The Scholarly Integrity Policy the University Counsel must have advised the Director responsible for interpreting institutional policies wasn’t “legally applicable” mentions the institution’s funding multiple times:

Having a VP of Academics trying to get away with hiding his conflict of interest is about the worst officer who could possibly be trying to do so, considering all the VP of Academics duties listed in this policy:

He certainly “represented himself”:

The institution would not be in danger of having to repay the funds if the University Counsel hadn’t thought his client’s officers didn’t have to rectify their own misconduct:

The Investigations Policy is a record:

The former president must have okayed the expense of “protecting” his underling. The Provost’s actions weren’t just ignored:

Except, of course, if he was deeply involved in hiding any evidence of said allegations:

The edits to the Discrimination and Harassment Policies were made out of convenience. The unapproved edits to the Investigations Policy seem to be a different level of misconduct:

And if the Decision Maker is the Person at Risk, there is no Investigative Committee:

Unless he is actively trying to get away with his own misconduct doesn’t seem to be mentioned:

I think the University needs an ethics officer. And if it has one, it needs a better trained one. But it needs better trained officers across the board. No training department ever wants its officers guessing as to what they should do when “read the policy/policies involved” should have been ingrained:

The VP of Academics attempted to explain his program’s “pedagogy” twice. When neither “explanations” were actual pedagogies, the institution removed a student’s academic freedom so the institution wouldn’t have to try to make up a third excuse. You cannot put a workable pedagogy into a methodology that wasn’t built around one. When that became obvious, the institution believed it was above being questioned or criticized, even if it was supposed to protect those abilities.

Unfortunately, the institution won the trifecta of suck. It had a VP of Academics attempting to get away with his scholarly misconduct, a University Counsel who jumped into the thick of it to assist him in his efforts and a president who ignored the misconduct and had no issue with the cost of the lawyers’ involvement.

Their ticket would have lost with a well-trained senior management aware of the duties to their offices, but the institutional culture couldn’t imagine holding itself to the same standards it held its student body to. And then the institution had an external compliance system that believed its officers could come to professional conclusions before the allegation was investigated.

Institutions — as unnatural persons — should only gamble with what they can afford to lose.

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But also, a student should have the right to fill out a form like this if the Person at Risk is an employee or member of the teaching staff that can’t be disappeared. The institution has proven it will make a complaint against a senior Officer at Risk go away:

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