It took two years to find Betty Morton, program director for gender equity and harassment prevention, but after only eight months on the job, she has decided to head elsewhere.
Morton's decision last week to accept "an offer that was too good to refuse" from Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Durham leaves the Office of Institutional Equity with a vacancy that it needed two nationwide searches to fill the first time around.
"I'm not the kind of person that spends a short time at a job-I really had expected to have a good tenure, if not a career, here at Duke," Morton said, who had been approached 18 months ago by Blue Cross/Blue Shield about a position. She will leave the University by the month's end to become the company's associate general counsel. "But just looking at the [Blue Cross/Blue Shield] opportunity, I decided it was the right thing to do even though the timing was not good. I regret that it's been such a short time."
Myrna Adams, vice president for institutional equity, said she hopes to replace Morton by July with an internal candidate experienced with harassment issues and familiar with the operations of the University. She will not appoint an interim director in the meantime.
"I don't want to do an interim," explained Adams, who appointed Morton in July 1997. "I've been there and done that. And you can't do enough long-term planning with an interim."
Both Adams and Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs Sue Wasiolek, who participated in Morton's interview process, lamented the director's departure.
"My disappointment is not that it took us so long to find her and that she's leaving so quickly. My disappointment is that she's leaving," Wasiolek said. "I think we're losing a really valuable resource."
Although she was only able to work with Morton for a brief time, Adams said it was long enough to convince her that the Office of Institutional Equity had made a wise choice. In addition to supervising the implementation of the University's harassment policy, Morton's responsibilities included coordinating educational resources about sexual harassment, gender equity and forms of illegal discrimination.
"It's hard to know exactly how to respond," Adams said. "On the one hand, you don't want to limit people's horizons; on the other hand, it's hard to assemble a staff of people with the kind of competencies and personal qualities that I look for."
As she prepares to leave, Morton said some elements of the campus environment made it difficult for her to increase campus-wide understanding of the University's harassment policy.
"We really don't have a system that is sufficient or a strategy that is University-wide for dealing with these kinds of matters," she explained, adding that although her tenure at Duke has been brief, "there are incidents or activities or environments here that I find surprising for this day and age. And I have experienced some surprising lack of knowledge on the part of various constituencies about what to do, who to contact and how to handle a problem situation effectively."
Adams agreed with Morton's assessment of the barriers faced by their office and said that she has taken steps to facilitate their removal. In particular, beginning in July, Adams' administrative assistant will take on the new position of staff investigator so that Morton's replacement and Ben Reese, assistant vice president for cross-cultural relations, can spend less time handling complaints and more time educating community members about harassment issues.
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