Rebuttals (comments) to Appeal Hearing of 9-19-17
University Appeals Commission Hearing -
University of Wisconsin-Platteville
Transcript of Proceedings Taken on:
September 19, 2017
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4 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - PLATTEVILLE
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6 UNIVERSITY APPEALS COMMISSION HEARING
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10 RE: Revocation of Tenure of Sabina Burton, Ph.D.
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16 University of Wisconsin-Platteville
17 1 University Plaza
18 Platteville, Wisconsin 53818
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21 4:00 p.m.
22 September 19, 2017
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1 University Appeals Commission Chairperson:
2 SUSAN HANSEN
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4 University Appeals Commission Members:
5 ABULKHAIR MASOOM
BARB BARNET
6 SHERYL WILLS
RICHARD (RICK) BOCKHOP
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8 Also present:
9 BRIAN VAUGHAN
UNIVERSITY LEGAL COUNSEL
10 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
11 JENNIFER LATTIS
SENIOR SYSTEM LEGAL COUNSEL
12 OFFICE OF GENERAL COUNSEL
1802 VAN HISE HALL
13 1220 LINDEN DRIVE
MADISON, WI 53706
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ROBERT J. KASIETA
15 ATTORNEY AT LAW
SUITE 222
16 559 D'ONOFRIO DRIVE
MADISON, WI 53719
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MICHAEL J. BREITNER
18 DIRECTOR
OFFICE OF EVENT SERVICES
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20 SABINA BURTON, Ph.D.
21 ROGER BURTON
22 WITNESSES: PAGE
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UW-Platteville Chancellor Dennis J. Shields 3
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1 4:00 p.m.
2 September 19, 2017
3 CHAIRPERSON: Good afternoon. Thank you
4 for coming to this review.
5 Today is Tuesday, September 19th, 2017,
6 and the time is 4:00 p.m. We are meeting in
7 Ullsvik 300 on the UW-Platteville campus.
8 I'm Professor Susan Hansen, chair of the
9 UW-Platteville Appeals Committee.
10 The other committee members hearing this
11 case will introduce themselves.
12 MS. BARNET: Barb Barnet.
13 MR. BOCKHOP: Rick Bockhop.
14 MS. WILLS: Sheryl Wills.
15 MR. MASOOM: Abulkhair Masoom.
16 CHAIRPERSON: Also present is UW-Madison
17 Attorney Brian Vaughn who is advising the
18 committee.
19 This is an appeal before the University
20 of Wisconsin-Platteville Appeals Committee which is
21 authorized to hear this appeal pursuant to
22 UW-Platteville Employee Handbook, Article III,
23 Section 6. This appeal will be conducted according
24 to the policies and procedures set forth in
25 Chapters UWS 4 and UW-Platteville Faculty Handbook
Rebuttal:
The policies and procedures have already been violated numerous times by the administration.
Page 4
1 Chapters 6.3.12.3 and 6.3.13.
2 UWS 4.06(1)(c) and Chapter 6.3.12.3 of
3 Faculty Handbook provide that this evidentiary
4 hearing may be conducted in open session if
5 requested by the appellant. The faculty member in
6 this case, Dr. Sabina Burton, has requested that
7 this hearing be held in open session.
8 I will now note the appearances of the
9 parties. Please state your appearances for the
10 record.
11 MS LATTIS: Jennifer Lattis, representing
12 from the Office of General Counsel UW System, and I
13 am representing the UW-Platteville administration.
14 MR. KASIETA: Good afternoon, Dr. Hansen.
15 My name is Bob Kasieta. I'm a lawyer from Madison.
16 And with me at counsel table today are
17 Sabina Hansen --
18 DR. BURTON: Burton.
19 MR. KASIETA: I beg your pardon. Sabina
20 Burton. I'm sorry.
21 DR. BURTON: That's okay.
22 MR. KASIETA: I'm off to a good start,
23 don't you think?
24 Sabina Burton and Roger Burton.
25 CHAIRPERSON: Prior to this appeal
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1 hearing, a complaint was received by the Office of
2 Chancellor Shields on December 16th, 2016, seeking
3 Dr. Burton's termination from her position as
4 tenured professor in the Department of Criminal
5 Justice. Chancellor Shields appointed Dr. Petra
6 Roter to investigate the matter. Dr. Roter
7 submitted a report to Chancellor Shields on
8 March 1, 2017. Dr. Burton was offered the
9 opportunity to meet with Chancellor Shields to
10 discuss the matter. Chancellor Shields
11 subsequently issued a letter to Dr. Burton dated
12 March 30 of 2017 in which he determined that the
13 evidence supported dismissing Dr. Burton from her
14 tenured faculty position for cause. On April 19,
15 2017, Dr. Burton notified the university in writing
16 of her intention to appeal that determination.
17 The issues before the panel are as
18 follows:
19 Whether there's just cause to dismiss
20 Dr. Sabina Burton from her position as a tenured
21 faculty member as set forth in the Statement of
22 Charges included in Chancellor Shields' letter of
23 March 30, 2017, Sections I, II and III.
24 UWS 4.05 and 4.07 as well as Article
25 6.3.12.3 of the Faculty Handbook provide that the
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1 hearing panel will take evidence and testimony by
2 each of the parties and their respective witnesses.
3 A brief opening statement and closing argument may
4 be offered by the parties, with the emphasis on
5 brief. Thereafter, the hearing panel shall convene
6 in closed session to deliberate and will prepare
7 its next steps.
8 The record in this appeal shall include
9 all those exhibits and materials submitted by the
10 parties during the presentation of their cases and
11 the verbatim record of testimony, arguments
12 offered, and any other material as stipulated by
13 the parties.
14 Because this matter is being conducted in
15 open session, does either party wish to request
16 that witnesses be sequestered until it is time they
17 may be called to testify?
18 MR. KASIETA: We do request that the
19 witnesses be sequestered, understanding, of course,
20 that Dr. Burton is able to be present during the
21 entirety of the proceeding.
22 CHAIRPERSON: Okay.
23 MS LATTIS: Then I would request that
24 Mr. Burton also be sequestered.
25 CHAIRPERSON: We will sequester the
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1 witnesses that may be in the audience. I believe
2 there are some witnesses that will be joining us by
3 phone, so they're already naturally sequestered.
4 And we will request that Mr. Burton be sequestered
5 also.
6 MR. KASIETA: Well, may I be heard on
7 that issue?
8 There wouldn't be a basis for
9 sequestering Mr. Burton. I understand that by
10 asking for sequestration, that means that I could
11 call him to testify, and that's fine, but otherwise
12 I'd really like to know what basis there would be
13 for sequestering him. Again, he's just a member of
14 the public here then.
15 MS LATTIS: He had been on your witness
16 list, --
17 MR. KASIETA: Yah.
18 MS LATTIS: -- so I assumed that you
19 would call him to testify. If you're not intending
20 to call him to testify, then of course I have no
21 objection.
22 MR. KASIETA: Okay.
23 CHAIRPERSON: Is that okay then?
24 MR. KASIETA: Thank you.
25 CHAIRPERSON: Okay.
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1 MS LATTIS: All right. Then I will ask
2 my one witness, who is present, to wait outside.
3 (A PAUSE.)
4 MS LATTIS: Thank you.
5 CHAIRPERSON: Pursuant to UWS 4.06(1),
6 the burden of proof of the existence of the just
7 cause is on the administration.
8 The UW-Platteville administration
9 presented its testimony on May 25th, 2017.
10 Panel members may from time to time ask
11 questions of the witnesses or reserve time at the
12 conclusion of questioning by the parties, as they
13 deem appropriate. The parties are reminded to
14 proceed with the examination of their witnesses in
15 an orderly and prompt manner in order to conform to
16 this schedule.
17 If either party needs a brief recess,
18 please let me know. The Committee may also request
19 a brief recess at any time.
20 I'm confident that all parties will act
21 in a professional and respectful manner during this
22 review.
23 Following all the presentations, the
24 Committee contemplates that it will move into
25 executive session to deliberate and make
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1 recommendations concerning the next step.
2 Does either party have any matter to
3 raise before we proceed from this hearing?
4 MS LATTIS: None.
5 MR. KASIETA: Well, I have several,
6 please.
7 I would like to hear from the Chair and
8 the Committee, the panel, on the issue of the
9 constitution of the Committee, please. We have
10 raised issue about that and about the propriety of
11 the panel sitting as it was constituted, and I
12 submitted something in writing in the hope of
13 streamlining that process of that, but my hope
14 would be that the Committee would vote, the panel
15 would vote on whether it would continue as a panel
16 or whether it believed that the rules had not been
17 honored.
18 And if I may just very briefly? You're
19 going to hear me a lot talk about the details
20 because the details are important, it's what
21 provides due process for any of you and for
22 Dr. Burton, and so I am stuck on everything being
23 done exactly as the rules require, and that's why I
24 brought the issue up.
25 CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. The panel has
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1 reviewed this earlier in May, and we did receive
2 your submission and have reviewed it. This is a
3 panel of Dr. Burton's peers, so of course we're
4 concerned with procedure. And we reviewed our own
5 process for being formed and have determined that
6 there were no improprieties, that we followed all
7 of the procedures outlined in the Faculty Handbook.
8 MR. KASIETA: Then I would like the
9 record certainly to reflect that we proceed under
10 protest and reserve all rights regarding appellate
11 activity by virtue of the constitution of the panel
12 and the procedures that were followed to put the
13 panel in place, please.
14 CHAIRPERSON: Okay.
15 MR. KASIETA: The next item I have
16 concerns a request that the matter be dismissed,
17 because clearly UWS 4.02(2) was not honored in that
18 the appeal procedures were not provided with the
19 Statement of Charges as is unambiguously mandated.
20 The rules require that at the time that those
21 charges are delivered to the faculty member who is
22 being being subjected to this process, that faculty
23 member must -- not might, not maybe at a later date
24 -- but must receive the appeal procedures with that
25 submission, and it is uncontroverted in this case
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1 that that did not happen. Now that is not a mere
2 technicality. That is a substantive right afforded
3 every faculty member on the campus. And so it is
4 with that that I respectfully request that the
5 panel dissolve, that if, after all of what has
6 happened, if there is a desire to reinstitute
7 charges, that we start with a new panel and with a
8 new set of charges.
9 CHAIRPERSON: We have discussed this
10 matter, and Attorney Lattis, you had some comments
11 regarding that.
12 MS LATTIS: Yes. I'm trying -- I have
13 been put on the back foot, having not had notice of
14 this.
15 So Dr. Burton did in fact receive all of
16 the -- the set of copies of the rules, and the rule
17 that requires that she receive a copy of it in
18 Chapter 4 was followed.
19 It is not a matter of due process that
20 that that particular rule be followed to the letter
21 so long as she had access and was provided with a
22 copy of the rules, and in this case she was
23 provided with a copy of the procedures at the time
24 that she was given the suspension and original
25 notice of the complaint. So it was overlooked when
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1 we filed the charge, but our position has been that
2 she received all -- she received a copy of the
3 rules, there was no violation of her due process,
4 which would have been of course to have received a
5 copy of the rules, and the fact that it didn't come
6 with the charge but came with the original
7 complaint is a harmless error.
Rebuttal:
It was not harmless. The hearing panel was formed improperly and Dr. Burton’s reliance on Chancellor Shields’ incorrect instructions caused further violation of the policy to go unnoticed by Dr. Burton until the panel had already been formed improperly.
On Apr 18, 2017 Attorney Amouyal asked for the appeal procedures: (Amouyal-toShields-4-18-17).
Dr. Burton asked for the appeal procedures on 4-19-17 I request that you inform me of all the appeal procedures available
to me. Please be specific and inform me of the actual statutes dealing with the appeal procedures available to me. (OpenHrgRqst-4-19-17).
On 4-20-17 Dr. Burton wrote “Please send me, as soon as possible, the procedures or rules for conducting the hearing.” (OpenHrgRqst-Additional-4-20-17).
Rebuttal - Important:
Dr. Anderson asked Atty Lattis about the issue in a communication we do not have access to.
On 4-21-17 Lattis’ wrote to Anderson explaining why Dr. Burton should not be given the specific appeals procedures she requested (anderson_ltr_4-21-17). Her arguments are ridiculous and she contradicted them in the hearing calling it an “error.” This means Shields made the “error” when delivering the statement of charges and Lattis made the same “error” when she refused to give the procedures to Dr. Burton after being informed of the requirement in multiple communications.
8 CHAIRPERSON: As I recall, that is a
9 conversation that took place when we also looked at
10 that issue.
11 Anything else from the other side?
12 MR. KASIETA: We would of course
13 respectfully request that we reserve all rights
14 going forward under protest in light of that, what
15 we contend is a violation of the rules.
16 In addition UWS 4.04 was violated in that
17 there was not a hearing held within 20 days of the
18 request by Dr. Burton. Now 4.04 provides that a
19 hearing shall be held not later than 20 days after
20 the request except that this time limit may be
21 enlarged by mutual written consent of the parties
22 or by order of the hearing committee. The request
23 for a hearing shall be addressed in writing to the
24 chairperson and so forth. There was, by everyone's
25 agreement, I trust, no mutual consent to an
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1 extension, and I don't think it appropriate after
2 the fact to order the extension, and to the extent
3 that the panel or panel chair can order an
4 extension of the 20-day deadline, then it should
5 come with some reason or rationale for the
6 extension.
7 Now this is a particularly important
8 issue in this case because had the hearing been
9 properly held as the rule requires within 20 days
10 of the date of the complaint, it would have been
11 easier to obtain the testimony, it would have, as
12 circumstance would have it, been at a time when
13 Dr. Burton was in better health, and it would have
14 complied with that rule that every one of the
15 members of this panel has the advantage of, which
16 is that if allegations are made against you, you
17 have the ability to have those allegations
18 adjudicated promptly, and in this case they were
19 not. It's created a substantial interference with
20 the due process rights of Dr. Burton.
21 CHAIRPERSON: I believe that we met as
22 soon as possible, given the short timeline that was
23 provided. We'll certainly consider all of these
24 issues that you have raised when we deliberate.
25 But I would like to go ahead and proceed
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1 as we have gone to great trouble to get this to
2 work and timing for it to happen, I would like to
3 go ahead and proceed, but we will consider your
4 three issues when we deliberate.
5 MR. KASIETA: Thank you.
6 CHAIRPERSON: Anything else?
7 MR. KASIETA: Yes, please.
8 I asked that the panel agree to this ban
9 because it was improperly instructed in the prior
10 session on March 25th regarding what the definition
11 of just cause was. If a jury in a civil case
12 receives an improper instruction, the jury cannot
13 proceed to consider the case, and it is in fact
14 reversible error.
15 Now, Dr. Hansen, you properly point out
16 that the panel is supposed to be of Dr. Burton's
17 peers, which is very much like a jury situation
18 where improper instruction on the law has happened,
19 then it is a situation of reversible error, and
20 because the definition of just cause is not
21 properly before the Committee, the panel, and has
22 been mischaracterized, I believe that the panel
23 should agree that it would essentially disclare --
24 declare a mistrial and that we would not proceed.
25 MS. LATTIS: May I be heard on that?
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1 CHAIRPERSON: Yes, please.
2 MS LATTIS: That would be the -- at the
3 previous hearing what I told the panel was a near
4 verbatim quotation from the last I think eight or
5 so termination of tenured faculty cases that have
6 been heard before the Board of Regents, so I don't
7 have one of those decisions with me today, but that
8 is the standard of just cause that they have
9 applied in all of those decisions. I would be more
10 than happy to provide the Committee, if it's
11 interested in it, with copies of those decisions so
12 that it can see the standard of just cause – or
Rebuttal:
We should ask for these decisions to see what she is talking about. We did, and she only produced two. Baica and Kung? She produced the other six later. (see 10-27-17 in timeline)
In Judge Peterson’s decision of 3-18-16 he wrote “In January 2013, at her earliest eligibility, Burton applied for tenure. She was granted tenure, effective for the 2013-14 academic year. Burton thus enjoyed substantial job security: tenure extends for an unlimited period, and tenured faculty can be dismissed only for just cause and only after due notice and a hearing. See Wis. Admin. Code UWS § 4.01.” (Dkt-90-Case1)
This was part of his consideration in dismissing Burton’s case against the administration. Does Attorney Lattis’ definition of just cause seem like substantial job security?
13 the definition of just cause that the Board of
14 Regents has always applied.
15 So the Committee was not misinformed on
16 that. There are many definitions out there of just
17 cause. What I told the Committee was the one that
18 the Board has applied.
