” said Attorney Diana Courteau, who
represents the professor. “In order to do that, they had to
discredit the man who created it.” On Dec. 21, 1999,
Bodrogligeti filed a lawsuit against the Regents of the University
of California, claiming an invasion of privacy and age/race
discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The
regents maintain that Bodrogligeti’s allegations are untrue
and that the university feels confident in its position to fight
this suit. “The bulk of the case has been dismissed ““
there’s very little that remains,” said Jeff Blair,
university counsel for the UC Regents. “I don’t believe
there’s any evidence that the university has done anything
improper.” Attorneys Alan Zuckerman and Julie DeRose have
been retained by the UC Regents as well. “The university
denies all allegations,” Zuckerman said. Pauline Yu, dean of
humanities, Antonio Loprieno, chair of the Near Eastern Languages
and Cultures Department, and Cary Porter, associate dean of
students, among others, were also named in the suit for their
alleged involvement. On Monday, the suit was amended to include a
due process violation and defamation allegedly committed by Vice
Chancellor of Academic Personnel Norman Abrams for a letter about
the professor sent to California Assemblyman George House.
Administrators are declining to talk about the case, citing UC
policy which prohibits them from speaking about pending lawsuits.
“It’s practice and policy not to comment on cases that
are going to litigation,” said Robert Naples, dean of
students.

The cheating Bodrogligeti is the same professor who exposed the
largest organized cheating incident in recent UCLA history. Thirty
Korean students were caught cheating by two of Bodrogligeti’s
proctors in an elementary Uzbek language course during a final exam
in fall 1996. According to Bodrogligeti, more than 100 identical
shrunk copies of the professor’s text were discovered
underneath students’ tests, indicating this was
“organized cheating.” Halil Kaya, one of the proctors
and a graduate student working with Bodrogligeti, said he became
wary of the number of students who insisted on using the rest room
during the exam. “I got suspicious and checked the
bathroom,” Kaya said. “They were talking and looking at
cheating sheets.” Dean Porter informed Bodrogligeti that he
could only report students who were caught cheating by two or more
witnesses. After consulting with his assistants, the professor
submitted a list of six names, which became five after it was found
that one student had used a fictitious name and student ID number
on his test. According to Bodrogligeti, other strange anomalies
surrounding the incident led him to conclude the students were part
of a larger scheme. The summer before the Uzbek language course was
scheduled to take place, Bodrogligeti said Dean Yu told him he had
no right to screen students. “I had no screening; those who
were not in the field of studies could sign up,” he said. The
course, normally capped at 18, suddenly boasted 59 students, he
said. While he may have had several Korean students in each of his
previous classes, 50 of the 59 students enrolled that quarter were
of Korean descent, he said. His attorney, Courteau, believes
Bodrogligeti was set up. Students cheated, she said, to prove the
professor could not control his classroom and was allowing rampant
misconduct, as well as cheating, to embarrass him. Through
discovery ““ the legal process of obtaining information from
the opposing party prior to trial ““ the court ordered the
university to turn over 1,500 e-mails and letters relating to
Bodrogligeti’s case dating back to 1994. Many portions of
pages were redacted, or blacked out, according to Courteau. The
university produced a July 7, 1999 letter Abrams wrote to
Assemblyman House, alleging a long history of cheating in
Bodrogligeti’s classes. “It should be noted that
professor Bodrogligeti’s allegations of cheating by Korean
students came after many years of complaints about cheating in his
classes where he took no action and came at a time when the
University was preparing to file charges against him,” he
wrote. Bodrogligeti reported the incident in December 1996, but
hearings for the five students did not take place until March 1999.
But in his February 2001 plaintiff’s deposition, Porter said
this was not a typical length of an investigation. Over those two
years, Bodrogligeti said he wrote seven letters to Porter,
questioning the lack of timeliness. Porter never responded,
according to the professor. In a September 1998 letter, College of
Letters and Science Provost Brian Copenhaver responded to
students’ concerns over a Los Angeles Times article that
raised allegations the university was retaliating against
Bodrogligeti for reporting the incident. “Cheating is not
acceptable at UCLA, absolutely and unequivocally,” he wrote.
