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.