Rebuttal: Lattis presented it as the standard of just cause the panel should apply. According to the court the policies should apply. This comment should be part of the argument to Regents about just cause. It shows that Lattis is ignoring the policies and opting to use past injustices as a standard of doing business, requiring a court to make a decision rather than following policies. It seems Lattis thinks doing things by the Status Quo is the way to go even if it is in conflict with the statutes and policies. This is just one more example of this. Just because you’ve gotten away with it before doesn’t mean you can continue to do so.
So, an argument we need to make is that the panel didn’t even know what standard of just cause to apply. Ask each panel member the definition of just cause in their own words.
Ask the panel members who made the decisions about adherence to policy (answer should be Hansen). Grill Hansen on her understanding of the policies, especially her understanding of just cause.
19 CHAIRPERSON: We will also look at those
20 and consider whether just cause was misunderstood
21 by the Committee.
Rebuttal:
Deposition question: So, what standard of just cause did you come to decide was the standard to apply in this case?
We need to ask each panel member the same question to see if they applied the same standard.
22 Do you have any other matters?
23 MR. KASIETA: Yes, Dr. Hansen.
24 This you've already referenced:
25 Scheduling issues. I am concerned about our
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1 ability to get all of our witnesses on in a single
2 three-hour session, and so I raise this concern at
3 the front, because I understand that the panel and
4 its Chair have wide discretion regarding how to
5 conduct the hearing, if you're going forward with
6 with the hearing, and I respect that. I am
7 respectfully requesting that we take the three
8 hours today that have been set aside, once again,
9 under protest, but that we reserve the right to
10 come back for another session if we are not able to
11 get all of our witnesses in. And I ask this
12 specifically because I would like to conclude with
13 Dr. Burton, and if I'm in a position where I'm
14 presenting evidence and there is not adequate time
15 for Dr. Burton to testify, that puts her in a very
16 difficult position.
17 CHAIRPERSON: The panel will consider
18 this issue when we get to our three-hour time
19 limit. And, as I said before, you know, if the
20 panel feels it needs additional information, has
21 not heard everything that needs to be heard or
22 everyone that we need to hear from, we will move
23 forward with a second time, second date.
24 MR. KASIETA: I appreciate that. Thank
25 you. Does that mean that if I'm not able to get to
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1 Dr. Burton, that we will have the opportunity to
2 return?
3 CHAIRPERSON: We want to be fair but also
4 expedient, so we do want to move forward, and so if
5 time is allowed, if time is available for
6 Dr. Burton this evening, then of course we will
7 hear from her. But we do want to be efficient
8 about how we go about this panel hearing, so I do
9 not want to unduly extend the time of other
10 witnesses. Okay.
11 MR. KASIETA: I understand. All right.
12 Thank you. I appreciate that.
13 CHAIRPERSON: Anything else from either
14 side?
15 (NO RESPONSE.)
16 CHAIRPERSON: Okay. Does either party
17 wish to make -- well, I guess Dr. Kasieta, Attorney
18 Kasieta, if you would like to make an opening
19 statement of no more than five minutes, you may do
20 so. And then, Attorney Lattis, you may do so later
21 after him.
22 Go ahead.
23 MR. KASIETA: Thank you. And thank you,
24 members of the panel.
25 We are going to split the opening
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1 statement between my comments and Dr. Burton's
2 comments. I have asked her to write them out so
3 that we can move quickly, and so I defer to her at
4 this time.
5 DR. BURTON: Is this better?
6 Good afternoon.
7 I became a member of the UW-Platteville
8 Criminal Justice Department on August 23rd, 2009.
9 I chose this school because of my passion for
10 teaching. I fell in love with UW-Platteville
11 because of its students. It didn't take long for
12 me to feel at home here. Wisconsin reminds me of
13 my home state in Germany. Platteville is about the
14 same, roughly the same size of the town I grew up
15 in.
16 Not long after I started my teaching
17 career here at Platteville, I learned that I had
18 joined a deeply divided, dysfunctional department.
19 Grievance committees actually recommended
20 communication training start after in 2010 and then
21 again in 2013. Those trainings never occurred. No
22 committee action.
23 There were two factions when I arrived in
24 the department. One was led by then Chair Caywood
25 and by Eric (inaudible) and the other faction was
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1 Drs. Cheryl Fuller and Amy Nemmetz.
2 In 2010, just the next semester after I
3 got there, got here, the LAE meeting -- meeting
4 that had occurred already talked to all department
5 members to investigate Dr. Fuller's accusation that
6 Dr. Caywood was sexually harassing her. I remember
7 telling the Dean that the whole thing made me very
8 uncomfortable, that I liked working for both of
9 them and didn't want to take sides.
10 In 2011, after Dr. Nemmetz' application
11 to a faculty position was rejected, another
12 complaint was made, another complaint of sexism.
13 Then Dean -- Associate Dean Bunte interviewed
14 members of the department regarding her accusation
15 of sexism against Dr. Caywood.
16 Despite the deep divide in the
17 department, I was able to make friends on both
18 sides. I worked well in the campus, in the
19 on-campus program and in the graduate online
20 program. Numerous times I invited department
21 members to our small farm in Platteville for social
22 gatherings in an effort to unite our department and
23 also to connect with my superiors and colleagues.
24 I was valued by students and peers alike.
25 I received a letter of appreciation by Chancellor
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1 Shields in the spring of 2012 and was promoted to
2 associate professor in August of 2012. I was the
3 first member of the Criminal Justice Department to
4 have ever got a sabbatical from an outside
5 institution. I felt secure in my employment
6 despite the fact that I was on tenure at that time.
7 Dean Throop, who joined the ranks during
8 that time as well, had my husband and I for a
9 social gathering over at their house. That also
10 went very well. So I really felt comfortable. My
11 career was taking off.
12 All that came to a pretty much screeching
13 halt on October 10, 2012. A female student in my
14 class approached me with a note she had received
15 from a male professor in my department. The note
16 read, "Call me tonight," three exclamation points,
17 and the note had the professor's private cell phone
18 number. The student was visibly upset. She didn't
19 want to go back to class. She felt humiliated.
20 She also didn't want to talk to Chair Caywood. She
21 felt he would take sides with the professor.
22 That evening I asked Dean Throop for
23 advice, how to best handle it, without giving her
24 the details of that complaint. She referred me to
25 a Dean of Students. We tried that and reported to
Page 21
1 actually both Caywood and the Dean of Students on
2 that matter and felt that it was taken care of
3 after that.
4 I never thought that this little action,
5 helping a student, would get me in so much trouble
6 with my superior. Dr. Caywood was furious that I
7 didn't keep the incident in-house. He later
8 actually apologized and said he would -- he owes me
9 an apology. That was his position in 2015,
10 something I'm still waiting for, but at least he
11 acknowledged his wrongdoing, his poor handling of
12 the incident.
13 My professional hardships during that
14 time was further aggravated by the news that my
15 father was dying, and so instead of getting a
16 break, actually Dr. Caywood laid into me even
17 further. That was in early 2013. It was really
18 the worst time of my life. I never felt so
19 helpless in my life, and I (inaudible) something
20 that creates a (inaudible), but I -- it was truly a
21 time where I felt helpless and alone. I repeatedly
22 asked Dean Throop and HR Director Durr for help in
23 dealing with Dr. Caywood's attack, but I just got
24 into further trouble with Dr. Caywood and also Dean
25 Throop. Durr told me that (inaudible) "Dr. Caywood
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1 can ignore you forever." She told me he could --
2 basically he could ignore me until you both retire.
3 COURT REPORTER: I'm sorry. I can't
4 understand you. I'll need a copy of your notes too
5 because I'm --
6 DR. BURTON: You can get those. I'm
7 reading and I'm also on a pretty heavy medication
8 too because of my treatment.
9 Suddenly my -- so I dropped from being
10 the rising star in the CJ program to a marginalized
11 person under constant scrutiny. Suddenly my
12 efforts to improve the CJ program and build a state
13 of the art Cyber Security Program were interpreted
14 as threats. My legitimate requests for fairness,
15 for fair and equal treatment, were called bullying.
16 My efforts to address the problems in the given
17 grievance and complaint procedures were blocked,
18 ignored and denied.
19 Despite the hardship I focused on what I
20 loved doing the most, teaching. I continued
21 supporting undergraduate research and brought a
22 restorative justice program on campus in 2014.
23 In our criminal justice courses we
24 repeatedly address ethics and integrity, we appeal
25 to our students' sense of justice and encourage
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1 them to withstand corruptive process.
2 I believe it is my utmost responsibility
3 to stand by what I preach. I believe in opposing
4 abuse of power and I must speak up against it. I
5 believe that identifying violations of policy and
6 law and helping to address them properly is my duty
7 as a professor and faculty member in higher
8 education and an essential component to a healthy
9 organization. We all must stand by what we teach
10 in the classroom.
11 Unlike my colleagues in the CJ program, I
12 have two daughters attending UW schools. One is a
13 a senior at UW-Platteville, the other one a junior
14 at the UW-Whitewater. I am therefore not just a
15 faculty member at UW-Platteville but also a parent
16 to a UW-Platteville student. Much of what I have
17 tried to bring to the attention of the
18 administration and the authorities are issues that
19 deeply concern me as a parent. Like every parent,
20 I want my child to be safe.
21 As a CJ professor I am unfortunately all
22 too familiar with the grim statistics when it comes
23 to victimization of women in our society. One in
24 six females will fall victim to an attempted or
25 completed rape in their life time. The statistics
Page 24
1 for females on campuses is even worse: One in four
2 females will fall victim to attempted or completed
3 rape. My daughters' safety and safety of all
4 students is and will always be my major concern.
5 One of the first committees I joined
6 after starting my employment at UW-Platteville was
7 the Sexual Assault Awareness Council. I was
8 particularly concerned that UW-Platteville, unlike
9 other universities I taught for, did not require a
10 mandatory sexual harassment and discrimination
11 training. It became one of my efforts to push for
12 mandatory Title IX training in accordance with the
13 US Department of Education. It took until 2016 to
14 finally have the training that most other colleges
15 made mandatory with federal regulations over a
16 decade ago.
17 I hope that this panel will honor my
18 right according to UWS Chapter 4 to defend myself
19 against all of the dismissal charges and all of the
20 other allegations that have been made against me at
21 the last hearing that I could not attend. I trust
22 that you will recognize that my actions were done
23 in response to retaliation I have suffered by UW
24 administrators in an effort to protect myself
25 against false allegations and not, as Chancellor
Page 25
1 Shields claims, done in an effort to damage the
2 university. I am a proud mom of a UW-Platteville
3 student. My daughter, Elinor, has been on the
4 Dean's list from the very beginning and has also
5 been on the Chancellor's list. It is far from the
6 truth that I intend to hurt this university, its
7 reputation or its students. Hurting this
8 university would hurt my daughter. I'm not willing
9 to do that.
10 CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Dr. Burton.
11 DR. BURTON: My efforts have been to
12 protect students and support fellow ethical
13 instructors. Exposing corrupt elements within an
14 organization is not the same as attacking the
15 entire institution as the charges against me
16 wrongly allege. My daughter's GPA would have
17 allowed her to attend many other prestigious
18 schools. Yet I encouraged her --
19 CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Dr. Burton.
20 You've gone over the five minutes. And you will
21 have an opportunity to complete your comments
22 later. I think we have the gist of your opening.
23 Attorney Lattis, do you have any opening
24 comments, brief?
25 MS LATTIS: No, I do not. Thank you.
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1 CHAIRPERSON: So we'll move on to your
2 first witness, please.
3 MR. KASIETA: Thank you.
4 We will -- we'd like to question
5 Chancellor Dennis Shields, please.
6 This is the configuration that the panel
7 wants?
8 CHAIRPERSON: Yes. It's fine.
9 MR. KASIETA: Okay. Very good.
10 EXAMINATION
11 BY MR. KASIETA:
12 Q Dr. Shields, just for our record, state your name,
13 please.
14 A Dennis J. Shields.
15 Q And you are the Chancellor at UW-Platteville?
16 A Yes.
17 Q And you are also by training a lawyer?
18 A Yes.
19 Q Did your legal training inform you in this matter
20 in any respect?
21 A Well, I think my legal training and my more than 30
22 years in higher education informed me.
23 Q So your legal training did inform you?
24 A My legal training and my 30 years in higher
25 education did inform me.
Page 27
1 Q All right. And your legal training included
2 knowledge of what constitutes just cause?
3 A Umm, I don't know what you are talking about.
4 MS LATTIS: I object to that question.
5 The Chancellor is not here to talk about the just
6 cause decision that the Board of Regents applied.
7 We're not going to have a debate about that here.
8 The -- and I'm not going to allow my client to be
9 questioned about his opinion on legal matters.
10 CHAIRPERSON: I would ask that you focus,
11 please, on the dismissal charges and how Chancellor
12 Shields came to this conclusion.
13 MR. KASIETA: If I may, please, let me be
14 heard on that.
15 Just cause is at the center of this
16 matter, and the charges are cushioned in the legal
17 doctrine of just cause. This panel is going to
18 make a recommendation based on whether there was
19 just cause for termination, and so I respectfully
20 request that I be permitted some latitude regarding
21 questioning this witness about his understanding of
22 just cause, and to your point, Dr. Hansen, what
23 just cause he applied in his work on this matter.
24 CHAIRPERSON: Some limited questions.
25 But again, let's not focus on -- you may do so, but
Page 28
1 let's also move forward.
2 MR. KASIETA: Oh, I will. Thank you.
3 Thank you.
4 BY MR. KASIETA:
5 Q So, Dr. Shields, your legal training involved just
6 cause, did it not?
7 A No.
8 Q Did you --
9 A You attended law school; you know what the drill
10 is.
11 Q Well, I learned about just cause in law school, --
12 A Okay.
13 Q -- I learned a lot about it.
14 A I also also learned that terms can have very
15 specific meaning and you can interpret them how
16 you'd like to have them interpreted.
17 Q Okay. Sir, --
18 A So trying to pin me down as to some specific
19 definition is not going to work today.
20 Q I appreciate your comments, but I'm being told to
21 be expeditious, and so if you will, please, focus
22 on my question, and I would be very grateful for
23 that. Would you please?
24 MS LATTIS: I object to the argumentative
25 nature of this questioning.
Rebuttal:
This is about the time Roger noticed that Attorney Lattis became blotchy. Red blotches broke out on her neck. They cleared up a few minutes after the discussion on just cause ended.
Page 29
1 CHAIRPERSON: Again, our main purpose
2 here is to allow you the opportunity to question
3 the witnesses that were brought in the May hearing
4 with regard to the Statement of Charges the
5 Chancellor has made, so yes, just cause is a
6 concept that we need to as a panel deal with, but
7 again, we want to talk about the charges and not
8 interpretation.
9 MR. KASIETA: All right.
10 BY MR. KASIETA:
11 Q Chancellor Shields, as I understand it, you have
12 made a recommendation to this panel that there is
13 just cause to terminate a tenured faculty member at
14 UW-Platteville?
15 A There's a good reason, factual reasons for making
16 -- taking such action, yes.
17 Q Are you not telling this panel that there is then
18 just cause for terminating Dr. Burton?
19 MS LATTIS: Well, I object to that
20 question as speculation and improper description on
21 what's going on here.
22 What has been done has set out a set of
23 charges, and now the determination is whether or
24 not those charges are true. The Chancellor will
25 make his decision and recommendation to the Board
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1 of Regents following this process, so nobody has
2 yet applied the law. This panel will also make its
3 recommendation, which will go to the Board of
4 Regents. The Board of Regents then will apply the
5 standard of just cause and and everything else and
6 determine whether or not the tenured faculty member
7 should be terminated.
8 MR. KASIETA: Let me, please, be heard on
9 that.
10 CHAIRPERSON: All right.
11 MR. KASIETA: That is so wrong. Just
12 cause does not enter in when it gets to the Board
13 of Regents, so when the Chancellor acts after this
14 panel has acted, just cause starts from the minute
15 somebody says "you're a tenured faculty member and
16 and we're going to deprive you of your employment,"
17 and that's what I'm trying to establish. That is
18 so wrong.
19 CHAIRPERSON: Again, I think what really
20 needs to be addressed are the reasons, the
21 Statement of Charges which create the decision, and
22 I would like to get through that and to Chancellor
23 Shields' previous testimony in May.
24 MR. KASIETA: I'd only had a couple of
25 questions on that, and I'm surprised it's taken
Page 31
1 this turn. I don't know how this panel, with all
2 respect, please, I don't know how this panel can
3 measure what it's being told if it doesn't know
4 that yardstick of just cause which the rules
5 provide has to be the standard by which termination
6 is imposed, and all I'm trying to do is to get the
7 Chancellor's understanding of just cause as he
8 applied it to this matter.
9 MS LATTIS: Well, I can answer that
10 question.
