Paul Barrows continues to haunt UW

WASHINGTON - Jenna over at Right off the Shore has kept her finger on Madison's pulse over the holiday and has a post up on a recent decision to grant Paul Barrows an appellate hearing.

And Jenna has it right – Mr. Barrows is a “joke of a university official [who] continues to embarrass our school.”

For those unfamiliar, Mr. Barrows is the former Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs who slept with at least one student and sexually harassed multiple individuals, while also allegedly harassing (though not necessarily sexually) the former Dean of Students. When things got ugly, he took sick leave from Madison and hunted for a job elsewhere. When the media caught on, he claimed it was Chancellor Wiley's fault in part because he was never actually sick despite being on sick leave. (Still following? Yeah, it's absurd.) This is where his honesty went out the window, as it took the Badger Herald all of a few minutes to find out that Mr. Barrows had told officials at the University of Texas that he was, indeed, on doctor-advised leave. But he told a local newspaper his leave wasn't physician-approved. And like the head chef at IHOP, he flip-flopped with some level of skill.

The whole affair was sordid in countless ways, with Mr. Barrows looking like a genuine cad and the university's image taking a mighty beating. The unfortunate policy of backup positions (which has since been reexamined) landed the administrator back in Bascom Hall. As Jenna notes, “He is now upset because his pay was docked to $72,881.”

Now don't get me wrong, I am all for due process. But I thought professors Cohen, Clark and Coronado taught us a valuable lesson about how too much due process becomes sheer idiocy and an utter embarrassment. It is this type of due process that now visits Mr. Barrows.

You see, he has already faced John Wiley, Peter Spear and Susan Steingass! (I'm not even counting Luoluo Hong because she was less than reputable.) Now I criticize Ms. Hong on occasion for not believing in sufficient due process – and she doesn't; she wanted Mr. Barrows gone with no investigation. But this is too much due process. We've seen the fact, we've had an initial decision, we saw a follow-up investigation, Ms. Steingass wrote a lengthy report and Mr. Barrows sauntered back into Bascom Hall.

The time has come to put this whole sorry ordeal behind us and move on. If Mr. Barrows truly cares about the university, he'd allow the school to do just that. Of course, on top of this appeal, he is still suing Ms. Hong and Mr. Wiley for various related things and, as such, has indicated that he will continue to put his own selfish interests first at great cost to the community that once embraced him.