Why did it take the National Park Service so long to act on sexual harassment complaints?/NPS

Editor's note: The following column was written by a former Grand Canyon National Park employee who has asked to remain publically anonymous.

Both Grand Canyon National Park and Baylor University have recently faced scandals involving fundamental failures by management in their responses to sexual assault and/or sexual harassment allegations. The contrast between Baylor University’s handling of their situation and the National Park Service’s response to Grand Canyon’s sexual harassment problems could not be more different, nor be more telling.

One week after the release of findings from an independent investigation into the allegations, Baylor University suspended, then fired, its head football coach, reprimanded the athletic director, and removed Kenneth Starr from the position as president of the university.

Head football Coach Art Briles had brought unprecedented success to the Baylor football program, along with the financial benefits that athletic achievement brings to a university, and had eight years remaining on a 10-year contract and reportedly earned close to $6 million a year.

Subsequently, Athletic Director Ian McCaw resigned after deciding that a change in leadership for the athletic department was in the best interest of the university. And Kenneth Starr (of Whitewater fame) resigned as Baylor University’s chancellor as a “matter of conscience,” stating that, “We need to be honest … the captain goes down with the ship,” in an ESPN interview. It is further reported that other unnamed members of the school administrative staff and athletic department were also dismissed.

On the other hand, more than four months after the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General Investigative Report of Misconduct at the Grand Canyon River District, at least one former river district employee (Boatman 3) who was identified in the report remains employed by Grand Canyon National Park.

Superintendent Dave Uberuaga, who along with Deputy Superintendent Diane Chalfant was identified as having mishandled the reported sexual harassment incidents, was offered a reassignment to the NPS Washington Office in mid-May. At this writing, Ms. Chalfant remains the deputy superintendent at Grand Canyon National Park, despite the fact that the OIG report specifically established that she violated the confidentiality of the complainants by forwarding documents (see attachment).

Additionally, over a 15-year-period since a “Women in Law Enforcement Task Force Report” was issued in 2000, NPS managers and Human Resource professionals have not addressed the issues of gender bias, sexual harassment, and hostile work environments and retaliation that female rangers faced (High Country News, May 2, 2016), nor have they been held accountable for that failure. A 2007 EEO review that was initiated at Grand Canyon was apparently never completed.

Mr. Uberuaga chose to resign instead of accepting reassignment to Washington, but for reasons neither as a “matter of conscience” nor for the park’s best interest. Instead, Mr. Uberuaga was quoted in an interview published by Grand Canyon News after his June 1 retirement was announced as stating that the proposed reassignment was not a disciplinary action and that he would have liked to be the person responsible for enacting a plan to prevent future instances of sexual misconduct in the park. His comments appeared to be mostly about protecting his reputation vs. the harm done to the employees who experienced sexual harassment at the canyon and to the park itself.

Instead of even echoing the NPS’s and federal government’s long-standing policy of zero tolerance for sexual harassment, Mr. Uberuaga explained the past instances of sexual harassment by placing them in the context of 4,000 employee nights in the canyon per year where there were “vulnerable co-ed” situations that were never going to go away, thereby indicating his apparent continued acceptance for sexual harassment in the workplace.

What does the NPS’s response to the sexual harassment allegations at Grand Canyon say about the agency’s values?

One, it says that the agency values male employees over female employees.

Two, if Mr. Uberuaga’s statements to the Grand Canyon News are indicative of the accountability and responsibility that the NPS managers have taken for what happened at Grand Canyon, then the agency’s leaders still do not believe that they are accountable and responsible for providing workplaces free of sexual harassment and retaliation.

The unacceptably long delays in responding to the sexual harassment allegations and the reports of managerial improper handling of these reports further reflect how the agency has evolved into just another federal bureaucracy in the 100 years since its inception, showing that the agency has failed to heed Horace Albright’s (the second director of the NPS) entreaty to not do so.

And finally, it shows that the National Park Service has failed the public’s trust. How can the American people trust the NPS to preserve and protect the rivers, rocks, historic objects, wildlife, vegetation and other resources under its jurisdiction if it demonstrates such obvious disregard for the well-being and safety of its (female) employees?

Park employees and managers such as Mr. Uberuaga speak often of the “NPS family” when referring to the employees of the agency, many of whom, especially at the field level (e.g., the staff interacting with the public on the front lines), are talented and dedicated public servants and protectors of parks. Given how Mr. Uberuaga and other NPS managers responded to the allegations of sexual harassment of several “daughters” in the NPS family, how can agency leaders be trusted to protect the mere plants, animals, landscapes and cultural sites that make up the national parks?

The author is a former employee of Grand Canyon National Park.