Marnocha’s Return

I posted last week that Randy Marnocha, formerly a UW-Whitewater administrator, is back as interim athletic director following the demotion of Amy Edmonds. See, from this website on 10.14.16, UW-Whitewater’s Interim Athletic Director.

The issue on campus is not simply whether this or that person will hold office, but whether the school will produce an administration that values the individual rights of students, coaches, and faculty more than it values the self-promotion of leading administrators.

Marnocha’s a choice best viewed cautiously. The university’s press release includes these remarks on his experience:

….Randy Marnocha is a familiar member of the Warhawk family. He served our campus for 27 years in various capacities, including 2006 until 2010 as Vice Chancellor for Administrative Affairs. He then took a position with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Athletic Department as associate director for business operations,” Chancellor Kopper said. “Randy has experience at one of the nation’s premier athletic departments, and I am pleased that he will bring his skill-base and knowledge to Warhawk Athletics….”

How Marnocha will do in his new & interim role I’ve no idea. Some of his past work in this city was spotty. It was Marnocha, along with then-City Manager Brunner, who wanted to form a joint university-municipal court (to keep more of the court fees with local, rather than county, authorities). See, from June 22, 2008, Joint court could be just the ticket @ GazetteXtra.

At the time, I let that discussion play out for months without much comment until September of that year, because there was no chance that a joint court of that kind was permissible under Wisconsin law. The oddity was that for months officials in the city and university went on with a city-university court proposal apparently without reading (or understanding) fundamental points of state law (that prohibited local creation of a hybrid court of the kind being proposed).

Finally, I wrote about the idea, after these proponents discovered, or were told, that their proposal was legally impermissible. See, from this website on September 4, 2008, Whitewater Common Council Meeting for 9/2: The Joint Court Proposal.

Marnocha was also a proponent of Whitewater’s Innovation Center. See, A City-University Technology Park in Whitewater.   Now that he’s back, perhaps he’ll use his formidable ‘skill-base’ to list the cost of the Innovation Center as against the number of actual, full-time jobs created (excluding jobs already existing at CESA 2, work-study jobs, internships, and university faculty already employed at public expense but affiliated with the Innovation Center).

Someone with “experience at one of the nation’s premier athletic departments” should be able to use a calculator, abacus, chalkboard, or pencil & paper to calculate the result in only minutes.

The failings here have been of addressing sexual assaults, over many years, and they’ve been severe.  Changing a person here or there is not enough.

I’ve written about local, official misconduct concerning sexual assault complaints for years; recent, national  political news is not the basis for my concern.  The conduct of self-aggrandizing and self-protective administrators in ignoring injury to some (thereby inflicting more injury through the denial of justice), and in causing reputational and related economic injury to others, is the basis for this concern.

It will take more than the shuffling of two chairs to overcome years of administrative misconduct.