Senator Larson, do we have you yet?
Good to see you, but to see
YOU sir, thank you.
Okay.
Thank you.
Oh, we thought you were going to be
on the phone.
But no, you're here in person,
my favorite friend.
Sorry, I just missed you.
Oh!
How's this feeling?
Did you, did you?
Good morning, this is
the.
Started the meeting on committees
and universities,
or technical colleges and
universities.
So this committee is now
in session.
Welcome all of you who are attending
as visitors and potential speakers.
If you are looking to register,
whether to speak or just to
register.
Please talk to our folks who are by
the doors or we have kiosks outside
that you can
fill out for the benefit
of this committee.
We have everybody
accounted for and we understand
who is here to speak
versus just here to attend.
With that, we will go ahead and take
the role of the committee.
Senator Hutton here.
Senator Raul Guerrero.
Here.
Senator Fine.
Senator Larson
here. Senator Pat, yeah.
Well, thank you for joining us
today.
We ask you to ensure that for the
respect of everybody, if you
have a phone, that you would mute
it.
And the last committee is the
actual chair forgot to do that.
So I will try to be
consistent with all of you to make
sure that it happens as well.
Mr. Chairman.
Yes, sir.
Before we get started, I wanted to
ask like.
Council question.
Let me go ahead and get through our
remarks and we
can do that.
Thank you.
If you do have written testimony and
you do plan to testify,
we'd ask that you would have copies
for the committee ahead of
time. And again, our folks
in Pages that can help that,
please get your information to them
and they will take care of making
those copies for you.
We are here today about a decision
by the Board of Regents that raises
concerns not just about
transparency, but about how prepared
or serious they
are about addressing the strategic
direction of the University of
Wisconsin system.
Firing President Jay Rothman without
a clear explanation to the public
requires scrutiny.
It demands the public receives the
answers that it is entitled to.
This is not a routine personal
matter. This is the chief executive
of one of the most important public
institutions in our state.
Decisions that it's making to
require a straightforward
explanation.
Transparency is the foundation of
public trust.
When decisions are made without an
explained justification, it further
erodes confidence, not just to
the Board of Regents, but in the
institution itself.
The legislature has an important
role in the oversight of a state
entity like the Board of Regents
in exactly this type of situation.
Particularly the Senate has a role
of approving the Governor's
nominations to the Board Regents.
If Regents expect to earn the
approval of this body, they must
demonstrate a commitment to open and
humble decision making.
Throughout my time in the State
Senate and this committee's time, we
have tried to focus on big picture
and long-term challenges that
need to be addressed in higher
education to remain strong over
the coming decades.
The UW System is a cornerstone of
our state's economy and I believe we
would all agree with that consensus.
It is currently educating 1,650,000
students, and it provides a
critical workforce pipeline
for employers across our
state.
At the same time, it faces serious
long-term challenges.
Enrollment has declined by 9
percent since 2012,
far more than counting just
traditional students, with some
campuses seeing 25 to 30
percent enrollment drops.
There is a shrinking college age
population, increasing alternatives
to four-year educations,
and growing concerns over families
about the cost and value and return
on that education investment.
Employers across Wisconsin are
telling us they cannot find enough
workers with the skills they
need while students are questioning
whether the traditional model of
higher education is meeting their
needs long-term.
At the same time, we continue to
hear concerns about the cost and
value of the degree and the
statement of bureaucracy within the
current system.
These are issues that demand the
full attention of the Board of
Regents.
Instead, we are faced with a sudden
leadership shakeup that risks
creating instability at a time when
the chancellor turnover is high and
our flagship university is losing
its CEO.
While the system desperately needs
to be more ambitious and
reform-minded, President Rothman
worked to move the system forward
through different challenges,
engaging with both the legislature
and the governor on reforms.
Removing him with no explanation
sends a troubling signal to
taxpayers, students, and employers,
and even donors about
where this institution is heading.
My committee and I have consistently
worked to advocate for deep system
reforms that will strengthen the
UW system long-term.
Reforms that improve accountability,
align education with workforce
needs, ensure that taxpayers
and families are getting the value
for their investment.
We must all ensure that the UW
System remains strong, competitive,
and responsive to the needs of its
employers.
Today's hearing is about what went
into the decision to remove
President Rothman, if those
justifications warrant his removal,
and if the process earns the
continued trust of the Senate.
The Senate has a constitutional role
in confirming
regents, and that authority
exists for a reason, and that
reason is accountability within the
system.
If that standard is not being met,
it is appropriate for this committee
to act.
We owe it to the people of Wisconsin
to ask questions, to demand answers,
and to ensure the governance of the
United System reflects the depth
of the challenges it faces.
With that, we will go into the
hearing and we will begin
to call up those who are here to
testify.
And Senator Papp, you have a
question for Ledge Council.
Before we proceed, I do thank
you very much, Mr.
Chairman. My question for Lodge
Council is, can you explain
to me and
to my colleagues what
is the definition of at-will
employment?
Let's just gin
it down to, could be generally
cast
as an employment arrangement
that is able to be discharged by
either party, employer or
employee without
cause or reason.
So just to be clear, do
you or do you not have to have a
reason for your termination if you
are an Antwell employee?
Generally no.
I thank you very much for that.
I assume that the former
CEO of Wisconsin's largest
law firm knows
that as well.
I would also say this, I do
always take the
responsibility of oversight,
very important, and I do agree
with the chair that investment
in the University of Wisconsin
system is important as an investment
in our economy.
But I will just make this comment.
This is the fourth public
hearing this legislative
session that this
committee has had.
We have only met three times
prior.
And if we're serious about
oversight when
it comes to the University of
Wisconsin system, making sure
that there is accountability with
the UW system,
we have a job to do as well.
And it is disappointing that
this is only the fourth time that
this committee has met this
legislative session.
With that, I yield back.
With that, we have two individuals
registered to testify
before this committee here this
afternoon.
I will ask President
Bogast and
are we going to have both of you
come up at the same time?
Very good.
And Timothy Nixon, both from the
board of regents and obviously the
board chair, you are
free to come up and
testify before us.
Okay, thank you very much.
Waiting for others to join.
Chairman Hutton and members
of this committee, good morning.
I am grateful for the opportunity
to appear before you today, and
I do not take it lightly that
this is my third time before this
committee.
I want to begin where I always begin
when I speak about the University of
Wisconsin, with gratitude.
Serving on this Board of Regents has
been among the greatest honors of my
life. For six years
I have had this privilege of sitting
in rooms with students who
are first first in
their families to earn a college
degree, with veterans returning
to finish what they started,
with researchers unlocking
discoveries that will change
how we treat diseases, and
with faculty and staff who
show up every single day
committed to the mission of these
institutions.
The University of Wisconsin is
not an abstraction.
It is a living, breathing engine
of opportunity for the people of the
state.
And it contributes billions
of dollars to our economy by
producing the teachers,
engineers, nurses,
and business leaders Wisconsin
depends on.
My entire family are
graduates of the University of
Johnson.
I have seen firsthand what these
universities have meant to my family
and to so many Wisconsin
families.
That is why I take this
responsibility so seriously,
and why I will continue to advocate
for these institutions with
everything I have.
I say all of this because I want
this committee to understand the
spirit in which every one of my
fellow regents approaches this work.
