Jacobowitz settles 'water buffalo' lawsuit

The University admitted no wrongdoing and paid the 1996 College graduate nothing in ending a five-year legal battle. The "water buffalo" saga is finally over. Eden Jacobowitz, who garnered national attention in 1993 when he faced racial-harassment charges for yelling, "Shut up, you water buffalo," to a group of African American women outside his high-rise window, has settled his 1996 lawsuit against the University. The University admitted no wrongdoing and paid Jacobowitz nothing in settling the lawsuit, according to General Counsel Shelley Green. She said the University did pay Jacobowitz's attorney, Edward Rubenstone, "under $10,000" to cover part of Jacobowitz's fees and expenses. "He dropped [the suit]," Green said. Rubenstone said that he was "not particularly" satisfied with the settlement, but Jacobowitz --Ewho has just begun his first year at the Fordham University Law School in Lincoln Center in New York -- stressed that "it's very nice to know it's over." "It was an incredibly annoying, nagging incident that shouldn't have lasted longer than an hour. Instead, it took four or five years," the 23-year-old added. Jacobowitz sued the University in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court in February 1996 for $50,000, alleging that the University inflicted emotional distress and violated its contract with him. Jacobowitz, a 1996 College graduate, was a freshman in January 1993 when a group of African American women performed a sorority ritual that involved singing songs late at night in Superblock. From his sixth-floor High Rise East room, he shouted what five of the women -- all members of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. -- perceived to be a racial epithet, and they filed harassment charges against him in the student judicial system. After The Wall Street Journal, conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh and the American Civil Liberties Union -- among others -- took up Jacobowitz's cause, the women dropped the charges in May 1993 because they didn't think they could get a fair hearing. "I think the case exposed Penn's hypocrisy, its repression, its double standards and the nightmare of a speech code at a major university," said History Professor Alan Kors, a free-speech advocate who advised Jacobowitz in the judicial proceedings. "It led to profound and, I hope, permanent changes at the University." Jacobowitz's case led to the dissolution of Penn's racial harassment policy, a part of which was known as the "speech code." The women -- Colleen Bonnicklewis, Suzanne Jenkins, Ayanna Taylor, Nikki Taylor and Denita Thomas -- charged Jacobowitz with violating the code, which broadly bans racist behavior. The phrase "water buffalo" is a rough translation of a Hebrew word meaning a foolish person, maintained Jacobowitz, who was born in Israel and whose native language is Hebrew. In 1994, an internal University investigation into the incident, as well its handling by the Judicial Inquiry Office, said Penn treated the women unfairly. But the ACLU said at the time that the report displayed ignorance of due process and law. Then-College freshman Christopher Pryor, Jacobowitz's roommate, was also investigated by the JIO for telling the same women to "get your fat asses out of here." Sheldon Hackney, who was University president at the time of the incident, said yesterday that he was unfairly criticized for not stepping in to defend Jacobowitz during the judicial proceedings. "The way that the disciplinary system was set up then, neither the president nor the provost had any role in it," said Hackney, who returned this semester to teach in the University's History Department after a four-year stint heading the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington. "Looking back, I don't see that I could have done anything differently." At his NEH confirmation hearings before a U.S. Senate panel, Hackney admitted that the charges against Jacobowitz were an "error". "It was absurd," Kors said. "[Jacobowitz] shouted a word that had no racial connotations, and he did it to express his disapproval of noise, and the already horrible speech code didn't criminalize any of that." The "water buffalo" case -- which brought Penn national infamy -- wasn't the only one in the 1993 spring semester that exacerbated racial tensions around campus. On April 15, a group of African American students stole The Daily Pennsylvanian's almost entire press run of 14,000 copies to protest alleged racism by the DP and the University. Hackney -- a reputed free speech advocate -- criticized the students' actions at the time but didn't label them a crime or theft. Jacobowitz's lawsuit was dismissed on August 19 with prejudice -- which means neither Jacobowitz nor the University can file another suit in the case. "It was time to move on, because this whole thing was just making me sick," Jacobowitz said. "The money paled in comparison to the emotional distress that this case caused over the last five years." Jacobowitz said he'll "definitely consider" practicing First Amendment law as a result of his experience with the case and dealing with Kors and the ACLU. None of the five women -- who graduated in 1993 and 1994 -- could be reached for comment last night. Daily Pennsylvanian staff writer Randi Rothberg contributed to this report.

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