E-mails raise ethics issues

Such informal behavior has become increasingly common, a professor says.

COLUMBUS (AP) — A flood of records has not confirmed accusations that a senior aide to Attorney General Marc Dann sexually harassed two junior staffers.

However, the documents and emerging details make one thing clear: Dann and a circle of his closest aides interacted with a group of young women in the office more like buddies — or prospective boyfriends — than professional colleagues.

Dann’s 28-year-old scheduler, Jessica Utovich, playfully calls Dann names, invites him to drinks, solicits his opinion of her hair and scolds him for his conduct in thousands of e-mails between them released this week.

Meanwhile, the two women who allege harassment, both 26, say they spent time drinking and having pizza at an apartment Dann shared with the senior aide and another senior member of his staff.

Dann, 46 and married with three children, holds an office in the nation’s seventh-largest state that’s viewed as second only to the governor in its power. During his campaign, he promised voters he would return ethics to state government.

Tom Sutton, a professor of political science at Baldwin-Wallace College, calls it “AG Animal House” after the National Lampoon movie about wild college life.

“Were any laws broken? Probably not. But was it ethically suspect in terms of how they behaved to each other? Probably yes,” Sutton said, referring to Dann and Utovich.

One of the women claiming she was sexually harassed, Cindy Stankoski, said in her complaint that Utovich was in Dann’s condominium Sept. 10 when she alleges Dann aide Anthony Gutierrez unbuttoned her pants while she was drunk and sleeping.

In their e-mail exchanges Dann and Utovich were familiar.

“You owe me dinner,” she’d write to Dann.

Or him to her: “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have had that conversation in that manner. I tried to talk to you earlier. You became totally defensive and my anxiety level increased dramatically because of those unresolved issues.”

He once called her “cookie.” She called him a “dork.”

One day she wrote: “Please do not EVER tell me to stop acting emotional. I try to do my job to the best that I can.”

Sutton said colleagues in high-pressure political environments certainly get casual on occasion, or let four-letter words slip in their personal exchanges.

“But it shouldn’t be happening in e-mail, and it shouldn’t be happening at a place where he’s staying,” Sutton said.

He drew parallels with former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, noting that people hold those who campaign on a platform of ethical purity to a higher standard.

The propriety of such informal behavior among bosses and subordinates can be debated — but it has become increasingly common, said P.M. Forni, a professor and director of the Civility Institute at Johns Hopkins University.

“There was a time when formality was an effective separation wall between the world of work and the social sphere of action,” Forni said. “Tearing down that wall seemed a triumph of democracy, but it came with unintended consequences.”

For instance, many corporations that introduced dress-down days in the 1980s and 1990s ultimately eliminated them, because it turned out casual dress was sometimes opening the door to inappropriate behavior at the office, he said.

Dann’s office’s computer use policy notes that e-mail is “intended for business purposes.” However, it does allow for “limited personal use such as reading online newspapers” during lunchtime and other breaks.

E-mail and the Internet have accelerated the casual trend in offices, promoting communication that’s a hybrid between the written and the verbal, Forni said. Stress and lack of time people have while at work makes their e-mail exchanges even more susceptible to being inappropriate, he said.

“Stress is a very bad counselor, it clouds our judgment when we have to make important decisions,” he said. “Certainly somebody in the position of Mr. Dann has to have the clarity of mind to make good decisions every single day, many times a day probably. It is a stressful situation and, with the added informality with Internet communication, you have a volatile mixture.”

Dann recused himself from the investigation of Gutierrez, the aide accused of harassment and one of Dann’s roommates. Dann has suspended Gutierrez and a third roommate at the apartment, his communications director Leo Jennings III, in connection with the sexual harassment investigation.

His office says testimony is complete in its investigation. Findings are expected in about two weeks.

“Both the morality play of excessive informality in the office and the reality play of the abuse of power and rank, if indeed that is what happened in this case, both have to do with a very basic skill of socialization: restraint,” Forni said.

Jennings, a close friend and political consultant to Dann, had been disciplined in September over another issue that involved restraint: He sent a profanity-laced e-mail to a co-worker at the office.

Sutton said the case has raised serious questions about Dann’s judgment.

“There’s a pattern emerging and the pattern is clearly that he’s hiring friends into positions of importance and then trying to justify the hires as qualified.”