As we rapidly approach the end of summer, I wanted to discuss a trend I noticed in several news stories in the past month. Think about what underlying issues these events may be revealing:

• Research misconduct scandal brings down a University President.
• Problems persist at a university years after a major scandal led to an ''overhaul of [the institution's] ethics and misconduct reporting systems.''
• A chancellor is forced out and an institution has a ''big hole to dig out of'' for failing to address a major compliance issue for several years.

When you boil down these and similar stories, the failures ultimately indicate problems with culture. I like this definition of culture from Wikipedia: ''Culture is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.'' Every institution, and even each department, has its own unique culture. However culture is expressed, it should be with ethics, integrity, and compliance in mind if it is to be a healthy one.

As I thought about how we can create cultures without scandals that wreak havoc and problems that persist, three basic things came to mind. As usual, they aren't necessarily profound, but I believe they can be impactful.

3 Ways to Ensure Strong Ethical Cultures

1. Communicate it. If you desire your organization or department to operate in an ethical manner, have you ever verbalized that to your team? What are the expectations you have as a leader for your team? As George Bernard Shaw famously said, ''The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion it has taken place.'' Never assume your team knows what you expect behaviorally.
2. Live it. Communicating only works if leaders actually live out the ethical culture. People are paying considerably more attention to you and your actions than you likely realize. There is a powerful influence principle called ''social proof'' that says we look to the behavior of others to determine what is expected for our behavior. This becomes vitally important for leaders promoting ethics.
3. Correct it. All organizations and people have an innate tendency to drift. Whether its drifting off our exercise plan or other personal goals, drifting is just a part of life. It's also true with respect to culture and ethics. There will be times where something may not go perfectly, but the important thing is to practice ''radical honestly'' and deal with it head on. Ignoring issues will only create culture drift momentum that ultimately takes you to the edge of the cliff some of these institutions fell from.

Consider these points as you attempt to impact the culture within your sphere of influence. We again invite you to review the events from higher education over the past month with a view toward proactively managing risk.

M. Kevin Robinson, CIA, CFE
Vice President
Office of Audit, Compliance & Privacy
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Information Security & Technology Events

Jul 13: MOVEit Breach: The higher education sector is reeling from the MOVEit breach, a mass hack of Progress Software’s file transfer service used by hundreds of organizations. Colleges and higher education groups alike -- from the University of California, Los Angeles to the National Student Clearinghouse -- have been caught up in the cybersecurity incident. Even firms that weren’t directly hit are suffering from the attack. TIAA, a retirement services provider widely used by academics and teachers, alerted its members that the breach affected one of its vendors, PBI Research Services. The vendor audits member deaths and locates beneficiaries, handling sensitive data like Social Security numbers. (link)

Jul 05: Cyberattack: While making international headlines for infiltrating government agency networks in states with anti-transgender legislation, a covert group of hackers found a new target Wednesday, the University of Connecticut. This time around, the self-proclaimed leader of the group of hacking "gay furries" known as SiegedSec said the series of spoof emails, which left some students believing that their university president was dead, wasn’t an act of retribution but simply "for the lulz." At 1:12 a.m. an email account masked with the name UConn Announcements, sent a message to UConn’s undergraduate listserv informing students of the "Unfortunate Passing of Radenka Maric." Students who woke up to the hoax message responded with shock and concern before realizing that the email was fake. (link)

Jul 03: Data Breach: On June 30, 2023, Lansing Community College filed a notice of data breach with the Attorney General of Maine after discovering that an unauthorized actor had access to the school’s computer system for a period of nearly three months. In the notice provided to the Maine AG, LCC explains that the incident resulted in an unauthorized party being able to access consumers’ sensitive information, which includes their names and Social Security numbers. Upon completing its investigation, LCC began sending out data breach notification letters to all individuals whose information was affected by the recent data security incident. (link)