We are experienced leaders from
business, law, academia,
and public service.
We are proud alumni.
We are volunteers who
take no compensation and
bring deep judgment to the
responsibility we have been
entrusted with.
And it is from this place of genuine
care for these institutions and
the people they serve that the
Board of Regents reached a unanimous
17-0 decision
to end Mr. Rothman's
employment.
I recognize that this hearing has
been convened in the wake of that
decision, and I want to address
this community directly and
honestly.
It is entirely understandable that
this committee has questions, and
I want be as transparent with
you as I am legally
able to do.
But I need to say something clearly.
President Rothman knows exactly
what he is doing.
He is a sophisticated professional
who understands that personnel
matters are confidential.
The confidentiality surrounding his
evaluation was not arbitrary.
It reflects a fundamental fiduciary
duty that this board owes to
the University of Wisconsin,
to the integrity of our process,
and to every individual who is
subject to them.
We kept this matter confidential
because that is what
responsible governance requires.
It is what law requires,
and it is what our obligation is
to these universities.
And yet, President Rothman, who
understands all of this,
has chosen to use that constraint as
a shield.
Making public statements, he knows
I cannot rebut it.
And framing a narrative, he know I
cannot correct.
That is deliberately one sided,
that is not a search for truth,
that a strategy.
I will not pretend otherwise,
what he said publicly is misleading,
and the fact that it is misleading
does not reflect a lack
of reasons on the part
of this board.
It reflects the opposite.
The reasons are substantial.
The process was very thorough.
And if Mr. Rothman generally wants
this committee and the public to
understand what happened, there
is a straightforward path.
He can waive his confidentiality.
The moment he does, I will
sit before this committee and walk
through the details.
I welcome that conversation.
Until then, I'm not hiding behind
this rule.
I'm honoring it.
It is my responsibility,
the board's responsibility, as
a member and attorney
that I must do.
What I can tell you is this.
That decision was not made
lightly.
It was not political, it was
not retaliatory, it was unanimous,
every single member of the board in
attendance was in agreement.
Boards of regents do not reach
17 to zero decisions on
a limb.
I also want to address directly
what has been said publicly
in recent days.
Mr. Rothman has stated that he will
not step down because he believes he
is doing what is best for the
University of Wisconsin.
At the same time he is making this
claim, he is engaged in
a sustained public campaign that
is causing real harm to these very
institutions,
the ones he says he is protecting.
Every day spent re-litigating
this decision through the media is
a day that undercuts the faculty,
the students and the staff
and the reputation of our
universities.
I will let the public and this
committee decide if that is a mark
of true leadership.
Mr. Rothman made clear repeatedly
that he would only wish
to serve with the board's
full confidence.
We took him at his word.
When that confidence was no
longer no longer existed,
we acted accordingly.
The universities of Wisconsin at
this critical moment in higher
education deserves
nothing less than a leader who
is fully aligned with the board and
ready to lead.
I have devoted six years of
my life to this board.
We are not political hacks.
We are a rubber stamp.
We are serious public servants
who have given of ourselves because
we believe in what the
Universities of Wisconsin means
to the people of Wisconsin.
And we made a difficult decision for
the right reasons and we stand
by it.
I am honored to continue this
service.
I firmly believe that this board
and the Universities of Wisconsin
are made of something much
stronger than this moment.
And I thank you very much for this
time. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Appreciate your testimony.
Mr. Nixon, would you like to go
ahead and testify and then we can
open it up to the committee?
Let me just make a few comments,
because President Pocot's covered
it. She and I are sort of a gang of
any, at least in style.
So let me do my 10 Nixon
comments.
This is an unfortunate situation
for the University of Wisconsin.
I did not choose this, Jay
Rothman did.
This was done, by the way,
exactly like he
handled the same situation
for others.
Look at the political letters
from a couple days ago.
This is the way since at
least Governor Thompson was there
that these kinds of
situations are handled at UW.
I just want to be clear that there's
nothing unusual about
the approach to Mr. Rothman, the
request.
This is what the UW has
done, including Mr.Rothman.
He played this well.
He knows we cannot disclose events
that occurred in a closed session.
He's using that. And believe me,
being quiet for a week is unnatural
for me. I may have to be committed,
but I have that quiet,
that is.
I am 68 years old.
Never before, never
have I been accused of
not being direct,
clear, and unambiguous.
My reputation is that I
am too much so.
His claim that
he does not or did not
know has all of the substance
of the shadow of a starving
pigeon. I'm going to repeat that.
That's Abraham Lincoln.
All of the substance of the
shadow of a starving pigeon.
In the beginning, his
command and control, management
style, and practices were
necessary and
beneficial to
bring financial and operational
discipline to an organization
that needed it.
No dispute on that, and you all
sit here, you've been looking at it
longer than I have.
I thank him for that.
That is a service.
Regarding other accomplishments,
he is a bit like the rooster crowing
and then taking credit for the
sunrise after.
The good things that were a
massive team effort, not the
accomplishments of one
person.
We need, this is about the
future.
What kind of leadership is needed
for the future?
Let me just point out one
sort of quasi-objective.
U.S. News and World Report
does an annual review of
the 50 top innovative
universities in the United States
regarding education,
class size, all of that
sort of thing. How we educate people
at universities.
It lists the top 50.
Now most of these lists don't
think much of, and it's not that
we're not number one.
We're not even on the list!
Of the top 50 innovative
schools in the United States.
Not even on the list.
This is not a conservative liberal
thing because our good friends and
neighbors at Marquette University
have made the list of the most
innovative universities in the US.
So thank God one higher education
institution in the state has
made the best.
There's at least one other one
that should be on that.
Change is not Mr.
Rothman's strong suit.
Yet change is what we desperately
need. We need to be nimble.
A major difference between Mr.
Rothman and me was
his lack of urgency,
despite protestations to the
contrary. It is his nature to
be very deliberate.
We don't have time to be very
deliberate in the year 2026
in the sense that we can't take a
year and six months to
decide and think about every
single issue.
This is no different than moving
on to a new quarterback no
matter what you thought of the
previous quarterback or what they
did.
We know how to do that in this
state. That's functionally what
we're doing.
Forward.
Very good.
Regent Nixon, appreciate that
testimony as well.
And with that, I'm sure we'll have a
few questions for you
over the next few minutes.
So we'll go ahead and open up the
committee and go from there.
Senator Larson.
Thank you.
Both for coming
to testify on short notice.
We are here at a
hearing after the legislature has
adjourned.
So we're coming back from vacation
just to be able to talk to you guys.
So we appreciate that.
The...
Specifics of
what happened with
President Rothman and
the negotiations that happened in
terms of his employment.
Did those happen in
open session or were those
in closed session?
Those were in closed session and
we had a lot of dialog and
this was never taken lightly.
Again, we have a fiduciary
duty to the University of Wisconsin
and the people that it
serves.
This was not a light
decision.
We had many discussions in
closed regarding this issue.
Let's counsel.
What does the law say about
leaking information that
happens within a closed session
in terms
of employment?
I'd have to research that.
I'm not exactly sure what you're
talking about in this case, but I
can find out.
I can tell you what the open records
law says, but
I don't
know exactly what
the nature of the question is.
I probably want to look into it
more.
