Terri Patraw received "commendable" personnel evaluations every year. Thus, she was significantly exceeding goals and objectives.

She had never received a single unsatisfactory mark nor did she have any adverse action in her personnel file.  It was proven that Terri Patraw received the highest rating generally awarded coaches.

An overall evaluation of commendable shall be considered "meritorious."  NSHE Code, Title 5, Chapter 7.

COMMENDABLE: Successfully met, and in some areas, significantly exceeded established goals and 
objectives. Achieved high levels of productivity and competence.   UNR/Human Resources.


These personnel evaluations were signed by Terri Patraw's supervisor, the athletic director and the university president.

A word I have heard too many times in the past 1.5 years . . .

From Dictionary.com

Corrupt:

 
Most recently I have received quite an education from others on how corrupt our justice system is.  The things I have witnessed over the past 1.5 years are unimaginable to the normal person. 

We have all met corrupt people.  However, to watch a group of corrupt people work together to attempt to destroy your life simply to cover up their own misconduct is something nobody can relate too . . . unless you have lived through it yourself. 

There is wide scale corruption permeating my case.  The truth will come out and justice will prevail.

RENO (AP) — A former professional hunter for the U.S. government claims in a whistleblower complaint that he was fired in retaliation for reporting co-workers who illegally shot two mountain lions from an airplane in northeast Nevada.

“This is a blatant case of reprisal,” said Christine Erickson, the staff counsel for the Washington D.C.-based watchdog group for government workers.

Strader of Wells said he reported the incident to his district supervisor in the fall of 2007.

Strader said his supervisor reacted angrily and accused him of making up the story. He said he was told later that aerial gunning crews also had shot three other mountain lions in northeast Nevada.

Violation of the federal Airborne Hunting Act is punishable by up to a year in prison and a $5,000 fine.

“We shouldn’t go around as government employees committing felonies in government airplanes,” Strader told the AP.

But if shooting the lions was a bad deal, the cover-up is worse, Strader told AP.

“It’s the old cliche — kill the messenger. They are bending over backward to make me the bad guy.”

The Whistleblower Protection Act forbids discharging a federal employee for disclosing crimes or other waste, fraud or abuse, Erickson said. She said an employer who breaks the law could be fired.

You would not believe the dark side of this lawsuit if I told you.  More stunning revelations roll in by the day.  The perjury, falsification of evidence, witness tampering, and political interference does not end.

Do not believe anything you read in the paper or online.  Those are calculated and staged events to defame and intimidate me. 

I am not asking you to believe me either.  The truth will be revealed in a Court room for a jury to decide.  I am looking forward to that day.  The defense team is not.

That is why they have gone to unbelievable and illegal lengths in an attempt to sabotage my case. 

The truth will be revealed in a book.  All the bad actors will not be able to hide behind their organized corruption.

Keep the faith.  Much more coming in the next few days...

When the media began questioning the university about the allegations the school released the coaches personnel files, including the allegedly false performance reviews, to the public.

The parties settled before trial for $3.4 million.
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These universities use the same dirty tricks to intimidate and defame coaches who have the courage to stand up to misconduct in their athletics departments.  What a disgusting display of leadership in higher education.    

The truth will come out in the end . . . a book is being written . . . those who lied, manufactured evidence, and tampered with witnesses can run . . . but will not be able to hide from their misconduct.

I received this message this morning.  This individual hit it right on the nose...

Come on, people. Wake up and smell the coffee. In order to make their case, UNR's attorney had to resort to character assassination because they didn't have a strong enough case, based on the evidence and testimony presented. Typical!

According to the investigation by the victim's attorneys, ASU had destroyed records of Henderson's misconduct during the Summer Bridge program, and significant e-mails had been deleted even though ASU knew the victim was about to file suit. Kerr, the lead attorney for the victim, discovered some of the missing e-mails.

In one, Rippon, the school's director of academic success, wrote that the women who had complained about Henderson's behavior during the Summer Bridge program were "women I trust completely." But Rippon later testified under oath in a deposition that they were women with "attitude" who had "issues with all men."

Another e-mail, discovered just before the settlement was reached, was from one of the women who had complained about Henderson. It stated, "I don't want to get raped in college and that is what Darnel [Henderson] makes me feel like when he is around me."

ASU officials in the football program, the athletic department and the president's office refused to comment.

"Sooner or later everyone sits down to the banquet of consequences"

                                ~~ Robert Louis Stevenson ~~

By Dan Hinxman • RGJ • February 12, 2009

Nevada athletic director Cary Groth had hoped the NCAA's Committee on Infractions would review its 14-month-long investigation into the Nevada athletic department at its February meeting, but that is not likely to happen.