Jul 01: Data Breach: On June 28, 2023, Roosevelt University filed a notice of data breach with the Attorney General of Maine after discovering that an unauthorized actor was able to access confidential student and prospective student information in the school’s possession. In this notice, RU explains that the incident resulted in an unauthorized party gaining access to applicants’ FAFSA applications, which included individuals’ names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and driver’s license numbers. Upon completing its investigation, RU began sending out data breach notification letters to all individuals whose information was affected by the recent data security incident. The Roosevelt University investigation confirmed that an unauthorized party was able to access parts of the school’s network on May 1, 2023. (link)

Fraud & Ethics Related Events

Jul 26: Research Misconduct: A major physics journal is retracting a two-year-old scientific paper that described the transformations of a chemical compound as it was squeezed between two pieces of diamond. Such an esoteric finding -- and retraction -- would not typically garner much attention. But one of the leaders of this research is a professor in the physics and mechanical engineering departments at the University of Rochester in New York who made a much bigger scientific splash earlier this year touting the discovery of a room-temperature superconductor. At the same time, accusations of research misconduct have swirled around the professor, and his superconductor findings remain largely unconfirmed. (link)

Jul 24: Bribery Sentence: A former dean at the University of Southern California was sentenced to 18 months’ home confinement for bribing a county official in exchange for contracts with the university’s social work school. The dean, 84, was also ordered to pay a $150,000 fine at her sentencing hearing Monday morning in downtown Los Angeles. The dean pleaded guilty last year to helping veteran politician -- who served on the LA County Board of Supervisors at the time -- funnel $100,000 from his campaign account, through the USC school, to a nonprofit ran by his son. (link)

Jul 24: Research Fraud: A Florida State University research professor of criminology has been fired after an investigation showed his "extreme negligence" caused near "catastrophic" damage to the program, per FSU’s Provost James Clark. The professor received a scathing termination letter after years of suspicion that he had been publishing studies that included false data. "You demonstrated extreme negligence in basic data management, resulting in an unprecedented number of articles retracted, numerous other articles now in question, with the presence of no backup of the data for the publications in question," Clark wrote in the letter. The professor has worked at FSU since 2007. He was placed on administrative leave in March prior to his termination as the investigation moved ahead. (link)

Jul 20: Research Fraud: The president of Stanford University has resigned after an investigation opened by the board of trustees found several academic reports he authored contained manipulated data. Marc Tessier-Lavigne, who has spent seven years as president, authored 12 reports that contained falsified information, including lab panels that had been stitched together, panel backgrounds that were digitally altered and blot results taken from other research papers. He was the principal author on five of the reports, and a co-author on seven. (link)

Jul 19: Conflict of Interest: In June 2020, a biopharmaceutical company called BridgeBio Pharma issued a routine press release. It was entering into a collaboration agreement with the Johns Hopkins University to "invest heavily in programs to accelerate promising genetic-disease therapies," among other things. Left unmentioned in the release were the tight ties between the company’s upper leadership and that of Johns Hopkins. Four months before that release was issued, BridgeBio sent out another release and filed a notice with the Securities and Exchange Commission: It was adding Ronald J. Daniels, the university’s president, to its board. With that post came a $50,000 a year retainer and stock options worth about $1.2 million, according to SEC documents. (link)

Jul 19: Ethics: John Champagne submitted his report just before noon on Oct. 28, 2021. The many hours of compliance training the English professor had taken during his nearly 30 years at Penn State Behrend had sunk in. The professor’s complaint had entered Penn State’s internal accountability system -- a series of compliance and risk management offices, many of which were formed in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal roughly a decade earlier. A yearlong investigation by Spotlight PA and the Centre Daily Times found the internal accountability apparatus Penn State constructed has repeatedly failed those it was intended to protect. A decade after the national scandal, Penn State lacks a unified way to track all cases of reported misconduct. (link)

Jul 17: Foreign Ties: A congressional committee focused on national security threats from China said it had "grave concerns" about a research partnership between the University of California, Berkeley, and several Chinese entities, claiming that the collaboration’s advanced research could help the Chinese government gain an economic, technological or military advantage. In a letter sent last week to officials at Berkeley and the University of California system, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party requested extensive information about the Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, a collaboration set up in 2014 with China’s prestigious Tsinghua University and the Chinese city of Shenzhen. (link)

Jul 06: Grant Fraud: A University of Oklahoma professor and his wife were recently sentenced to federal prison. The couple, both 60, were sentenced to serve more than three years collectively and ordered to pay $2.1 million in restitution. The two had been accused of making false statements involving a Department of Energy grant. Authorities said the pair had formed and controlled a company called MicroChem Solutions. Through that company, they applied for and received federal grand monies from the Small Business Technology Transfer Program of the Department of Energy. However, authorities said the pair spent grant money on unrelated matters, including personal expenses. They also allegedly made false statements and submitted altered documents to the Department of Energy regarding how they spent grant money. (link)

Jul 01: Occupational Fraud: A Pittsburg man is facing up to 15 years in prison for allegedly stealing Apple devices from the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center, where he worked as a security guard. Prosecutors say the man, 24, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to 17 counts of felony second-degree commercial burglary, 17 counts of grand theft and two felony counts of accessing someone else's computer system to alter and delete data without permission. The security guard is accused of stealing multiple devices worth more than $200,000 from areas where there was no evidence of forced entry during a period between May 2022 through this month. (link)

Compliance/Regulatory & Legal Events

Jul 27: Concealed Documents Lawsuit: Survivors of convicted former sports doctor Larry Nassar and a group of parents of the survivors filed a lawsuit against Michigan State University on Thursday. The survivors and parent group known as POSSE said the lawsuit is over the "secret decisions made about releasing documents in the case." The lawsuit alleged the university and its trustees violated the Open Meetings Act and the Michigan Constitution. The group is calling for accountability from the university, not money, according to a news release from the law firm. (link)

Jul 27: Employee Conduct: A former dispatcher for Youngstown State University police was sentenced Thursday to one year of probation after pleading guilty to using a state criminal database to look up the background of women he planned to meet. The charges stem from accusations dating back to 2018 that the man misused the state’s LEADS -- or law enforcement automated database -- to look up the backgrounds of women he planned to meet. The allegations ultimately got him fired from the university. (link)

Jul 25: Federal Settlement: United States Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero announced today that Thomas Jefferson University will pay $2.7 million to resolve allegations that it misused and improperly retained federal funds intended to be used for student loans. The settlement resolves allegations that between 2009 and 2016, Jefferson invested nearly all of its PCL Fund with its endowment, and retained the resulting earnings for its own purposes, in violation of loan program terms. Specifically, the settlement resolves allegations that Jefferson improperly invested federal monies expressly intended to be loaned to qualified medical students to finance their medical education, and retained all returns gained from that investment. (link)

Jul 25: Employee Conduct: A former Columbia University gynecologist accused by the wife of former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and others of sexual assault was sentenced Tuesday to 20 years in prison after his conviction earlier this year on federal sexual abuse charges. The man was convicted in January of four counts of enticing and inducing individuals to travel interstate to engage in illegal sexual activity -- each of which carried a maximum possible sentence of 20 years in prison, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York previously said. (link)

Jul 25: NCAA Compliance: Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh and the NCAA are working toward a negotiated resolution that is expected to see him suspended four games this season in penalties stemming from alleged false statements he originally made to investigators, sources tell Yahoo Sports. The agreement is an initial version of the negotiated resolution and is not yet finalized. The resolution must now be approved by the NCAA Committee on Infractions, which could take several days if not weeks. The committee has authority to adjust penalties. (link)

Jul 25: Employee Conduct: A former University of Iowa professor was sentenced to prison for child pornography and drug charges. The professor received a 25-year sentence for conspiracy to distribute more than 50 grams of meth, that resulted in the death of a victim. He was also sentenced to 20 years for possessing child pornography. The 66-year-old's sentences will be served concurrently. (link)