Yeah, I'm just curious,
if the
regents, as they're here before us,
started to talk openly about things
that happened in closed session,
would that open the university
up to
legal liability?
I don't know what they know,
so possibly.
If there was...
That's a possibility for sure.
It is a possibility.
So there is a possibility of a
lawsuit if they violate
the closed session
understanding of what was discussed
in the personal matter that is not
public and the person has not
waived their
confidentiality agreement.
Question, I'm sure others
have questions, we do.
My last one to you is did
President Rothman ever threaten
to resign?
Many times.
He had told us many times that
if he did not have the confidence of
the board, he would resign.
And I think that was a public
statement a few years ago, and
I know he's told that to other
constituencies as well.
So you're welcome, we're on.
Yeah, thank you.
I just want to make very clear that
I'm not on vacation.
Even though that this has been
viewed as coming back from vacation,
I don't think that's the case.
I think that it's important that if
any committee comes into this
session here that or is presented
that, we come and we do what we've
been elected to do.
So I don't got no tan going
on, sir. I'm still working.
My interest here is
not only to
question what happened,
but my interest in it is not
political.
It is solely because obviously
there's an issue,
and I'm assuming it's not just about
him, it's about a larger picture
here of things that need to be
addressed. So as I sat here today
and have been looking at this over
the news, my question is, okay,
what's the issue?
Why is he not meeting those needs,
and how are we going to fix this?
For the next person coming up or
for the university as a whole?
In my mind, the one thing that pops
in is decreased enrollment, right?
I'm sitting here and thinking, okay,
maybe that's the issue.
Maybe they've lost confidence in the
fact that there's decreased
enrollment. What is the solutions to
that? Or is there a different
reason? So as I've heard a
lot of people call me and contact me
and hearing some comments today,
this isn't just a political issue.
This is in no way in my
opinion.
The focus, the focus is what
are the issues that need to be
addressed, how are they going to be
solved, and how can we continue to
make the UW system great as a whole,
right?
So for me, it is much bigger
than what is being presented in
this room right now in
here today. Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you for that question.
That was a part of my testimony.
I hadn't read because I didn't want
to get into the hooties.
But you have asked, and I have an
answer for you.
This is about the future.
I already gave you
one question.
Why are not we one of the
top innovative, at least in the
top 50 innovative schools in the
United States?
Because we're not being innovative.
In the ways of dealing
with the issues that you've raised,
the drop-offs.
We've authorized
90-credit
bachelor's degrees.
We haven't seen any proposal yet.
We need to be talking about
certificates.
We need be talking non-traditional
students. We need to be talking
about educating
people from kindergarten through
their adult life not necessarily
in the silos that have
been built and existed historically.
That's a big issue,
but let me give you a specific that
has been bothering me.
Why does the
University of Wisconsin system
bureaucracy have
579
employees for a
13-school system when
the technical college has 50
for a 16-school system?
That's a great question, isn't
it? And I'm on the technical college
board. By the way, they could use a
few more people than those 50.
I just want to tell you that's
really mean for them.
I'm on both boards.
Since last November,
I have in particular,
this has been my justification.
I just don't see the difference.
When you look at other systems,
they don't have this many people,
okay?
These people do good work.
I don't want to insinuate that
they're lazy, that they are not
doing good work, but in my
view, they are better off
reassigned, or the resources
used at campuses where
we actually educate people.
President Rothman has not
provided an answer to me
since November.
The only thing we've done is had a
meeting where they all told us about
all the good things they're doing.
Don't dispute that, but why 579?
Can't we cut that?
Maybe that's the right number, okay?
He's not justified it to me.
But I think we
ought to take some of those people
and move them on campuses
where we actually educate
people.
And he has
not been on
board with moving that along.
Well, I was just going to
say thank you for providing a
specific example rather than
some gray zone where we just kind of
jump around the issue.
I mean, these are the things that,
you know,
thank you.
They scare me while I wait in
line.
Oh,
would you like to comment on that,
otherwise I do have another
question.
My other question was, you talked in
here about him waiving his rights
for confidentiality and so forth.
I mean, is that some written
agreement that was somewhere that
both of you had signed upon
employment or something that, or
in this particular situation?
I mean, is there
something that was
legally?
Personnel matters by
law and definition
are confidential.
And that's why when we talk about
personnel matters, we go into closed
session.
And so it is not our ability to
waive it, and Vice of
Council as well, we are
not able to do that.
It is his to wave,
it's his confidentiality,
and he has to waave it before we're
able to say something legally.
Let me add that
I want to emphasize this
has been the UW
practice.
At least as far back as
Governor Thompson was president.
I'm not commenting on the wisdom of
it. I am merely stating that
requesting people to
leave their job under
friendly, quiet circumstances
is the way UW has
been doing this and the way
President Rothman actually did it.
Again, if you want specific
examples, I think somebody leaked
the public record anyway,
correspondence to Politico
from Mr. James
Larson Langdon,
sorry, I
get a hold, have patience with the
other hands, I'm 68,
that this is exactly
the way President Rothman let
him go with exactly
the same no information
response.
Now this is, I am going to tell you,
this is the way it has been done.
I'm not commenting on what I think
of that. I might have an opinion
these days, but it's just the
way UW did it.
And one other thing, as a lawyer,
and you're getting me for free today
like you do every day, so this is a
really good deal for the state of
Wisconsin.
When you have an at-will
or a probationary employee,
the general recommendation is
you never give them a reason
for terminating.
The relationship, because
all that would do is raise
the potential for a lawsuit.
You, at will, you just let them
go.
The probationary, you just let them
go. Because if you tell them
anything, and we all know how
lawsuits work, truth, no
truth, eh, it doesn't much matter.
There are lawsuits.
You don't do this even in the
private sector with those two kinds
of employees. And I'm a lawyer, I
apologize.
So this is the advice I would have
given my own clients, in addition
for large corporations that
are very public.
This is the way you usually
edge out CEOs,
okay? Because you don't want to
damage, in that case, the brand
whatever you're selling, okay.
So you try not to have
these public blow ups,
all right? And so...
There's nothing here in my
mind, from my experience,
that's unusual, and not only that,
it follows UW practice.
Now, whether that practice
is appropriate for a public
institution, I'm not commenting on
that, I am merely reporting a fact.
I appreciate the testimony,
especially Regent Nixon, regarding
that. It is a little
surprising to me admittedly
to hear from the
Board of Regents who
are eagerly,
eagerly pushing for significant
reforms in the system.
Because I would argue going back
quite a few years, the
Regents have been viewed as the
gatekeepers for the status quo.
So if you're telling there's a new
revelation within the
Board of Regents that says
the President isn't acting
quick enough in terms of
significant reforms and
efficiencies.
That is a surprising B,
encouraging, and we'd love to
hear a little bit more context as to
how that is the the new face
of the regions that somehow,
in this case...
Then-president Rothman wasn't
on board with or keeping pace
with in terms of the reforms that
either you all were pushing or
are pushing or that you expected
then-President Rothman to be Thank
you very much.
Yes, now let
me just provide a little color
to that.
President Rothman moves
methodically,
he moves deliberately,
and part of that is he's a corporate
lawyer for fully, they just do that,
I'm a lawyer, okay, so I know how
they, I understand the thought
process.
