UC regents to tighten sex harassment policy

The University of California regents are expected to close an apparent loophole Thursday that allowed a regent to avoid discipline after he was recorded this spring asking an actress at his podcast company if he could hold her breasts.

At their two-day meeting in San Francisco, a regents committee unanimously agreed Wednesday to recommend that the full board update its ethics policy to prohibit regents from violating UC’s sexual harassment rules even if they are off-duty.

At the same time, UC rules already require regents to “comply with all applicable laws, regulations and university policies.” They are also barred from “seeking loopholes” to avoid compliance.

If the updated policy is approved by the full Board of Regents, it remains unclear if the regents could discipline Regent Norman Pattiz for a violation of UC’s sexual harassment policy, UC spokeswoman Dianne Klein said.

At the same time, the university would become the first in the country to explicitly require ethics rules to cover the private lives of its governing board, UC General Counsel Charles Robinson told the regents.

The updated rules also would require the regents to take sexual harassment prevention training, as UC employees are required to do.

“As one who has already started the training, it’s not that difficult. You can start it tomorrow if you want,” Pattiz said during the meeting of the governance committee that addressed the matter.

Pattiz, the CEO of a company that owns PodcastOne in Los Angeles, was recorded in May knocking on the studio door of an actress trying to tape a brassiere ad for her podcast. When she became flustered, Pattiz asked: “Can I hold your breasts? ... Would that help?”

Actress Heather McDonald went public with the recording during her Oct. 26 broadcast. Her 13-minute interaction with Pattiz shows up about 23 minutes into the podcast.

McDonald, who took her chatty “Juicy Scoop” podcast to another company over the summer, said Pattiz frequently commented on her appearance or joked about following her into the bathroom during her weekly visits to the recording studio. She said she had to hire a lawyer because Pattiz tried to prevent her from taking the popular podcast elsewhere.

Pattiz told the Los Angeles Times in early November that he “deeply regrets” his comments to McDonald. “If I did that, I sincerely apologize, and it will be a valuable learning experience,” he said.

On Wednesday, he told The Chronicle, “I have apologized directly to Ms. McDonald and publicly. And I intend to support the recommendations to the Board of Regents.”

Pattiz, a member of the governance committee, voted to update the policy.

Yet students remained dissatisfied, suggesting before the committee’s vote that the regents have been hypocritical by cracking down on sexual harassment across the 10-campus UC system while appearing to protect one of their own. In January, just months before Pattiz was recorded, the regents revoked the tenure of a UC Riverside professor who had violated UC’s sexual harassment policy.

“If this was found out about any other university employee, their employment would be terminated because the university doesn’t stand for acts like this,” Julia Schemmer, a UC Riverside sophomore studying public policy told the regents Wednesday morning as she called for Pattiz to resign from the board.

Pattiz was absent from the meeting at that point, but took his seat after the public comment period concluded. Gov. Jerry Brown reappointed Pattiz in 2014 to a new 12-year term on the Board of Regents and has declined to comment on the matter.