Student accuses professors of misconduct

Editor's Note: This is part one of a two-part series exploring why three professors and a graduate student are embroiled in a string of University court cases and the problems they've found with how UM evaluates discrimination, threats to campus safety and allegations of misconduct.

Not long after graduate student Wayne Moore complained about a teacher, he found himself blocked from taking classes and his behavior the subject of a campus inquiry into whether he was a threat to himself or others on campus.

He thinks the events were connected. Administrators disagree, but it led to a tangle of University court cases alleging discrimination, retaliation, abuse of power and negligence.

Although it's not all over, President Royce Engstrom ruled Monday that Moore's claims of discrimination because he's an older white male were unfounded — even after a University committee found just the opposite and adamantly urged Engstrom to act. Moore said he is currently considering appealing the decision to  the Board of Regents.

Several related confidential cases remain unsettled. Those cases are evaluating whether the professors violated University policy by retaliating against the student after he filed a complaint against one of them.

Professors Katie Kane, Heather Bruce and Louise Economides say they discovered a pattern of "odd" and "aggressive" behavior from  Moore that worried them and made some of their students feel threatened.

The English department chair Jill Bergman asked administrators to evaluate Moore because of alleged bizarre and troublesome behavior, as well as his  diligent pursuit of a complaint that Kane was unprofessional, which Bergman wrote seemed "out of proportion with the situation," according to the form she filed.

Moore defends his right to complain about a professor and says they maliciously teamed up to retaliate against him by alleging he was a threat to campus safety.

They can't reach a consensus about what happened or who was at fault, but everyone agrees the University of Montana needs to change how it handles student-faculty conflicts.

The professors say the process too heavily favors the student, violates their right to due process and exacerbates conflicts rather than solving them because it's so slow.

Moore says the process allows faculty and administration to ignore students' concerns, doesn't have checks against abuse of power and reduces what could be a fruitful investigation to he-said-she-said arguments that get nowhere.

In this two-part series, the Kaimin will look at how this case got this far and the reasons everyone involved finds fault with the process.

After moving west from Ohio to Whitefish, Mont., where he taught snowboarding for a year, Moore came to UM in the fall of 2008 to pursue a graduate degree. The 45-year-old already had a degree from Ohio University in English literature, but started out his graduate experience without a program in mind.

With hopes of becoming an adjunct professor in English at a small college or university, he entered the Masters in Teaching English program in the spring of 2009.

He was awarded a teaching assistantship from the department and taught an introductory writing class the next two semesters. Today, Moore continues to work at the Writing Center, where he's been employed for more than a year, while he waits to re-enter the graduate English program. He delayed his studies because of the disputes that cascaded from his complaint last fall about Kane's lack of professionalism.

Moore was a student in Kane's literature seminar on cultural studies and by the end of the semester, he wanted a refund for the class.

In the discrimination investigation by UM's equal opportunity officer, Moore complained Kane was late for class on multiple occasions, disorganized and didn't keep to her schedule of appointments.

Rachel Caldwell, another student in the class, also took issue with Kane's teaching. Caldwell wrote in a letter supporting Moore's complaint that Kane was often late to class and didn't have a lesson plan when she arrived. Caldwell wrote Kane often started classes with questions like "What would you like to do today?"

"I think Katie (Kane) is a good person and I think she does care about students and her job." Caldwell wrote. "But she is in need of some oversight and restrictions. She is failing to educate and help students because she is not making teaching or planning a priority."

In the hearing for the complaint Moore eventually filed against her, Kane acknowledges she was late three times during the semester, her written testimony shows. All three times, Kane said she was under the impression the class started at 4:10 rather than 3:10, resulting in her being five to 20 minutes late to class. She wrote a student came to her office to get her each of the three times, and she apologized for her lateness.

"I was not after those three unfortunate, embarrassing, and unprofessional failures to be on time, ever again late for the start of class," she wrote in her claims.

Kane's list of claims also shows she had consistently high evaluations and won multiple awards and fellowships for her work as an associate professor and director of Irish studies. Her studies focus on ethnic and third-world literature and culture, critical theory, and Irish and Native American history and culture.

On the last day the class met, Moore's frustration with Kane came to a head.