Age-Bias Suit Filed by Adjunct Passed Over for the Tenure Track
By Monica F. Jacobe
Part-time lecturer Rosemarie Crane was passed over for a full-time appointment four times in eleven years at Wilbur Wright College, one of the City Colleges of Chicago, and she asserts that it was because of her age. Crane was sixty-eight during her last application for a full-time position in 2004. After eleven years with a stellar record at Wilbur Wright, she says, including being the only part-timer to receive the college’s Teaching Excellence Award, she was not interviewed; the two open full-time positions were filled by applicants who were then twenty-nine and thirty.
Crane filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which in August, having failed to reach a voluntary settlement with Wilbur Wright, filed a federal lawsuit on Crane’s behalf. According to the EEOC, Crane’s suspicions about age bias were confirmed by a former English department chair after Crane was passed over in 2004.
Age bias is a violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, which extends protection to workers forty and over. The lawsuit asks that Crane receive back wages and a fulltime, tenure-track appointment at Wilbur Wright.
Representatives of the college have not commented on the matter because of the pending lawsuit. Crane continues to teach there part time.
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