Equal Employment Opportunity or Not?

Abstract

The SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 global pandemic left many workplaces in disarray. The author—an American-born Chinese American person—had returned to work shortly after receiving her first Moderna vaccination in April 2021. She returned to a workplace in which a direct supervisor started engaging in racist behaviors (pulling “chink eyes” during a Zoom meeting, engaging in anti-Asian rants) and pressuring for (unpaid) overwork well beyond the work week and beyond her actual professional role. She worked through the system at the university to try to resolve the issues, but the then-head of information technology services (ITS) notified her of a notice of non-renewal of her position a little more than a half-year after meeting with her via Zoom. She filed a federal discrimination complaint about this ill treatment only to have a year-long “investigation” (involving collecting documents and various testimonies) end with their legally binding neutral finding. This work describes the experience and some observations from the years-long experiences.