Ex-ASU admin blames employees for ignoring sexual harassment

PHOENIX (CN) — Former Arizona State University Athletic Director Ray Anderson blamed his employees on Friday for his decision not to report a wealthy donor for sexually harassing three women.

“It was a mistake on reflection, because I should not have allowed them to avoid their responsibilities to report it,” Anderson testified.

Anderson, now a professor at ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, was and is a mandatory reporter.

Then-senior associate athletic director David Cohen told Anderson in March 2019 that donor Bart Wear inappropriately touched three women, including Cohen’s wife and the wife of head basketball coach Bobby Hurley, at a basketball game. Cohen said Wear grabbed his wife Kathy Cohen by the waist and ran his hands up to her breasts.

Anderson said he didn’t think the behavior described to him was sexual harassment, but rather “inappropriate touching,” and therefore didn’t escalate the complaint. Five months later, he fired Cohen, who sued him and the Arizona Board of Regents for retaliation in 2021.

Anderson said that he told Cohen he would have a conversation with Wear, but that conversation never happened. Though he eventually admitted that he had a responsibility to report credible information, Anderson passed the buck to Cohen and another employee present at their initial meeting.

“It’s their responsibility,” he said. “They had all the information.”

Over the next two months, Cohen confronted Anderson once at a baseball game and again after Anderson took Wear on a private jet to a two-day golf outing, asking him whether he had addressed Cohen’s concerns with Wear.

“At this point I had not,” Anderson admitted. “I could have picked up the phone at any time and could have called Mr. Wear.”

Between June and August 2019, Anderson reduced Cohen’s responsibilities, changed who he reported to and renegotiated his annual bonus before eventually terminating his employment.

Defense attorney Robert McKirgan has spent a large chunk of trial, which began Tuesday, focused on an incident in 2017, in which Cohen deposited into his personal bank account a $690,000 check for the university from the ticketing company Vivid Seats. Cohen said he deposited the money for safekeeping and later refunded Vivid Seats, instructing them to rewrite the check to ASU. McKirgan has made the mix-up out to be a central reason for Cohen’s eventual termination.

But Anderson said he “wasn’t aware” of the incident at all.

Similarly, McKirgan has dwelled on another 2017 incident in which Cohen was privately reprimanded by the Pac-12 athletic conference for his behavior at a basketball game. But ASU never separately punished Cohen, and it wasn’t included in Anderson’s stated reason for firing him.

Instead, Anderson said Cohen’s termination “was a culmination of things over the prior five or six years.” In each of those years, Cohen received a 3% raise and bonuses exceeding $75,000.

Anderson said Cohen “was hostile and irate” at the suggestion he report to a new supervisor, and suggested it was representative of a consistently bad attitude. He added that ASU investigated Cohen for “excessive alcohol purchases” on school-sponsored trips.

Sandy Clubb also testified Friday that Anderson contracted her company, Victor Group, to conduct a culture assessment of the athletic department in 2018. In the assessment, employees were asked to name two supervisors whom they would want in their corner in an emergency, and two whom they would not want.

Twelve of 22 employees said they would not want Cohen in their corner, and none said they would want him.

Clubb said Anderson was “disruptive, gossipy and had anger issues,” pointing to two incidents in which he acted aggressively in staff meetings.

When cross-examined by Cohen’s attorney, Michael Perez, Clubb added that Cohen “was incredibly pleasant at times,” and “he was smart.”

Months after Cohen was fired, ASU cut ties with Wear and admitted that it should have addressed the situation sooner.

Kevin Salcido, human resources manager at ASU, said he discouraged Anderson from firing Cohen.

“The haste in which the decision seems to have been made, it just doesn’t feel right to me,” he recalled saying in 2019. Salcido testified at the end of the day Friday.

Though ASU contends that Cohen should have reported the incident right to the Office of University Rights & Responsibilities, Salcido said Cohen fulfilled his obligations by alerting his superior, especially because Anderson told Cohen he would handle it.

Anderson will resume his testimony on Tuesday. The parties still say they will be wrapped up with testimony by Wednesday.

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