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UPDATED: National Park Service Director Urged By Congressional Representatives To Survey Workforce For Sexual Harassment

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Editor's note: This updates with response from National Park Service officials that they are looking into how they might conduct a survey.

Nearly two dozen members of Congress have signed a bipartisan letter to National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis asking that his staff conduct a system-wide survey to see whether sexual harassment is an ongoing problem in the agency.

The letter, written by U.S. Reps. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, Paul Gosar of Arizona, and Niki Tsongas of Massachusetts, was signed by 17 other members. All 20 sit on the House Committee on Natural Resources, which has oversight authority for the Park Service. Rep. Tsongas is the Ranking Member of the Natural Resources Federal Lands Subcommittee.

Park Service officials told the Traveler on Friday that they were looking into how such a survey might be conducted.

"The National Park Service leadership appreciates the interest of the members of Congress who signed on to this letter and are in the process of discussing how such a survey could be conducted, with input from other organizations that have used similar methods to study these issues," April Slayton, the agency's assistant director for communications, wrote in an email. "We are committed to ensuring that every NPS employee can work in an environment that is free from sexual harassment and hostile work conditions."

The congressional letter, sent March 23 and just announced by Rep. Tsongas on Thursday, maintains pressure on the Park Service to investigate sexual harassment in the wake of revelations that such conditions played out for employees of the River District at Grand Canyon National Park for 15 years. According to a report by the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General, life deep in the Inner Gorge of the Grand Canyon at times reflected rowdy, sexually charged scenes from a frat party for some Park Service employees, with male employees pawing and propositioning female workers, some of who at times exhibited their own risqué behavior.

Grand Canyon Superintendent Dave Uberuaga, acting in the wake of the report, in mid-March dismantled the River District Office. The superintendent, in an email to all his employees, wrote that he takes "full responsibility for the situation the park finds itself in and I acknowledge and accept that over time, a culture was tolerated that allowed sexual harassment and created a hostile work environment."

That email, sent March 18, came a day after Director Jarvis sent an email to all Park Service employees stating that "no employee has the right or the power by nature of their position to inflict their will or to subject co-workers, regardless of their status, to abuse."

In his email, Director Jarvis acknowledged that across the system many employees "have expressed shock and dismay that the serious behavior and practices described has occurred for so long."

While he added that personnel matters and pending Equal Employment Opportunity cases require confidentiality, the director wrote that he wanted to "assure you that we are taking active steps in response to this situation."

In their letter to the Park Service director, the House representatives called for the Park Service to "increase their scope and conduct an agency-wide survey of all NPS employees," a release from Rep. Tsongas' office said.

“Specifically, we recommend that the National Park Service conduct a service-wide anonymous survey of its employees to determine if there are other instances of long-term sexual harassment in the workplace," part of the letter read. "The experience of examining sexual assault and sexual harassment in the military tells us that such cases do not happen in isolation and could be indicative of wider systemic problems. An anonymous service-wide survey will provide the National Park Service with a snapshot of the scale of this problem and better inform the agency on any necessary policy changes.”

The congresswoman's release did not list the other 17 members who signed the letter.

Comments

Reminds me of when Udall questioned the NPS director in a hearing about increasing fees at Denali for climbing.  He expressed that he had been hearing complaints and wanted the director to explain.  The director explained, Udall checked a box and fees continued to rise unchecked on Denali for climbers.


I'm still trying to understand what it means when the Superintendent takes "Full responsibility" for failing to act on such an egregious, longstanding issue. Is he going to be fired or subject to demotion or other disciplinary action? Or is he on track for promotion, which is what happened the last time he was involved in scandal?


Doing a survey is one thing; taking action on survey findings is altogether something else.  I'm guessing most permanent NPS employess with more than a short term tenure have taken multiple surveys (i.e. employee viewpoint surveys, management review surveys) on the same topics providing the same feedback more than once people until they wonder at what point the exercise became futile.  If this results in a survey, I would hope it would encompass employees who work on a temporary, seasonal basis.  They are especially vulnerable since they have very little power as it relates to the employment relationship.  They are easy to terminate, or they can simply not be invited back, which is a de facto termination of sorts.


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