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Monthly Archives: September 2014

University

Coach Fader’s Interview with WISC-TV (Channel 3000)

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Update: Video interview embedded immediately below.

On Monday night, WISC-TV Madison broadcast an interview with UW-Whitewater’s former wresting coach, Tim Fader. Coach Fader was dismissed from his position in June 2014, two months after he reported an alleged sexual assault to the Whitewater Police Department. A story based on the broadcast interview is now online. See, Former UW-Whitewater wrestling coach seeks to clear name.

The interview provides significant new information about UW-Whitewater’s actions in Coach Fader’s dismissal, and more broadly the university’s evident misunderstanding of the difference between actual reporting and mere formalism.

Here’s the reported account of Fader’s actions:

But on Good Friday, April 18, he [Fader] said he received a phone call from the mother of a student he knew on campus. His reaction, he believes, cost him his job and has harmed his chances to continue his career.

“She was very emotional and she said, ‘You know that recruit you had here yesterday. (He) sexually assaulted my daughter,'” Fader said. “I called the police and said, ‘I’m Tim Fader. I’m the wrestling coach. I have a sexual assault allegation. What do I do?'”

Fader said the Whitewater police officer he spoke to suggested he get the recruit to the station for questioning. Fader did that, sending the recruit with an assistant coach to meet with detectives.

A spokesman for the Whitewater Police Department said officers are meeting with the Walworth County District Attorney’s Office this week to determine if charges will be filed. Whitewater police would not discuss how the department learned about the alleged incident, stating it remained an open investigation.

Fader believed that by reporting as he did, the Whitewater Police Department would notify the university, as it had in past incidents.

The interview also includes key information elicited from university officials Sara Kuhl and Mary Beth Mackin.

Of the April incident reported to the city’s police department, Dean of Students Mackin states that the “university responded appropriately in accordance with its obligations under Title IX and its own institutional policies and practices.”

It’s an empty response, three times over.

First, it was Fader, not the university, not an institution, that initially responded.

Second, an appropriate response would not have been to create the impression of punishing direct, initial communication to the police, as that is the very opposite of the goals of Title IX reporting. (It’s the opposite of any climate that correctly supports reporting and open discussion). Mackin obtusely conflates actual conduct with mere formalism, and rests on the latter rather than the former.

Third, if the university had wanted a more canned reply, it could not have picked a better one than Mackin’s defensive, organizational one; it’s as though she thumbed through a phrase book for institutional defenders and found something especially lifeless (‘Defenses, company men and women, Page 6…’).

The WISC-TV story also relates that UW-Whitewater press spokeswoman Sarah Kuhl “denied an open records request asking for documents related to the Title IX investigation into the alleged incident in April because she said its attorneys and the federal government advised the school to do so.”

Included is the reasoning behind the denial:

“Given that your request seeks information that has been or is likely to be requested by OCR as part of the investigation, the university believes that the release of information could compromise the integrity of the investigation, including the university’s ability to adequately represent its interests,” Kuhl said the records request response.

A refusal to release information now is temporary only, as Kuhl (or others) must know. Here’s why. A federal investigation may resolve administratively and if so records will be available via subsequent state and federal records requests to UW-W and the Department of Education, respectively. Alternatively, UW-Whitewater may also find itself in litigation with the 2-14-14 claimant or others in a necessarily public forum.

Either way, information about these matters will become public. There’s no avoiding a public airing – nor should there be such avoidance.

There’s no way to know, of course, whether Kuhl’s concern about protecting the university’s position is boilerplate or also an implicit admission of a true vulnerability concerning the claimant’s case from which the ongoing federal investigation derives.

One can be sure, however, that Chancellor Telfer was quick to issue a statement in May protecting his position in all this, but made no mention of Coach Fader’s actions. It was, after all, Fader and not Telfer who took practical action here.

Now that there’s investigative press coverage, Chancellor Telfer’s nowhere to be found, leaving the talking to a spokeswoman and subordinate.

And that, to be sure, is neither a positive climate nor even personal leadership at UW-Whitewater.