“This investigation has indeed required more time than is
typical, but the chronology has nothing to do with the objectivity
of the investigation and certainly implies no effort to protect any
group of students.” By March 1999, when a hearing was finally
conducted, those students accused of cheating had already
graduated. According to Porter’s Academic Senate hearing
deposition in July 1999, he stated that some of the cheaters
received no sanction. Asked if any were disciplined, Porter replied
“No, they were not, they were found not culpable ““ Oh,
I’m sorry, I take it back. Of course there were a couple who
admitted to having cheated.” Porter said he thought two
students were suspended around May 1999, which was after they
graduated. Like all UCLA professors, Bodrogligeti has the
discretion to view his students’ records. He said the five
students still have a deferred report, which signifies a pending
disciplinary matter, listed on their records for his Turkic course.
According to Anita Cotter, associate registrar, if the DR is not
resolved or eliminated, students cannot obtain their degree.
“It would have been a human mistake if we had awarded a
degree to a student with a DR on their records,” she said.
Bodrogligeti’s lawyers allege there was no human error.
According to the Registrar’s Office, four of the five
students caught cheating graduated between June and December 1998.
The fifth in the cheating ring was last enrolled at UCLA in the
summer of 1998, but did not graduate. In an e-mail, dated March 12,
1999, produced through discovery, Chair Loprieno, the
professor’s immediate supervisor, wrote to Dean Yu: “To
show evidence of cheating is too legalistically high to be of real
value. Needless to say, this is something that should never be
divulged to the media or public, but it does show to me that …
the fear of legal consequences often makes UCLA (or perhaps all
Universities) reluctant to behave courageously against moral lapses
by faculty or students alike,” he stated. Yu, who in a July
1998 interview with the Daily Bruin has denied having any role in
the cheating incident, replied to Chair Loprieno in an e-mail March
13, 1999: “Of course one of the reasons that (Dean of
Students Robert) Naples’ office did not pursue Bodro’s
allegations vigorously was (the professor’s) utter lack of
credibility.”

The altercation A week after the cheating episode, Bodrogligeti
said he was confronted by 12 agitated students. “Students
were very upset that I had reported cheating ““ they came into
my room during office hours and surrounded me and demanded I
withdraw my report,” he said. When the professor refused, he
said he was physically assaulted. “One guy had a piece of
paper in his hand with signatures from students and said “˜We
will see to it that Dean Yu will kick you out,'” he
said. “They grabbed my head and pushed it down against the
surface of the table.” According to Bodrogligeti, Kaya, the
same assistant who caught the cheaters, saw the commotion from the
hallway and intervened, causing the students to disperse.
Bodrogligeti did not file a police report.

The purchase Just days before the university was to confer a
master’s degree upon him, Kaya, who received a full-ride
scholarship by the Turkish government to study at UCLA, said he
received notice from the Dean of Students Office that he had been
discharged from the university for selling tests to students for
$200. “I had three or four days to graduate,” Kaya
said. “I had one last exam.” Kaya, who has filed his
own suit against the UC Regents, said he is the victim of an
undercover university operation to dispose of him because he
witnessed the cheating and the student-professor altercation in
December. According to Kaya, three administrators approached him as
he sold lecture notes and past exams to students in Kerckhoff Hall
the Sunday before Bodrogligeti’s Winter 1997 Uzbek exam. Kaya
said he refused to sell them a set, knowing they were not students.
