Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

SPC prof may be fired for dating

An administrative law judge recommends the action. The professor contends that none of the women were in his classes.

By JOSE CARDENAS
Published February 14, 2006

CLEARWATER - A St. Petersburg College humanities professor should be fired for dating five female students, an administrative law judge has recommended.

Gary Rodriguez, 35, has been suspended since January 2005. The college trustees voted that March to stop paying him.

The suspension came after one student, Pamela Socorro, now 21, filed a complaint against him after their 11-month courtship soured.

The college's board of trustees will consider the recommendation by Judge Lawrence P. Stevenson at its March 21 meeting, college president Carl Kuttler said Monday.

"It's a sad day when the college has to take action against any employee," Kuttler said. "The college takes sexual harassment very seriously. This was a grave violation of that policy."

Craig Berman, the attorney representing Rodriguez, said he will file an appeal with the trustees, asking that Rodriguez be allowed to keep his job.

Berman said Stevenson's most serious finding of fact was that Rodriguez went to the movies with Socorro in the fall of 2003 and kissed her.

Stevenson said this took place before the end of the class Socorro was taking from Rodriguez. Rodriguez claimed the date occurred later, after he had already given final grades to Socorro.

"This was not the kind of thing that should end your career," Berman said. He added that he thought an admonishment to Rodriguez would be sufficient.

Berman said he disagreed that the relationships with the four other students violated the college's sexual harassment policies because that dating occurred when those students were not in Rodriguez's classes.

"The only time it's a violation is if (the teacher is) in the position to determine (their) grade," said Berman.

Berman said that Rodriguez, who lives in Dunedin and shares custody of young twin daughters with his ex-wife, has not worked during the past year.

He had been a full-time instructor at SPC since 1998. His continuing contract of employment basically amounted to tenure.

According to Stevenson's report, in October 2003 Rodriguez invited students in one of his classes to come to an Ybor City bar to watch him play keyboard with his band, Bus Stop.

Socorro went with friends, according to Stevenson.

Rodriguez would later argue that the romantic relationship started in December 2003, after the semester had ended and Socorro was no longer his student.

Stevenson believed Socorro's version of events, however, and determined that the courtship started before, including a date to the AMC Woodlands 20 theater in Oldsmar on Nov. 29, 2003.

After the movie, the two remained in the parking lot and talked into the early morning of Nov. 30, according to the judge's report. That's when they kissed for the first time.

Their relationship soured by December 2004 after Socorro found e-mails on Rodriguez's computer from other female students.

They fought at his house, and Socorro went to a hospital, according to Stevenson's report. Pinellas County sheriff's deputies did not file any charge in that incident.

College officials investigated Socorro's complaint in December 2004. They suspended Rodriguez and opted to have an administrative judge hear the case.

Stevenson wrote that Rodriguez abused his position by inviting female students to come watch his band where he could pursue them romantically or sexually.

Rodriguez did not seem to think there was anything wrong with dating students as long as they were not in his class at the time, the judge wrote.

"Respondent's rationalization," Stevenson wrote, "appears to be that it was perfectly acceptable for him to use his classes as a dating service, planning romantic relationships with his female students while they were in his class, so long as the actual dating did not begin until the semester ended."

[Last modified February 14, 2006, 02:45:31]