Months after scandal rocked her office, student conduct head out

Just six months after her office brought the national media spotlight to Penn's campus - more specifically, to its dorm room windows - Office of Student Conduct Director Michele Goldfarb quietly resigned her post this summer.

While it does not appear that Goldfarb was forced out, watercooler talk in Penn's administrative offices pinned November's high-rise sex scandal as a possible catalyst for her departure.

Goldfarb denied the rumors and said that her resignation was unrelated to the incident.

Last fall, the OSC charged an undergraduate student with sexual harassment for posting photographs of he took of a couple apparently having sex against a high rise dorm window on his personal Web site. Following media scrutiny, the OSC ultimately dropped the charge.

"Was the window controversy a difficult one for the office? Yes. Was it the only difficult one we've dealt with?" she said. "Not by a long shot.

"It was a cumulative matter that was not attributable to any single event at all."

Still, word circulated around campus this summer that the window scandal finally gave Goldfarb the final push she needed to step out the door.

"I think there's some truth to the hunch that the incident may have had something to do with her decision to depart," said one University administrator who wished to remain anonymous.

"I don't think it's the only thing," he said, adding that he believed the window controversy was effectively her "tipping point."

Another administrator said that although he could not speak to the veracity of any rumors, the "University scuttlebutt" was that the window scandal prompted a "fed up" Goldfarb to step down.

"It is the kind of high visibility job where you don't want to be noticed," he said. "If you are, that means there's a scandal."

Goldfarb said that she was simply ready to move on.

"This was a burnout job," said Goldfarb, who headed the OSC for 11 years and recently accepted a position teaching at the Penn Law School. "I just needed to leave it. It's a job that just wears you down."

Goldfarb said she had long wanted to return to teaching and had been considering resigning for some time. She even went so far as to warn Provost Ron Daniels of her desire to step down when she first met him last fall.

"I encouraged her to stay last semester," Daniels said. He added, though, that by early summer she had informed him that she wanted to take another job.

Goldfarb's tenure at the OSC receives generally high reviews from faculty and administrators, but she came under intense criticism during the window scandal - particularly from history professor and noted free speech advocate Alan Charles Kors.

Kors, who remarked during the scandal that the OSC was "clearly out of its mind and out of control," said that he thinks Goldfarb's departure is likely a positive step but not a cure-all for the office.

He added that though he likes Goldfarb personally and acknowledged that, overall, she left the office in better shape than she found it, the OSC's "willingness to sacrifice the liberties and political rights to political pressures is infinite in its negative qualities."

Goldfarb's resignation became official July 1, and she made a transition out of the office over the summer. The school is currently in the process of searching for a replacement.

Daniels' Chief of Staff Lois Chiang said that the Provost's Office has just started advertising the position and not to expect a permanent replacement for several months.

In the meantime, Goldfarb's top deputy, Ed Rentezelas, will serve as the interim OSC head.

Ironically, Rentezelas was the office's initial point man on the window-sex case last year.

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