11 MR. KASIETA: I -- oh, please, no.
12 MS. LATTIS: Yes, I can.
13 MR. KASIETA: I don't think counsel --
14 MS LATTIS: Yes, I can.
15 MR. KASIETA: -- should answer the
16 question.
17 MS LATTIS: Yes, I can.
18 MR. KASIETA: I want the Chancellor, who
19 made the recommendation, please, to answer the
20 question.
21 MS LATTIS: But the problem is that the
22 Chancellor doesn't have the answer to that
23 question. I'd have the answer to that question,
24 which is that the Board of Regents has applied a
25 particular standard of just cause for many years,
Page 32
1 and that is the standard under which we, the
2 administration, are operating because that's what
3 we have been told to operate by the Board of
4 Regents.
Rebuttal:
The standard of just cause that the Board has established is in here: (AppealRights-Highlights). So, Lattis is wrong.
5 CHAIRPERSON: I would ask that you move
6 forward, please.
7 MR. KASIETA: I have prepared, because I
8 didn't want to rely on technology, I appreciate it,
9 Dr. Hansen, you're saying that -- we're saying that
10 we would have technology, and I do have the thumb
11 drives, but if I may just give each member of the
12 panel the exhibits we will be using so that if
13 technology fails, it will just do it faster. Thank
14 you.
15 Sorry, Bev. I shouldn't be talking while
16 I'm --
17 (A PAUSE)
18 MR. KASIETA: The first item in the
19 packet of exhibits, and I gave one to Attorney
20 Lattis as well, perhaps you could share it with
21 Dr. Shields so he'd have it too. I don't care if
22 you use your set or mine. They're the same
23 document. But what was Exhibit A in the first
24 submission, which is now Exhibit 1 in my packet, it
25 begins at page No. 2. And just for purposes of the
Page 33
1 convention that I used, I have all of the exhibits
2 you have in front of you Bate stamped so that the
3 upper right-hand corner of each page has a number,
4 so as I'm talking about the exhibit, so we don't
5 spend a lot of time flipping and flopping, I will
6 tell you what the Bate number is when I'm
7 referencing a document as well as the exhibit
8 number, and then hopefully we can move through it.
9 BY MR. KASIETA:
10 Q All right, Dr. Shields, do you have what was
11 Exhibit A attached to your previous exhibit, now
12 Exhibit 1, page two?
13 A I think I have what you are referring to.
14 Q It's the March 3rd, 2017 letter that you wrote.
15 You see that?
16 A March 3rd?
17 Q March 30th.
18 A Yes. I have that.
19 Q Yes. Thank you. This is a letter that you
20 authored?
21 A Yes.
22 Q Based on firsthand information?
23 A I think it's pretty clear in the letter what I
24 based it on is the allegations that Provost Throop
25 and Dean Gormley provided and the report from
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1 Dr. Petra Roter, who investigated the matter.
2 Q Were there any other sources of information or
3 people who had input into the March 30, 2017
4 letter?
5 A My lawyer, Jennifer Lattis.
6 Q Did you write it or did Attorney Lattis write it?
7 A I think she wrote the first draft.
8 Q Can we tell from the March 30, 2017 letter which
9 portion you wrote or which portion she wrote?
10 A No.
11 Q Okay. Let's go through it. In the first paragraph
12 you see, it begins "on December 16, 2016," and
13 continues. I want to focus your attention, please,
14 on the last sentence of that first paragraph. "I
15 concluded that the charges were substantial and
16 that, if true, might lead to dismissal." You see
17 that?
18 A Yes.
19 Q That was your choice of words, that the charges as
20 you understood them then, might --
21 A I will own them.
22 Q -- lead to dismissal?
23 A I'll own them.
24 Q What does that mean?
25 A It means yes to your question.
Page 35
1 Q Okay. Thanks. All right. By the time you signed
2 the letter you had not concluded in your own mind
3 that the charges, even if substantiated, should or
4 must lead to dismissal?
5 A No.
6 Q All right. You appointed Dr. Roter of UW System
7 Administration to investigate the matter. Who did
8 you consider in addition to Dr. Roter?
9 A Umm, one of the challenges I had is that I didn't
10 have anybody locally that I felt was at arms length
11 about this because of all the stuff that had been
12 happening, and so I talked to president -- or
13 Chancellor Mark Mone at UW-Milwaukee, without
14 disclosing what it was about, but that I needed his
15 recommendation. I think maybe I talked to Jennifer
16 or someone else to sort of point me at some places
17 I might look for people who would be objective
18 about doing this investigation.
19 Q Who specifically recommended Dr. Roter?
20 A I don't know. I don't remember that.
21 Q Are you aware that we have tried to get Dr. Roter
22 to testify at this proceeding?
23 A No.
24 Q All right. Do you know any reason why she wouldn't
25 be willing to testify at this proceeding?
Page 36
1 A No.
2 Q Now you then have a four-point list of what you
3 characterize as Dr. Roter's findings. Do you see
4 that?
5 A Yes.
6 Q All right. And No. 1 is you "recorded a series of
7 UW-Platteville internal conversations, meetings and
8 proceedings," right?
9 A Yah.
10 Q "And that they were published then to the public?"
11 A Yes.
12 Q Okay. Now are you contending in that that any
13 state laws were broken?
14 A Well, I think I explained later where I think the
15 violations came in. That doesn't say it right
16 there, no. No.
17 Q But you are then contending that state laws were
18 broken?
19 A Yah.
20 Q By Dr. Burton?
21 A Through her knowledge and consent.
22 Q All right. And you're talking about Chapter 19,
23 the open records laws?
24 A No.
25 Q I beg your pardon?
Page 37
1 A I'm not sure what you are talking about there.
2 Q When you say that you have formed an opinion that
3 the conduct you reference in point number one broke
4 laws, are you referencing Chapter 19 of the open
5 records laws of the Wisconsin statutes?
6 A I don't see it referenced here. Can you help me
7 out here, what --. It didn't cite a statute here,
8 but --
9 MS LATTIS: Well, the original question,
10 I believe, was whether or not you thought that any
11 state laws were broken by Dr. Burton's conduct, and
12 you said "yes," and now he is -- the attorney is
13 asking you whether any state laws were broken in
14 your opinion because you said "yes." There isn't
15 anything in the charges that states that.
16 THE WITNESS: All right.
17 BY MR. KASIETA:
18 Q Do you want to adopt that answer?
19 MS LATTIS: So if you will turn to page
20 page 3.8, you can see how the Wisconsin public
21 records law was referenced.
22 THE WITNESS: So that's where that came
23 from.
24 BY MR. KASIETA:
25 Q All right. So when we look at point number one at
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1 the first page of your charges, your charge -- the
2 charges for dismissal, you're referencing the third
3 page of that letter, paragraph numbered eight?
4 A Yes.
5 Q All right. And did you do any research to
6 determine whether in fact Dr. Burton was bound by
7 Chapter 19 of Wisconsin statutes?
8 MS LATTIS: Did you do anything?
9 THE WITNESS: No.
10 BY MR. KASIETA:
11 Q Did you understand that in fact Chapter 19 relates
12 to open meetings and open records as it applies to
13 institutional factors?
14 A I was relying on the advice of my lawyer.
15 Q You understood based on the advice of your lawyer
16 or your legal training or some other source that
17 individuals do have --
18 A Wait. I relied on the advice of my lawyer.
19 Q This is a different question.
20 A Okay.
21 Q You understood, either by virtue of your legal
22 training, advice of counsel, or some other source
23 that individuals in Wisconsin have a one-party
24 consent right to record conversations?
25 MS LATTIS: If you don't know how to
Page 39
1 answer that question, you don't need to answer that
2 question. He's asking you for a legal opinion on
3 on what the state law says.
4 MR. KASIETA: No. No, I'm not. I'm
5 truly not.
6 BY MR. KASIETA:
7 Q I'm asking for the state of your understanding at
8 the time you make a decision to file charges for
9 dismissal against a tenured faculty member. Did
10 you at that time understand that under Wisconsin --
11 A I'll tell you what I understood. I understood that
12 it is inappropriate and, as this says right here,
13 performance evaluations, and as a faculty member
14 she's not just an individual out on the street.
15 She has a professional obligation to evaluate her
16 peers, the subordinate faculty members, et cetera,
17 and not disclose those performance evaluations
18 publicly. That's what I understood.
19 Q All right.
20 MS LATTIS: I also must object to the
21 characterization of Wisconsin law as a one-party
22 consent. That means that it's not a felony to --
23 or a crime to do a one-party consent recording.
24 THE WITNESS: And so -- okay.
25 MR. KASIETA: All right. As long as
Page 40
1 we're arguing, I have to vehemently disagree with
2 that. It is not one-party consent for purposes of
3 felonious conduct. It is one-party consent for all
4 purposes, that could not attach civil liability,
5 that could not attach any misdemeanor charges, that
6 could not attach felony charges for one-party
7 consent under Wisconsin law. That's just wrong.
8 MS LATTIS: No, I agree with that. It
9 also could -- there also could not be civil
10 liability, so no civil liability, no crime for
11 one-party consent.
12 MR. KASIETA: It is for all purposes
13 permitted under Wisconsin law.
14 MS LATTIS: No. Now that's a different
15 question. So permit -- the employers may refuse to
16 allow parties to tape record if they choose.
17 MR. KASIETA: And that's where I was
18 going next.
19 BY MR. KASIETA:
20 Q Dr. Shields, is there any rule at the University of
21 Wisconsin-Platteville that unambiguously tells a
22 faculty member when he or she cannot do what is
23 otherwise legally permitted under Wisconsin law and
24 record conversations with their own consent?
25 A I am astounded at that question because that's not
Page 41
1 the issue here.
2 Q Please answer --
3 A The issue is what she made use of the recordings
4 for.
5 Q Please answer my question.
6 A That's my answer.
7 Q Do you -- do you know of any rule at
8 UW-Platteville --
9 A It is incredible to me in her professional position
10 in evaluating her peers that she would publish
11 those evaluations. That's my answer to that
12 question.
13 Q All right. With all respect, I --
14 A With all due respect, that's my answer. You're not
15 going to get a different answer from me out of
16 that.
17 Q If you will let me ask the question, and if you
18 will, please, answer it. My question, Dr. Shields,
19 is, are you aware of any written rule at the
20 University of Wisconsin-Platteville that in any way
21 restricts a tenured faculty member from asserting
22 or exercising her otherwise applicable right to
23 one-party consent for conversations?
24 A And I will say to you again, I'm astounded by that
25 question because the question isn't whether she
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1 recorded it, it's what use she put it to. So we
2 can go around like that if you want to, but that's
3 my answer to that question.
4 Q Look, if you will, please, at point number one,
5 once again, you don't say in the first point that
6 it was the use alone of the recording, do you? You
7 say, "This is the charge: You recorded a series of
8 UW-Platteville internal conversations?"
9 A That -- that --
10 Q Do you see that phrase?
11 A That portion of the letter describes where I'm
12 going. The statement of the charges, if you'll
13 look at page three, is "you have publicly disclosed
14 personal information of colleagues."
15 Q So -- I'm sorry. Were you finished? I couldn't
16 tell if you were finished.
17 A (A pause.)
18 Q Oh, please, answer, please, Doctor. Were you
19 finished?
20 A Sure.
21 Q Okay. Thank you. All right. So are you
22 withdrawing the allegation from paragraph number
23 one that says that "You recorded a series" -- are
24 you withdrawing any criticism, let's make it
25 broader than that so I don't have to go through
Page 43
1 this again.
2 A Okay.
3 Q Are you withdrawing any criticism for having
4 recorded internal conversations? Just that part of
5 it.
6 A I will tell you that this laid the predicate for
7 the Statement of the Charges, which is later in the
8 letter that says that the charge is that she
9 Publicly disclosed confidential personal
10 information of her colleagues." This section of
11 the letter is not a Statement of the Charges. That
12 comes later in the letter.
13 Q Well, will you please tell the panel whether you
14 are or are not critical of Dr. Burton for recording
15 conversations?
16 A Critical in what sense?
17 Q Critical in the sense that it justifies termination
18 for a tenured faculty member.
19 A No. That's not what I am saying.
20 Q Okay. Now continuing with the first page, please.
21 A Sure.
22 Q The letter of March 30, 2017, it says, all -- at
23 point number two, "all of your colleagues who were
24 interviewed reported feeling threatened and/or
25 harassed by you." You see that portion?
Page 44
1 A Umm hmm.
2 Q Your answer is yes for our court reporter?
3 A Yes.
4 Q Thank you. Did you personally conduct any
5 interviews of colleagues or are you relying upon
6 Dr. Roter?
7 MS LATTIS: Objection. The statement
8 ahead indicates that this is a summary of what
9 Dr. Roter found; therefore, it's clear from the
10 writing that he was relying on Dr. Roter when he
11 lays out this statement.
12 MR. KASIETA: Let me explain where I am
13 going here. This -- the issue is colleagues
14 expressing feeling threatened. And I understand
15 that Dr. Roter brought it up, and I didn't mean to
16 mischaracterize what this is, but it is an issue,
17 and I'm just asking Dr. Shields, regarding that
18 issue, setting aside what's at point number two,
19 regarding the issue of faculty members feeling
20 threatened, did you personally conduct interviews
21 of colleagues of Dr. Burton?
22 A No.
23 Q All right. The third point from Dr. Roter's
24 investigation at page one of the prior Exhibit A
25 was: "You have strayed from or violated the Letter
Page 45
1 of Direction provided to you by Provost Throop."
2 Do you see that one?
3 A Yes.
4 Q Okay. You considered the Letter of Direction of
5 Provost Throop in your decision to recommend
6 termination of Dr. Burton?
7 A Well, it's factually what Dr. Roter found in her
8 report.
9 Q I understand that. My question to you is, without,
10 once again, just using this as a framework for the
11 issues, okay? So my question, standing alone,
12 without reference to answer Exhibit A, if that's
13 that's easier for you, my question is, did you
14 consider Dr. Throop's letter as part of your
15 evaluation in recommending termination of
16 Dr. Burton?
17 A Well, that's part of the exhibits that Dr. Roter
18 provided with her report, so yah.
19 Q Point number four in Dr. Roter's report here that
20 you recount and in the March 30th letter says "Your
21 mission to expose corruption has pulled students
22 into matters and conflicts that are outside of the
23 academic mission environment of the university."
24 All right. Let's issue focus on that issue. Now
25 did you personally interview any students about
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1 this issue of Dr. Burton allegedly pulling students
2 into some dispute?
3 A I used the report that Dr. Roter provided as the
4 basis for what I wrote here.
5 Q I do appreciate that. What I want to know,
6 separate and apart from that, did you personally
7 interview any students regarding specifically this
8 issue?
9 A No.
10 Q All right. Now there are -- in your next paragraph
11 there was an offer to meet for an informal
12 discussion and then there was some dispute about
13 who could be present for the logistics of that
14 meeting in general terms, right?
15 A Yah.
16 Q All right. And did the meeting then ever take
17 place, an informal attempt to resolve issues?
18 A Well, I drove to Madison and sat in my lawyer's
19 office and waited for your client to come onto
20 Skype and they never showed up.
21 Q Okay. And so no meeting ever took place to
22 informally resolve these issues?
23 A We had established a meeting time, and your client
24 didn't show up for it.
25 Q I heard that. I'm asking if there was ever a
Page 47
1 meeting (interrupted) --
2 A We established a time, and your client didn't show
3 up for the meeting.
4 Q I do understand that.
5 A Okay.
6 Q I do, Dr. Shields.
7 A That's my answer.
8 Q But it doesn't answer my question, which is, if
9 there was ever a meeting that was actually held to
10 try to informally resolve these issues?
11 A The effort to do so failed and so we proceeded.
12 Q Without another attempt?
13 A Right.
Rebuttal:
Nobody ever communicated anything about a Skype interview to Dr. Burton. There was never an agreement to Skype for this meeting. It seems the Chancellor just made this up.
14 Q Okay. Thank you.
15 Q Now it says "Having received and evaluated" -- now
16 I'm on the next page. I'm sorry. I left you
17 behind there. "Having received and evaluated the
18 information I have just described, I find that the
19 evidence supports dismissing you for cause from
20 your tenured faculty position at UW-Platteville,"
21 right?
22 A Yes.
23 Q All right. What did you mean when you said "for
24 cause" in that letter?
25 A That she had engaged in activities that supported
Page 48
1 removing her as a faculty member at Platteville.
2 Q The things that Dr. Roter reported in her report
3 did not please you as a chancellor, true statement?
4 A Well, I don't think we'd be sitting here if I
5 thought the activities that she reported factually
6 there didn't support it.