You don't move until every I is
dotted, you don't do until every T
is crossed, you don't move until
everybody's lined up.
That takes six months to a year
to do that in anything.
The major difference between
President Rock and I And
even after everything that's
happened, I still like the guy.
OK, let's just be blunt about that.
I do not dislike him.
Is I always sensed
a lack of urgency on
some of these issues, which to
me looked like they're pressing on
these universities today.
And an answer a year from now or
two years from now is not
going to be good enough.
President Rockman never.
Thank you for joining us. We'll see you next time.
To his credit, doesn't
want to upset either
the legislature, the governor,
or the faculty
or anybody else.
Sometimes when you're changing
things, that's
kind of a necessity.
I mean, I don't want back
you guys off. I've got
administrative law for you.
I taught him administrative law for
23 years.
One of the things I told, and I
repeated, even said this at the
Board of Regents several times, we
are not elected officials.
You are the elected officials,
the governor is the elected
official.
We do our job, but
we do it subject to your oversight
and direction.
Act 15 is a good example.
You saw that we followed the law,
and I would quote you what I said to
people who were not as
happy as they could be.
I said, this is a law passed
by a Republican legislature
signed by a Democratic governor.
This is the law.
And we don't care if you like it
or not.
That's pretty irrelevant to us, and
that was directed at certain people
at the university who thought it was
inappropriate. My point was,
it doesn't matter what you think the
elected officials are saying.
I just want
to add to that.
I just wanted to be clear.
Mr. Rothman, we are
very pleased in what he has done to
this moment.
There are many difficult things that
we went through as a board,
and we are aligned with Mr.Rothman.
Many difficult things.
And change happens at
a snail's pace in any institution.
Unfortunately, the industry of
higher education is a very
antiquated system.
Working within those systems
is very difficult to make change.
And I think right now we're kind of
at a precipice in higher education.
You mentioned the demographic slide
and the pressures are coming down
hard on us.
This narrative that higher education
isn't necessary.
It is, part of this
decision is that we need a
transformative leader and
that we have to really take this
into the future, which is to me
yesterday, right?
I mean, we have pressures of AI,
we had the, you know, this
narrative that I don't know, I'm
probably going to get my statistics
wrong, but 76%
of the public doesn't want AI.
They're terrified.
Well, even now, more than ever,
we need people in our institutions.
We need people that have critical
thinking skills that understand AI
because we as humans need
to control the machine, not the
other way around.
So, there's many pressures that
we are feeling as a board,
as an institution, where we like
to have and work well together
with that leader that can bring us
into the future.
And I do not want to diminish all
the wonderful things that Mr.
Rothman has done.
And he has done great service
to the universities and the
universities of Wisconsin.
So, I do want that
to be our
thought process here.
That's not what it is,
so.
Mr. Chair, I would like, I
had removed a number of my remarks,
but in light of the senator's
question, I want to bring up another
one.
There is no regent's
guidelines or guardrails
on AI.
AI is a lot of
smoke and noise, and good things
in the university, but there
are no guidelines or
guardrails.
President Rothman has blocked those
since November, and this is another
one of my courses.
We've got to speak.
We've gotta say something.
We need an
articulated Wisconsin
Board of Regents Wisconsin.
AI guidelines, not one
crafted by Silicon Valley through
negligence or neglect.
Okay, we need to do this the
Wisconsin way.
And we have, this has not been
brought to us, we've been asking for
it since November.
We're studying it, we got
lots of committees in that system
studying it and they're not doing a
bad job.
Just will not bring it forward to
us.
But overall, I do also want to
add that I'm very proud of our
individual universities who do
have wonderful policies and
guidelines for their campuses.
They're doing amazing work on the
campuses, so I don't want to
lose sight of that.
Thank you, I appreciate it.
Information or path.
Thank you Mr. Chairman.
Thank you both for being here.
Mr. Nixon, thank you for your
openness and your candor.
I get in trouble for you.
Me, too. But I'll tell you, I
appreciate it, because you
talk about hobby horses.
This is something that I believe.
I didn't know the exact number, but
at 579, now I know the
number. I really do believe
that there can be reform done,
and I strongly support
not just our
planning University here in Addison,
I'm very proud of our regional
comprehensive that we have.
So I look forward to continuing to
work with you and
the President in regards
to moving forward on this.
But my follow-up
question is to
the Board President.
Thank you for your testimony.
And I appreciate your
candor, but you
write this.
If Mr. Walkman genuinely wants
this committee and the public to
understand what happened,
there is a straightforward path.
He can waive his
confidentiality.
Absolutely.
Why hasn't he done that?
He seems to be talking a lot.
Why has he not waived
his confidential?
I believe that his
objective is to be able to get his
narrative out and be one-sided.
I mean, he knows that I cannot
regret what he's saying.
He knows, and he does know the
truth. He knows the truth and
he understands what this is
all about.
And we were hoping that
he would move on and we could
celebrate all his great
accomplishments.
That, I think, was going to be the
best path forward for the
universities.
I mean, to do
the media circuit
that he's on
denigrates our wonderful
universities.
And that makes me really sad
because I know that he worked
tirelessly for the universities
and I really was
hoping to celebrate his past
accomplishments.
And keep that stability
which was so needed for the
universities and to celebrate him
and the campuses and all
the hard work that these people
come to work every day.
We're here for the students.
We're over the people that we serve,
the students in the state and
it's unfortunate that he's taking
that path.
One follow-up question,
I read in the news media
that it
was given an opportunity to
retire at the end of this calendar
year.
Is that correct?
He was given an opportunity to
resign at the end of the year and
it was a nice runway for him
to be able to go out,
finish a few loose ends
and celebrate him
and visit all the
campuses and celebrate
the fact that he has accomplished
many things in his tenure.
I mean, if you look around this
country, these jobs
right now are so
difficult.
They don't have a long shelf life.
Things are moving so quickly and
so fast, we have to be
nimble.
And so I wanted to
give him that opportunity
and have him be able to celebrate
and the board to stay steady
and focused on what comes next.
So he chose not to do that.
You know what I'm going to say.
Just so you don't think that we walk
in lockstep and do whatever,
I was not in favor of the 18 months.
I was in favor to
run late, but not that long.
However, this is our president.
She made that decision, and that's
what we went with.
I thought that was too long.
And then I'll wrap up
here. I've also heard,
I don't know where I heard or read
it, that there has been a six
month summits package
that's been approved.
That's correct. That's from his
contract.
Can we just talk about the contract
for a little bit?
I find it interesting,
I say this somewhat tongue in cheek,
but also somewhat genuinely,
when I look at deployment contracts
today, the fact that
I see a contract that is any less
than 20 pages seems
quite unusual in the world that
we now live in, and I
appreciate all the roles that you
will play in that.
It did seem a little odd that
the contract at least we've
had provided to us is
as thin as it
is as relates to the use of paper.
And curious as to
what's behind that, why that
would be the case.
Is there other contractual
information that is
an aside from that four page
document and
can you shed a little insight at
least in the fact that you are both
attorneys and in this case it is a
personal matter
that J. Rothman would have been put
in that position with that
narrow of a contract.
Would we do it again?
Was that done intentionally?
If you could just shed a little bit
of perspective on that.
I can start, and I'm sure Mr.
