Education Policy, Business and Technology

No More Passing the Harasser

Inside Higher Ed: Pass the trash, pass the harasser: call it what you will, but the University of Wisconsin System doesn’t want to do it anymore. So it’s moving forward with a policy on disclosing misconduct findings against employees to future employers during reference checks. The system will automatically share such information between its campuses and other state agencies. And it wants such disclosures on its own potential hires, too.

Wisconsin fast-tracked the policy change this summer, after it was revealed that Shawn Wilson, a former assistant dean of students at the Stevens Point campus and deputy coordinator for Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits gender-based harassment, resigned during an investigation that would eventually find he had likely repeatedly asked a campus business employee to go home with him and made sexual innuendos.

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