But when one administrator offered Kaya $200 in cash for the set,
he accepted the money. Although he admits to selling lecture notes
and old tests to about 15 students for $30 to $50 ““ an act
which Bodrogligeti said violated an explicit regulation on his
class syllabi ““ Kaya said he could find no specific
regulation concerning the sale of such items in the Student Code of
Conduct. Kaya said he was dismissed without a hearing and his
appeal was rejected by the Dean of Students Office. “The
students didn’t have their hearing until two years
later,” Courteau said. “(Kaya) was let go after
approximately five days.” In a May 1998 e-mail, Chair
Loprieno wrote to Trish Farrugia, Yu’s administrative
assistant: “Little does (Bodrogligeti) know that the
purchasers were you, Mila (August) and her husband! But I think you
will have to devise a reason why you decided to buy the exam. It
should be easy to find one: evidence of previous cheating, rumors
among students, etc. Well, all the best with our common
enterprise.” In a deposition from a UCLA Academic Senate
hearing submitted July 8, 1999, Mila August, management services
officer of the Kinsey Administration Group, stated the university
reimbursed her $300 for purchasing lecture notes and tests with her
personal funds, $100 of which was distributed to students to make
their own purchases of notes. In her February 2001
plaintiff’s deposition, August admitted that university tape
recorders were used to record the sale. “Well, you
don’t want to see cheating in any academic institution and
the fact that you could buy lecture notes or buy tests or buy
admission to a review session really disadvantages some students
who can’t afford to do that and it’s not fair,”
August stated in the deposition. But Courteau said the university
shouldn’t be conducting covert activities. “The
university’s job is not to investigate but to provide the
vehicles for students to pursue their interests,” he said.
“They shouldn’t be spending university time, university
money and university equipment to go after a tenured
professor.” In a July 1997 e-mail produced in discovery,
Loprieno again wrote to Yu that Kaya denied selling any exam.
“(Kaya) and Bodro seem to believe in a “˜Korean
conspiracy,'” Loprieno stated. “I was able to
“˜scare’ him “¦ but he did not
“˜involve’ Bodrogligeti the way we had secretly hoped
for.” In an e-mail dated March 19, 1998, produced in
discovery, Yu wrote to Farrugia, with the subject line
“Bodro.” “Norm (Abrams) says we first need to
have some significant corroboration from other students that this
is in fact happening,” she wrote. “Trish, when you call
the student tomorrow morning, please ask him to ask other students
in the class to contact us concerning the matter.” “One
accuser isn’t enough,” she continued. “How many
students are in the class?”

The system In the suit, Bodrogligeti and his lawyers accuse that
the Academic Senate system is flawed and corrupt. On Feb. 16, 1998,
Bodrogligeti filed a grievance charge against Yu and Loprieno with
the UCLA Academic Senate, alleging they had violated the
professional rights of faculty and had participated in age
discrimination in an attempt to force him to resign. According to
Abrams, the faculty member must file directly with the Privilege
& Tenure Committee, which makes a preliminary investigation and
may lead to a full-blown hearing. Yu was exempt from the charges,
but probable cause was found in Loprieno’s case for failing
to take proper action when notified that Bodrogligeti, a member of
his department, had been physically assaulted. On April 23, 1998,
Yu filed a charge with the Academic Senate that Bodrogligeti had
failed to foster honest academic conduct and ensure grades
reflected students’ true merit. In a complaint against a
faculty member, the Charges Committee serves as a grand jury to
determine if a faculty has violated university policy, Abrams said.
If probable cause is found, the P & T Committee hears the case.
The chancellor, who may impose sanctions like suspension,
dismissal, demotion or a letter of censure, next hears the
recommendation. The Charges Committee found probable cause that
Bodrogligeti had failed to foster honest academic conduct and
ensure grades reflected students’ true merit and recommended
to the P & T Committee on June 2, 1998 that the professor be
“suspended without pay for a term of no less than one
academic quarter.” In its report, the committee called
Bodrogligeti’s Turkic 160 course “an embarrassment to
the university.” “It is widely perceived as a
“˜gut,’ (an easy “˜A’). and the course has no
required reading and discussion sections,” it stated. The
committee also found Bodrogligeti facilitated Kaya’s improper
actions and told students to “make your deals with Halil
Kaya.” Bodrogligeti maintains he neither made that remark,
nor sold a note or test in his life. Abrams said the recommendation
from the Charges Committee arrives at his desk and is forwarded to
the P & T Committee. “Most of the time I would agree with
the recommendation,” Abrams said. In Bodrogligeti’s
case, however, Abrams did not agree with the committee, who
recommended Yu and Loprieno be instructed to monitor all of the
professor’s future course offering. In a June 30, 1998 letter
to Professor Russell Thorton, chair of the P & T Committee,
Abrams instead stated that if Bodrogligeti had knowledge before the
sale of Kaya’s exams, or participated in the sale of exams,
he may face the maximum penalty ““ dismissal from the
university. Chancellor Albert Carnesale ultimately sided with the P
& T Committee recommendation. Other elements of the Academic
Senate system must be further examined, said Bodrogligeti’s
attorneys. Professors often opt to settle a dispute rather than
bring their case before the P&T Committee because they lack the
financial resources to hire a legal defense, Courteau said. Abrams
said professors are generally not provided legal counsel. The
current system also precludes an impartial hearing, Courteau said,
because faculty members who serve on the charges committee have a
vested interest in upholding university interests.