For prior posts about this matter, please see:

Questions on Assault Reporting, Formality, and Former UW-Whitewater Wresting Coach Fader

Assault Reporting, Formality, and Former UW-Whitewater Wresting Coach Fader

Caution on Publishing About Criminal Investigations

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 9.30.14

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Month’s end in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of sixty-two.

On this day in 1954, America commissions the world’s first nuclear submarine:

GWBridgeUSSNautilus.agr
Nautilus passes under the George Washington Bridge during a visit to New York Harbor in 1956. Via Wikipedia.

USS Nautilus (SSN-571) was the world’s first operational nuclear-powered submarine. The vessel was the first submarine to complete a submerged transit to the North Pole on 3 August 1958. Sharing names with the submarine in Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and named after another USS Nautilus (SS-168) that served with distinction in World War II, Nautilus was authorized in 1951 and launched in 1954. Because her nuclear propulsion allowed her to remain submerged far longer than diesel-electric submarines, she broke many records in her first years of operation, and traveled to locations previously beyond the limits of submarines. In operation, she revealed a number of limitations in her design and construction. This information was used to improve subsequent submarines.

Nautilus was a component of SubRon Ten (Submarine Squadron Ten). The squadron commander was stationed aboard the USS Fulton (AS-11), a submarine tender stationed in New London, Connecticut at State Pier. Nautilus and other submarines in the squadron made their home tied up alongside the tender, where they received preventive maintenance and, if necessary, repairs, from the well-equipped Fulton and her crew of machinists, millwrights, and other crafts.

Nautilus was decommissioned in 1980 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1982. The submarine has been preserved as a museum of submarine history in Groton, Connecticut, where the vessel receives some 250,000 visitors a year.

On this day in 1859, Abraham Lincoln speaks in Wisconsin:

1859 – Abraham Lincoln Speaks at State Fair
On this date Abraham Lincoln delivered an address at the Wisconsin State Fair. In his speech, he connected agriculture to education: “Every blade of grass is a study; and to produce two, where there was but one, is both a profit and a pleasure.” The rising political star (who was elected the following year), also stressed the importance of free labor. This was Lincoln’s last visit to Wisconsin. In 1861, after winning the presidential election, Lincoln signed the bill establishing the U.S. Department of Agriculture. [Source: AbrahamLincoln.org]

Google-a-Day asks about a poem:

What poem title did T. S. Eliot say he created by combining the titles of a romance by William Morris with the title of a Rudyard Kipling poem?

Business, Corporate Welfare, Government Spending, Uncategorized, WEDC

WEDC Claims Success by Writing Off Bad Loans

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Wisconsin has had years of embarrassments from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, of economic manipulation, of picking supposed winners as though party hacks would know better than markets. It was a method bound to disappoint.

These smarmy men at the WEDC have been trying to show progress on the millions of bad loans they’ve made. Lazy men that they are, they’re reducing millions in bad loans not by trying to salvage them, but simply by writing them off –

Friday’s audit [by the Legislative Audit Bureau] found that the troubled loans held by WEDC dropped from 49 loans totaling $13.2 million as of June 2013 to 30 loans totaling $5.5 million as of December 2013.

Of the $7.7 million decrease in troubled loans held by WEDC, the biggest chunk — $3.2 million — came from loans that were written off by WEDC because they were 90 days past due.

For the state to proceed with the collection process, those loans had to be transferred from WEDC to the Department of Administration. So by itself that change is just a bureaucratic shuffle, not a gain for taxpayers.

The audit didn’t examine what had happened to the loans after they went to the administration department.

The next biggest chunk of past due loans, worth $2.1 million, had their contracts rewritten by WEDC to delay repayment by the borrowers.

Another $1.3 million in loans were forgiven by WEDC in whole or in part….

See, Audit: jobs agency makes progress on bad loans by writing many off.

When Messrs. Telfer, Knight, and Clapper met for a second time at the Innovation Center with WEDC leader Reed Hall, to crow about what a great program the WEDC has been, it’s a shambling, stumbling, dishonest agency they were praising.

That’s what they dragged into Whitewater yet again. This agency is the embodiment of disrespect or ignorance of sound policy

That’s a problem of corporate welfare, of course, yet more: if one will overlook such obvious failure, loss, and disgrace to Wisconsin from the WEDC, perhaps one will overlook the risks, costs, and vital details of other bad ideas.