7 Q Okay. Could you please answer my question? The
8 report findings of Dr. Roter did not please you?
9 A Well, it's not a question whether they pleased me
10 or not. It's a question of whether or not what she
11 reported rose to the level that I should move to
12 have Dr. Burton removed as a faculty member.
13 Q And that's exactly what I am trying to get at,
14 Dr. Shields. If you read Dr. Roter's report and
Rebuttal:
Bob – This is important: Please do not refer to the investigation report as “Dr. Roter’s report” because it has almost certainly been forged. It is not signed. Please put doubt in the panel’s mind about its authenticity at every opportunity.
15 the sum total of that report was that you thought
16 the conduct reported did not please you, would that
17 be sufficient just cause in your view to recommend
18 termination of a tenured faculty member?
19 A I don't think it's a question of whether it pleased
20 me or not. It's a question of whether the facts
21 supported move -- proceeding down this path.
22 Q Supported to what extent? How sure did you have to
23 be?
24 A Well, it's pretty good documentary evidence that
25 what I have said occurred, what was in the report
Page 49
1 actually occurred.
2 Q (A pause.)
3 A So do you want examples?
4 Q No. I'm asking you for standards. I would like
5 very much to get an understanding, if I'm able, of
6 what standards you applied to make the
7 recommendation you're making to this panel.
8 A Well, I think that's laid out in the letter also
9 that says that it was a gross violation of
10 professional ethics to publish the personnel
11 evaluations of junior faculty members. That is a
12 violation of a trust of the faculty. It's a very
13 sacred responsibility. She could make some other
14 use of those recording to justify some other thing
15 that she had an issue with, that's fine, but
16 publishing them, the criticism, the evaluation of
17 her peers, of these junior faculty members, is a
18 pretty serious matter in the academy.
19 Q Umm hmm.
20 A And factually, there were the recordings, she
21 admitted to making the recordings, she admitted to
22 making them available to her husband. There was
23 ample evidence that those recordings were
24 published.
25 Q All right.
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1 A That's a pretty serious matter.
2 Q Let's go with that one. The serious matter that
3 you described, and I respect your comments, that
4 serious matter, where is it codified in any of the
5 rules of the University of Wisconsin-Platteville?
6 A Well, I'm comfortable if her peers think that's not
7 about, that's what this panel is for, if her peers
8 thinks I'm wrong about that, okay. I think, given
9 my experience in higher education, that's pretty
10 clear violation of the professional ethics of a
11 tenured faculty member.
12 Q I appreciate your comments.
13 A So if you're asking me to make a statutory finding
14 of them, I'm not -- I don't have a statutory.
15 Q No. Thank you for that. I'm not asking for a
16 statutory finding, Dr. Shields. I'm asking whether
17 any of the rules of any kind of the University of
18 Wisconsin-Platteville address this very issue?
19 A Well, I think so. I think the Faculty Handbook and
20 others make it pretty clear that those are very
21 serious deliberations that are not for publication.
22 Q Can you cite any of those (interrupted) --
23 A Not off the top --
24 Q Can you cite any of those?
25 A No. Not off the top of my head.
Page 51
1 Q All right. And would you agree, sir, that where
2 there might be violations, even serious violations
3 of propriety in terms of faculty members, you have
4 on many occasions dealt with those improprieties in
5 an informal fashion without Statements of Charges?
6 A I have on occasion resolved things informally, yes.
7 Q And what attempt did you make to resolve exactly
8 this issue, the dissemination of recorded
9 information regarding faculty personnel --
10 A Well, there's a track record here.
11 Q -- for Dr. Burton?
12 A There's a track record here of offering to meet
13 with her in this process informally, and even
14 before that, to come talk to me about what her
15 issues were in the department, and every time it
16 turned into an adversarial proceeding: Recordings,
17 witnesses. That's not how you resolve things
18 informally. So I didn't make that offer, outside
19 of the process that you have in front of you today.
20 Q The process that you are recommending?
21 A That we're in the midst of right now.
22 Q That you were recommending her termination?
23 A The -- look, we have an example here already in
24 this process of establishing a time to have a
25 meeting, an apparent agreement with it, and then
Page 52
1 the day before, raising some objection to it and
2 then not showing up. That's how these things have
3 played out, at least on two occasions when I made
4 an offer in this pro- -- one time in this process
5 and one time before that.
6 Q Do you have firsthand knowledge of why Dr. Burton
7 was not able to be present on March 25th? On
8 May 25th?
9 A Well, I know we were in conversations with her
10 lawyer that very day, and there was no indication
11 of any reason why she couldn't appear. Or we
12 didn't hear afterwards any explanation for why she
13 didn't appear -- didn't appear on that morning.
14 Q You don't remember hearing about her illness?
15 A What illness?
16 Q You don't know anything about that?
17 A No.
Rebuttal:
Dr. Burton never agreed to meet by Skype with Lattis in attendance. Dr. Burton made it clear that she did not consider any meeting with Lattis in attendance to be “informal.” Dr. Burton never accepted any appointment to meet by Skype. There was never an offer for an “informal” meeting. Chancellor Shields is the one who failed to provide meetings, not Dr. Burton. Dr. Burton requested several times to meet with Shields but he denied or ignored her requests (ChancellorDennisShields-Platteville) also (universitycorruption.com). (consolidate these two pages)
18 Q You don't. Okay. Well, were you responsible for
19 sending Family Medical Leave Act information to
20 Dr. Burton because of her illness?
21 A To the extent that I am Chancellor of this
22 university, I'm responsible for everything that
23 happens here. Was I personally involved with that?
24 No.
25 Q Were you aware that the university sent information
Page 53
1 to Dr. Burton regarding her health so that she
2 might avail herself of the Family Medical Leave Act
3 benefits?
4 A No. Not personally, I wasn't aware of it.
5 Q What does that mean, not personally?
6 A Well, if someone wants to come after me for
Rebuttal: Here the Chancellor makes it clear that he feels as though Dr. Burton is “coming after him.”
7 something that happens on this university, as the
8 Chancellor I'm accountable for all that. Do I have
9 personal knowledge of every one of those things?
10 No. I would expect in due course that our Human
11 Resources Department would process those things and
12 make them available. That's what they -- that's
13 what that department is there for.
14 Q Now let's jump ahead a little bit.
15 A Okay.
16 Q And go to the third page of your letter, which is
17 Bate No. 4.
18 A Okay.
19 Q No. 7, near the top of the page, says "The files
20 were archived on the internet by another source."
21 This is reference to information -- this is
22 reference to information that was, you contend,
23 improperly disseminated?
24 A Yah.
25 Q All right. You don't have any information that it
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1 was Dr. Burton who archived any internet materials,
2 do you?
3 A No.
4 Q Who archived anything?
5 A I don't know.
6 Q Who can access any archives of information?
7 A I don't know.
8 Q In fact, what you know, Dr. Shields, is that when
9 requests were made to take down certain recordings,
10 that Dr. Burton responded promptly and took those
11 recordings off of the website?
12 A Yes. That was what was reported to me.
Rebuttal:
Actually, nobody has ever made a request to remove the recordings. Roger removed them immediately after the Chancellor suspended Sabina and delivered to her the Throop/Gormley complaint. There was no request to remove the recordings.
13 Q Now let -- just briefly, I promise briefly
14 concerning point number eight on this same page,
15 did you do any research of any kind to determine
16 the applicability of Chapter 19 to this situation?
17 A I relied on the advice of my lawyer.
18 Q All right. So you didn't do any research?
19 A Not personally.
20 Q You didn't write this paragraph, counsel did?
21 A Right.
22 Q Are you requesting or recommending termination of a
23 tenured faculty member because of some violation of
24 Chapter 19 of the Wisconsin statutes?
25 A Well, it's a piece of it. That's a piece of the
Page 55
1 violation of professional ethics.
2 Q Now let's go down, please, Dr. Shields, continuing
3 with this Letter of Charges, Roman numeral II, "You
4 have engaged in disrespectful, harassing and
5 intimidating behavior toward your colleagues." You
6 see that?
7 A Yes.
8 Q Let me jump back, please, to the prior issue that
9 we were talking about. Did I understand your
10 testimony correctly that you had no idea why
11 Dr. Burton was not at the last hearing?
12 A No. That's not what you asked me about.
13 Q All right.
14 A I thought you were talking about the informal
15 meeting.
16 Q Did you understand that she was ill and couldn't be
17 present?
18 A At which meeting?
19 Q At the May 25th.
20 A All I know is what her husband Roger Burton
21 reported that day.
22 Q Which was that she was ill?
23 A Yes.
24 Q And you don't have any information that she wasn't
25 ill?
Page 56
1 A I didn't at that moment, no.
2 Q All right. I think you did.
3 A If you were -- I thought you were referring to the
4 informal meeting.
5 MS. LATTIS: I did too.
6 BY MR. KASIETA:
7 Q Oh. Oh, so when you were answering those questions
8 about not knowing what happened, you were talking
9 about the informal meeting?
10 A Yes.
11 MS LATTIS: Yes.
12 BY MR. KASIETA:
13 Q You understood that at the May hearing of this
14 panel, she was ill?
15 A Yah.
16 Q Okay.
17 A That was reported to us that morning, and then we
18 got medical documentation later.
19 Q Thank you for that clarification. All right.
20 Let's jump back to Roman numeral II, please. "You
21 have engaged in disrespectful, harassing and
22 intimidating behavior toward your colleagues."
23 The first question to you, Dr. Shields, is did
24 you -- do you have firsthand information about
25 disrespectful, harassing, or intimidating behavior
Page 57
1 toward colleagues that you are using to form a
2 basis for your recommendation to this panel?
3 A It's the -- the basis is the report that Dr. Petra
4 Roter provided and, you know, the documents that
5 were developed at the point of which those Letters
6 of Direction were provided.
7 Q I do appreciate that. I'm asking about your
8 personal knowledge here, and my question is, do you
9 have personal firsthand knowledge of disrespectful,
10 harassing, or intimidating behavior by Dr. Burton
11 toward her colleagues?
12 A Well, the e-mails --
13 Q Okay.
14 A -- that are -- the emails that are part of the
15 record, yes.
16 Q All right. And all of your --
17 A So as Chancellor I'm not in the middle of all this
18 stuff all the time, so if that's the question that
19 you are asking, no. I rely on people I trust,
20 administrators, department chairs, provosts, those
21 sorts of people, to develop this information. So
22 quite candidly, I stayed pretty much at arms length
23 of this until this stuff started.
24 Q Okay.
25 A And so the basis for what I moved on is the report
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1 that Dr. Roter provided.
2 Q Okay. So if I asked you about your firsthand
3 knowledge of offenses before that that might
4 justify termination, your answer would be, you
5 don't have firsthand knowledge before the Dr. Roter
6 report? Do I understand you correctly?
7 MS LATTIS: Well, firsthand knowledge,
8 meaning has he read anything before that or talked
9 to other people who had witnessed it? Or are you
10 asking whether he actually witnessed contact?
11 MR. KASIETA: Well, I think he gets it.
12 He said the e-mails, which we're going to talk
13 about, was one example of firsthand knowledge, but
14 he didn't know about those until after Dr. Roter
15 submitted a report, as I understand.
16 MS LATTIS: Oh, if that's your question,
17 then that's --
18 MR. KASIETA: (Interrupted).
19 MS LATTIS: -- a different question.
20 BY MR. KASIETA:
21 Q So any other firsthand knowledge?
22 A So, look, when the Letters of Direction were
23 written by Dr. Throop, I was consulted about it.
24 Q All right.
25 A I saw what was there. Those are the kinds of
Page 59
1 things that I'd need to be aware of, and so I saw
2 e-mails at that point in time, et cetera. So I
3 wasn't completely removed from that, although I
4 didn't get into the middle of it.
5 Q All right.
6 THE WITNESS: And Dr. Throop had
7 consulted with I think mostly you, Dr. Lattis. I
8 mean I think -- you know, you're a doctor and so
9 forth.
10 MS LATTIS: I've been elevated.
11 THE WITNESS: Yeah. But yah, so we don't
12 do this lightly. We don't just say, "Oh, well,
13 she's said -- she said something that was not
14 true." There's a process that we think through to
15 do this kind of stuff.
16 BY MR. KASIETA:
17 Q Because the process is really important when you
18 are talking about taking employment from a tenured
19 faculty member?
20 A Well, I think that there's no doubt that it is an
21 extraordinary step to get to the point where you
22 take action that you think is required to remove a
23 faculty member. That's not entered into my
24 testimony. My testimoney in May, which I'm sure
25 you've read, --
1 Q (Nods head.)
2 A -- made that plain. I didn't -- I didn't do this
3 lightly. We are not sitting where we are today
4 because I didn't think it's very serious.
5 Q And from your perspective the conduct justifying
6 the recommendation you make, and I'm looking for
7 your perspective here, Dr. Shields, has to be
8 extraordinary?
9 A Yes.
10 Q All right. It cannot be an error on the part of a
11 faculty member, an honest mistake, that justifies
12 your recommendation to a panel like this for
13 termination?
14 A That's not how I would characterize what we have in
15 front of us today.
16 Q I'm asking for the scope of your perspective on
17 this. It cannot be an error, an honest mistake,
18 that justifies your recommendation for termination?
19 A And I would not characterize what we have here as
20 an error.
21 Q Well, the panel is going to make up its mind about
22 what we'd --
23 A Right.
24 Q -- characterize it as, and --
25 A And I'm giving you my opinion.
Page 61
1 Q -- I want to know --. Let me, if I may, please,
2 finish my question, and then I'll certainly be
3 courteous and let you respond, as I have. If the
4 panel concludes that what is happening here is an
5 honest mistake, let's say, then if I understand you
6 correctly, you would say, "Well, you shouldn't
7 terminate a faculty -- a tenured faculty member for
8 an honest mistake?"
9 A Well, I would have to take very seriously the
10 assessment and evaluation of the facts in this case
11 that this panel puts forward. This is a panel of
12 Dr. Burton's peers, and I should give that some
13 deference, okay?
14 Q (Nods head.)
15 A At the end of the day my responsibility is to do
16 what is in my best judgment that's in the best
17 interests of this university. So we'll have to
18 wait and see what this panel find.
19 Q It sounds like what you are telling us is that even
20 if this panel finds that there is not just cause to
21 terminate Dr. Burton, that your mind is set on
22 terminating Dr. Burton?
23 A I would say --
24 MS LATTIS: I object to the argumentative
25 nature of that question.
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1 CHAIRPERSON: The panel makes a
2 recommendation.
3 MR. KASIETA: Right.
4 CHAIRPERSON: We don't make a decision.
5 MR. KASIETA: Okay.
6 THE WITNESS: And I could say this --
7 MR. KASIETA: I beg your pardon. Let me
8 rephrase the question. I apologize.
9 BY MR. KASIETA:
10 Q It sounds to me like you're saying that even if
11 this panel makes a recommendation not to terminate
12 because it does not believe that the conduct at
13 issue justifies termination of a fellow tenured
14 faculty member, you're pretty much set on
15 proceeding with termination?
16 A I'm not prepared to say that yet. I really am very
17 interested in their assessment of the facts and the
18 circumstances and so I would have to take that very
19 seriously. And, you know, I have to make a lot of
20 very difficult decisions, and the reason for this
21 process is to allow a faculty member in these
22 circumstances the opportunity to have her peers or
23 his peers speak to whether or not they think what I
24 have obviously think has been pretty egregious
25 missteps really aren't, and so I would have to take
Page 63
1 that very seriously.
2 Q What would you have to hear from this panel by way
3 of recommendation to change your mind?
4 A I don't know. I'm very interested in seeing their
5 take on these facts.
6 Q Look, if you will, please, beneath Roman numeral
7 number II, number I, do you see it there? Do you
8 see the Letter of Direction from Dean, now Interim
9 Provost Elizabeth Throop, dated October 28, 2014.
Rebuttal:
Note: Throop is no longer with UW Platteville. She is now Provost at another university.
10 A Umm hmm.
11 Q It says "Instructing you to, among other things,
12 treat your colleagues with respect and cease all
13 e-mail activity making groundless and unwarranted
14 accusations against members of the university
15 community;" that was a summary of the content of
16 the October 28th, 2014 Letter of Direction from
17 Dr. Throop?
18 A Umm hmm. Yes.
19 Q Okay. Have you heard of the principle,
20 Dr. Shields, that when one is issuing a Letter of
21 Direction, one should be specific so that the
22 recipient on the Letter of Direction knows exactly
23 what a quantifiable offense is?
24 A Sure.
25 Q And the reason one in a Letter of Direction tries
Page 64
1 to be specific is to eliminate the possibility that
2 the faculty member to whom the Letter of Direction
3 is directed will make a mistake and use his -- oh,
4 I beg your pardon -- use his or her judgment in
5 trying to comply and make an error?
