Former employee and student sues SBCC for discrimination

Santa Barbara City College is being sued by a former employee and student, alleging discrimination. This coming after the junior college received similar heat in the past year.

Santa Barbara native Krystle Farmer is currently without a job and dropped out of school and she blames Santa Barbara City College.

“Why do I have to lose my job? I am the victim,” said Farmer. “I am the one that is hurt and it just goes to show that this is how they treat students.”

In Superior Court, Farmer has filed suit against City College’s Equity Department for racial and gender discrimination and wrongful termination. She says the issues started when she was working in the Equity Department a year ago.

“The state gets funded equity funds to support the under represented students and so we had an equity director, Dr. Luis Giraldo, and he seemed like he was doing good work,” said Farmer. “But I started noticing that we were only doing things geared towards the latin population. Black students weren’t being represented well, LGBTQ wasn’t being represented well, Native American students, there was just a lot of avenues that we were not hitting.”

Farmer claims her troubles started when she started asking questions.

“It created a hostile work environment for me,” said Farmer. “He started isolating me from work group meetings and that ended in me receiving my paycheck and getting half of what I usually make, even though I had worked the hours. It forced me into a resignation.”

According to Farmer, Giraldo started to spread rumors she wanted a relationship with him, which she claims is not true. She then filed a sexual harassment complaint. Farmer moved on to working for UMOJA, a program at SBCC that supports disadvantaged students, but eight months into the new position that program was merged back into Giraldo’s department.

Soon after she was let go.

“Everyone failed me. Every single process and procedure at that school failed me,” said Farmer. “I met with the dean of student conduct, I met with the director of HR, I met with his supervisor, I met with the president of the school and they have failed me.”

Santa Barbara City College declined to comment on the allegations made by Farmer because the issue is currently an ongoing legal matter.

Santa Barbara City College has found itself in hot water in the last year for allegations of insensitivity to minority students. A department head was placed on administrative leave for using a racial slur while repeating a story from a gender equity work group meeting. That meeting was called in response to a rise in complaints regarding gender and racial issues on campus. Students protested at a board of trustees meeting in protest of the school’s decision to bring that administrator back on campus.

Earlier this year, small protests broke out at a board meeting after the college board of trustees decided to discontinue saying the Pledge of Allegiance before meetings. The pledge has since been reinstated.