"I don't know if we're on it or not," said Groth, who added that the NCAA has not told her what the specific focus of the investigation is.

It is common practice for the NCAA not to communicate with universities under investigation unless necessary. The governing body for college sports has not yet contacted Groth or Dr. Jean Perry, the university's special assistant to the president for athletics, academics and compliance, regarding the investigation.

Groth and Perry said Nevada has not received a notice of allegations.
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In response to a public records request, however, a representative of the University has informed me that the university has received a 'draft' of the notice of allegations.   This, and any appearance before the NCAA's Committee on Infractions would mean this is a major infractions case; that the university has been notified that major violations of NCAA rules have been found.

Panic often sets in for those rendered sleepless by their fear of justice.

                                        - Taha Hussein, Ph.D., The Sufferers 

Morality may consist solely in the courage of making a choice.
Wickedness is always easier than virtue,
for it takes a short cut to everything.
But over time you learn, you can't make wrong work.

There are always two choices,
two paths to take.
One is easy.
And your only reward is that it's easy.
You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong.

Work joyfully and peacefully,
knowing that right thoughts and right efforts
will inevitably bring about right results.

You can never lose anything that really belongs to you,
and you can't keep that which belongs to someone else.

You always experience the consequences of your own acts.
If your acts are right, you'll get good consequences;
if not, you'll suffer for it.

Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.

~~ Author Unknown ~~

A former colleague shared this quote with me years ago.  I have never forgotten it.

The way people treat you is never a reflection of you.  Rather it is a reflection of them.

I have thought of this quote a lot in the past year plus.  There are those who encourage, admire, and support me for standing up to wrongdoing.  There are others who express their anger at my resolve for standing up to corruption. 

Why do people treat me so vastly different based on the the same reports of improper governmental action?  

                        Well, the way people treat me is a reflection of them. 

If a person's moral standards encompass truth and integrity they will certainly admire my efforts. 

If, on the other hand, a person fears the truth, preferring to believe all is above-board, they will likely feel resentment towards me.  

Then there are those with much to lose when the truth comes out.  Those are the ones who engage in the smear campaign against me to cover their improprieties.

Think about the incredible power of the quote above.  It pertains to all of us in every interaction we have with people.  It is so very true. 

Do you support a reporter of illegal activity...or do you support those who engage in illegal activity?  Your own morals and standards will influence your answer.

Best Wishes...

Ever notice over the past year that:

Do you know what the athletic director told me in our last meeting on August 28, 2007...she said she looked in my personnel file and had nothing to use against me!  I kid you not.

She was never a star athlete or a championship coach. In fact, there were star athletes and championship coaches who disliked her a great deal, when Jan Kemp famously cleared her throat and spoke up more than two decades ago about what was rotten at the University of Georgia.

But the impact of what Kemp had to say -- and of what she did -- resonates today.  Her exposure of academic fraud within the Bulldogs football program helped set in motion a host of reforms that have made college athletics at least a slightly more civilized place today.  At the very least, she helped expose the underbelly of a profitable beast and forced us all to examine it.

"She had an impact in convincing the world that the off-the-field stuff in college sports was important," said University of California-Berkeley professor and author Murray Sperber, who has written several acclaimed books on the conflicted coexistence of big-time sports and higher education. "And she took an enormous amount of s--- for it."

Kemp fought hard enough against powerful, popular opposition that she should be remembered and revered.

What she did took more guts than slamming into the middle of the line on fourth-and-1.

For everyone who cares about maintaining education's fundamental role within the pseudo-professional world of college athletics, Kemp is a hero. For every athlete who has been helped toward a degree by enhanced academic support, Kemp is a hero. And for everyone who ever stood on principle in the face of institutional backlash, Kemp is a hero.

If schools didn't care whether their athletes got an education, nobody was there to call them on it. Until Kemp did.

Kemp's stand -- at a time when Georgia was at football's forefront under Vince Dooley, winning the 1980 national title -- got her fired as the English coordinator for Georgia's developmental studies program in 1982.

The professor sued the school and won her job back along with a $1 million settlement, but it was the university's arrogance in taking the case to court that led to seamy revelations about misplaced academic priorities.

The Georgia scandal dovetailed with other significant off-field scandals of the same time: a Creighton basketball player who came forward to admit that he went through school there without being able to read or write; a South Carolina football player who detailed to Sports Illustrated his steroid abuse; major pay-for-play revelations that rocked SMU football and Kentucky basketball.