The history In the spring of 1994, Yu, who served as chair of
the East Asian Language and Culture Program at Irvine, was hired as
the UCLA dean of humanities. According to a Feb. 9, 2001
plaintiff’s deposition provided by Courteau, Yu said the
university formed a task force in 1992 with the focus of expanding
humanities to include South and Southeast Asian Languages and
Cultures. Bodrogligeti’s lawyers alleged that in order to
promote her program, Yu needed full-time employee positions or
FTEs, tenured professorships. “What she thought she could do
was railroad through this professor in order to develop the
Southeast Asian Studies Program,” Courteau said. But in a
July 1998 interview with The Bruin, Yu said there was absolutely no
truth to that allegation. “I’ve never once discussed
the issue of retirement with (Bodrogligeti),” she said.
Bodrogligeti said he was targeted because he was near retirement.
If he was to retire or be dismissed, Bodrogligeti said the FTE
would stay in his department. But if a professor is forced to
resign, then the professorship goes back to the dean of humanities
to redistribute, he said. Still, e-mail messages between Yu and
Loprieno show that the professor was the subject of their
correspondence. In a May 13, 1994 e-mail ““ produced through
discovery ““ Loprieno called Bodrogligeti an
“old-fashioned European professor” and his attitudes
“remnants of the past.” “If you give us 10
positions in the next two/three years, I promise you that our
courses will become a model of ideal fusion of high standards on
the one hand and pedagogical attention to the students’ needs
on the other!” Shortly after this e-mail, Yu promoted
Loprieno to chair of the Chairs of Humanities, head of about 20
department chairs. Another e-mail, dated Feb. 13, 1996 from
Loprieno to Yu states: “My impression is that, if cornered,
Bodrogligeti might either retire (in which case we’ll have a
celebration dinner…) or decide not to offer these classes
anymore.” In a Sept. 10, 1998 e-mail to Yu, produced through
discovery, Loprieno included excerpts from the fall quarter
enrollment of Bodrogligeti’s 111A Elementary Uzbek class and
170 Turk-Mongolian, which, less than a month before the first day
of class, showed only three and five students enrolled,
respectively. “We have come a long way since the enrollments
of 60 in Uzbek and 300 in Turco-Mongolian empires,” Loprieno
wrote. On Sept. 29, 1998, Loprieno wrote to Yu in an e-mail
message, calling Bodrogligeti’s classes “Mickey Mouse
courses for athletes.” Bodrogligeti has alleged that Yu is
adamantly against European scholarship. Yu’s article
“Disorientations: Asian Literatures in the University”
from the 1998 Stanford Humanities Review discusses the
“evacuation” of European scholarship. “The
rapidly changing demographics of the American university student
populations, particularly in California, have also effected a
dramatic change in internal power relationships between East Asian
and European language departments, to the extent that enrollments
bring power,” she wrote. Today, Bodrogligeti is asking Judge
Letteau to set a court date so that this four-year ordeal may
finally be resolved.

A TIMELINE OF CHEATING: FROM THE CLASSROOM TO THE
COURTS One professor alleges that UCLA administrators are
the culprits in a string of cheating incidents Please click here for the full-size
infographic SOURCE: Bodrogligeti v. UC Regents, 2001 Original
graphic by VICTOR CHEN/Daily Bruin Web adaptation by SHIRLEY
LAI