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Chico State faculty union issues apology for its handling of embattled professor's sex case

California State University, Chico
Wikimedia Commons
California State University, Chico

The Chico State chapter of the California Faculty Association issued a campus-wide apology Monday for the way it handled a 2020 case involving biology professor David Stachura’s affair with a graduate student he supervised.

While acknowledging that Stachura had a right to union representation while he was being investigated, local union leaders wrote in a statement “we do not have a duty to cover up harm and wrongdoing, nor should we protect people who have egregiously violated their ethical duties and obligations to fellow faculty, staff, and students.”

Stachura was suspended Friday amidst an uproar on the Chico campus and on social media.

“We’re learning hard lessons along with all of you. We, too, are both angry and upset,” union leaders wrote. “We want to make absolutely clear that your (executive) board did not fight hard enough for all members, and in hewing to procedures that are meant to protect due process, we wound up failing our colleagues and community.”

EdSource reported last week that Stachura allegedly threatened to shoot two professors who cooperated in the university’s investigation of the affair, for which he was lightly punished.

The union’s statement was made public prior to a 3 p.m. campus-wide Zoom meeting Monday on the situation called by University President Gayle Hutchinson.

Thomas Peele is an investigative reporter at EdSource. He is a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter.
EdSource believes that access to a quality education is an important right of all children. We further believe that an informed, involved public is necessary to strengthen California’s schools for the benefit of the state’s children, its civic life, and its economy.