Is there any university in Wisconsin with a worse history of employment discrimination than UW-Milwaukee?
This question occurs given the fact that UWM was once again found in violation of federal affirmative action regulations. In April 2006, the U.S. Department of Labor completed a 17-month investigation of UWM that found significant problems.
UWM has managed to sit on this story for nearly a year, though the documents are available under the open records law. You might think a publicly funded institution should be sharing this information with the media and university employees. I was tipped off about the investigation by state Rep. Jason Fields (D-Milwaukee), and I suspect I’m not the only member of the media he e-mailed.
“No one wants to talk about the ugly side of these issues,” Fields says. “We don’t want to give the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee a black eye.”
But doesn’t UWM deserve that black eye? Consider its history: Every 12 years or so it has gotten in trouble with the feds. In 1981, the university signed a “conciliation agreement” with the federal government where it acknowledged it had a problem of paying inequitable salaries to women faculty and agreed on steps to correct this. In 1993, the feds again slapped UWM, finding inequities in salaries for women and minorities. For four years after this, until 1997, the university was monitored by the feds.
During the 1990s, the local media wrote countless stories about sexual harassment, inequity in pay and the like at UWM. By the late 1990s, the university was supposed to have overcome the problem. Former chancellor Nancy Zimpher set out to address any lingering discrimination by assembling a task force “to examine the climate for women.” The task force released its findings in December 2000, and the news wasn’t good: 40 percent of employees said the university was unresponsive to discrimination or harassment complaints and 30 percent said they feared retaliation if they reported problems.
Zimpher’s response, as noted in a Milwaukee Magazine story in October 2005, was not to solve the problem. On the contrary, she oversaw a change in university policy stating that any legal complaints could henceforth be filed only by “the subject of discrimination, harassment or retaliation.” This would mean that only a victim (who may be too intimidated to do so) could complain, not a professor or student who observed harassment. Similarly, a member of a hiring committee who observed discrimination could not file a compliant, only the applicant (who might have no such insider knowledge of who else applied, etc.).
When confronted about this, university officials told the magazine this questionable policy, which was written in 2002, was supposed to be a draft statement. By then, though, it had been listed as the official policy for nearly three years. Officials also said they would be revising the policy.
Even as university officials made these assurances, it’s now clear they were being investigated by the Department of Labor, which began its inquiry in November 2005. The results: UWM conceded “an adverse impact for minority and female hires, minority promotions and minority terminations” in its affirmative action program.
UWM, while making no admission of violating federal law, agreed to yet another “compliance agreement” that requires it to clean up its act. The university must conduct a campus-wide study of salary inequities based on gender. Incredibly, UWM is also required to submit records to the Department of Labor for every hire at the university in the next year.
In short, this is a major slap down of the university by a Republican-led federal administration that no one would ever accuse of liberal political correctness. There must have been some pretty strong documentation of problems to prompt this ruling.
More Catholic Cover-ups?
Two weeks ago, I wrote about this state’s lax response to sexual abuse by clergy.
Victims of a priest like Siegfried Widera, who abused children in both this state and California, were able to gain financial settlements in California, but nothing in Wisconsin. For that reason, church documents related to Widera were legally available in California, including many that detailed how the Milwaukee archdiocese had handled him.
Meanwhile, none of the documents related to Franklyn Becker – another priest who was transferred to California after reports that he had assaulted children in Milwaukee – have been made public. Peter Isely, Midwest Director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, calls the Becker files “a much more significant cache of documents from the California settlements.”
Isely has urged the Journal Sentinel to petition the California Superior Court for these records. Because Becker transferred back to Milwaukee after his years in California, Isely argues, “the handling of this abusive priest implicates every bishop Becker worked under over a period of three decades” in Milwaukee. The archdiocese, Isley wrote the JS, “appears to be moving today to get these incriminating documents sealed.”
Walker Gets Wacky
During a meeting with the JS Editorial Board last week, County Executive Scott Walker said he would like to grow the local economy enough so lower-income people don’t have to rely on transit and could instead afford to buy cars.
Ah, Earth to Scottie. We live in a society with a large population of working poor who can’t afford a car. Growing the economy is a nice thought, but there’s no guarantee any newly created jobs will pay enough for these folks to afford a car. And in the meantime, while they wait for this never-before-seen economy to arrive, how will they get to work, the store or anywhere else?
As county executive, Walker is entrusted with the responsibility of making sure the county’s bus system, once one of the most successful in the country, continues to serve low-income people who need it. That will take some hardheaded strategizing, not some blue-sky libertarian rhetoric about an auto utopia.
And don’t miss critic Ann Christenson’s Dish on Dining.