Nixon can follow up,
but I can tell you that I,
the negotiations for the contract is
very, that contract is standard.
It's been used in the past over and
over again, being at will,
and, I think, I might be
wrong, but maybe you can be on this.
I think the six month is
by statute that you have to give
an at will employee,
and that there's something else in
there, and if they resign, it's a
90 day, that's all standard.
And so it is in
light, but again,
Mr. Rothman, his whole
attorney life was a transactional
attorney.
So he reviewed the contract and
he had made no changes to
the contract.
And again, this was used for all the
prior presidents.
I don't know how far back it goes,
but absolutely.
I think it's, you know, perhaps a
time to look at the
contract that's been used over and
over again. But again, Mr.
Rothman accepted it without any
changes and being a transactional
attorney at every opportunity to do
so
Yeah, I didn't see it until
a little bit ago. I was not on the
board with the contract.
I saw it probably about when you
did. I was astounded at
the contract, but
I will go back.
Jay Rothman is an intelligent
man and a good lawyer.
Let's just put it like that.
And he's representing himself there.
Quite frankly, if I were his lawyer
and I were doing it, I
might have had different ideas
if I were advising him on that
contract. Bye.
He is who he is, he chose
to sign it, and if we struggle
with that, then you say that we want
him to sign the other contract,
that's not fair.
But I advised him
not to sign that contract as
the president, but he is
acting as his own lawyer, and he's a
good lawyer.
He's a great lawyer, no doubt.
Thank you. Double perspective,
so I'll ask you another question.
Thank you.
And just to be clear, we're back
in here taking up the Board of
Regents appointments while
there are over 100
other appointments
that are outstanding for the Senate
that have not been taken up for a
full vote.
The Senate adjourned.
At the end of that, I know in
my district they're struggling with
affordability of trying to just make
ends meet. Housing has not been
addressed in any way, shape, or
form. We didn't do anything on
data centers and so it's the Wild
West where tech companies
are going at it
and holding communities to be able
to get what they want with no
repercussions.
We haven't done anything on water
law to make sure that we have
clean water in our state.
The list goes on.
Is there a question to intervene
this?
Yeah, just that we decided
that this was it, that this is the
thing to say let's Let's snap our
fingers, let's come back in because
we want to drag
a few appointments in front
of us to score political points.
This seems exactly what it is,
and frankly, I've
been here for 15 years fighting
for our universities.
I was here when the governor tried
to repeal the Wisconsin idea
and say that we're going to shift
from the search for truth and
say the borders of our universities
end at the borders in the state,
and saying that we are here for the
enrichment of all, and
instead say we're gonna focus on
workforce development, and people
turned out and said that's not what
they wanted. We've seen the
degradation of the university.
We've see the cutting of funds.
We've the forcing
of tuition freezes
that are unfunded from the state.
So therefore, the product that is
turned out is less than it was
for students today than it a decade
ago.
And I have been fighting for that.
And I find it curious that now
we're coming in
to deal with this.
In sports.
We would call this a flop.
If you know the time,
which is that somebody
is reacting very
big of, oh my gosh,
I've got fouled.
And they're looking for a reaction.
They're looking a foul.
And it seems that
the refs have called in
and are saying, OK,
whistle blown.
We've got something here.
And now we're drawn in because of
this flop, because
the president is protesting
and saying that, know,
I am unclear as to what was going
on and that somehow in all of
these closed sessions no direction
was, he's claiming no direction
was given, no criticism was given
and that nothing, you
know, would have led him to believe
that this was ever an option.
And the other side is unable to
respond to that because he has
not waived his confidentiality
agreement in a personnel
matter.
And that is the only way
to go back to the sports metaphor,
that we can actually check the tape,
Mr. Chairman, is for him to
waive his confidential agreement.
So then we
can check the
figurative tape and see what
was actually put before him
for what his guidance was
and where that may have
varied along the way
in those performance reviews.
He has not done that.
And until that happens,
we are only hearing one side
of this, where we're seeing the
athlete who is waving his arms and
saying that this was a huge problem.
And we could clarify that.
And until then happens, I don't
know.
We don't.
You don't maybe, you
know, we don't exactly
what the terms of agreements were
that were violated.
All we can do is speculate.
And frankly,
I personally,
given what is happening within
our universities, given I have a
campus in my district, and
I talk to my students, I talk my
faculty, I talked to the neighbors,
and they are not thrilled.
They were not thrilled with the
direction of what the president was
doing. And I have not
seen many tears shed in
leaving the teachers
union AFT put out statement
saying that they were
frustrated with some of his
decisions, I've
heard from students who were very
frustrated with the attacks on
diversity, equity, and inclusion
which matters in my district,
in my campus because it is
the most diverse campus in the
state.
Those issues I have not heard
him addressing and
those were a giant area of
criticism. So if we are going
to get back, Mr. Chairman,
to what the Wisconsin
idea is, which
is the search for the truth,
the only way that we can actually
get to that is if
the president waives his
confidentiality.
Otherwise, we are standing up for
something we have no idea
what it was.
And there could be things beyond
that, why my
mind wanders to reasons other
folks have been dismissed and we're
getting large public attention
for it. We don't know what we're
wandering into and if that is a
decision that we're coming back
into.
That we're coming back out of
session instead of addressing all
of those other issues and frankly
not addressing what the universities
are supposed to be doing for our
students and for the state and
we're talking about one person.
Universities are bigger than one
person and
so I would ask you
know do you what do
you view your service as
as regents because I
was surprised to find out what your
compensation was.
For this goal, for
your public service, and what do
you believe the goal of your
service as regents are?
Because I believe this is up for
your appointment.
Why do you want to serve on
the Board of Regents?
If you still do.
Thank you, Senator Larson, we're
actually here to ask you to double
our salary.
Which is...
I appreciate all that, and
I see this as a distraction from
the excellent work that we're all
doing.
I mean, I would love to be here
celebrating the amazing budget that
Governor Evers and your
leadership, the Republicans, have
worked tirelessly to get to us.
I mean it was amazing that
we worked together on that.
And I know I had a really nice
conversation with you, Senator
Hutton, over the weekend, And my
desire is that we continue forging
ahead to work hard
to give the state what it so
deserves.
I always have wanted to work with
both sides,
the governor, and move
ahead to what the state needs.
I mean we have great needs,
as you said Senator Hutton, the work
force is dying,
the needs are great, business
leaders, both sides of
the aisle, they appreciate and
respect the universities and what
they're trying to accomplish.
I serve, I am
so privileged to serve and
would like to continue to serve to
really health.
Work together to bring the
needs to this state.
I love Wisconsin.
It's my home.
My grandparents came here as
refugees and could not believe their
crazy love they got to live here.
And I want us to
flourish together.
The divisiveness really breaks my
heart. We are a board of
18 independent individuals,
no matter what the press says about
us, we all have our own thoughts,
but the one thought that I think
everyone in this room can agree
to, the University of
Wisconsin is a crown jewel for this
state.
We have, I'm sure many of you have
educated, some have taught at
the University Wisconsin.
We cherish it.
And for anything to come
between that, to not get to distract
it, is really a
shame. It is a distraction.
So I know that we continue
this work together.
That is my hope for the board.
It's my hope from myself.
Believe me, this is not an easy
thing to do as a volunteer with my
time.
