Tenure

At least one colleague said the move to grant Orren tenure although staff assistants said they were having problems was alarming.

"There was a whole string of incidents when he would scream at secretaries," one of Orren's co-workers says. "This was before Gary had tenure. They gave him tenure anyway."

Orren's tenure was announced by the school in November, 1988, according to Steve Singer, a Kennedy School spokesperson.

Barrios said she believed the tenure committee was aware of staff complaints about Orren's behavior when they considered him for promotion.

"I remember, when he got tenure, feeling very, very--really it was a great injustice and that he didn't deserve it," the co-worker says.

Work Environment

The support staff say Orren's behavior made their work environment extremely difficult.

"I remember several of his secretaries feeling--I just remember they all disliked him," the co-worker says. "I remember one of his secretaries quit and somebody said he'd been acting weird for a couple of days. At one level it wasn't very descriptive, but on another level, when somebody said that, I knew what he was talking about."

The co-worker, who asked not to be named, also said the work environment was emotionally uncomfortable.

"I certainly remember that it made working there much less pleasant than it would otherwise have been," the co-worker says. "I remember one time having to help him with some kind of project and just feeling greasy and sleazy by the end."

"Somebody at the K-School once said he had the instincts of a bully," the co-worker says. "He really had a way of knowing who was vulnerable, who had to take it from him. It was designed to threaten me and it worked."

A former staff assistant who says she left because of Orren's behavior described the office environment as very unpleasant.

"I remember this feeling of dread all the time," she says. "He really expected--he made unreasonable personal demands."

Barrios says that she found the experience working with Orren, and reporting his behavior, difficult and painful.