6 A Okay.
7 Q All right. And now when we look at the summary you
8 have in your letter of the Letter of Direction from
9 Dr. Throop, it says "Treat your colleagues with
10 respect." That's one of the directives, right?
11 A Yes.
12 Q And is there a quantifiable measure of exactly how
13 to comply with that Letter of Direction?
14 A Well, as I recall, the Letter of Direction did make
15 pretty specific -- used pretty specific instances
16 of what was indicated it violated in this respect,
17 so while it may not be real specific here, that
18 letter, I think, and you have a little more
19 complete information there.
20 Q Right. And we'll talk about that then. All right.
21 And regarding these other items, you think that
22 specificity was contained in the Letter of
23 Direction of Dr. Throop in October 2014?
24 A Yah.
25 Q Okay. Now point number two under Roman numeral II
Page 65
1 says "You made statements to the effect that you
2 had no intention of complying with the Letter of
3 Direction." You never heard Dr. Burton ever say
4 that she had no intention of complying with the
5 Letter of Direction, did you?
6 A Not personally, no.
7 Q All right. Where did you get that from?
8 A It's somewhere in the documents here, in the --
9 Q Because now we're past Dr. Roter's report, right?
10 MS LATTIS: It was also a finding in the
11 Federal court decision.
Rebuttal:
Wrong. There was an email where Sabina said something like ‘I cannot accept the letter of direction’ and she went on to explain that she had filed a grievance to address her concerns about the letter (http://universitycorruption.com/uw/TrialDocs/Depositions/Depo-Throop/Depo-transcript-Throop/2015.10.28%20Throop%20Deposition%20-%20exh%2078%20(00217697xCECB9).pdf pg38 D#5). The appeal court got it wrong and said that Dr. Burton made this indication but she didn’t. There is no evidence to this. The appeal court got that wrong, based on Tim Hawks’ misrepresentation.
12 MR. KASIETA: Well, I'm not conversant
13 with the Federal court, but I -- I've read the
14 decisions, and I strongly disagree with that
15 characterization that there was a factual finding.
16 I remember the reference from Judge -- was it
17 Connelly's decision?
18 MS LATTIS: No. It was --
19 MR. KASIETA: Peterson's decision?
20 MS. LATTIS: No. From the Seventh
21 Circuit decision.
22 MR. KASIETA: Oh, the Seventh Circuit?
23 MS LATTIS: Yes.
24 MR. KASIETA: All right. Well, I don't
25 recall that. If you, perhaps during the break, if
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1 you can point me to that, --
2 MS LATTIS: I'd be happy to.
Rebuttal:
She didn’t.
3 MR. KASIETA: -- I'd be very grateful.
4 All right.
5 BY MR. KASIETA:
6 Q And then going to number three, Dr. Shields, you
7 reference your own Letter of Direction detailing
8 the activities that violated Dr. Throop's Letter of
9 Direction, right?
10 A Umm hmm.
11 Q Your answer is yes?
12 A Yes.
13 Q And why did you issue a Letter of Direction that
14 related back to Dr. Throop's Letter of Direction?
15 A Well, she didn't follow the Letter of Direction
16 from Dr. Throop, and I, you know, in the interests
17 -- let me back up and just say this. What you are
18 seeing is an effort by this institution, led by me,
19 over a period of years, so this didn't just -- you
20 know, this didn't happen one week and then the next
21 week something happened and then another week
22 happened. There was a lot of activity, a lot of
23 time that passed that lead to Dr. Throop's letter,
24 okay? And try to give time for that to happen,
25 give room for behavior to change, see that over
Page 67
1 time whether things could -- it didn't happen, I
2 felt like before instigating activities, let me try
3 one more time to offer some advice in a Letter of
4 Direction as to the behavior that was expected.
5 That's what was going on here.
6 Q Please forgive give me for jumping around a bit
7 here, but I want to go back to an issue I meant to
8 ask a question about a while ago, and that is, you
9 reference -- when I asked about specific firsthand
10 information, you said you saw e-mails, and I want
11 to know, are the e-mails that you are using to
12 support your recommendation of termination
13 contained in the exhibit that was provided to the
14 panel in the May hearing?
15 A Yah.
16 Q All right. Do you have other e-mails that you did
17 not use?
18 A No. I didn't use them or anything else. I don't
19 know if there's any other e-mails that specifically
20 deal with this, but what I based it on was what was
21 here.
22 Q All right. Did you personally go through the
23 e-mails and cull out which ones were going to be
24 used?
25 A No.
Page 68
1 Q Where did the e-mails come from?
2 THE WITNESS: I think we were assembling
3 that with you, weren't we, Jennifer?
4 MS LATTIS: No. I -- well, they were
5 attachments to Provost Throop and Dean Gormley's
6 complaint.
7 MR. KASIETA: Thank you.
8 BY MR. KASIETA:
9 Q Dr. Shields, do you know how those e-mails came to
10 be in the possession of the administration?
11 A Specifically, no. I think in the course of doing
12 their work, Dean Throop and -- or Provost Throop
13 and Dean Gormley and other faculty in the
14 department came across them, presented them.
15 Q Did you ever ask Drs. Gormley or Throop whether
16 there are other e-mails?
17 A No. I didn't ask the question.
18 Q So if I understand correctly, what we have here are
19 is the universe of e-mails that you, Dr. Gormley,
20 or Dr. Troop, either or, were able to compile
21 supporting --
22 A (Interrupted.) Well, I can't speak --
23 Q If I can finish, please.
24 A Okay.
25 Q -- supporting this assertion that Dr. Burton
Page 69
1 behaved in an unprofessional or confrontational
2 fashion?
3 A Well, I would say this is what they presented to me
4 in their complaint.
5 Q So that's a yes?
6 A I can't speak for the university on that, what they
7 might have looked at and culled it to these. I
8 don't know.
9 Q Now let's continue, please, with your Letter of
10 Charges here, the March 30, pardon me, 2017 letter,
11 and now we're going to go to the next page, which
12 is page 4 of the letter, page 5 Bates stamp. We
13 talked about some of these things, so I'm going to
14 move forward and not go through each of them. I
15 want to look at point number 5, if you will,
16 please, about a third of the way down the page.
17 A Umm hmm.
18 Q You admitted to Investigator Roter that you are
19 direct and short with colleagues and that you could
20 be perceived as threatening. Do you see that item?
Rebuttal:
The Roter report falsely reported what Sabina said and Chancellor Shields further twisted what the Roter report said. So, this is a real twist. Sabina never admitted this to Roter.
21 A Yes.
22 Q And that is a sub number, if we go back to the
23 prior page, of your assertion that Dr. Burton
24 engaged in disrespectful, harassing and
25 intimidating behavior toward her colleagues, right?
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1 A Umm hmm.
2 Q Your answer is yes?
3 A Yes.
4 Q And I'm only doing that, I just -- I'm not trying
5 to be discourteous. I'm only doing it because we
6 want a record for the court reporter.
7 A I understand.
8 Q Thank you. All right. Was it ever your
9 perspective that Dr. Burton, given her pronounced
10 German accent that we have already seen today,
11 might be perceived as being direct and short, even
12 when she didn't intend to be?
13 A Well, I would say her admission that she knows that
14 she can be intimidating is a threatening -- is a
15 self awareness on her part about this.
Rebuttal:
Sabina never admitted that she was intimidating or threatening or that she could be perceived as such.
16 Q Well, look carefully at it though. It says "she
17 could be perceived as being threatening."
18 A You know, that's a self awareness.
19 Q Not that she was intending to be threatening,
20 right?
Rebuttal:
Sabina never admitted this. So far Bob has done a good job of not admitting that Sabina said this. If that is on purpose keep it up. If it is accidental then please understand that Sabina never admitted this. Never. We can prove it on audio recording.
21 A Well, you know, that's a trick today in society,
22 that people don't -- they can acknowledge that
23 something happened that they didn't intend but they
24 don't want to own it. I think if you're self
25 aware, you have to own both what you intend and
Page 71
1 what you don't intend and act accordingly.
2 Q Okay. Well, let me ask you this. Would you
3 recommend termination, if we could isolate this
4 item, the "Dr. Burton allegedly being direct and
5 short with colleagues and being perceived as
6 threatening," if that were the only item on the
7 list, would you recommend termination for that
8 item?
9 A No.
10 Q All right. Now I looked in Dr. Roter's report, and
Rebuttal:
Please don’t call it Dr. Roter’s report. It is, with 99.9999% certainty, not Dr. Roter’s report. It is very very very likely a forgery. It is not signed. We only have Shields’ assertion to demonstrate authenticity.
Also: We need to point out that Dr. Burton did not tell Roter what was written in the Roter report. The report twisted Sabina’s words and then Shields twisted the words in the report.
11 I looked quite diligently for this admission and I
12 can't find it, are you telling me that point
13 number, 5 that you admitted it to Investigator
14 Roter that you are direct and so forth, are you
15 saying that's in her reports?
16 A You know, I just read that again recently. I think
17 I saw it in there.
18 Q Okay. All right.
19 A I could be wrong.
20 Q You didn't have conversation with Dr. Roter that
21 formed a basis for your --
22 A No.
23 Q -- Statement of Charges?
24 A No.
25 Q Did you ever talk to Dr. Roter about her report?
Page 72
1 A No.
2 Q Did you consult with Dr. Roter as she was
3 performing her investigative work?
4 A No.
5 Q Now let's look, please, at -- well, prefatory
6 question here. Would you agree that the Criminal
7 Justice Department is dysfunctional?
8 A Right now? No.
9 Q And it sounds like, and I'm reading between those
10 lines, which isn't very difficult given her tone,
11 that you're saying that when Dr. Burton was there,
12 it was dysfunctional?
13 A You know, I wouldn't -- it was dysfunctional, but
14 that, I think, preceded her presence there.
15 Q All right.
16 A So I mean in fairness, I -- look, you know, we went
17 through a department chair change, an interim
18 department chair, we did a national search for a
19 new department chair. Without throwing anybody
20 under the bus, we knew there were issues and we
21 were working to get them figured out.
22 Q Thank you for your candor. All right. It would be
23 wrong for the panel to interpret your comments as
24 if you were saying Dr. Burton has created the
25 dysfunctional environment of the Criminal Justice
Page 73
1 System, that it in fact preceded her, right?
2 A I think there were issues in the Criminal Justice
3 Department that didn't have anything to do with her
4 if you go back seven, eight, nine years ago, and
5 that we came to that. Now that's a little
6 different than what I think some of the dysfunction
7 she created by her behavior, but that's not to say
8 I would attribute all of the dysfunction in that
9 department that we're getting figured out was her
10 responsibility.
11 Q Others created dysfunction in the Criminal Justice
12 Department?
13 A Yah.
14 Q How many of those did you recommend for termination
15 to a panel like this one?
16 A Well, none. I think that would be the answer.
17 Q Now let's look, please, at -- continuing on now,
18 please, Roman numeral III.
19 A Yes.
20 Q On the same page we were on.
21 A Uh huh.
22 Q Dr. Throop's Letter of Direction "advised you to
23 cease involving students in your personnel disputes
24 and grievances?"
25 A Uh huh.
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1 Q And I think you answered this broadly in response
2 to a prior question, but I just want to be sure I
3 point it now, you haven't talked to a particular
4 student, any particular student, who said that
5 Dr. Burton involved them in her personnel matters?
6 A I haven't talked to a student, no.
7 Q All right. And when you made the recommendation to
8 terminate, you didn't have any information from any
9 students who said they didn't believe that
10 Dr. Burton had ever involved them in personnel
11 matters, did you?
12 A No.
13 Q All right. You weren't aware of any students who
14 said that in fact that allegation is not true?
15 A What?
16 Q The allegation that she involved students in
17 personnel matters.
18 A Oh, I think there's ample evidence that she was
19 engaging them in this process. She had her own
20 justification for doing that. But, yah, there's
21 e-mails, there's social media, et cetera, that it's
22 pretty clear she was involved in in getting
23 students in the middle of this.
24 Q Is all of the evidence that you are aware of
25 included in the exhibits that have been submitted?
Page 75
1 A This is what we have been able to gather, yes.
2 Q All right. Well, look, if you will, please, at our
3 exhibits. They should be in front of you there,
4 please.
5 MR. KASIETA: And perhaps, counsel, you
6 could share those if they aren't already?
7 BY MR. KASIETA:
8 Q Exhibit No. 9. And tell me when you have it.
9 A Okay.
10 Q All right. This is a voluntary statement from a
11 student. Have you ever seen this before?
12 A No.
13 Q This student says, "Daisy Colin," or Colin, "I
14 enrolled for Criminal Justice Seminar on Spring
15 2016. I was not aware of the legal case involving
16 Sabina Burton. Burton did not speak about the
17 incident in class or during my visits at her
18 office. She also did not make any indications
19 regarding the allegations made. I have read the
20 above statement and it is true and correct to the
21 best of my knowledge," and she signed it. Do you
22 have any reason to doubt that statement?
23 A No.
24 Q Let's look, please, at Exhibit No. 10. This is
25 Bate No. 103. This is a declaration of Alexandra
Page 76
1 Zupek in the Burton versus Board of Regents
2 litigation in Federal court. Have you seen this
3 document before?
4 A No.
5 Q Do you know who Alexandra Zupek was -- is?
6 A No, I don't.
7 Q You don't?
8 A (Shakes head.)
9 Q She's the student that Dr. Lorne Gibson came in and
10 --
11 A Oh, okay.
12 Q -- handed this slip to with his phone number on
13 it, --
14 A Okay.
15 Q -- saying, "call me?"
16 A Okay.
17 Q All right. Are you aware that Ms. Zupek was upset
18 by what Dr. Gibson had done?
19 A Oh, yah. I think that was pretty clear.
20 Q Okay. You're aware, and I think if I understand
21 and recall your testimony from the last session
22 correctly, that it was inappropriate for Dr. Gibson
23 to have done what he did?
24 A I think that's what everybody involved around there
25 arrived at that conclusion, yes.
Page 77
1 Q Even if it was an experiment?
2 A Umm, you know, I think Dean Throop made it pretty
3 plain that that behavior was inappropriate.
4 Q It was appropriate, on the other hand, for
5 Dr. Burton to console this student?
6 A Yes.
7 Q It was appropriate for her, Dr. Burton, to share in
8 this student's offense at what had happened?
9 A I'm not sure what you mean by that.
10 Q Well, do you think it was appropriate for a fellow
11 faculty member, learning of what Dr. Gibson had
12 done, to be offended by what he had done?
13 A Yes.
14 Q You didn't recommend that Dr. Gibson be terminated
15 for what he had done?
16 A The people at the appropriate level dealt with
17 that, and he was gone, you know, within months
18 after that for a whole variety of reasons.
Rebuttal:
Gibson was not gone within a matter of months. He was an employee until the end of the school year in 2015 (exhibit 643). The student incident happened on Oct 10, 2012. He was employed for two and a half years after the event. Dr. Burton didn’t have a problem with this. The mishandling of the incident by Caywood, Throop, Lattis and Shields caused the problems.
The CJ department voted Gibson to be the chair on Sept 17, 2013 (CriminalJusticeDept).
Note: Dr. Bockhop, appeal panel member, seems to believe Shields. We need to point out to him that Gibson was still around 2.5 years after the event.
19 Q Nobody recommended that because of this, that
20 Dr. Gibson would be terminated?
21 A Not specifically this, no.
22 Q And you've seen -- I don't want to go through all
23 the court documents, but you've seen reference to
24 this, given the statement to Miss Zupek as sexual
25 harassment?
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1 A Yes.
2 Q And you agree that that in fact was sexual
3 harassment?
4 A Umm, I think it was inappropriate behavior. I
5 don't think officially anybody made that judgment,
6 but it was clearly inappropriate. The Dean and the
7 university viewed it that way. And we moved
8 forward.
9 Q Now let me ask you this. Do you have any issue
10 with Dr. Burton disagreeing with the powers that
11 be, as you indicate them, for not firing Dr. Gibson
12 for this inappropriate behavior?
Rebuttal:
Dr. Burton never argued to anyone that Dr. Gibson should have been fired. She thought he should have been reprimanded. Later, when she found out about his other indiscretions in class and his inappropriate testing materials she decided to vote for his non-renewal.
Bob made the wrong argument here.
13 A She's entitled to her opinion about that.
14 Q And I don't want to take you back to your law
15 school days, but there is a First Amendment right
16 to speak out, is there not?
17 A Sure.
18 Q And in fact in an institution where tenure governs,
19 there is an expectation that if you speak out in
20 exercising your First Amendment, that you will not
21 then be subjected to discipline or termination?
