Long-time AC Transit director Joel Young subjected another director, Sarah Syed, to “unwanted physical contact” during a board meeting recess last year, an independent investigation has found.
The investigation was triggered by an anonymous complaint against Young, who is currently the transit agency board’s at-large member, about an incident that occurred on September 24, 2025, in the public board room at the agency’s headquarters in Oakland. The agenda that day included, among other board items, a remembrance of Director Christian Peeples, who had died some weeks earlier.
The investigation was conducted by the Oakland law firm Meyers Nave and involved interviewing Syed and other witnesses and reviewing video, documents and agency policies. According to a December 17 letter addressed to Syed, the claim that she experienced unwanted physical contact was substantiated. The unwanted touching, according to the letter, violated the agency’s Board Policy No. 260, which prohibits gender-based harassment.
The letter did not say whether Young would face discipline.
Late last night, the agency posted a public statement about the investigation for the first time, affirming “confidence in [the] independent review.” It also made the video of the incident public on its YouTube page, “so riders, employees, elected officials, and the East Bay communities we serve can review the footage and better understand the investigator’s conclusions.”
The video shows Young putting his hands around Syed at the 2-hour and 49-second mark.
The AC Transit statement confirmed that the board has the authority to consider disciplinary action when a policy violation is found, and said that any sanctions would have to be considered during a public meeting. “To date, no meeting to consider discipline has been scheduled,” the statement said.
“She bristled and stiffened and looked very uncomfortable. Other people raised their eyebrows and looked at each other with concern.”
AC Transit board member Jean Walsh
Another board director, Jean Walsh, told The Oaklandside that she observed the interaction in question. She recalled that Young approached Syed from behind, “wrapping both his arms around her and squeezing her in a big embrace from behind.”
“She bristled and stiffened and looked very uncomfortable,” Walsh said. “Other people raised their eyebrows and looked at each other with concern. Other people definitely noticed. That’s what I saw and found it to be inappropriate and kind of creepy.”
Walsh said that the close contact was especially strange because Young and Syed are not friends and “not on the best of terms,” with Young even once urging the board to censure Syed in 2025 over her interactions with the agency’s then CEO.
“It was a weird interaction,” she said.
The investigators, according to the same letter, found that the touching did not violate other board policies that prohibit bullying, abusive conduct, and workplace violence.
Young responded to The Oaklandside with a written statement, saying that September evening was emotional for the board because of Peeples’ recent death. Young said he “offered comfort and support” to his fellow board members and “unfortunately, one colleague experienced my gesture differently.”
“I respect that her experience was different from my intent,” Young said, which he said was “simply an effort to show Director Syed that I wanted to put our disagreements…behind us and return to the civil working relationship and friendship we once had.”
Young, a past board president, said the investigator did not recommend that any disciplinary action be taken in his case, an assertion AC Transit spokesperson Robert Lyles would not comment on, citing “limits on what our Transit District can legally disclose regarding an internal workplace investigation.” Young said the claim itself was a form of retaliation by Syed for Young’s role overseeing the earlier disciplinary process against her.
Board President Diane Shaw responded to The Oaklandside by sending a statement signed by her and three other directors, Murphy McCalley, Anthony Silva and Harpreet Sandhu, defending Young.
“Director Young is the longest-serving member of the current Board, serving since 2009, including as vice president and president. His tenure includes securing more than $600 million for AC Transit, advancing workforce development and transit technology, expanding the district’s zero-emission fleet, and representing AC Transit nationally,” the board members wrote. “That record provides important context for understanding the commitment he has made to AC Transit and the communities we collectively serve.”
Syed, by contrast, is a relative newcomer just finishing her first term on the board. She agreed to comment to The Oaklandside only after AC Transit publicly released the video of the incident. “Every woman knows the difference between a hug and a squeeze of her neck,” she said by text message. “I’m speaking out because this event was an escalation of prior verbal harassment, unwanted touching and angry outbursts. No one should have to endure gender-based harassment at their work or fear for their safety.”
Walsh, in a call with The Oaklandside, said the support of Young by the four board members under these circumstances was “outrageous.”
A forceful response by female elected officials
Over the weekend, the report’s two-page cover letter became public when it was sent as a link in an email from Rebecca Saltzman, El Cerrito’s mayor pro tem and a former BART board president, to the Central Committee of the Alameda County Democratic Party. Saltzman sent the email ahead of a Sunday meeting where the committee would choose which candidates to endorse for the upcoming general election, including for AC Transit’s Ward 3 race.