Previously, at FREE WHITEWATER on the WEDC:

See, below, the Legislative Audit Bureau report and a reply from the WEDC’s Reed Hall:

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 9.29.14

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Monday in town will be warm, with a high of eighty-one, accompanied by an even chance of late afternoon thundershowers.

There will be a meeting of the Urban Forestry Commission at 2:15 PM. Later, at 6:30 PM, there will be an informational meeting about construction at the intersection of Center and Whitewater Streets.

Reason prevails – when asked whether they’d perform CPR on a bear, 91.3% of respondents to FW’s Friday poll said, “No, I think I’d pass on that.” I’ve always been an optimist about our country’s future, and this is another small bit of information supporting a positive outlook.

On this day in 1957, the Packers get a new stadium:

gmti-photoj2002q3m09t24h16122600.jff

1957 – Packers Dedicate New Stadium
On this date the Green Bay Packers dedicated City Stadium, now known as Lambeau Field, and defeated the Chicago Bears, 21-17. In the capacity crowd of 32,132 was Vice president Richard Nixon. [Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]

Google-a-Day asks a question about a book, about a band:

The Curatorial Director of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum authored a book describing 50 years of what rock band?

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 9.28.14

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of eighty. Sunrise today is 6:49 AM and sunset 6:42 PM. The moon is a waxing crescent with nineteen percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Here’s one lucky cyclist from Russia, in the midst of accidents and chaos all around, but able to walk away —

On this day in 1781, as the Battle of Yorktown begins, Lord Cornwallis’s days as a British commander are numbered:

…General George Washington, commanding a force of 17,000 French and Continental troops, begins the siege known as the Battle of Yorktown against British General Lord Charles Cornwallis and a contingent of 9,000 British troops at Yorktown, Virginia, in the most important battle of the Revolutionary War.

Earlier, in a stroke of luck for the Patriots, the French fleet commanded by Francois, Count de Grasse, departed St. Domingue (the then-French colony that is now Haiti) for the Chesapeake Bay, just as Cornwallis chose Yorktown, at the mouth of the Chesapeake, as his base. Washington realized that it was time to act. He ordered Marquis de Lafayette and an American army of 5,000 troops to block Cornwallis’ escape from Yorktown by land while the French naval fleet blocked the British escape by sea. By September 28, Washington had completely encircled Cornwallis and Yorktown with the combined forces of Continental and French troops. After three weeks of non-stop bombardment, both day and night, from cannon and artillery, Cornwallis surrendered to Washington in the field at Yorktown on October 17, 1781, effectively ending the War for Independence.

Pleading illness, Cornwallis did not attend the formal surrender ceremony, held on October 19. Instead, his second in command, General Charles O’Hara, carried Cornwallis’ sword to the American and French commanders.

Although the war persisted on the high seas and in other theaters, the Patriot victory at Yorktown ended fighting in the American colonies. Peace negotiations began in 1782, and on September 3, 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed, formally recognizing the United States as a free and independent nation after eight years of war.

On this day in 1925, one of America’s finest computer engineers is born:

1925 – Seymour R. Cray Born
On this date Seymour R. Cray was born in Chippewa Falls. Cray received a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota. He established himself in the field of large-scale computer design through his work for Engineering Associates, Remington Rand, UNIVAC, and Control Data Corporation. In 1957 Cray built the first computer to use radio transistors instead of vacuum tubes. This allowed for the miniaturization of components which enhanced the performance of desktop computers. In the 1960s he designed the world’s first supercomputer at Control Data. In 1972 he founded Cray Research in his hometown of Chippewa Falls where he established the standard for supercomputers with CRAY-1 (1976) and CRAY-2 (1985). He resigned from the company in 1981 to devote himself to computer design in the areas of vector register technology and cooling systems. Cray died in a automobile accident on October 5, 1996. [Source: MIT and Cray Company]

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 9.27.14

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Saturday in the Whippet City will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty. Sunrise is 6:48 AM and sunset 6:43 PM. The moon is a waxing crescent with eleven percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Tim Bell, while racing in the Circuit of the Americas, lost the brakes on his Nissan 370z and took evasive action — finally hitting a barrier at around one-hundred miles per hour. Amazingly, and fortunately, he walked away unharmed:

On this day in 1964, the Warren Commission report becomes public:

The President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established by President Lyndon B. Johnson on November 29, 1963[1] to investigate the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy that had taken place on November 22, 1963. Its 889-page final report was presented to President Johnson on September 24, 1964[2] and made public three days later.[3] It concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy and wounding Texas Governor John Connally[4] and that Jack Ruby also acted alone when he killed Oswald two days later.[5] The Commission’s findings have proven controversial and have been both challenged and supported by later studies.