22 A Yes.
23 Q And the speaking out under the First Amendment can
24 be uncomfortable, can't it?
25 A Yes.
Page 79
1 Q It can be disrespectful, like people who burn
2 flags, with the protection of the First Amendment?
3 A That's a statement.
4 Q That's a question.
5 A And do I think that way?
6 Q Do you understand that the exercise of the First
7 Amend- --
8 A I have a pretty clear understanding of what the
9 First Amendment is all about.
10 Q I beg your pardon?
11 A I have a pretty clear understanding of what the
12 First Amendment is all about.
13 Q So you know it frequently carries with it things
14 that make other people uncomfortable, statements
15 that make other people uncomfortable?
16 A That's a question too?
17 Q It is.
18 A Yes.
19 Q And the First Amendment, the exercise of First
20 Amendment rights, is often perceived as being
21 disrespectful, is it not?
22 A Yes.
23 Q The exercise of First Amendment rights is often
24 perceived as being threatening, isn't it?
25 A Yes.
Page 80
1 Q And the exercise of First Amendment --
2 A So how is that relevant to what we're doing here?
3 Q Oh, we're getting there.
4 A Okay.
5 Q The exercise of First Amendment --
6 A So I'll let you -- go ahead and say all that stuff
7 you want to say, I just -- I don't have any
8 objection to it, but I'd rather you get to the
9 point.
10 Q Okay. And your expressing your view on that, do
11 you think that's respectful, interrupting my
12 questioning like that?
13 A Well, I think when you're running this down around
14 ring around the rosie, yah, I think, you know, my
15 reaction to it every once in a while is not
16 necessarily okay.
17 Q Okay. And that in your view is appropriate?
18 A Well, I don't know.
19 Q And yet if Sabina Burton is offended, viscerally
20 offended because a colleague engages in sexual
21 harassment and the powers that be don't even
22 recommend his termination and put him through the
23 same process she is now facing, do you think that
24 that is disrespectful and justifying, at least in
25 part, a recommendation of termination?
Page 81
1 A Her objection to the way that has been handled for
2 me personally has never been an issue. If she
3 wants to speak out about the university's position
4 on sexual harassment, et cetera, that's fine.
5 That's not an excuse to publish the evaluations of
6 her peers. There's not a causal connection between
7 those two. And therein lies the challenge that we
8 face in this circumstance. This activity by
9 Dr. Burton over a period of years about an incident
10 that happened five years ago, if it was only her
11 saying, "I don't think the university is doing the
12 right thing about sexual harassment," never would
13 have got to this point. It was never about that.
14 That's not an explanation for saying, "Okay, I'm
15 going to sort of expose the personal deliberation
16 -- personnel deliberations about your peers in your
17 department" for some reason or other, explain to me
18 the causal connection there.
19 Q Let's look, please, at Exhibit No. 11, Dr. Shields.
20 This is a statement from Bryant Etherton. It is
21 another statement of a former student of
22 Dr. Burton. All of these statements are from
23 former students, so no current students have been
24 contacted once she's on -- been put on leave by
25 you, so that she doesn't have any current students,
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1 does she?
2 (A PAUSE.)
3 MS LATTIS: We're reading the letter.
4 MR. KASIETA: Oh, I'm sorry. Tell me
5 when you're ready. I apologize.
6 (A PAUSE.)
7 THE WITNESS: Yah.
8 BY MR. KASIETA:
9 Q All right. And the point I was trying to make is
10 that Dr. Burton has no current students because you
11 put her on a leave of absence, a leave?
12 A True.
13 Q Okay. So this former student, Bryant Etherton --
14 let's just -- I've got a few questions about the
15 issues he raises. He says that he attended all but
16 one class period for the course, he took the fall
17 semester of the Criminal Justice Seminar for 2016,
18 he fulfilled all course requirements, and he says
19 "all periods of instruction that I attended were
20 appropriately completed within the allotted
21 three-hour time. All necessary coursework was
22 completed." And then he says, "Sabina did not
23 share knowledge of or facts pertaining to any
24 pending ongoing legal cases that she was involved
25 in. Students were officially made aware of
Page 83
1 Dr. Burton's legal situation with the University of
2 Wisconsin-Platteville on the date of 11/1/16
3 through an e-mail from update@uwplatt.edu." Let me
4 stop there, please. Who is that, the person with
5 the e-mail address UW -- update@uwplatt.edu?
6 A Well, I think it's a university relations -- Public
7 Relations.
8 Q All right.
9 A Public Relations office.
10 Q And do you know the e-mail he's talking about,
11 11/1/16?
12 A Umm, I have no reason to question whether or not
13 it's there. I'm not -- I'm seeing this today, so
14 I'm not --
15 Q He says he "received the e-mail and it contained a
16 complete PDF of the case title, Case 3:14cv, filed
17 3/18/16," and that's Dr. Burton's litigation?
18 A Yes.
19 Q It "contained a complete PDF of the order denying
20 the motion." It contained court documents
21 essentially?
22 A (Nods head.)
23 Q Okay?
24 A Umm hmm.
25 Q Are you critical of the dissemination of court
Page 84
1 documents to --
2 A Aren't those public records?
3 Q Let me finish, please. Are you critical of the
4 dissemination of court documents to students,
5 drawing them into this issue in an official
6 university e-mail?
7 A I think the circumstance, there was a lot going on
8 on, there was a lot going on there, and the --
9 without the university personally trying to make
10 their case themselves, the simplest way for those
11 people who were interested in this to understand
12 the status of where we were was to say "here's a
13 Federal court decision where this is laid out and
14 you know where the university stands on this."
15 Q And you think it appropriate for the university to
16 say to the students, "Here is our position?"
17 A We didn't say what our position is. We said,
18 "Here's the court document."
19 Q Again, it's on the documents that said what your
20 position was?
21 A No. What the court said, what the court finds.
22 Q And do you distinguish between the procedure that
23 we are talking about and simply telling the
24 students, "Dear students in our Criminal Justice
25 Department, you might or might not hear rumors
Page 85
1 about all kinds of things in our faculty, and I as
2 your Chancellor am eager for you to pursue your
3 studies and to ignore whatever background noise
4 there might be, and I have counseled my faculty not
5 to have conversation with you about any kind of
6 personnel matters, nor will I -- nor will any
7 university official?"
8 MS LATTIS: I object to the argumentative
9 nature of the question and ask that it be
10 rephrased.
11 CHAIRPERSON: Please do so.
12 MR. KASIETA: I beg your pardon?
13 CHAIRPERSON: Please do so.
14 BY MR. KASIETA:
15 Q Well, as opposed to giving students details,
16 particularly when, as here, you know, before this
17 panel, recommending termination of a tenured
18 faculty member for sharing personnel information as
19 opposed to giving students details, could you,
20 Dr. Shields, could you have simply sent them an
21 e-mail saying "I understand your concern? All is
22 well. Please, pay attention to your studies. I
23 will deal with all personnel issues that you might
24 hear rumors of?"
25 A No.
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1 Q All right.
2 A And I'll explain to you why. Over the course of
3 five or six months this had turned into an
4 extraordinary circumstance. This university was
5 pilloried, all kinds of things were said about us,
6 on University Corruption, on social media, and all
Rebuttal: Wrong. The website was published until about mid to late October. The watchdog article was about Oct 26 and the University sent their email to students on Nov 1. Nobody knew about the site, except Roger, Sabina and Mat Kittle until Kittle published the article on Oct 26. Shields won’t be able to show any email traffic about universitycorruption.com until after Oct 26, 2016 because nobody knew about it before then.
7 kinds of ways. The students were very concerned
8 about this. Against -- I had to weigh -- the
9 institution had to weigh, do we just stand there
10 mute, do we just stand there mute and not say
11 anything and have these students, who have a
12 legitimate concern, and say, "Oh, we just can't
13 talk about that?" Well, those Federal court
14 decisions are public documents and spoke most
15 directly to the merits of the things they were
16 concerned about. And if I had it to do over again,
17 I'd probably do the same thing, given the amount of
18 fire that we were taking from so many directions as
19 an institution and that engaged everybody in this
20 community: Students, faculty, everyone else.
21 That's where I am with that. Now you can agree or
22 disagree with that, but that's the circumstance
23 that we were in.
24 Q You were acting there in what you considered to be
25 the best interests of the university?
Page 87
1 A Yah.
2 Q You were disclosing information that clearly drew
3 the students into a dispute with --
4 A The students were already drawn into it.
5 Q If I may, please, if I may finish my question?
6 A Well, if you're going to characterize it, I'm going
7 to correct you. You know, the notion that the
8 students weren't already engaged in this is just
9 not an accurate factual observation.
10 Q You further engaged the students in a piece of
11 litigation between the university and a tenured
12 faculty member, all the while criticizing a faculty
13 member for bringing the students into personnel
14 issues, true?
15 A That's -- that's a -- it's interesting. I would
16 characterize what you just said, an arsonist
17 complaining that a house burned down. That's what
18 that's like. That's like, "Oh, we have clean hands
19 with this. This whole theory has nothing to do
20 with us, so if you respond by trying to put the
21 fire out, the fire department is at fault," that's
22 a very interesting spin on what was going on in
23 those days.
24 Q And there was no other way that you as the
25 Chancellor can conceive of to communicate with the
Page 88
1 students other than sharing detailed court
2 documents with them?
3 A Do you have a problem with those court documents?
4 Q Can you answer my question?
5 A Do you have a problem with what those court
6 documents say? That's my answer.
7 Q Well, okay, if I get to answer questions, I've got
8 a lot to say, by I'm not sure that --
9 A Well, that's my answer to your question.
10 Q No, it isn't. And (interrupted) --
11 A Yes, it is. That's the answer you're getting.
12 With all due respect, that's the answer you're
13 getting.
14 Q Well, you're not answering the question. Can you
15 conceive, Dr. Shields, of any other way of
16 communicating to the students without --
17 A I'll answer it this way.
18 MS LATTIS: Just let him finish the
19 question.
20 BY MR. KASIETA:
21 Q -- without sharing detailed court documents with
22 them?
23 A What I will say to you is that at any given moment,
24 what I have to do as chancellor, somebody can
25 second guess. Hundreds of things, thousands of
Page 89
1 things in any given year. And if I were to reflect
2 back on any one of them, I might say, "Yah, I might
3 have done that a little differently to get a
4 different result." Am I comfortable with the
5 choice that I made here? I'm comfortable with it.
6 I'm not going to second guess it.
7 Q And no one has recommended that you be either
8 disciplined or removed for having involved students
9 in personnel matters, have they?
10 A No, they haven't
11 Q Let's look, please, at Exhibit No. 12. And I'll be
12 respectful this time and let you read it before I
13 start giving you questions. Please tell me when
14 you are ready?
15 A (A pause.)
16 MS LATTIS: Do you have a second copy of
17 that? It's very awkward to be sharing.
18 MR. KASIETA: Oh, I'm sorry. If you
19 could give them your copy of your document. Okay,
20 thank you. Evidently I miscopied by one.
21 MS LATTIS: Thank you.
22 MR. KASIETA: Sure.
23 MS LATTIS: And what is it again, 12?
24 MR. KASIETA: Exhibit 12. Yes, please.
25 Bate 109.
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1 (A PAUSE.)
2 BY MR. KASIETA:
3 Q Are you ready?
4 A Sure.
5 Q Okay. Thank you. All right, this is a statement
6 from Katherine Komorowski, who dates it July 3,
7 2017, another student, former student of
8 Dr. Burton, and she indicates "It has been brought
9 to my attention that several slanderous accusations
10 have been made about the professional conduct of
11 Dr. Sabina Burton during some of her courses,
12 mainly seminar." Let me ask you this. Do you know
13 Katherine Komorowski?
14 A No. I don't recognize the name.
15 Q Okay. She says "I was a student in her seminar
16 course and never once did she discuss any aspect of
17 her legal case with her students during or outside
18 of class. No students were aware anything was
19 going on until Watchdog posted an article." You
20 see that?
21 A Umm hmm.
22 Q The answer is yes?
23 A Yes.
24 Q Thank you. What is Watchdog, just in case
25 everybody doesn't know?
Page 91
1 A I don't -- I don't know how to describe it.
2 Q Okay. Do your best.
3 A I don't know how to describe it.
4 Q Do you know what it is?
5 A No.
6 Q Oh, okay. You don't know?
7 A (Shrugs shoulders.)
8 Q Okay. You don't understand that Dr. Burton has
9 anything to do with Watchdog?
10 A I don't know if she does or doesn't.
11 Q Okay. All right. "The conduct of other people
12 involved in this case disappoint me to the point
13 that I am disgusted to be a graduate of the
14 University of Wisconsin-Platteville. UW-P is known
15 for its Criminal Justice Program, but how can a
16 school that is so good at teaching a program of
17 this capacity be so terrible at practicing what
18 they teach? Dr. Burton is one of the rare people
19 who can walk the fine line between professor and
20 friend. She is an amazing mentor with high
21 standards and always does what is right and just."
22 She goes --
23 CHAIRPERSON: Excuse me, but we have
24 read, you've given us time to read this, so I think
25 we can move on with the questioning.
Page 92
1 MR. KASIETA: Okay. All right.
2 BY MR. KASIETA:
3 Q There is no criticism, Dr. Shields, of Dr. Burton's
4 teaching in this matter, is there?
5 A In this letter, no.
6 Q Yah, in this matter, this recommendation to be
7 terminated?
8 A No. No. No.
9 Q Thank you. And there is no criticism of her
10 research?
11 A No, there is not.
12 Q There is no criticism of her mentoring of students?
13 A No.
14 Q In all respects in terms of her professorial
15 obligations, the teaching, the mentoring, the
16 research, those aspects, there is no basis for
17 suggesting termination?
18 A Well, I would suggest to you that service on
19 personnel matters is part of her obligations as a
20 faculty member.
21 Q Okay.
22 A And that not understanding, or not, you know,
23 aligning with what's expected in those kind of
24 situations is a problem, so not with regard with
25 regard to teaching and those aspects of her
Page 93
1 responsibility. But we're here because another
2 piece of her responsibility is in question.
3 Q Thank you. And what you are talking about there is
4 the dissemination of recorded information?
5 A Right.
6 Q Okay. Look, please, at Exhibit No. 13, Bate 110.
7 And, again, a moment to read it.
8 (A PAUSE.)
9 BY MR. KASIETA:
10 Q Are you ready?
11 A Yes.
12 Q Oh, thank you. If you just tell me when you are
13 ready, then -- I'm just waiting until you're
14 finished. Thank you. All right.
15 Were you aware that any student indicated
16 at any time that the only reason Dr. Burton ever
17 mentioned the personnel issues was after the
18 communication by the administration concerning the
19 case? Were you aware of that?
20 A That's what you are saying this person is saying in
21 this letter?
22 Q Well, do you see that?
23 A Well, this -- this is one student making her
24 observations.
25 Q Well, how many students did you rely upon?
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1 A Well, I think the documents that are there show
2 what we relied upon.
3 Q How many students did you rely upon?
4 A I think the documents in there show what we relied
5 on.
6 Q Do you know? Can you answer my question, please?
7 A The documents in there show you what students we
8 relied upon.
9 Q Dr. Shields, do you know how many students?
10 A The documents in the charging thing show you the
11 students that we relied on.
12 Q Well, I'll tell you, sir, I've read the documents,
13 and I can't tell how many --
14 A Well, --
15 Q -- students you relied on, so are you able to help
16 me out, please?
17 A Well, at minimum, the ones that you see that we put
18 forward in the documents that we presented. So off
19 the top of my head, I can't count the number of
20 those that are there.
21 Q But to the extent you know of any students who
22 indicated that there was any mention of personnel
23 issues by Dr. Burton, those have been included in
24 the exhibit?
25 A Yes. Yah.
Page 95
1 MR. KASIETA: It's approximately five
2 after 6:00. Could we take a brief break?
3 CHAIRPERSON: I was just going to ask the
4 two of you if you would like to take a break at
5 this point. Five minutes, but five minutes only.
6 MR. KASIETA: Thank you.
7 (A RECESS WAS HAD.)
8 CHAIRPERSON: All right. We can start
9 this again.
Rebuttal:
Lattis failed to give Bob the promised information about the false claim that Dr. Burton said she would not follow Throop’s LOD. She said she’d do it at the break but she didn’t.
10 MR. KASIETA: Thank you.
11 MR. KASIETA: Logistical question. To
12 decide what I am going to do, I need to know
13 whether we'll be back for another session.
14 CHAIRPERSON: The panel -- actually,
15 that's the panel's decision, so, I -- I can't
16 answer that question.