The board decided three years ago to phase out Young’s at-large position, and so Young is now running for the Ward 3 seat — the seat Syed currently occupies — which represents Central and North Oakland, Piedmont and Alameda. Young faces Adriana Valencia, a tech product manager from Oakland.
Thanks to a 2023 redistricting, Syed is now running for the Ward 4 seat, which covers East Oakland and most of the Oakland hills. Her opponent is Gabriel Morales, an educator.
According to a report from East Bay Insiders, Young, in his opening statement to the county Democratic committee, addressed the allegations, calling the letter a “last-minute sort of smear campaign” by supporters of Valencia. Young claimed that he hugged Syed during the board’s remembrance of Peeples, and that he consoled other people as well. “Unfortunately, one of my colleagues misunderstood a hug I gave,” Young said.
Shaw, the board president, appeared to echo Young’s version of events in the statement she issued with her colleagues to The Oaklandside. “It was an extraordinarily emotional time. Members of the public, employees and board members alike shared kind words, expressions of support and embraces as we mourned together,” they wrote. “We believe Director Young was offering solace and support to a colleague during an extraordinarily difficult and emotional moment.”
The statement did not address the potential impact of Young’s misconduct on Syed or mention her by name.
Saltzman’s email to the committee, which included a link to the investigative summary, was co-signed by Syed, Walsh and Barnali Ghosh, a member of the BART board of directors representing District 3, which includes parts of Oakland. They wrote “as women who hold elected office” to say they condemned “the conduct substantiated by the independent investigation.”
“Gender-based harassment and unwanted physical contact by an elected official toward a colleague should never be brushed aside,” they said. “Women should be able to serve their communities without enduring harassment, intimidation or unwanted physical contact, and without having substantiated findings minimized or mischaracterized.”
They also, in the email, endorsed Valencia in her Ward 3 race against Young.
Saltzman told The Oaklandside that the group of women decided to go public with their letter because Valencia’s endorsement had been pulled off the Central Committee’s consent calendar in advance of the Sunday meeting. Some committee members, she said, wanted to hear Young out because they had heard that he had denied the investigation’s findings.
“ We realized that somebody had been telling them misinformation about that situation,” she said. “And then it happened again at the endorsement meeting on Sunday, where Joel Young got up and lied. We really felt the need to set the record straight.”
“What happened was a pretty big deal, especially because Sarah and Joel aren’t friends. This isn’t something that can be misconstrued.”
Rebecca Saltzman, El Cerrito mayor pro tem
Saltzman, who was a BART board member for 12 years before moving on to run for local office in El Cerrito, said she found Young’s substantiated behavior “totally unacceptable,” and that if what he’d done had happened at a BART meeting, she would have called for an official censure and might have removed the offender from committee assignments.
“What happened was a pretty big deal, especially because Sarah and Joel aren’t friends,” she said. “This isn’t something that can be misconstrued. It’s one thing if an ally [did it], but he’s gone after her a whole bunch of times.”
One local Democratic Party source, who asked that we not use their name, citing privacy issues, said Young had also disputed the investigative findings in recent months to members of the John George Democratic Steering Committee, an influential local political group led in part by civil rights lawyer Walter Riley. The Oaklandside reached out to the committee’s board members, but none responded by press time.
Walsh said she signed onto the email from the women elected officials because she wanted the facts of Young’s harassment to be known and wanted directors elected who can “serve the public” and keep the focus on AC Transit service.
Asked why a finding of harassment by one board member against another had not made it to a public AC Transit meeting in the nine months since the investigation was closed, Walsh said that was the recommendation of AC Transit’s general counsel.
“I don’t understand the logic of it, personally, why some things come before the public, and some don’t,” she said.
Saltzman said she also didn’t understand why the investigative findings hadn’t been made public in the months since the investigation wrapped.
“ It is very concerning because this is behavior that the public should know about,” she said. “I think if people had known about it, there would’ve been quite an uproar.”
The Oaklandside reached out to AC Transit’s general counsel, Aimee Steele, through the agency’s press email, but we did not hear back before publication.
Lyles, the agency’s communications director, in a statement to The Oaklandside last night, said the “board took the concerns seriously and promptly referred the matter to an independent investigator, not internal counsel.”
Lyles said the agency has limits on what it can share during an investigation to protect its integrity and the privacy of those involved.
“Now that the investigation and the board’s review are complete, we are able to share a clearer picture of what happened, what the investigator found, and how the matter was addressed,” Lyles said.
Update: This story has been updated with comments from Joel Young and Sarah Syed provided post-publication.
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