I have a law practice.
It's very difficult, but it's
worth every minute for this
investment into the future
of our state.
I mean, it's the economic
impact of our state.
So why not all work together,
what's best for everybody?
And to get our students,
and not just your typical student,
we have over 800, I think we talked
about this last time, Senator
Hutton, we have somewhere around,
and Governor Thompson has spoken
about this, over 800
thousand students that
they have dropped out,
they have a lot of credits there.
Love to get them back into our
universities to help out, whether
it's with a certificate, some of
our campuses, some way
to up their workforce and get
them in there.
Veterans, love more veterans.
There's many people of all different
walks of life that would really
have a wonderful opportunity right
here in their own backyard in all of
your districts.
So for me to serve on this board
is the privilege of lifetime,
but I am so looking forward to
cut the divisiveness and work
together. We all want the same
thing, so let's do
it, and let's not have
this be the distraction.
So I appreciate that question.
Thank you.
If I may, I want
you to know that there are two of us
here. The meeting was called on 48
hours notice, all right?
I've been waiting two years.
She's been waiting 26 years,
okay? So not everybody could
come on two days notice,
alright?
These are real human beings who
have wives, families,
and jobs, okay,
so just to pick up and move on two
day, that's very hard.
The region job, I don't know
why anybody wouldn't want it.
You don't get paid.
Next week, I spent five days
in Eau Claire, five
entire days in Auclair.
Last week, I spent two days
reviewing orders.
From the student discipline
committee of which I am the chair
because I want to make sure
the students are fairly heard
I spent two days doing that you
don't get paid for it.
However, what do you get?
Well number of regions have had
their houses vandalized in
Madison in Milwaukee.
You get that you get protested
I'm surprised when we have meetings.
We have bomb dogs and
Police doing checks to
make nobody wants to do a sin
because some people do and it was
last fall I think the guy said he
was gonna show up at two o'clock in
the afternoon with a rifle and shoot
us.
So I don't know why anybody wouldn't
want this job.
Appreciate the comments from our
two guests.
I would take a little bit of
exception in terms of the
divisiveness for which we
are operating.
We deal with the fiduciary duty on
behalf of the state
of Wisconsin, and certainly the
taxpayers, to be
engaged and be knowledgeable
and be able to ascertain
decisions that are made within our
agencies.
That's certainly why we're here
today, is to ask the questions and
to gather as much information as we
can So we have
a Bible answer for the decisions
made.
Right, wrong, or different, but
that's what we're here in Colton to
do.
I would say
to my colleague,
Senator Larson, that of
all the reforms that we've worked on
over the last year and a half,
I don't recall your name being on
too many of those reforms in terms
of transforming what needs to happen
at UW, and yet
I'm hearing from our two regents
who have done it today that we need
significant reforms
within our UW system, structurally
and otherwise.
And I think that leads into my
question with.
Help maybe all of us in general
understand the relationship
between the regents
and the president in
terms of the reforms that
Regent Nixon, you've more so
alluded to, but
Madam Chair, you have as well,
that are just
nibbling around the edges.
They're significant in terms
of what we say needs to
be happening within UW to,
at minimum, keep pace with where
we're going as a.
Bellwether institution in our
state and an engine in our state.
So in the dynamics
between the administration,
and I'll throw the governor's
office in that mix,
the president of the systems and
the regions,
just from an outsider perspective.
Where and who and how do those
initiatives, in this
case significant reforms,
land on the table, and
where are the driving forces as
to what those reforms
should be, what
reforms should prioritized,
and who's going to take the ball in
one of those reforms to ensure that
those actually happen.
Senator, that is
the question.
Let me go back to what
I see the issue as.
We are 18 people doing
their very best as volunteers.
But we functionally
are captives of
the UW System Administration
and the President.
Because we can ask for
things, but we can't necessarily
write them or do them or move them
along.
They move them on or not move
them.
And I'm going to give
you a couple examples of things
that haven't moved along despite
multiple requests.
Now I think if President Rothler
were here, he would say, well, the
board hasn't as a
whole told me what it's wanted.
It's 18 people that meet six times
a year together.
Eight times a year, and that
we do things otherwise, but
we are not the full-time
professionals.
Unfortunately, this would be like
you taking instruction from the
secretary of the department of
administration.
Okay, think about that for a second.
Nothing against the secretary of the
Department of the Administration. Thank you.
It makes it very hard.
That's why the relationship between
the president and the board has
to be one of trust, confidence,
and being able to work together and
not believing that there are any
issues.
Because we are the captive
of the people that we're
supposed to be looking at.
And we would hope in the next
president that we kind of
address that.
President Rothman.
As a command and control
kind of management style, which was
necessary and useful to
get the budgets balanced and all
that stuff.
Wouldn't have happened without
somebody with that
style, okay,
would not have happened.
But now we kind of need something
else.
We need to be able to work with and
not just sort of be hanging out
here without the support of that
administration, which
is very large. I think they've got
some time to do stuff for us, You
take that.
So you mentioned AI briefly in
terms of where the system currently
sits with AI and some of the
reluctance to continue down that
path.
Can you name four or five
other initiatives that
President Rothman was
more of a gatekeeper of the
status quo and
either rejected or was not on board
in moving some of those
reforms through the
system.
Look, here's one of the things I
like to say.
Everybody's in favor of change,
just nobody wants to do it.
But President Rauffman was always
concerned about it.
And this is legitimate.
He goes, you know, this is the
University of Wisconsin.
Change isn't necessarily
welcomed in here.
He was always concern.
And he told me he didn't
like what I said out loud,
because it would alarm people.
Okay, my view is people should be
alarmed. But he didn't like what I
would say a lot about things because
it would agitate the staff or the
faculty or the students because it
wasn't fully thought out.
So in general, we talked
about a lot of these things.
We've talked about the cliff.
We've talk about certificates.
We've about faculty pay.
We've talking about campuses.
We've taught about program array.
Okay, but everything moves.
In my view, he would disagree
with me, in fairness to him.
He would disagree, but in my view
everything moves a little too
methodically.
Now admittedly, I am a patient
person.
I was once tested for patients and
I tested negative.
So, but if you've
got to move...
And starting to move is the first
thing. And he generally speaking,
except for the things, and we did
agree on a lot of things.
We put Act 15 into place.
The Regents, before I got on, agreed
with the DEI deal.
One of the things I talked to him
about was, is this
system complying with
that deal?
Whatever you might think of it.
It was an agreement.
A real big, I take it, agreements.
And we talked about it in a lot
those terms. So there was a lot
support. Don't get me wrong, this is
not like, and they got everything
that's wrong.
I'm not saying that,
but I'm saying for innovation
and movement forward,
key and the system are not designed.
Really move quickly and
but on the other hand what
organization is the state government
depended on
Let me just add to that too, and
to be fair, this is
a moment of transformation,
but I can tell you that the system
and the people that make the system
but more the campuses.
Act 15 was.
A lot of work,
it took a lot time and
a lot of buy-in from the campuses
and I give them all so
much credit for working together
to get what they had to get done.
But it really sort of prevented us
at the moment for, it's a
way to move forward, but it
was all hands on deck.
And, you know, now that
we're kind of past that,
it is a moment in time that we must
move forward.
