Joe Gow didn’t hurt anybody or anything. In fact, as the longest-serving chancellor in the UW System, his La Crosse campus was one of the few that was in sound financial shape.
But Gow and his wife, Carmen Wilson, had a side hustle. They produced videos and wrote books about sex. The videos were also cooking shows, combining their passion for food with their passion for, well, passion.
When this came to light the UW System President (I refuse to call it the “Universities of Wisconsin”) Jay Rothman and the Board of Regents sounded like the Church Lady. Lots of clucking. Lots of pearl clutching. They were aghast. How dare he besmirch the reputation of the Great University of Wisconsin, whose flagship campus has long held a reputation for being the closest thing to a monastery or a convent. The BYU of the Midwest.
So, the Regents, at Rothman’s urging, summarily fired Gow even though he was months away from retiring as chancellor anyway. I don’t know. Maybe they had to do that to head off even more huffing and puffing from Republican legislators, not that they’re going to get any credit for it in the form of a more friendly reception for their budget anyway. And sure, maybe Gow and Wilson should have picked another hobby, like, say, stamp collecting or pickleball or maybe they could have kept the kitchen parts of their videos while dispensing with the bedroom scenes.
But then Rothman and the Regents took a really obscene step. They moved to strip Gow of his tenure. Gow simply wanted to go back and resume teaching in communications. What’s the point of having tenure if it doesn’t prevent the firing of a professor in a case like this?
Gow has his defenders. FIRE, an organization dedicated to academic freedom, has taken on his cause. They’re suing to get Gow’s tenure back. Let’s hope they succeed.
But I bring this up now because it contrasts so sharply with another case — this one on which Rothman and the Regents can’t seem to summon the same level of moral outrage. It’s the case of LaVar Charleston. In contrast to Gow’s good fiscal stewardship, Charleston’s management of the UW Madison’s diversity programs was a train wreck.
Charleston’s department budget went up 59% in one year. He got a $50,000 raise to an annual salary of $364,000, with no apparent accomplishments to justify it. He gave out extravagant bonuses (why does anybody in government get a bonus?) willy-nilly. He authorized conferences for his staff at exotic and very expensive locations. One staff member received $45,000 in reimbursements to attend conferences over just two years. Another of his programs was comped $32,000 for a trip to Maui, including $14,000 just for lodging. In fact, last year alone his 52 staff members attended 36 conferences. It seems to be the Department of Junkets.
And all the while, the percentage of Black students on the UW campus has barely budged and nobody’s handing out any awards for the improvement of the campus culture. This is supposed to be an agency that advocates for the most marginalized groups on campus and it’s being run like a country club.
All of which raises a whole bunch of questions. How could Charleston do all this without getting flagged? Where are the financial controls? Who’s running this place? And has DEI been such a sacred cow on campus that it couldn’t be touched or is this kind of thing going on in departments all over the place? Either way the answer is not going to be good.
Charleston was removed from his administrative job, but he was also allowed — in stark contrast to Gow — to return to a teaching position.
His mismanagement came to light only because of an audit of DEI programs forced by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos — an audit that legislative Democrats opposed, DEI being a sort of religion, adhered to without any evidence of success, on the left.
So, now the Democrats look bad (again), Vos looks good, DEI, which has come under withering attack from Trump, looks even worse, and the UW’s budget requests for a lot more money are looking dead, dead, dead. I’m a big supporter of my alma mater, but even I wouldn’t give them another dime until they get their house in order.
Charleston has done a whole lot more damage to the UW than Gow ever did. And yet, Rothman issued only a brief statement saying that he was “disappointed” in “the employee” without even mentioning Charleston by name.
And the Regents have said nothing at all about it. No gasps to be heard from them. Their pearls remain unclutched. But when Gow’s hobby came to light, Rothman called it “abhorrent” and then Board of Regents President Karen Walsh said that Gow had shown “reckless disregard” for his responsibilities. She said they were “outraged” over his behavior and she fumed, “We are alarmed, and disgusted, by his actions, which were wholly and undeniably inconsistent with his role as chancellor.”
But regardless of how they react, they need to get their fiscal house in order. You know who could help? Joe Gow.
[Editor’s note: This post has been corrected to include that Jay Rothman issued a statement about the removal of LaVar Charleston as DEI chief.]
Dave Cieslewicz is a Madison- and Upper Peninsula-based writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. You can read more of his work at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos.
