Following accusations of sexual assault against her husband, UW-Whitewater misplaced former Chancellor Beverly Kopper on paid leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act, a Gazette investigation found.
Kopper initially resigned from her post on Dec. 31, 2018 and retired from UW-Whitewater on Jan 5. 2020 after her husband, Alan “Pete” Hill, was ordered to leave campus by UW System President Ray Cross following the assaults.
University officials originally planned for Kopper to serve eight months on paid leave with her chancellor’s salary and then return in August 2019 to resume her duties as a teacher in the school’s Psychology department. Her nine-month projected salary of $118,308 was 50 percent higher than the department’s chairwoman, according to the Gazette.
Instead, Kopper spent much of the fall semester on the Wisconsin Family and Medical Leave Act, which employees can use “when you need time off from work to care for yourself or a family member who is seriously ill, to care for a newborn or newly adopted child, or to attend to the affairs of a family member who is called to active duty in the military.”
Following an open records request filed by the Gazette with UW-Whitewater five months ago, Alexandra Stokes, the public records custodian at UW-Whitewater, sent the records on Tuesday — after a reporter followed up on the story Monday.
Stokes said Kopper’s leave was redacted because she sought to protect “the confidentiality and privacy of personal medical information.”
Kopper’s leave occurred from Sept. 1 to Nov. 24. Frank Koza, the dean of the College of Letters and Science, wrote to UW System Legal Counsel Tomas Stafford the university would assign a “project for her to work on the last four weeks of the semester,” according to the records.
Stafford noted, however, Kopper could extend her leave. Yet it remains unknown how Kopper spent the rest of the semester, according to the Gazette.
The records investigation comes amid a university effort to restructure around $12 million in budget cuts related to declining enrollment and subsequent revenue loss.
“Over the past year or more, UW-[Whitewater] has suffered from news stories that might have negatively affected our reputation,” current Chancellor Dwight Watson said in a budget listening session.