And it's not necessarily
looking backwards to what
we could have been doing, it's we've
gotten a lot of big things
accomplished, we have a
great budget that we are working
with.
We've got Act 15 done, we
are trying our very best to make
sure all campuses are complying.
It was a heavy lift and
people worked tirelessly, I mean
60, 70 hours of work to make
sure that we're in compliance.
And they're still very much worried.
They want to make sure that all the
I's are dotted and the T's are
crossed. So as we look there,
we're also looking forward to move
ahead and, in sync with the next
leader, that the board and
that leader, not a
silver of light, I think I'm quoting
a past present, will get between
us. And that's what we need,
because it is a difficult
place to get change,
as we all know.
We think that we've got a
clear week and then we're throwing
something, whether it's from the
federal government or something that
we got to accomplish.
All hands on deck, okay, we'll
put this over here.
But little by little, we're getting
there, and we're hoping that the
next leader can really be
transformative, energetic,
and work with the board closely so
we can accomplish more.
Thank you.
I don't know that I heard the four
or five other areas that
President Kaufman was
the
gamekeeper of.
And I think some additional detail
on that would be helpful if it's
available before we go to
Sarah Kavalka-Bear with her
question.
Was the gatekeeper a lot of things.
He did not like it when we talked to
individual legislators and we had
to report every time we talked to
one of them on the set.
I'm not a big fan of that.
Maybe I did.
Maybe I kind of didn't.
In fairness to him, Act 15
did block everything up for about
a year. But what do we need to
talk about? Here are other things we
need talk about.
And we haven't even gotten them on a
list.
Y'all are concerned about
dormitories.
Well, should we have dormitory?
Should dormitore be public?
Should dormitories be private?
Should they be whatever?
That's the things we need.
We didn't even get to talk about
those things because they were
considered third rail.
And quite frankly, they are third
rail as
an example.
They're AI is third rail,
you know.
I'm.
You've already guessed, I read that
book, How to Overcome Your Shyness,
OK?
And I'm willing to grab the third
rail.
President Obama is just less likely
to do that in a number of things.
He and I talked a lot,
as you might guess.
And I don't dislike you,
we just didn't see eye to
eye on the speed with which you
could move and any of the
topics you could, in fact,
move on.
We didn't want to upset the
applicant. I think the applicant
needs some upset.
Senator R.C.G.
Yeah, I had a, I have two
questions here.
Let's call, so maybe you could help
me out with this one.
And again, I like the detail.
I guess I'm stuck on it's
him, it's them, blah, blah blah.
I don't like that, right?
I just fax.
So if this board actually
met in closed session.
Thank you very much.
Would Rothman be actually able
to waive confidentiality
if he was in a closed session?
Is that possible if you're in a
close session?
Can he do that?
Would he be able to do that, would
he know facts from that closed
session, to be able to wape that?
I think he could communicate his
own issues that
he was discussing in the closed
session.
So he could disclose what
he actually said and did,
but not what anybody else said or
did or any sort
of concerns that they had
about him, if it was in closed
session.
I hesitate, since
I don't know what the communications
will hesitate to
venture.
So it's a gray zone again, if we
don't have it.
He has his reasons
and he can come
out and say what he perceived his
reasons.
Okay.
Possibly my last question that I
would have here is, again, black
and white. I just like facts.
I kind of appreciate your style
here. I don't know if I'm as
abrupt as you, but I
appreciate it, right?
But when we don't have facts,
we get assumptions.
Very rarely do we assume
those assumptions are in the
positive, right?
They're usually in the negative I
mean, I've been sitting here reading
your non-verbals girlfriend, and I'm
not taking them as the reading the
positive. Okay
We have, now we have
our UW president who got
booted and we have our
chancellor who's
leaving. When we think about
what the general population in our
country and the other universities
are assuming because
they don't have facts, I'm going to
assume it's not in the positive.
Maybe I'm wrong.
But again, my intention
is, what are the facts so that it
can be clear, so that people are
not making negative assumptions
about our flagship here and
the regents and
the university as a whole?
Just something to ponder and
consider. How does that look to the
general folk?
In my opinion, it doesn't look good
in the assumptions that I'm
developing in my own little mind
here because I have no facts, except
for what you have provided.
Thank you for that.
As far as the UW Madison,
maybe if I have your question right,
UW Madison Chancellor is
leaving to take a
position at Columbia University.
She has left the flagship better
than when she founded.
I have no doubt that
when we begin the search, which will
begin shortly, we will
find an excellent leader for
a flagship, which is
key.
Our flagship is
really the Crown Jewel.
And we take that duty very
serious, and I think that
her leaving.
And I think we will find many
good people. I mean, look at, she's
going to the top, one of the top Ivy
Leagues in our country.
And I thinks she's done so many
wonderful things for the university.
As far as President Rothman, it's
unfortunate that he chose this
exit.
It's unfortunate that he's creating
a narrative that has to be negative.
It doesn't have to be a negative.
The past is the past.
He's done wonderful things, as I
said before. He righted
the ship for all our comprehensives,
which has never been done.
We work together well on civil
dialog, and we're very excited
about where that's headed.
I'm so proud of our 13
universities and how serious they're
taking civil dialog
and free speech, and we are
all, every one of us, I can speak
for the board, our proponents of
all that is happening with this.
This is necessary.
More speech is better, right?
We all agree with that, and
I'm so proud that we've taken the
lead and the President's taken
that lead.
I mean, people can assume things,
but that's not up to us,
that's up to President Rothman.
If he wants to waive
confidentiality, then he
can do that and we can talk about
the personnel matters.
I mean I think there's enough
narrative out there from the
positives, and the fact that we
wanna go forward with a leader
for the future is
really, to me,
it's not a negative.
Everyone can create their own
stories, but that's not on the
regents. We didn't want it that way.
It's on President Rothman to
determine how he wants the
narrative.
So it's unfortunate, but here
we are.
I'm just hoping we aren't
looking at negative life because of
large departures in UW.
And if you haven't considered that,
that would be shameful because now
it should be.
I appreciate that.
Assumptions.
Right now it should be I appreciate that and assumptions I
appreciate that and it's unfortunate
and you know region and
I'm sorry mr.
Rothman's tenure for various reasons
we've lost ten chancellors right
we don't we don't want that
we want stability we want
to bring stability back and
and and if
you look around the country again
higher education is a time
of a big change
chancellors, presidents,
these are really difficult jobs.
It wasn't like it was 10
or 15 years ago when
they don't have issues that are so
controversial.
Everyone's under a magnifying glass.
And these jobs for these people at
such a high level, there's burnout.
I mean, they're hard.
They're under the gun 24-7.
So for whatever reason
that, you know, that the public
assumes, these
jobs are really tough.
And I think we have a lot of good
people that we will find to
replace both Mr.
Rothman and Chancellor Mnuchin.
I am very confident.
A couple of points to raise
on that.
In addition to leaving for Columbia,
Shunston is going to make $3 million
there. She makes $1 million here.
We also had Chancellor Schmidt
leave Eau Claire, and
he had.
A really good bump when he went to
James Madison.
And I'm going to say this.
The $600,000 we
paid President Rothman, that's nice
of him to accept that that's not
a market salary for a system
this size. You can look around and
just say, but that's
where we are.
