Speaking Truth to Power (19 page)

I had watched news conferences before, but never expected to participate in one myself. As I dressed that morning, I realized that I had no idea what I would encounter. The people who would be helping me were novices. Already, Dean David Swank’s office was swamped with telephone inquiries, and the press corps swarmed the hallways like locusts. The media attention was focused on the law school building. And to quell the uproar, Dean Swank announced that the press conference
would take place as planned. As a matter of consideration for students, staff, and faculty, who were in a state of bewilderment about the entire situation, the law school location made sense. But this choice created a different uproar. “You’ve got to send her someplace else,” objected the university administrators. “What about the local Holiday Inn?” one official demanded. David Swank held his ground: “She is a member of this faculty. I will resign before I turn her away.” Later, public officials excoriated him for his stand.

The conference was initially scheduled for 10:00. CNN asked that it be postponed for an hour so they could carry it live. We agreed. I saw no point in appearing unreasonably uncooperative with the media. Besides, a delay gave me more time to brace myself.

I drove to the law school by myself and crossed the fifty or so yards from the parking lot to the law school building. Two of my colleagues, Associate Dean Teree Foster and Rick Tepker, spotted me and met me on the walkway, sparing me from having to step into the turmoil alone. Inside the building the scene was surprisingly calm. Most of the press had gathered in the classroom where the conference was to take place. I went to the dean’s office to discuss the procedure with Foster, Tepker, and Swank. Though we were used to evincing self-confidence in most situations, our inexperience showed. And the press statement issued the day before would later be described as amateurish. No doubt it was one of the first Rick Tepker had ever written. But we were all amateurs. There were none of the high-paid professional “handlers” to which Senator Alan Simpson would later allude with disdain. I did not even know what the term “handler” meant until later that day when advised by the press.

As I walked down the crowded hallway to classroom 2, familiar faces offered reassurance. The circumstances were so unreal that friends seemed out of place. I saw Dr. Thomas Hill, the academic adviser for the athletic department, whom I had known since he arrived at the university in 1988, and Beth Wilson, a friend and the affirmative action director for the university. In a small gesture of support that I will not forget, Beth wrote her home number and a note on a bank deposit slip: “Call me if you need anything.”

Students, staff, and my colleagues filled the classroom, along with the press. Eric was there with a college friend. Everyone except the press stood and applauded as I entered the room. The Student Bar Association, the Black Law Student Association, and the Minority Coalition presented resolutions supporting me. This at once bolstered my resolve and overwhelmed me with dismay. They did not deserve this massive intrusion of cameras and reporters; none of us did.

Yet I was in a classroom, a place where after some struggle I had finally come to feel at home. And my statement came more easily for that fact. Though this was one of the rare occasions on which I would receive a standing ovation in the classroom, it was only one of many at which I would be pummeled with questions, a fact I tried to remind myself of as the reporters’ questions began. But somehow the familiarity of the setting only heightened the surreal quality of the press conference. I could not comprehend that it was actually happening. When I think back on it, it is as though I am standing behind myself viewing the whole thing from over my shoulder.

“One or two more questions,” Dean Swank announced. Each reporter tried to make sure that hers or his was the last. In the statement, as in responding to questions, I tried to urge upon the press that in sending my statement to the Senate I had responded to the inquiry of a Senate staffer, that I was not acting to raise a sexual harassment claim but out of my sense of responsibility to the nomination process, and that I felt the Senate had an obligation to resolve the matter, since some of its members had already responded to the reports of my charges by impugning my integrity. This was the first time I asked for a public resolution, but at that moment I knew that if there was none, I would certainly live under the shadow of the accusations of fabrication forever. Even with a public resolution, the shadow might well continue for years. Without a chance to address publicly the allegations of those who called me a liar, I would spend my entire life addressing them privately. I wanted the matter resolved “so that all of you nice people can just go home,” I concluded. We all laughed nervously.

After what seemed an hour-long press conference, I went to the
dean’s office. Ovetta Vermillion, the dean’s assistant, informed me that Tim Phelps was in the waiting room. She showed a man into the office whose face I had never seen but whose voice I recognized immediately. As he introduced himself, he seemed genuinely sorry for the way things had evolved in the thirty-six hours since his story ran in
Newsday
, or perhaps I wanted so badly for someone to feel remorse for the turmoil that I mistook what was only fatigue in his eyes. At the same time, I was sure that as a journalist he would have liked to get the “scoop” for his paper, and he didn’t get it. I was not trying to be evasive. I just had nothing to tell him, nothing more than I had said at the press conference.

Finally back in my office, I sat exhausted at my desk. I wanted at least to try to respond to the telephone calls I’d received that morning and to finish preparing for classes. Later in the day, a stereotypically arrogant ABC news correspondent interviewed me for the evening program. He seemed to see the story as an inconsequential Washington political scandal. Dan Rather interviewed me for the
CBS Evening News
. To my surprise, he conducted a sincere inquiry into the situation. It would be too much to say that I was pleased with the interview, but I was relieved that someone seemed to understand the real-life elements of what was occurring. After confronting incredulity and lack of sensitivity throughout the day, I was refreshed by Rather’s appreciation of the issues. And despite the seriousness of both the day and the subject matter, the interview provided its moment of humor. Throughout the whole thing, a fly buzzed around my head, seeking perhaps its own fifteen minutes of fame. When it was over, I was sure that no one would remember anything I said, only the fly I was trying to ignore.

As friends and family members telephoned me from around the country, the question first and foremost on their minds was “What is going to happen next?” I had no answer for them. “All I can do is wait to hear from the Senate,” was my only response.