A new level of accountability was reached and has been maintained, thanks in no small part to Jan Kemp.

"In the history of college sports, she's more than a footnote. Frankly, she's more important than Dooley. Coaches come and go. She had a lasting effect."

Stoic and publicly silent through months of a sex scandal, the woman whose relationship with former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick led to his downfall broke her silence Monday, shedding tears as she pleaded guilty.

Christine Beatty, a former aide to the mayor, accepted a four-month jail sentence in exchange for admitting to obstruction of justice charges for her actions in a civil lawsuit brought by two police officers.

The officers claimed Kilpatrick retaliated against them when they suspected wrongdoing by members of his inner circle.

Sexually explicit text messages between Kilpatrick and Beatty, published in January by the Detroit Free Press, contradicted witness-stand denials they were having an affair.  Both were married at the time.

"I lied under oath," Beatty told the judge.

"I did so with the intent to mislead the court and jury and to impede and obstruct the fair administration of justice," she said in pleading guilty to two felonies.

Beatty, 38, the mother of two young daughters will begin her jail sentence Jan. 5. 

Kilpatrick, 38, pleaded guilty three months ago, resigned from office and was sentenced to 120 days in jail.

Kelvin Sampson was forced out as Indiana's basketball coach last February amid a burgeoning scandal over NCAA recruiting violations.  Now, the NCAA is taking the step to ensure he can't coach a college program for at least five years.

Sampson received a five-year show-cause penalty -- one of the harshest the NCAA can levy against an individual.  The Hoosiers also received three years' probation.

In its report, the NCAA committee said: "A head coach does not promote compliance when he intentionally ignores committee penalties directed at him for intentional rules violations.  A head coach also does not promote compliance when he himself commits intentional violations."

Indiana was accused of four major NCAA violations that stemmed from more than 100 impermissible phone calls to recruits by Sampson and his assistant coaches during his first season in Bloomington.

The most serious charge against Sampson was that he provided false information to NCAA enforcement staff members and Indiana compliance officers.

The fallout also cost Indiana athletic director Rick Greenspan his job.

There have been a number of coaches in a variety of sports who have received a show-cause punishment. Former Cal basketball coach Todd Bozeman was given an eight-year show cause, but it took him 10 years to finally get hired, by Morgan State. As Bozeman has said, getting a job after receiving such punishment is extremely difficult.

For more on NCAA Investigations see Blog #2 - The NCAA Notice Of Allegations.

No one would have known. And a full-time spot on the PGA Tour in 2009 was on the line. But Hayes, honoring the tradition of a game where the players police themselves, turned himself in and was disqualified.

Hayes had a choice: He could have said nothing and kept playing, with no one aware of his mistake. Or he could turn himself in and let his mistake cost him a 2009 PGA Tour card.

He chose the latter.

Based on the current prevailing feelings toward Hayes' ethical maneuver, don't be surprised if tournament sponsors are ringing his phone off the hook this week in hopes of lining him up as a special invite for their upcoming events. In fact, such an outreach could lead to a scenario in which Hayes is actually able to enter more tourneys than if he had simply swept the incident under the rug, continued on to the final stage of Q-school and qualified through those means.

Karen Moe Humphreys, a former Olympic gold medal swimmer who became a coach and administrator at UC Berkeley, will receive $3.5 million plus back pay and benefits to the time of her termination in February 2004.  Under terms of the settlement Humphreys will also be reinstated.

Humphreys, who worked at UC Berkeley from 1978 until 2004, alleged that she lost her job at Berkeley because she complained about gender discrimination and in retaliation for “blowing the whistle” on a hostile work environment for women in the athletic department.

A six-month investigation indicates:

• Coaches and trainers were aware Plancher suffered from an inherited condition, sickle-cell trait, that can cause serious problems during high-intensity workouts. But they didn't appear to employ precautions.

• Plancher struggled severely at the end of the workout, and coaches and trainers were slow to respond.

• Coach George O'Leary and athletic department officials significantly understated the difficulty of the conditioning session in their public statements.

• The university did not begin interviewing players about the incident until more than a month after it happened; even then, some players with relevant information were never questioned.

James Jamison and Jevaughn Reams are the first players to go on the record about what took place that morning. Their stories -- which are corroborated by other players who requested anonymity -- undercut O'Leary's characterization of the workout as "not taxing," and also suggest coaches and trainers didn't respond to obvious signs Plancher was struggling.

