OLYMPIA – The Evergreen State College and a professor who led the study-abroad program to Chile could be headed to court, after professor Jorge Gilbert filed a lawsuit against the college. Gilbert is alleging defamation and discrimination based on his nationality.

Evergreen also is exploring “options for recovery” of a $23,500 settlement it made last week to 13 students who were on Gilbert’s study-abroad program in 2008, college spokesman Jason Wettstein said Thursday.

Thirteen of the 15 students who had gone on the 2008 trip each received about $1,800 in the settlement.

“I feel like it’s behind us,” said student Rebecca Moorman, one of the students reimbursed.

However, she said she wishes that the college had been more willing to settle with the students when issues were raised in 2008.

“Considering how long I worked to get paid back for it, and that I hired a lawyer; if they had the intention of paying us back, there wouldn’t have been a need for that,” Moorman said.

Gilbert’s month-long Chile program came under scrutiny last year after a travel company closed before issuing the students’ airline tickets to Chile. The program had been in place on and off since the 1990s.

The students paid for their trip by depositing their fees directly into a bank account managed by Gilbert, rather than paying through the college.

A college audit, released in February, concluded that at least $50,000 could not be accounted for from the trips between 2005 and 2008, among other findings. The state auditor’s office echoed the college’s findings in a fraud report released in July. The Evergreen audit also found that Gilbert violated the college’s money handling rules by asking students to deposit the funds directly into a bank account, rather than pay them to the college.

After the investigation, Gilbert was put on paid administrative leave. The college is going through its disciplinary process, Wettstein said.

Gilbert teaches Latin American studies with an emphasis in political economy of communications, among other things. He said he became an exile from Chile in 1974 after Augusto Pinochet became the country’s dictator. But after Chilean democracy was restored, Gilbert served as the country’s honorary consul in this state until resigning from that post this year.

Gilbert denies Evergreen’s allegations and believes the report is an attempt to discredit him, said Gilbert’s attorney, Pat Skrinar.

“The report is fraught with supposition, speculation, false, inaccurate, and defamatory statements, and gossip,” says a lawsuit that Gilbert recently filed against the college.

The lawsuit, filed in Pierce County Superior Court, says that the Evergreen had accepted his travel costs proposals and documentation every year until the investigation in 2008, after the Chile trip had already started.

The suit claims that the college’s investigation did not follow due process, that college officials conspired to violate Gilbert’s civil rights, that the college discriminated against him based on his national origin, and that he was defamed by the college’s report of its investigation both locally and in Chile.

On Thursday, Skrinar also questioned why the college settled with the students as quickly as they did.

“Because of the animosity and the discriminatory attitude of the college against my client ... especially Don Bantz, the provost; he wants to make my client look bad,” she said.

Wettstein, the college spokesman, said that the college is not in a position to comment on the lawsuit.

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