Jul 24: Employee Conduct: An associate professor at Augusta University has been arrested for public indecency after he was caught pleasuring himself in a math lounge, authorities said. The professor, 65, was arrested last Monday, a week after he was allegedly seen with his pants down and watching porn on his personal computer in the lounge, according to an AU police report released late last week. A facilities management employee notified campus Officer Zachary Skinner after seeing a professor’s genitals exposed from a window into the lounge around 2:15 p.m. on Monday, July 10. The lounge is located on the 3rd Floor of Allgood Hall. (link)

Jul 24: Hazing Lawsuit: A former Northwestern University volleyball player has filed a lawsuit against the university, alleging university officials failed to properly address a hazing incident that took place two years ago. The player, who is identified in the lawsuit as "Jane Doe 1," is the first female athlete from the university to come forward amid reports of hazing in the school's football program. In a 25-page lawsuit filed Monday, Jane Doe alleges she experienced "hazing, harassment, bullying and retaliation" as a member of Northwestern's volleyball team. (link)

Jul 19: Employee Conduct: The former University of Vermont men’s hockey coach was fired without pay after a four-month investigation, the university's athletic director Jeff Schulman confirmed in a press conference Wednesday. A formal complaint into the coach’s alleged "inappropriate text messages with a UVM student," was filed to the university’s Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity on March 16 after a staff member in the athletic department was alerted of the conduct. "The complaint was only about inappropriate text messages," Schulman said. "And I guess I do want to just be really clear that there was no allegations or indication of anything beyond inappropriate text messages." (link)

Jul 17: Title IX: A constellation of failures at California State University contributed to the widespread mishandling of sexual misconduct claims and an erosion of trust among students, faculty and staff at the nation’s largest four-year public university system, according to a written report released Monday by the law firm Cozen O’Connor. The report caps a yearlong, systemwide assessment of the university’s Title IX practices, as well as its handling of discrimination, harassment and retaliation. It was commissioned by the school’s Board of Trustees in March 2022 in response to an exclusive USA TODAY investigation. (link)

Jul 17: Employee Conduct: A woman who works for the University of Arkansas was booked on a charge of sexual assault. The woman, 42, of Rogers, admitted to a detective that she performed sex acts with a minor, according to the affidavit of probable cause. The victim had told police she had messaged him via Snapchat and sent him photos. She works in external relations for the University of Arkansas' Division of Agriculture, according to the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce website. She previously worked for then-governor Asa Hutchinson as deputy director of constituent services. (link)

Jul 14: NCAA Compliance: Over the course of three seasons, the Tennessee football program committed 18 Level I violations -- encompassing more than 200 individual infractions -- most of which involved recruiting rules violations and direct payments to prospects, current student-athletes and their families, according to a decision released by a Division I Committee on Infractions panel. An additional four Level I unethical conduct violations occurred involving former university employees. The violations resulted in impermissible inducements and benefits totaling approximately $60,000. As a result, Tennessee failed to monitor its football program. Additionally, due to his personal involvement in the violations, the former football head coach violated head coach responsibility rules. (link)

Jul 13: Conspiracy Lawsuit: Eleven former Emporia State University professors in federal court documents accuse school administrators, Kansas Board of Regents members and unknown other individuals of conspiring to fire tenured and "problematic" professors. The federal lawsuit is a response to the university’s decision last year to fire 30 tenured or tenure-track professors as part of a KBOR-approved "framework" to stabilize finances and restructure the university. The lawsuit argues that defendants willfully violated constitutional rights to due process, equal protection, liberty, property and free speech. (link)