"People who would normally be in front, never complaining about running, never getting tired, they were on the ground, cramping, throwing up and stuff," Jamison says. " 

Plancher collapsed.  Jamison and another teammate yelled to the trainers, but no one responded.  Jamison says O'Leary told the players to let Plancher try to get up on his own.

Asked how long the conditioning session lasted, Jamison estimated about 30-35 minutes.

Athletic Director Keith Tribble told the media it was a "basic conditioning" drill that lasted 10 minutes.

O'Leary described the session by saying, "It was not a taxing workout." 

Associate athletic director David Chambers said the workout actually lasted 20 minutes.  He said that Tribble had misspoken -- the 10-minute time frame was the "cool down period."

Jamison and other players were furious about the way O'Leary and Tribble described the workout.

"I've always been raised if you get in trouble, tell the truth. The truth is better than lies because you got to keep telling another lie, then another lie, then another lie, especially when it comes to somebody's life. And this guy did nothing wrong. He just died for no reason."

Shortly after Plancher's death, O'Leary told his players to avoid talking to the media about the incident.


George O'Leary is the same man who was fired from Notre Dame after he was caught lying on his resume.  Pardon me for not believing a word that comes out of his mouth.  Such despicable conduct for a man who is entrusted to instill values in his student-athletes.  Some people truly have no shame.

The attempts at spin-control and the outright lying by athletic department coaches and administrators is astonishing.  When universities hire incompetent, self-serving individuals into positions of leadership the students are the victims.

Killed were Charles Coogan Kelly, 21, an acclaimed snowboarder from Truckee; Derek Kyle Jensen, 23, a senior at the University of Nevada, Reno; and Nathan Viljoen, 23, a former UNR student. Several others were injured.  Today began with the selection of the jury, followed by opening statements, and then testimony from 4 witnesses.  

Witness #1:  She was the girlfriend of one of the victims.  She had attended the party with her boyfriend and two other friends that fateful night.  She was understandably emotional as she spoke of the victim, the atmosphere of the party, and hearing gunshots outside.  It was not until the next morning that she learned her boyfriend had been killed.

Witness #2:  He attended the party with a friend, one of the victims.  He spoke of hearing gunshots while he was downstairs grabbing a beer. He went outside to find his wounded friend crawling across the patio in the backyard.  His friend later died.

Witness #3:  He was one of the renters of the home.  He described his fruitless efforts to clear out many of the uninvited guests as the party was getting out of hand.  He witnessed a man beating Tyrone Hanson, a former Nevada men's basketball player, in the kitchen...however, this witness was unable to get a good look at the assailant beyond general characteristics.  He spoke of how he escaped to the backyard only to hear gunshots while he was talking with others.  He then climbed up the outside of his house to hide in his bedroom.  He remained there until the police arrived.  He later saw a male lying on the floor by a door.  He did not know the victim. 

Witness #4:  She is a current Nevada women's basketball player.  Her testimony included a detailed eye witness account of the defendant beating and kicking Tyrone Hanson.  She spoke of Hanson's girlfriend lying on top of him trying to protect him as the defendant pointed the gun at Hanson.  This witness tried to leave the kitchen, where the beating was taking place, but was stopped by the defendant.  She said that the defendant pointed the gun directly at her.  She was later able to escape outside where she heard gunshots as she left the party with her friend, a Nevada teammate.  This witness was the only one able to identify Taukitoku and place a gun in his hands. She said she is 100% sure that the defendant is the one who beat Hanson and pointed the gun at her.

The trial continues tomorrow and is expected to last a few weeks.  For more on this story see Blog #3.

"Why would you give $3.4 million?" Baker said.  "I know the university broke laws."

"I think those women have been terribly wronged and I think justice has been served," she said.  "It took a lot of courage for them to address issues they thought were important."

(In a 2006 article) Cosgrove said many of the guards have kept quiet for fear of retaliation. He said he was willing to come forward because he's retiring soon. "Correctional officers are pretty courageous people to do the job they do," he said, "but they're afraid to use their First Amendment rights. They're afraid to speak.  We're walking around on eggs."

Ironically Cosgrove had a prior hearing before Hearing Officer Bill Kockenmeister in which Kockenmeister ruled in favor of the State and against Cosgrove.  Kockenmeister is a state employee.  The Nevada State Prison is a state entity.  No conflict of interest there, huh?

The jury disagreed with Kockenmeister and delivered a unanimous decision in favor of Cosgrove and gave him every last dollar that his attorney, Jeff Dickerson, asked for. 

Kockenmeister is the same hearing officer who was suspended due to misconduct in my hearing.  An objective jury delivers justice.  Imagine that...


nvlaw wrote: