A San Diego State professor who sexually harassed at least four female students, asking one to dress as a French maid, no longer works at the university.
NBC 7 Investigates learned late Tuesday that Professor Vincent Martin was either fired or resigned last Thursday.
Just months after Martin started work at SDSU in fall 2011, a female student accused Martin of harassment. A document obtained by NBC 7 confirms Martin asked that student to meet him at hotel in Seattle and suggested she wear a "French Maid outfit."
Since then, SDSU investigators have confirmed Martin sexually harassed three other women who took his Spanish literature classes.
Records show Martin received a 30-day suspension in two of those cases. The university has not yet revealed what punishment, if any, Martin received for harassing the third student.
But late Tuesday afternoon, a university spokesperson revealed that Martin has not been employed at SDSU since last week.
That disclosure was made in an email sent to NBC 7 Investigates. It included no details about Martin’s departure and SDSU administrators were not available to answer to questions about why, and under what terms, Martin left the university.
Neither Martin nor his attorney have offered comment for this story.
In a statement, SDSU administrators said, the university "is limited, legally, with the disciplinary actions we can take until the faculty exhausts his or her due process." Read the full statement below.
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A decision letter from a previous arbitration hearing revealed Martin resigned from a job at the University of Delaware after he was accused of sexual harassment by a female student.
Just months later, during his first semester at SDSU in fall 2011, he began the same behavior, the documents show.
Martin received an informal warning about his actions, according to the letter, and an SDSU vice president told him his text messages were "inappropriate." Martin admitted he should not have sent the French maid text, the letter says.
However, less than two years later, he was accused of sexually harassing two more students.
SDSU administrators released the following statement about the University’s discipline process:
“Faculty at SDSU are employed under a collectively bargained contract that is negotiated at the system level and grants faculty certain rights, even in cases involving claims of sexual harassment. SDSU is limited, legally, with the disciplinary actions we can take until the faculty exhausts his or her due process. SDSU does not have discretion to simply terminate a faculty member without providing these due process rights, per their contract. Faculty are afforded the right to a hearing on the discipline wherein the third party reviewer determines whether the university's discipline is appropriate. SDSU takes all steps to ensure the discipline is appropriate (and appropriately severe) given the specific facts of the case and can be supported and upheld at hearing.”