Jul 13: Negligence Lawsuit: Victoria Bowles, who survived the fatal car wreck that killed a University of Georgia football player and recruiting staffer on Jan. 15, has filed a lawsuit against the UGA Athletic Association and Philadelphia Eagles rookie Jalen Carter, whom police accused of racing the SUV being driven by a recruiting staffer when it wrecked. The lawsuit, filed in state court in Gwinnett County on Wednesday by Bowles, a former recruiting analyst for the university, accuses the UGA athletic association of negligence and contradicts public statements by Bulldogs football coach Kirby Smart and other officials, who have claimed that recruiting staffer Chandler LeCroy shouldn't have been driving the leased SUV when it left the road and struck trees and utility poles. (link)

Jul 12: Employee Conduct: A department chair at Fairmont State University has been arrested after state troopers say he sexually abused a 4-year-old child multiple times. According to a release from the West Virginia State Police, the man, 70, a Senior Professor of Communication Arts and Chair of the Department of Humanities at Fairmont State University, was arrested on Wednesday after troopers said that he admitted to 14 counts of first-degree sexual abuse intrusion and 14 counts of sexual abuse by a parent, guardian or person of trust in regard to a 4-year-old child. (link)

Jul 10: Retaliation Lawsuit: A second lawsuit alleges that administrators at Lake Superior College retaliated against an employee who voiced concerns about a welding byproduct. Vaughn Johnson, a longtime maintenance worker at the college, claimed in a July 7 lawsuit that the college has violated the state’s "whistleblower" act and its occupational safety act. He claims he was disciplined, and threatened with termination, after telling managers there that filtration and ventilation systems at the school’s Downtown Duluth Center hadn’t been kept up, and a pair of employees who had tried to service it weren’t provided proper safety equipment. (link)

Jul 06: Retaliation Lawsuit Ruling: A split panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against a professor at N.C. State University. He had raised concerns about the NCSU education school’s recent focus on social justice and diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Plaintiff Stephen Porter sued the university in federal court in September 2021. He argued that his constitutionally protected statements prompted retaliation from NCSU. "Appellant’s Complaint alleges that he has been outspoken in recent years concerning the focus on ‘so-called 'social justice' affecting academia in general’ and ‘his concern that the field of higher education study is abandoning rigorous methodological analysis in favor of results-driven work aimed at furthering a highly dogmatic view of 'diversity,' 'equity,' and 'inclusion,'’" wrote Judge Stephanie Thacker on Thursday for the 2-1 majority. (link)

Jul 06: Employee Conduct: A Southern University employee was taken into custody after a woman told police he drugged and raped her at his on-campus apartment last month, arrest records show. The man, 59, faces a count of third-degree rape. An affidavit for the man says Southern University Police detectives met with the victim at Women's Hospital June 1, where she told them she had accompanied the man three days earlier to a building on the school's main campus to wash clothes.As it got late, the victim told police that she started to feel strange and began to black out and lose control over her bodily functions, at which point the man tried to kiss and hug her, the affidavit says. A spokeswoman for Southern University said he has been placed on leave pending an investigation. (link)

Jul 01: Tribal Repatriation Compliance: Most California State University campuses failed to repatriate Native American remains or cultural items to tribes as required under the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, according to a California State Auditor report published Thursday. The entire CSU system has only returned 6% of its collections to tribes, according to the report. The Auditor’s Office conducted a survey of all 23 CSU campuses and conducted on-site reviews at Chico State, Sacramento State, San Diego State and San Jose State, finding that of the 21 campuses with collections falling under the repatriation law, more than half failed to return the remains or cultural items. The two campuses that had returned remains or cultural items did not follow legal requirements when doing so, according to the report. (link)

Jul 01: COVID Lawsuit: Kentucky's highest court has sided with University of Kentucky students who are seeking refunds over the COVID-19 shutdown of the campus, allowing their suit seeking more than $200 million to proceed. The Kentucky Supreme Court issued an opinion June 15 on a class action suit filed on behalf of UK students who argued the university should refund their tuition and mandatory fees paid for the 2020 spring semester since in-person classes were canceled and campus facilities were closed. The issue at hand is whether or not the university had a contract with its students, which the university argued in two lower courts that it did not. (link)