The Commission took its unofficial name—the Warren Commission—from its chairman, Chief Justice Earl Warren.[6] According to published transcripts of Johnson’s presidential phone conversations, some major officials were opposed to forming such a commission and several commission members took part only reluctantly.[7] One of their chief reservations was that a commission would ultimately create more controversy than consensus, and those fears proved valid.[7]

Poll

Friday Poll: CPR on a Bear

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A woman comes upon a bear in the darkness near her home, believes it’s wounded, calls 911, and then (on her own initiative) begins administering CPR while awaiting the police.

Below is a link to the clip including the actual audio from that woman’s 911 call, about a ‘squished’ bear that was ‘flatter than a flitter’:

911 Call Audio

Admittedly, the animal-lover’s call to 911 has a surprise ending, but still…

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 9.26.14

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Good morning, Whitewater

Week’s end in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of seventy-nine.

It’s the anniversary of the first Kennedy-Nixon debate, televised on this day in 1960:

On this day in 1833, several tribes in Wisconsin cede land to the United States:

1833 – Indian Treaty Cedes to Government
On this date Indian tribes including the Ojibwe, Menominee, Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, Ottawa and Sauk ceded land to the government, including areas around Milwaukee, especially to the south and east of the city. The ceded land included much of what is today John Michael Kohler and Terry Andrae State Parks. The Potawatomi continued to live along the Black River until the 1870s, despite the treaty. [Source: Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources]

Google-a-Day asks a sports question about a location:

In what state did a golf star, who was the youngest player to achieve the Grand Slam, hold a news conference in 2010 to issue a formal apology?

University

Questions on Assault Reporting, Formality, and Former UW-Whitewater Wrestling Coach Fader

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Minor athletic-rules violations, no matter how widely reported, are trivial compared with assuring an open climate to report and address sexual assault and harassment (no matter how some try to change the subject).

A focus on a university’s small athletic discrepancies inadvertently (or intentionally) distracts from a more important focus on that university’s commitment addressing sexual assault and harassment.

I’ve posted on this topic previously. See, Assault Reporting, Formality, and Former UW-Whitewater Wrestling Coach Fader.

Prior news accounts of Coach Fader’s dismissal may be found at the Rockford Register Star (Wrestling coach seeks answers to dismissal) and Examiner.com (Update on Dismissal of Wisconsin Whitewater Coach Tim Fader).

There are also more recent stories at Channel 3000 and the Gazette (subscription req’d) about supposed athletic infractions in the UW-Whitewater wrestling program.

Behind both of the stories lies a UW-Whitewater self-reported review (embedded below at the end of this post) of the wrestling program.

I’ve several questions about the stories, and even more pressing questions about the federal harassment & abuse investigation of UW-Whitewater.

Timeline:

April 18, 2014. Report to Whitewater Police Department. By Fader’s account at the Rockford Register Star:

According to Fader, he received a phone call from the mother of a female student who had told her mom that she had been sexually assaulted by one of Fader’s wrestling recruits who was on campus for a visit. The recruiting visit had ended, but the recruit stayed in town for an extra night.
Fader did what he thought was the right thing by finding the recruit, talking to him, and taking him to the Whitewater police to make sure the incident was handled by the proper authorities.
When Fader received a return call from the mother of the alleged victim two days later, he thought it was all over. She told him that she should have never called him and that she was wrong about the incident. At that point, Fader believed the issue was over and all involved could move on.

May 1, 2014. U.S. Department of Education names UW-Whitewater as one of fifty-five four-years colleges in America under investigation for handling of sexual violence investigations. See, U.S. Department of Education Releases List of Higher Education Institutions with Open Title IX Sexual Violence Investigations.

