Former chief information officer sues Wichita State

A former chief information officer for Wichita State University has sued the university in federal court, alleging he was fired in retaliation for objecting to racially and sexually explicit language used by David Wright, the university’s chief data officer.

James Pulliam’s lawsuit, filed Monday in Kansas City, is seeking damages under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, a federal law that generally prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin and religion.

Calls and e-mails to WSU president John Bardo, provost Tony Vizzini and Wright were not returned.

“It’s a personnel matter, and we welcome the opportunity to resolve it through the legal process,” said David Moses, WSU’s general counsel.

That will be WSU’s only comment on the lawsuit for now, according to Lou Heldman, a spokesman for WSU.

Pulliam went to work for WSU on July 1, 2014, according to the lawsuit.

Pulliam’s suit says that while he worked with Wright, who is also WSU’s associate vice president for academic affairs, Wright made offensive racially and sexually explicit remarks in the presence of WSU employees and others.

In the lawsuit, Pulliam states: “During the interview for a chief information security officer, David Wright ... made the comment to a black candidate who was struggling to answer a question: ‘Don’t pimp us out.’ I objected to the comment as racially offensive.

“Mr. Wright told me that he is not allowed in many areas of campus because of his language and that he cannot be fired because he is ‘protected,’ ” Pulliam’s lawsuit states.

Pulliam says that Wright, with both WSU and non-WSU people in the room, used a vulgar sexual term to describe what it was like for him to use a computer mouse.

In reference to a new female employee, Wright told Pulliam “you couldn’t have hired anyone uglier,” according to the lawsuit. Wright later called the woman a “bitch” on several occasions, Pulliam alleges.

Vizzini, WSU’s provost and senior vice president of academic affairs, told Pulliam on Nov. 26, 2014, nearly five months after he was hired, that his management style was not working out, Pulliam’s lawsuit states.

A few days later, according to Pulliam’s lawsuit, he met with Vizzini to talk about Wright’s behavior. He says Vizzini said that even though Wright makes inappropriate comments that are embarrassing to others, WSU could not do anything about him because he was protected.

On Feb. 6, 2015, the lawsuit states, WSU officials placed Pulliam on administrative leave and told him his contract at WSU would not be renewed.

Pulliam states in the lawsuit that he wrote an e-mail to Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action officials about what he calls Wright’s inappropriate conduct. He also e-mailed Bardo and Vizzini about Wright’s conduct, the lawsuit states.

In a 2015 formal complaint to the EEOC, he said he warned Vizzini “that WSU will eventually get sued, and that somebody needs to do something about David’s inappropriate actions, and that David Wright is a vulnerability.”

The EEOC gave Pulliam a notice of right to sue in February.

The lawsuit says Pulliam was “unlawfully retaliated against for opposing race discrimination and/or sexual harassment.”

The lawsuit asks for unspecified damages, including lost wages and benefits, compensatory damages and other costs.

This was the second lawsuit filed against WSU this month by a former high-ranking WSU official.

On March 2, former WSU vice president for student affairs Wade Robinson sued WSU and Bardo over alleged violations of Title IX, a federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination.

Robinson says he was retaliated against for voicing concerns about how notification of a rape accusation with a student-athlete was handled, saying it eventually cost him his job. That retaliation, the lawsuit says, is a violation of Title IX.

This story was originally published March 18, 2016 at 7:14 PM with the headline "Former chief information officer sues Wichita State."