Campus Life & Safety Events

Jul 26: Sexual Assault: A former student and resident assistant at the University of North Alabama (UNA) has been indicted on sexual abuse charges after court records say he attacked two women. The student, 23, was arrested on July 19 after a Lauderdale County grand jury indicted him a few days prior. According to the three-count indictment, he forced one of the women into sexual contact by "forcible compulsion" on two separate occasions. This happened inside the dorms, according to Lauderdale County Chief Assistant District Attorney Angie Hamilton. The third incident happened with a different woman, court records say. Hamilton said that incident happened inside a classroom on UNA’s campus. All three alleged assaults happened sometime between December 2021 and November 2022, the court record showed. (link)

Jul 26: Greek Hazing: A fraternity’s interim suspension at Clemson University is now an official four-year ban, after an investigation determined members were responsible for hazing. Earlier this year, the school’s chapter of Alpha Gamma Rho was accused of forcing students into personal servitude and giving them chemical burns, according to a letter from Clemson. An independent probe confirmed the allegations and revealed instances of line-ups, ice baths and bodily harm towards a new member, according to university documents. Now, the group is barred from campus until 2027. (link)

Jul 25: Free Speech: Joy Alonzo, a respected opioid expert, was in a panic. The Texas A&M University professor had just returned home from giving a routine lecture on the opioid crisis at the University of Texas Medical Branch when she learned a student had accused her of disparaging Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick during the talk. In the few hours it took to drive from Galveston, the complaint had made its way to her supervisors, and Alonzo’s job was suddenly at risk. For free speech advocates, health experts and students, Texas A&M’s investigation of Alonzo was a shocking demonstration of how quickly university leaders allow politicians to interfere in classroom discussions on topics in which they are not experts -- and another example of increasing political involvement from state leaders in how Texas universities are managed. (link)

Jul 25: Threat: A Kansas football offensive lineman was arrested Monday afternoon on charges of "aggravated criminal threat; cause terror, evacuation or disruption," according to the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office booking report.Earlier in the day, there was an apparent bomb threat called into the Kansas football facilities. A University of Kansas spokesperson told The Star on Monday "everyone was safely evacuated" and that "there was a threat and the PD is currently there in response." Reached Tuesday morning for comment, the KU spokesperson did not confirm the player was arrested in connection with the threat. (link)

Jul 21: Robbery: A University of Maryland student was punched and robbed Thursday night as she walked on the College Park campus, police say. The University of Maryland Police Department said the student was on Chapel Lawn near the pedestrian tunnel under Regents Drive when she was approached by two women and a man. The student told police she was punched, and her property was taken from her. The suspects then fled in a white sedan. Police say no weapon were displayed but a gun was mentioned. (link)

Jul 17: Hazing Lawsuit: Eight Northwestern football players are in the process of suing the university over hazing allegations. The former head coach was fired by Northwestern following hazing allegations that were incredibly sexual in nature. Now, the program has been engulfed by chaos, and it appears a lawsuit is imminent. Eight players have retained Ben Crump and the law firm Levin & Perconti to represent them in any upcoming legal action that might happen, according to a Monday release. Judging from the release, a lawsuit is guaranteed and the allegations in it will be serious. (link)

Jul 14: Athletics Misconduct: The Northwestern baseball coach was fired Thursday amid allegations of misconduct, three days after the head football coach was dismissed because of a hazing scandal. The baseball coach spent just one season as the Wildcats' coach. The move was announced in a brief statement from athletic director Derrick Gragg. Northwestern baseball coach The Chicago Tribune and WSCR-AM reported this week that the coach led a toxic culture and that his bullying and verbally abusive behavior prompted a human resources investigation by the university. Multiple assistants left after one year, and at least 15 players entered the transfer portal, CBS Chicago reported, CBS Chicago reported. (link)

