Payroll Manager Not White Enough for Ivy League Club
Are you sitting down? Good. Because this may come as a shock to you, but you're going to have to grow up sometime: The Princeton Club of New York, a "private social club" catering to Princeton graduates, might be just a little bit racist.
I know. I know! An institution created by and for Ivy League graduates, participating in racist hiring practices? But that would go against the centuries of diversity, tolerance and openness that characterize Princeton University! And yet, it's what former Payroll Manager Jo-Ann Garcia alleges in a $10 million lawsuit:
Hired as a filing planner in 1981, Garcia was promoted in 1987 to handle employee benefits, manage the club's payroll and work as the house cashier. She was let go last spring after returning from a trip to her native Puerto Rico.
[...]
Her dismissal, according to the Manhattan Supreme Court suit, came after assistant general manager Evelyn Mendez-Baker asked her in June 2010 what she would do in case she got canned.
"Mendez informed her that the General Manager, Larry Hines desired 'white, native English speaking personnel and found the Hispanic accent of Guillermo Arana, the Controller, to be 'embarrassing,'" the suit says.
Well, it would certainly be the first time someone affiliated with Princeton said or did a racist thing!