17 MR. KASIETA: Okay.
18 CHAIRPERSON: The panel needs to decide
19 after --
20 MR. VAUGHN: Do you have a time estimate
21 for the remaining witnesses today?
22 MR. KASIETA: Well, yah. Good question.
23 Well, we'd never get through all of the witnesses
24 on the list today, and if the panel is of the
25 opinion that it's going to say we're done at
Page 96
1 7:00 p.m., then I want to have Dr. Burton start
2 now, and I'll just stop questioning Dr. Shields and
3 just go to Dr. Burton. I mean it's most important
4 that the panel hear from Dr. Burton, and so that's
5 why I'm asking now, because if we get to 7:00 and
6 you say, okay, you're not coming back for another
7 session, and I just decide, well, we're just going
8 to plow forward and then I don't get a chance to
9 call her, that would be a real problem.
10 CHAIRPERSON: Can we take a few minutes
11 just to talk among ourselves?
12 MR. KASIETA: Absolutely. Do you want us
13 to leave?
14 CHAIRPERSON: No. That's not necessary.
15 (DISCUSSION HAD OFF THE RECORD.)
16 CHAIRPERSON: So the question to you
17 both, are you willing to go until 8:00 this evening
18 and then be able to conclude?
19 (NO RESPONSE.)
20 CHAIRPERSON: That would give us two
21 hours, a little less than two hours.
22 MR. KASIETA: I'd never be able to finish
23 the evidence I want to put on today.
24 CHAIRPERSON: Okay. Then we will have a
25 a second session, but only a second session for
Page 97
1 three hours, and that would be -- that would be it.
2 MR. KASIETA: Okay.
3 CHAIRPERSON: We will finish this
4 session, we will have a second session for three
5 hours, and that will be it.
6 MR. KASIETA: Okay. Thank you so much.
7 CHAIRPERSON: Okay.
8 MR. KASIETA: I appreciate that.
9 MS LATTIS: Just one clarification for
10 that. So within that second session for three
11 hours, it's possible that I would need to present
12 some rebuttal testimony or cross examination of
13 Dr. Burton or something like that. Could I be
14 allotted one hour of that second session?
15 CHAIRPERSON: I think that's fair.
16 MS LATTIS: Thank you.
17 CHAIRPERSON: Okay.
18 MR. KASIETA: Thank you.
19 CHAIRPERSON: Let's move forward.
20 BY MR. KASIETA:
21 Q Let's move to another document, please,
22 Dr. Shields. The complaint to you from Drs. Throop
23 and Gormley, it's at Bate No, 17, kindly tell me
24 when you have it.
25 A (A pause.) Okay.
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1 Q All right. How does this December 16, 2016 memo to
2 you from Drs. Troop and Gormley come to be?
3 A (No response.)
4 Q Did you request anything of them?
5 A No. No. They arrived at this conclusion
6 themselves.
7 Q Did you talk to them about their memorandum before
8 you received it?
9 A Umm, yah. I think so.
10 Q What do you recall of that?
11 A I think they ran it by me. And I think I referred
12 it to Attorney Lattis for her input.
13 Q Before you ever saw a draft of the memorandum, did
14 Drs. Troop or Gormley recommend to you that you
15 should seek dismissal of Dr. Burton?
16 A I -- as I recall, what they indicated is that they
17 had discovered that these personnel-related matters
18 had been published, and it was very upsetting to
19 the department and, in their view, a violation of a
20 trust, and that they thought it rose to the level
21 that they would be recommending we take some
22 action.
23 Q How did you use this memorandum, the December 16,
24 2016, if at all, in your analysis resulting in a
25 recommendation of termination of Dr. Burton?
Page 99
1 A Well, I think in my letter it sort of -- to
2 Dr. Burton where I said that I think if -- if what
3 they have said in this complaint is true, that,
4 paraphrasing, that it's pretty serious and a
5 problem.
6 Q By the time you wrote the letter we've already gone
7 through to Dr. Burton, had you made any decisions
8 or had you come to any conclusions about whether
9 the allegations in the December 16, 2016
10 Throop/Gormley memorandum were true?
11 A I don't know that I -- that I had settled on
12 absolutely that they were true. I had settled on
13 the notion that I -- if they were true, that it was
14 a real problem and that I needed to put in place an
15 investigation that would factually determine if
16 they were true.
17 Q The Throop/Gormley December 16, 2016 memorandum
18 triggered the Roter investigation, do I have that
19 right?
20 A Yes. Yes.
21 Q Now look, if you will, please, at the prior page,
22 Bate No. 16.
23 A Yes.
24 Q The January letter -- January 2017 letter from you
25 to Dr. Burton. Do you see that?
Page 100
1 A Yes.
2 Q And you are at that point forwarding the complaint
3 from Drs. Troop and Gormley to Dr. Burton?
4 A I'm sorry, say that again. I'm sorry.
5 Q You were forwarding the complaint from Drs. Troop
6 and Gormley to Dr. Burton at that time in January
7 of 2017?
8 A Yah. Yes.
9 Q All right. And look at the second paragraph, if
10 you will, please, Dr. Shields. You say, "I have
11 reviewed the complaint and the attachments and I
12 find that these allegations are substantial such
13 that, if true, they would warrant your dismissal."
14 Do you see that?
15 A Yes.
16 Q All right. We jump forward back to Exhibit A, the
17 letter we talked about, I want to know what changed
18 between the time of the January 8th, 2017 letter
19 and your March 30 of 2017 letter, a couple months
20 later, after Dr. Roter had done the investigation
21 where you say -- you "conclude the charges were
22 substantial and that, if true, might lead to
23 dismissal."
24 A Umm, I don't know that anything had changed. I
25 knew there was still more process to come, and so
Page 101
1 even at this point, I don't think it's a foregone
2 conclusion.
3 Q But if a decision were left to you and you alone,
4 without process, you would terminate?
5 A Well, I -- I never contemplated that the process
6 wouldn't go forward.
7 Q Look, if you will, please, at Bate No. 7. It's
8 part of the original exhibits in this matter. This
9 is the Roter report. And I'm jumping around a bit
10 to try to finish up here.
11 A Okay.
12 Q Do you have it?
13 A What was the number you want me to look at?
14 Q Bate No. 7, upper right-hand corner, the little
15 number.
16 A The cover -- the cover page, is that what you are
17 talking about?
18 Q Yes, that's correct. Yes.
19 A Yes.
20 Q Thank you. It's dated dated March 1st, 2017?
21 A Umm hmm.
22 Q It's not signed, is it?
23 A (No response.)
24 Q Page 13?
25 A No.
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1 Q Did you ever get a signed version of Dr. Roter's
2 report?
3 A I think this is representative of what I received.
4 Q So you never got a signed version, but there's a
5 signature line. I mean there's a signature block
6 there, right?
7 MS LATTIS: Page 13.
8 THE WITNESS: I don't where that was.
9 Is there a signature on this or is it --
10 what is it you want me to say?
11 BY MR. KASIETA:
12 Q There is not a signature on this?
13 A Yes. There's not a signature on this.
14 Q All right. Did you ask to have the report signed
15 before you proceeded to recommend termination?
16 A No.
17 Q All right. Now look, if you will, please, at page
18 -- the second page, Bate No. 8.
19 A Okay.
20 Q And tell me when you have it. Contents of the
21 Investigation.
22 A Yah. I have it here in front of me.
23 Q Dr. Roter identifies four areas or themes that
24 guided the investigation. You see that?
25 A Umm hmm.
Page 103
1 Q Your answer is yes?
2 A Yes. Yes.
3 Q And what I am trying to do here now, Dr. Shields,
4 is to get your sense of the importance of these
5 four areas or themes that your investigator
6 centered on which ultimately resulted in your
7 recommendation for termination.
8 A Umm hmm.
9 Q And so let me ask you a specific question, trying
10 to go to that very issue. All right. If each of
11 those points were there individually, that is to
12 say, if there was only one, there wasn't one
13 through four, I'd like you to take me through and
14 tell me whether if, standing alone, any one of
15 those would have been justification for you to
16 recommend termination of Dr. Burton?
17 A Umm, so whether any one of them would have
18 sufficed?
19 Q Yes. That's another way to put it. Yah, I'm
20 trying to get your (interrupted) --
21 A Right. So I would say -- I would say "one" stands
22 alone. I think "two" stands alone and would warrant
23 it. I think "three" standing alone would warrant
24 it. I think the weakest one and the one that might
25 not stand up is number "four."
Page 104
1 Q All right.
2 A That might not, but that's -- that by itself might
3 not rise to that.
4 Q Now you see down the page that Dr. Burton has asked
5 that a letter from her attorney be included with
6 this report, that's Exhibit G, seven, eight lines
7 from the bottom?
8 A I see it. Yah.
9 Q Okay. And I have included that report or that
10 communication from the attorney as an exhibit and
11 I'd like to ask you about that. It is Exhibit
12 No. 5, I beg your pardon, 6, page 88, Bate number.
13 A Okay.
14 Q All right. When Dr. Roter's report came to you,
15 did it have all of the exhibits, including
16 Exhibit G?
17 A Umm, I couldn't say.
18 Q Then take a look, if you will, please, at Exhibit
19 6, page 88 of the packet, --
20 A Umm hmm.
21 Q -- and tell me whether you remember this letter
22 from counsel for Dr. Burton being that Exhibit G?
23 A I'm sorry. I have this front of me.
24 Q Yah.
25 A What's your -- what's your --
Page 105
1 Q I'll explain. I want to know whether when there's
2 a reference to Exhibit G, see, I didn't get -- I'm
3 not sure that this is Exhibit G, and I want to know
4 if you can identify Exhibit 6 at page 88 Bate
5 number as the Exhibit G that Dr. Roter referenced.
6 MS LATTIS: I think --
7 THE WITNESS: I don't know.
8 MS LATTIS: I think that if you go back
9 to the original exhibits that we've submitted, you
10 will find on -- this would be Exhibit -- the long
11 one, Dr. Roter's report, so Exhibit C, you will
12 find that on page 63 of Dr. Roter's report was
13 Exhibit G, which is that letter, so I think the
14 answer to your question, not that Dr. Shields would
15 necessarily have that directly in mind, is yes,
16 Dr. Roter did include the letter as requested by
17 the student -- by the attorney, and that is
18 Exhibit G.
19 MR. KASIETA: All right. And thank you
20 for that. And what I got was the page that says
21 "exhibits" and then it was labeled Exhibit G, but
22 not the exhibits themselves.
23 MS LATTIS: When I sent you the scan?
24 MR. KASIETA: Yes.
25 MS LATTIS: Oh, my gosh. Well, --
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1 MR. KASIETA: Okay. Well, that's fine.
2 Thank you.
3 MS. LATTIS: That was a problem with my
4 scanning then. I, you know, --
Rebuttal:
Get used to this Bob. They do it all the time.
5 MR. KASIETA: Okay. Thank you. No,
6 that's fine.
7 MS LATTIS: Yah.
8 MR. KASIETA: I understand.
9 MS LATTIS: These exhibits were all
10 submitted in paper at the request of the hearing
11 panel, and so there was only -- when you asked me
12 was the first time that I ever scanned them.
13 MR. KASIETA: Okay. All right. Maybe
14 I'm just misunderstanding.
15 If I might just have a moment, please?
16 (A PAUSE.)
17 MR. KASIETA: No, I do apologize. It's
18 there, but it's in a different format.
19 Well, let's not spend the time of the
20 panel. I think that they're different.
21 Let me -- let me, again, try to get to it
22 this way, Dr. Shields.
23 BY MR. KASIETA:
24 Q Whether Exhibit 6 is Exhibit G or not, let me ask
25 you, have you ever seen this document beginning at
Page 107
1 page 88 before?
2 A Yes. Yes.
3 Q All right. In what context?
4 A I read it when I got the report from Dr. Roter with
5 the attachments that she would have assembled
6 there.
7 Q Okay. All right. And what use did you make of
8 this Exhibit 6 in your analysis as you made your
9 recommendation to terminate?
10 A I took it as representing the view of the advocate
11 for Dr. Burton. I wasn't persuaded by it, but --
12 Q Did this submission by counsel for Dr. Burton do
13 anything to change any of your views?
14 A Umm, no, not particularly.
15 Q Did you follow up with your own inquiry for any
16 reason when you looked at the submission by the
17 attorney for Dr. Burton?
18 A No.
19 Q Did you conclude that there was anything in this
20 submission by the attorney for Dr. Burton that was
21 false?
22 A I wouldn't -- I viewed it as Dr. Burton's lawyer
23 putting their spin on what they saw in the report.
24 Q I appreciate that, but my question is a little more
25 pointed. Did you conclude that anything in the
Page 108
1 submission from Dr. Burton's attorney was false?
2 A I don't think I arrived at a conclusion about the
3 truth or falsity of any piece of it.
4 Q Okay.
5 A I don't think that's what I was doing.
6 Q All right. Looking back then to Dr. Roter's
7 report, please.
8 A And that's -- which one is that?
9 Q This is back at Bate No. 8 we were, --
10 Q Okay.
11 Q -- where we referenced Exhibit G.
12 A Okay.
13 Q That's how we got to Number 6.
14 A Okay.
15 Q Now let's go to page 9, Bates No. 9.
16 A Umm hmm.
17 Q And right in the middle of the page there was a
18 reference, and I want to know what you made of it
19 when you received this report and how it factors
20 into your analysis. There is an allegation of a
21 violation of ethics, university policy, and state
22 and federal laws. Did you have some understanding
23 of whether Dr. Burton had in fact violated any
24 federal laws?
25 A No.
Page 109
1 Q Did you follow up with Dr. Roter? I know you said
2 you didn't talk to her, but did you maybe shoot her
3 an e-mail or ask "what federal laws has this
4 tenured faculty member violated as you indicate in
5 your report?"
6 A No.
7 Q Do you, as you sit here today, after having had
8 opportunity to consult with counsel in this matter,
9 do you have any knowledge of any federal laws that
10 Dr. Burton violated in any way?
11 A No.
12 Q And when you got this report from your investigator
13 saying that there appear to be violations of
14 federal laws, you didn't do anything to follow up
15 on that?
16 A No.
17 Q Now let's talk about the website. You're critical
18 of the website that is a product of the efforts of
19 Mr. Burton, right?
20 A Umm, okay, yes.
21 Q You don't have any information that Sabina Burton
22 in fact created any website?
23 A No.
24 Q You never asked her whether she created a website?
25 A No.
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1 Q And to the extent that she shared documents, other
2 than the personnel documents, recordings we've
3 discussed, there is no prohibition, is there, of
4 Dr. Burton, or anyone else, members of the panel,
5 sharing information if that's not prohibited?
6 A Right. I mean that website was around a long time
7 before this happened. And quite frankly, I
8 would -- I was told a number of different times
9 that people were irritated by it, and I said,
10 "Well, she gets to say what she gets to say."
11 Q And Mr. Burton is not an employee of the University
12 of Wisconsin?
13 A No.
14 Q And he has First Amendment rights too?
15 A Never alleged otherwise.
16 Q Yah. And when requests were made to take down the
17 information that was in your judgment or the
18 administration's judgment inappropriate, that
19 information was taken down?
20 A The transcripts were taken down, yes.
Rebuttal:
Nobody ever asked, requested, demanded or otherwise indicated a desire to take the audio recordings off the website. Never.
21 Q All right. And so am I correct then in my
22 understanding based on that that it would be a
23 misunderstanding of your recommendation for this
24 panel to decide to recommend termination of
25 Dr. Burton because of the website?
Page 111
1 A I think I'm pretty clear that it's the publication
2 of these deliberations that are the basis for this.
3 Q All right. I understand what you said and I just
4 want to be sure that I am clear. You're not
5 telling this panel that the existence of the
6 website is any justification for termination, --
7 A Oh, no.
8 Q -- even though the website might not be -- put
9 people in a flattering light?
10 A Oh, I -- it obviously doesn't. That's the reason
11 for its existence.
Rebuttal:
Shields doesn’t even understand the reason for the existence of the website.
12 Q Umm hmm. As you view it, as you analyzed all this,
13 that was an expression of First Amendment rights?
14 A Yah.
15 Q As unpleasant as that might be?
16 A Absolutely. Absolutely.
17 Q All right.
18 A To my knowledge it doesn't doesn't say anything
19 nice at all about me in there. That's kind of the
20 cost of doing business for me.
21 Q Now as the Chancellor that's kind of what you
22 signed up for, right?