Jul 11: Threat: A woman was arrested in Austintown on Friday after allegedly making threats to shoot up a university in North Carolina. According to a police report, officers were dispatched to a Days Inn on Clarkins Drive after a caller told them that a woman he was staying with was making threats to harm herself if anyone other than him approaches her. At the same time, a welfare check on the woman was requested by the Western Carolina University Police Department who alleges that she threatened to come to the university and shoot employees with an AK-47. According to the report, University Police chose to criminally charge her with communicating a threat of mass violence on educational property and making a threatening phone call and that they would extradite on these charges. (link)

Jul 11: Hazing: Pat Fitzgerald has been relieved as head coach of the Northwestern University football team following an investigation into hazing allegations. Though the university said there was no "sufficient" evidence that coaches knew about the misconduct, its president said Fitzgerald "should have known." University President Michael Schill initially issued Fitzgerald a two-week suspension without pay on Friday after reviewing the investigation's executive summary. "However," Schill said in a letter to the community on Saturday, "upon reflection, I believe I may have erred in weighing the appropriate sanction for Coach Fitzgerald." While Schill was weighing his options, the university's student newspaper, The Daily Northwestern, published an article detailing a former player's experience with hazing within the program. A second player confirmed the details of the hazing incidents. (link)

Jul 10: Sexual Assault: A UF student was arrested by UPD and charged with sexual battery of a victim between 12 and 18 years old July 8. The suspect, a 19-year-old UF computer science student, allegedly held the victim down and raped her inside his room in Mallory Hall at 2:30 p.m. July 8. The victim did not give Siegel consent and repeatedly told him "no" and "I have to go," according to a police report. The report did not include the victim’s age. UPD arrested the student around 8:48 p.m. later that evening. (link)

Jul 05: Academic Workers Issues: Graduate students at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) were arrested at their homes last Thursday by campus police in the most recent escalation of the university’s aggressive anti-union campaign. Jessica Ng, a postdoctoral scholar; William Schneider, a graduate student at UCSD; and a third union member who has chosen to be anonymous, were arrested for participating in recent protests against the university, which academic workers say has refused to implement union contracts that were ratified in December after a six-week strike across the University of California (UC) system. Union members allegedly wrote slogans like "Living Wage Now" in washable markers and chalk on a concrete building. They have been charged with felony vandalism over $400 and conspiracy to commit a crime. (link)

Jul 04: Sexual Assault: A 19-year-old student sexually assaulted a woman with enough force to cause bleeding, Penn State University police said. The student, 19, of Glenside called friends claiming he had an "emergency" in early February of this year, according to a complaint. An inspection of his phone showed searches like "what is sexual assault" and "Penn State sexual assault process" after it was seized by investigators. He allegedly met the accuser at an off-campus party before the pair returned to his room on Feb. 4, Officer Spenser Lauver said. The student was recorded by surveillance cameras with the woman as they entered Beaver Hall, Lauver added. The stduent was charged with sexual assault and aggravated indecent assault without the consent of others. (link)

Jul 01: Free Speech: The University of Cincinnati has reprimanded a faculty member at the center of a TikTok controversy related to gender, free speech and trans rights. The reprimand directs the adjunct instructor to complete training about UC’s free speech policy and submit her syllabi for the coming school year to her department head. "Please note that this is to be considered a formal reprimand for your actions," the June 14 document obtained by The Enquirer reads. "A copy of this letter will be placed in your permanent records." In May, the instructor gave student Olivia Krolczyk 0/20 points for part of a final project in a class called Gender in Popular Culture for using the term "biological women" to describe non-trans female athletes. (link)

If you have any suggestions, questions or feedback, please e-mail Kevin Robinson at robinmk@auburn.edu or Robert Gottesman at gotterw@auburn.edu. We hope you find this information useful and would appreciate hearing your thoughts. Feel free to forward this email to your direct reports, colleagues, employees or others who might find it of value. Back issues of this newsletter are available on our web site.

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