Joe Gow tenure hearing: Day 2
ONALASKA, Wis. (WLAX/WEUX) – The hearing for former UW La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow has concluded. The UWL Faculty Committee will now make its recommendation on whether Gow will keep his tenure. First News at Nine’s Dashal Mentzel has more from today’s closing arguments and Gow’s thoughts afterward.
Joe Gow and employees of UWL met at the Omni Center once again for a public hearing about Gow’s potential termination as a faculty member at the university. After Gow called his only witness, Interim Chancellor Betsy Morgan, both sides shared closing arguments.
The university argued that there is no question that Dr. Gow engaged in insubordination. UW System Attorney, Wade Harrison, said, “The university has provided evidence that establishes just cause to terminate Dr. Gow’s employment. Dr Gow is violating university policy and has undermined the trust the university once had in him. More troubling is that he just doesn’t seem to get it.”
Gow responded saying the university has claimed he caused reputational harm to it, but that hasn’t been proven, “Now that the prosecution has presented its case, I think it’s clear that they have not proved just cause. They’ve led us in several unrelated directions. But ultimately they have taken us nowhere.”
During the hearing, Gow also showed multiple emails and text messages concerning how the university was able to get ahold of his computers. Gow says, “It’s hard to know how this committee will and see things, but I think our presentation today was pretty powerful in terms of the hearing the text messages and emails that show who was collaborating to get those computers.”
Gow says this process will be far from over if the faculty committee recommends his removal, “Then it will go to the Board of Regents and there’ll be another hearing. And we’ll just kind of do this over again. I don’t know, I mean, I’m certainly not going to go away. I think as you heard in the hearing today, they’ve said a lot of things about us that just simply aren’t true and that just don’t feel very good right now.”
After the hearing, the faculty committee held a closed meeting to recommend whether or not Gow would be terminated from his faculty position. In Onalaska, Dashal Mentzel First News at Nine.
The committee will send out written statements to both parties once a recommendation is made. If the committee recommends Gow lose his tenure, it will be sent to the UW System Board of Regents. It’s unclear when exactly the committee will make its recommendation.
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