Over dinner with Eric and Shirley, I discovered that the stress of the day had not taken away my appetite. Though I only now appreciate it fully, this was the last time I would eat in a public restaurant with some sense of anonymity. After dinner I went home alone to a ringing telephone
and an answering machine full of messages, some worse than I had anticipated—death threats and threats of rape or sodomy. People felt free to leave the most cruel and revolting messages imaginable. Yet not all the messages were of that kind. Many, mostly those from women, were words of encouragement. Some were delightful, like the one from two “older women,” as they described themselves, “friends, one black, one white,” who wanted me to know that they were behind me and were praying for me. Amazingly, that one message of support undid the damage of all the threats.

Halfway through the playback, the tape jammed and I lost the remaining messages. This was symbolic to me in the days to come of the many things that had seemed to go wrong in the past few days. But the broken message machine did not stop the telephone from ringing constantly. After talking to my mother, I turned off the ringers and went to bed.

U
nlike its reaction to my confidential statement, the Senate’s reaction to a public airing of my claim was swift, and in some cases outright hostile. This kind of resistance did damage and disservice in a number of areas. Of course, the immediate denunciations of my claim and their unsupported comments about my character harmed me personally. But they also misinformed the public about the issue of sexual harassment and disparaged the right of a private citizen to become involved in matters of public significance. And Senate efforts to press the nomination at all costs threatened the integrity of the nomination process itself.

Because both Democrats and Republicans acted irresponsibly, their behavior said less about party politics than politics in general. It was politics in general that showed its face in the arrogant statements of the senators. Their resentment that public pressure had forced them to change their internal policies was clear. And to many around the country, even those who did not identify with the harassment experience, the Senate’s attitude suggested that their own experiences might well be dismissed if the Senate found those experiences unpopular or unpleasant. They saw a Senate out of touch with the lives of its constituents. Those who knew firsthand or related to the harassment issue recognized that it was the senators’ resentment at being accountable to the public that had caused them to attack me. The side of public life that the people witnessed
during the hearing was contemptible but true. And nothing painted the unpleasant picture more vividly than the senators’ own words.

One of the first reactions to my statement that I heard was from Arizona Senator Dennis DeConcini, who said the following during a press conference on the afternoon of October 7, a short time after my own press conference was ended.

Later, more than one person would ask me, “Did you hear what DeConcini said?” Each person who asked seemed more incensed than the last, and none of them seemed to care that DeConcini was a Democrat. As one woman put it, “Here is a man who probably never had to face discrimination in his life telling women how they ought to react to being sexually harassed. ‘Where is the gumption’ indeed?”

I can’t count the number of times since October 1991 that I have been asked, “Why did you wait ten years to raise charges of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas?” To which I must first say that I wasn’t waiting from 1983 to 1991 to raise charges against Clarence Thomas. I was living my life. I was involved in the day-to-day struggles that everyone who lives and works and cares about their families and friends has. I had a full life of which Clarence Thomas was no longer a part. Moreover, the question misconceives what I was attempting to do in disclosing the information. I did not see the response as an effort to get relief or redress for the behavior. I was supplying information about how Thomas conducted himself in his professional role.

Perhaps a different question, and I believe a better question, is “Why didn’t you bring charges of sexual harassment immediately after you left the EEOC?” To understand the muteness of my response, one must
understand that I wanted most of all for the behavior to stop. That was my chief objective throughout. I found a way to make that happen by removing myself from the situation. Even in hindsight I am convinced that there was no way to stop the harassment decisively except by leaving. What were the precedents? There was a woman in the District of Columbia who sued Department of Corrections officials for harassment she experienced in the late 1970s. She is still attempting to obtain relief for her harm despite the fact that she won her suit years ago. I also recall one of the very first sexual harassment lawsuits ever filed. The woman involved in this case, Paulette Barnes, was an African American suing her supervisor in the Environmental Protection Agency, complaining that he stripped her of all job responsibilities after she rejected his sexual advances, ultimately abolishing her position altogether. I know of a third woman whose career as a doctor was stalled for over ten years because as a resident she complained about a doctor’s harassment. I also know of countless women who changed college majors or professional careers and sometimes even relocated to other cities in lieu of confronting their harassers.

These were my options. I assessed the situation and chose not to file a complaint. I had every right to make that choice. And until society is willing to accept the validity of claims of harassment, no matter how privileged or powerful the harasser, it is a choice women will continue to make. I do not believe that in the early 1980s I lived and worked in a society, either in Washington or in Tulsa, that would have supported my right to raise a claim of harassment against the head of the EEOC. And given the state of the law and what occurred in 1991, I do not believe that a complaint would have stopped what was happening. For years I made the choice to remain silent about my experience and to push on in my life. I made that choice, like many other women, because I thought that it was my only choice. Even today most women choose to keep to themselves the slights, innuendos, harassment, and abuse they experience—because they are women. I hear from former students, now young lawyers working with seasoned professionals and struggling to maintain their dignity and their jobs in this kind of ongoing balancing act. I hear
from middle-aged and older women who believe that their silence has allowed them to survive both economically and socially. In the world according to Senator DeConcini, all these women are sorely lacking in gumption. Yet they function in a world that encourages them to question their own reaction and to stop being “so sensitive” to the pain of their experiences. That alone takes a lot of gumption.

DeConcini also misrepresented the sequence of events that led to my statement to the Senate. No one contests that my first contact with the Senate came at the initiation of Senate staffers; it was a point I sought to stress at the press conference and one that was not debatable. Therefore, not only did I not make a call to the Senate and say that I wanted to complain, but there was never any anonymity. The Senate staffers called me and thus always had my name and my location. By the time of the hearings they had ample information about my background. Even Senator Simpson, in a rare display of probity on the matter, allowed that at least some Democrats on the committee had my name as early as September 23.