(We’re a huge country; there are thousands of four-year schools in America.)

May 12, 2014. UW-Whitewater officials Drs. Matt Aschenbrener and Elizabeth Watson are “charged on May 12, 2014 to lead the investigation [Wrestling Recruitment Investigation], to report findings and make recommendations.” (See embedded investigation report, at the bottom of this post.)

May 15, 2014. The Janesville Gazette publishes a story on Coach Fader’s suspension (UW-W wrestling coach suspended).

The story refers to a memo from Chancellor Telfer sent earlier that week:

Telfer announced the actions in a message to faculty and staff Tuesday morning [May 13]. He said the actions came after an incident filed with Whitewater Police Department.

“On Monday [May 12], I was notified that the Whitewater Police Department is investigating an incident involving an adult-aged recruit for the wrestling team,” Telfer wrote. “This matter is ongoing and I can only share limited information at this time.”

(On May 16th, I posted Caution on Publishing About Criminal Investigations, responding to a jumbled, misleading Web account of Coach Fader’s administrative suspension that made him seem as though he might be the subject of a criminal investigation from April’s incident. Fader was not, himself, a criminal suspect.)

May 30, 2014. Wrestling Recruitment Investigation dated 5.30.14 completed for Chancellor Telfer.

June 2014. Fader is asked to resign. See, Wrestling coach seeks answers to dismissal.

Questions:

1. The Wrestling Recruitment Investigation – at least as memorialized in the 5.30.14 report to Chancellor Telfer – produced no evidence of violence, harassment, or similar injury. Was anything omitted?

2. If no incidents were omitted, then are all the enumerated infractions no more than administrative ones?

3. Who (Chancellor Telfer, Athletic Director Amy Edmonds, someone else) decided to go beyond the Wrestling Recruitment Investigation’s recommendations and terminate (or demand the resignation of) Coach Fader? The Wresting Recruitment Investigation recommends seven modifications to team practices, but not one of them mentions, let alone requires, a resignation or termination. Who made that decision to demand dismissal?

4. On what basis – by what reasoning – did someone (Chancellor Telfer, Athletic Director Amy Edmonds, someone else) decide to dismiss Coach Fader (as the report does not recommend such action)?

5. Does the decision to go beyond the recommendations of the report’s authors (Drs. Aschenbrener and Watson) – who write that they conducted “over 50 interviews” and reviewed numerous documents – not call into question either their judgment in recommending too little or that of others who exceeded their recommendations?

6. Were all those who requested this wrestling recruitment investigation, who conducted it, and who were interviewed for it aware of the prior, nationally-published reports of federal investigations into possible Title IX violations, at least one of which involved UW-Whitewater?

7. Since the federal investigation into an incident of alleged sexual violence or harassment at UW-Whitewater was reportedly opened on 2.14.14, before the April 2014 recruiting incident, are those two events not separate?

8. If they are separate incidents (as seems very probable), then why conduct an audit into wrestling but — apparently – no similarly detailed investigation into other sports or campus activities?

9. Athletic Director Edmonds, in the Channel 3000 news report, says that

….all of the internal investigation recommendations have been implemented, including the consolidation of recruiting activities for all of its 20 sports programs on campus.

“This has bolstered all of our recruiting,” Edmonds said. “We’ve made sure everything is in one place now.”

What level of investigation did UW-Whitewater conduct into those other 19 programs?

Are there reports for those audits, if any were done?

10. Does Athletic Director Edmonds, Chancellor Telfer – or anyone – think that if one finds no more than technical violations in the wrestling program, that this lack of evidence assures, a priori, no more serious discrepancies elsewhere?

11. Does anyone on campus believe that a discussion of technical violations of sporting regulations matters as much as a climate of open discussion on harassment or violence?

12. There have been several stories about these recruiting violations, but why has there not been as much press attention to a safe climate on campus?

13. Can university officials not see that strong action on minor matters is less important than strong action and discussion on important maters?

It’s much easier to self-report about recruiting in the wrestling program than to commit to a leadership discussion of apparently separate and surely far greater concerns elsewhere.