23 A Absolutely.
24 Q Okay. All right.
25 A That and worse.
Page 112
1 Q And worse?
2 A (Nods head.)
3 Q Okay. Let's look, if you will, please, at page
4 Bate No. 10. This is "Alleged Harassment and
5 Intimidation of Coworkers" --
6 A Okay.
7 Q -- is the heading, Bate No. 10.
8 A Okay.
9 Q This is the same Roter report?
Rebuttal:
Thank you Bob, for referring to it as the “Roter report” instead of “Roter’s report.” It is most likely not Roter’s report.
10 A Umm hmm.
11 Q Now I'm just referencing the page numbers. Are you
12 there?
13 A Yes.
14 Q Okay. Thanks. All right. Second line of that
15 section says "Dr. Burton reports being cursed at,
16 belittled, misrepresented, and felt she was being
17 retaliated by her colleagues;" that was in Dr.
18 Roter's report, right?
Rebuttal:
It’s most likely not “Roter’s report.” Please refer to it as the “Roter report” instead.
19 A Yes.
20 Q What investigation did you do of those allegations?
21 A From this report?
22 Q Right.
23 A I didn't.
24 Q You didn't -- after you saw this, that one of your
25 faculty members was reporting to your investigation
Page 113
1 investigation that she was being cursed at,
2 belittled, misrepresented, and being retaliated,
3 you didn't --
4 A Well, --
5 Q -- have an investigation of that.
6 A -- I quite honestly didn't give a lot of credence
7 to that.
8 Q Even though your investigator reported it?
9 A She's reporting what Dr. Burton told her.
10 Q Did you have any more information about Dr. Burton
11 being cursed at, belittled, or misrepresented, or
12 feeling she was being retaliated by her colleagues?
13 A Well, I think it's pretty clear that over the
14 course of all this, she felt that she was being
15 retaliated against. That was her position.
16 Q What about being cursed at?
17 A I had -- I don't recall seeing that allegation
18 anywhere but in this report.
19 Q And you didn't do anything to follow up on it?
20 A No, I didn't.
21 Q If you have a tenured faculty member who is
22 reporting to your investigator that she has been
23 cursed at, belittled, misrepresented, would you
24 understand that she might not be as collegial as
25 you would like her to be?
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1 A If you accept on its face that what those -- she's
2 alleging is actually true, yah.
3 Q And you have no facts to dispute it because you
4 didn't investigate it?
5 A That's true.
6 Q And notwithstanding the fact that your investigator
7 brings these charges to your attention, you went
8 forward and recommended termination?
9 A Well, the purpose of the investigation was not to
10 justify Dr. Burton's complaints against her peers
11 but to deal with the issues that had arisen with
12 the publication of the personnel matters.
13 Q And didn't you deal with the publication of the
14 personnel matters by saying "Take those down," and
15 she did?
Rebuttal:
Nobody ever told Dr. Burton to take them down.
16 A Yah. But that's -- it goes beyond that in terms of
17 the harm that it can do to a whole lot of things
18 that happened on this campus. And I can appreciate
19 that she may have a different perspective on this,
20 but that's why we're here.
21 Q All right. So this recommendation for termination
22 is punishment for a problem that you have already
23 solved?
24 A No, I don't think so, because moving forward, there
25 is the need for trust and interaction in ongoing
Page 115
1 personnel discussions, and if no one in that
2 department when those interns feels like they're
3 free from being recorded and free from having that
4 information posted on the website or posted
5 publicly, that's an ongoing issue for the
6 institution.
7 Q Well, are you changing your position now regarding
8 the right of an individual under Wisconsin law to
9 record?
10 A Look, I have never objected solely on the basis of
11 it being recorded, it's what use it's put to
12 thereafter, and publishing personnel discussion is
13 not appropriate.
14 Q Now you contend that you told her to take them
15 down, and she took them down when you brought that
16 to her attention?
Rebuttal:
Nobody ever asked or told Sabina to take them down.
17 A And I can appreciate why that -- your position is
18 that solved the problem. It doesn't solve the
19 problem for the institution, all qright.
20 Q Because you're afraid she might do it again?
21 A Yah. And the opportunities to sort of have
22 informal conversations that would have provided a
23 path to arriving at something less than that just
24 never appeared.
25 Q All right. Well, let me --
Page 116
1 A I mean you can appreciate this. That is the very
2 thing that I would have had a conversation about at
3 an informal meeting before moving forward. But
4 when you get jerked around, and it doesn't appear
Rebuttal: Here Shields makes it clear that he feels as though providing fair due process to Dr. Burton is the same as “jerking him around.”
5 like they're very interested in having the informal
6 conversation, I take those very seriously. You
7 want to know how the kinds of things that happened
8 that have been resolved informally? That's what
9 happens, you come in, you have -- you sit and you
10 have a conversation. I would listen to their
11 perspective. I would have said, "Okay, you have
12 these issues. Let's get these people in a room and
13 let's try to work through that." Never had the
14 opportunity to present that to her. If you go back
15 a year before, in August, I sent a letter, "you're
16 struggling here, come see me." Immediately an
17 adversarial position was taken. That's not
18 somebody that's interested in resolving something
19 informally.
Rebuttal:
So, Shields is trying to say that Sabina is the one who refused to meet informally. But it is Shields who ignored Sabina’s requests to meet and made the meetings formal by inviting his attorney. It is Sheilds who lied about the Skype meeting arrangement. Sabina never agreed to meet by Skype. (Roger - put together a list of the times Shields failed to meet with Sabina) We can use this list of Shields’ failures to show that his argument above indicates that he did not seek resolution of this matter. He is the one who didn’t want to meet. If Sabina had met with him it would have been a one sided ass-reaming session. Shields is furious and he couldn’t even control himself in an appeal hearing. If Sabina had gone to meet with him he would have tried to intimidate her and make her break down. No way in the world would he have tried to resolve anything. He wants to break Sabina.
20 Q Let me follow up on a couple of things you said
21 there, Dr. Shields.
22 A Umm hmm.
23 Q One is, I cannot find the letter where after you
24 say you had tried to have this informal resolution,
25 you wrote even a short letter to Dr. Burton saying
Page 117
1 "if you don't come in here and have an informal
2 session, I am going to have no choice but to move
3 to termination?"
4 A No, I didn't do that, because we'd been through
5 that drill a couple of times.
6 Q And because you were angry because you thought she
7 was --
8 A I wasn't angry.
9 Q -- trying to jerk you around?
10 A I wasn't angry. It was just a fact. The two
11 opportunities that were presented, it's not like,
12 "Oh, I'd like to do it." No. It's "I don't like
13 your lawyer, so she can't be there." Or "I want to
14 record this, and I'm going to bring" -- that's --
15 that's my -- that's the two experiences that I had
16 with this. Now you might argue that I could have
17 been a little more patient. I don't -- I think
18 we'd gone pretty far down the path to expect that
19 at this point.
20 Q Let me follow up on the other point I indicated I
21 want to follow up on, --
22 A Okay.
23 Q -- and that is, sir, I have looked through the
24 documents to see whether I could find anyplace
25 where you asked, or anybody from the administration
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1 asked, that specific entries be taken down or that
2 audio files or video files be taken down. I can't
3 find any. Did you actually send some sort of a
4 letter or e-mail?
5 A You know, I'm not -- I'm not sure how that exactly
6 was communicated.
7 Q How many times were such requests made?
8 A I don't know.
9 Q Do you remember any clearly?
10 A I don't have personal knowledge of them, no.
Rebuttal:
That is because nobody ever asked for them to be taken down. They didn’t ask because that’s not their beef. They just want Sabina fired and the online files are their only non-protected activity they can hang their arguments on.
11 Q Look, if you will, please, at the top of the next
12 Bate numbered page, page No. 11 we're at now, and
13 the first sentences in Dr. Roter's report says
14 "Dr. Burton said that colleagues called her
15 mentally ill, asserted that her father was a Nazi
16 SS, questioned her credentials, and appeared to be
17 limiting her expression on professional
18 development." Do you remember seeing those in
19 Dr. Roter's report?
20 A Yes. Yah.
21 Q Did you follow up on any of those things to get a
22 fuller picture of what Dr. Burton was experiencing?
23 A Okay. I'll give you a sense of where I was with
24 that. There had been cross complaints between
25 Dr. Burton and another academic staff member that
Page 119
1 had been investigated, and my conclusion was they
2 were both calling each other a lot of things, and
3 that what needed to happen and what I suggested in
4 letters to both of them, that I wasn't taking any
5 action on either one of their complaints, that they
6 should be interested in mediating that kind of
7 thing and arriving at a conclusion. Yah, they're
8 obviously very angry and mad at each other. No
9 follow-up on my suggestion that it be mediated by
10 either one of them, so it's not not all on
11 Dr. Burton. But that's the context and thinking
12 about that. So I was aware of that sort of
13 interaction going on and had had an investigation
14 and said, okay, you know, it's like two young
15 adults that you are trying to mediate that are mad
16 at each other, you say, "Okay, let's take a deep
17 breath and try to figure this out. Let's mediate
18 this. Let's determine what's irritating one
19 another. Let's resolve to not have those things
20 happen again, and then let's move forward." Didn't
21 happen. So that's the context for looking at how I
22 looked at that.
23 Q Now one of the things I looked for in the materials
24 provided was any indication of just what you are
25 talking about in the context of either of the two
Page 120
1 Letters of Direction, in the context of any of the
2 lead-up to your recommendation of termination. I
3 find no written statement or recommendation of
4 mediation. Was there a written statement or was --
5 A Yeah, well, not in --
6 Q -- there a recommendation?
7 A Not in this piece, but we can find the letter that
8 I sent about those cross complaints, yes.
9 Q It wasn't included as an exhibit?
10 A No.
Rebuttal:
Shields never suggested that Sabina mediate for the letter of direction. They wanted a reason to fire her. They should have given Sabina a grievance hearing, not mediation. They couldn’t do that because the truth about the corruption would have come out.
In the letter dismissing the Rice v Burton complaints Shields wrote “if you are interested in mediating your difficulties with Ms. Rice, I would be willing to facilitate such a mediation.” This had nothing to do with the LOD but it is probably what Shields was talking about.
11 Q Okay.
12 A No.
13 Q But specifically regarding the statements at the
14 top of the Roter report at page 11, Dr. Burton said
15 the colleagues called her mentally ill. Did you do
16 anything to investigate that specifically?
17 A That was all part of an earlier transaction that I
18 just explained.
19 Q But it says "colleagues." It doesn't say "a
20 colleague." It says "colleagues."
21 A Okay.
22 Q And you talked about one academic staff person that
23 you said, "Ho, this is more than what I thought,
24 I'd have to do some investigation, some tenured
25 faculty member -- ese?
Page 121
1 A Well, --
2 Q -- is telling my investigator people are calling
3 her mentally ill?"
4 A Well, you know, the other context is that within
5 the department there had been ongoing efforts to
6 resolve these sorts of things over the course of a
7 number of years, so this was not news to me, and
8 all efforts to sort of resolve that internally
9 within the department hadn't met with any success.
10 So there was a lot of back and forth in the
11 Criminal Justice Department about people being mad
12 at each other about supposed activities one or the
13 other did.
14 Q And so it was common knowledge to you that
15 colleagues were calling Sabina Burton mentally ill,
16 is that what you are saying?
17 MS LATTIS: I object to the
18 recharacterization of his statement. He didn't say
19 that.
20 MR. KASIETA: But I'm still trying to
21 understand.
22 MS LATTIS: Ask him the question.
23 BY MR. KASIETA:
24 Q I thought you said this -- you pointed to the top
25 of page 11 and said this was common knowledge, and
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1 I wanted you to --
2 A All right, and I would explain that it was common
3 knowledge that there was a lot of conflict in the
4 department.
5 Q I get that. But I really want to focus on the
6 specifics. Okay. I mean that strikes me, if I'm
7 the chancellor, and I would never of course be able
8 to do that, but if I were the chancellor --
9 A Be careful what you ask for.
10 Q -- and somebody said to me, my investigator says to
11 me "One of your tenured faculty members is saying
12 that colleagues are calling her mentally ill," I
13 mean that's a show stopper, isn't it?
14 A Well, the investigator didn't have the history of
15 everything that had gone on there, okay? So this
16 sort of conflict was ongoing within the department,
17 the back and forth of the -- what I think was
18 fairly childish on both parties' part or all
19 parties' part to get through this, so the
20 investigator here didn't have that context. I had
21 had that context.
22 Q All right. And let me, if I may, please, just kind
23 of cut through it. You're not saying that people,
24 colleagues, didn't call her mentally ill or didn't
25 assert that her father was a Nazi or question her
Page 123
1 credentials, you're saying that's the kind of -- I
2 think you called it "the childish stuff" that was
3 going on --
4 A Between all of them –
Rebuttal:
Wow. He actually said that? Nice job Bob.
5 Q All right.
6 A -- that was going on, and trying to weigh into
7 that. I mean, look, a good example is the one I
8 investigated, I had investigated, right, is that
9 one party said this and the other party said this,
10 and, you know, she said this to that student and
11 she said this to this other student, and, you know,
12 at some point you got to say, okay, this is going
13 back and forth with hearsay and that, so the way to
14 get to this is to mediate it, is to sort of sit
15 down, get in the same room, understand why you are
16 upset with one another, and resolve it. I had that
Rebuttal:
But Chancellor Shields avoided every opportunity to resolve the issues. As he said earlier, he kept himself at arms length.
17 background coming into it. I mean if you want to
18 understand why at least a portion of her colleagues
19 were upset, it's because of what they were seeing
20 said about them on the internet and in social
21 media. It irritated them. It made them angry.
22 Probably made them say some things they wished they
23 hadn't said. So all of the parties involved with
24 that bear some responsibility for it, but the
25 others did not publish personnel deliberations.
Page 124
1 Q And who else, how many of these others who were
2 engaging in this behavior, have faced any
3 discipline at all for this?
4 A Well, no --
5 Q No one.
6 A And in fact Professor Burton, until she crossed
7 this line, didn't suffer any.
8 MR. KASIETA: It's approximately 6:55.
9 I would defer to the panel if the panel has
10 questions on things today. I don't want to take
11 all the time. I'm not going to finish with
12 Dr. Shields anyway.
13 MR. BOCKHOP: I have one question.
14 Was Dr. Gibson a tenured professor at
15 that time?
16 THE WITNESS: No. He was probationary.
17 MR. BOCKHOP: Thank you.
18 CHAIRPERSON: Do you have any other
19 questions at this point?
20 (NO RESPONSE.)
21 CHAIRPERSON: Okay. So we'll conclude
22 then for today, and we will set a second session.
23 MR. BOCKHOP: I have one.
24 CHAIRPERSON: Go ahead.
25 MR. BOCKHOP: Do we have any student that
Page 125
1 had all classes that were taught in '15 and '16
2 that have any documentation saying that they hadn't
3 been exposed to any of the situations that we are
4 in discovery here now with? Can you address that?
5 DR. BURTON: Are you talking about a
6 student in a seminar or in all the classes that I
7 taught --
8 MR. BOCKHOP: Yes.
9 DR. BURTON: -- that did not know about
10 what was going on?
11 MR. BOCKHOP: That have a document here
12 saying that they hadn't heard anything about this
13 in class.
14 DR. BURTON: I have not asked all
15 students.
16 MR. BOCKHOP: Okay.
17 DR. BURTON: I have not tracked them down
18 and have tried to not create too much attention.
19 MR. BOCKHOP: Sure.
20 DR. BURTON: But I contacted students
21 with excellent attendance records and tried to get
22 a pretty even spread from the classes that I
23 taught, and that's what they said.
24 MR. BOCKHOP: Thank you.
25 CHAIRPERSON: Anyone else?
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1 All right. Thank you all.
2 And we will work on finding a second
3 time. Probably will be several weeks from now.
4 And again, it will be three hours.
5 Attorney Lattis will have time for questioning, if
6 necessary.
7 And so we need to conclude whatever you
8 need to conclude in those three hours, okay?
9 All right. Thank you.
10 (HEARING CONCLUDED AT 6:59 P.M.)
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1 STATE OF WISCONSIN )
) SS. CERTIFICATE 2 COUNTY OF LA CROSSE )
3
4 I, Beverly A. Rojas, Registered Professional
5 Reporter and Notary Public in and for the State
6 of Wisconsin, do hereby certify that I have
7 carefully compared the foregoing pages with my
8 stenographic notes, and that the same is a true
9 and correct transcript;
10 I further certify that I am not a relative
11 or employee or attorney or counsel of any of
12 the parties, or a relative or employee of such
13 attorney or counsel, or financially interested
14 in said action.
15 Dated at La Crosse, Wisconsin, on this 25th
16 day of September, 2017.
17
18 ________________________________
19 Beverly A. Rojas
Registered Professional Reporter 20 Notary Public
21 My commission expires July 10, 2020.
22
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