One of the things that President
Rothland and I frequently
thought it heads on was open
meetings.
He firmly believed in
closed meetings, and he also
believed in briefing us individually
in small groups so
that we didn't have these public
discussions about things.
I am a huge, I was a municipal
official for 20-some years.
Open meetings don't bother me.
I lived with them.
I ran a village.
I ran water utility.
They are what they are, you just
follow the law.
But when you're using it to try and
keep people from discussing what
is going on, that's another reason
why we look so opaque.
It's just because you can go
into a closed session doesn't
mean you have to.
You are given the opportunity by
statute. And I think we
have way too many closed sessions.
And I thing our little side
briefings, I always hated
those because the major purpose is
so it wasn't publicly discussed
at a meeting.
And I just think that's
inappropriate.
Now, in his favor, what he
used to tell me was I don't
want to agitate individual
legislators. I don't want to agitate
individual campuses.
I don't want to
You know, by them hearing
this, and immediately going
up, isn't that?
You guys do that when you talk about
stuff. Don't you agitate a few
people when you're talking about the
laws you're going to do?
Who can we deny all charges?
So that's another thing I agree
with you. I am not a fan of closed
meetings. The university has too
many. Not because they're not legal.
Okay, because I made sure
that if we go.
This is one of the places, if we
start veering off what we said we're
going to discuss, I'm the one that
raises my hand and go, excuse me.
And so there's a general counsel
now. This is off topic.
But we still have too
many of them.
We need to be more
transparent for you and for
the public. I'm not ashamed of them
anymore.
Is it controversial?
Well, yeah, if you're doing it.
Benjamin Franklin said,
someone in public life who has
no one angry at them needs to
be ashamed, because
it means you're not doing something.
So that would be another point of
philosophical disagreement.
President Roth and I talked a lot.
Can I ask a follow-up question,
so I'll get to you, I promise.
Wait a minute.
You were there first?
Okay.
I'll just finish my comment real
quickly.
Again, you reiterated a number of
things that President Rotman was
not in support of or not leading the
charge with
or for.
You mentioned, again, a couple of
specific others that are a little
bit more vague.
Can you kind of walk us through a
process of, was there,
were there meetings, review
meetings, performance meetings with
President Rotland around those
areas that you found him to be
insufficient or
counter to what you are trying to
accomplish.
Were those meetings in
private?
Were they open meetings?
Were they documented meetings?
Are there documents that,
as a board, we
can have access to,
just to look at, again, behind the
scenes of how this all somewhat
played out?
The University of Detroit,
I'm sorry.
I'll just because I was
I will
just tell you that and I
think this has been in my statement
before and I don't know if this is
helpful to repeat this but the
president of the board is tasked
with the it's in policy that
we're tasked with giving an annual
evaluation to the president this is
nothing new it's been going
on forever and
that was done and
there were things that
you he was tasked with.
And we had gone into
some closed sessions about his
personal evaluation because it
was, when it first happened,
it was me, the president, and
our vice president Kyle Weatherly
that did the evaluation.
We gave him that information.
We had further talks in closed
session about his personnel
evaluation.
And then, you
may or may not be aware, there was
many, many discussions with
individual members, with President
Rothman, as time
went on.
So unfortunately,
the evaluation was done in,
all personnel evaluations are done
this way, and
confidence.
And that's the way I
was told to conduct it.
That's the why I did conduct it,
and spent dozens and dozens of hours
doing the evaluation,
and a lot of things stemmed from
that, and as for further
performances, we went forward.
So again, I apologize,
but it is confidential.
The things that came out,
I know President Raffman was
very well aware of all those things,
so.
Well, I'll see you then.
That the system is
obsessive about not making public
records.
President Laughlin and I had a
discussion one time,
and I was a little annoyed, but I
didn't remember the topic.
I sent him an email.
And his response was, do you
understand that's a public record
now? And I go, yeah.
I don't remember the topic, but
there's an example.
And the reason is he used
to give, because this was a
discussion he and I had over and
over and over again.
All you're going to do is upset the
separate constituencies, OK?
Thank you.
I'm not saying he's wrong,
that's probably true,
but to me, that comes
with the territory, I don't know.
That's just the way I look at it,
but I spent 20-some years as
a municipal official, I used to.
And to be fair to Mr.
Rothman, there are many sensitive
things that happen in system that
are hard for the campuses and hard
for constituents and hard for
legislators and so I
think, you know, he was,
a lot of the times, he was just
trying to be respectful to the outer
public because there are many things
that are discussed, as you all know,
that are very difficult and
hard things that we need to do that
are very difficult so
it's, you know, it's a balance and
it's really difficult to get the
right balance, so.
Can I quickly ask,
were those performance reviews, I'll
call them performance reviews
because they're something different,
if they were reviewed by the overall
Board of Regents and
I guess agreed to in that regard,
those were presented to
then President Rotman either
verbally or in writing?
Is there a policy about those
documents being in writing that he
signs in
consideration of the review
given or how does that necessarily
play out.
No, there's nothing to
be signed.
It was a discussion that was had,
the initial discussion with both
Kyle Weatherly, the Vice President
and myself, the results of
my, the process
that we went through with the
evaluation and all the various
stakeholders that we talked to.
That was the first initial
stages. And then it was my
duty and my fiduciary duty to
let the full board know the results
of that conversation.
And then we went into closed session
with
Mr. Rothman,
and then to try
to push it along, there were other
further discussions that were
brought between other members of the
board discussing this with him.
And those other discussions of the
regions were in
the same vein of
other concerns the
board at large had or were those
individual concerns that those
regions were
identified or speaking into.
Sorry, I realize
that needs to be clarified.
It was all stemming from the
evaluation and issues that were
identified going forward.
It wasn't individual members kind
of piling on their own opinion.
No, I present that with the
case, but I appreciate that.
No, no, I apologize, yeah.
Thank you.
And one thing he will tell you, and
there's some validity to this,
is that when he was talking to us,
sometimes it wasn't clear whether,
in fact, you see the top of my
statement. I'm only responsible for
what I say.
She's not.
It wasn't always clear whether
the discussions
were a group of joy.
You know, we can't have a rolling
forum on voting so we really don't
know what's going on.
But in fairness to him, yes,
sometimes he didn't know.
And sometimes we were speaking for
more than a person.
Sometimes he was speaking for
ourselves. So that's, in fairness,
to him it might have been confusing.
Yes.
Thank you both, appreciate you
answering some of those questions. I
know we've got a list.
Senator Paffert, Senator Larson, I'm
not sure who was first, so that you
guys aren't going to hustle over.
I'll be real quick.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Again, thank you both for being
here. Thank you for your leadership.
I appreciate it. I know it's not
easy to be here.
You've worked very hard.
Mr. Nixon, in your testimony.
You write his command and
control management style.
Now, you went on to talk about
how that was
needed during the financial and
operational discipline to an
organization.
My question to you is this.
Was that command and
command control management style,
did that stifle conversation among
you and your colleagues in the work?
Not for the issues that
he was using it for where it was
really effective.
Where we had campuses...
You know, that were running
structural deficits for years,
okay?
Where they had too many people that
go down that list.
That's something that you just don't
go up to people and go, hey, do you
want to cut your budget?
You got to go in and you got
to say, excuse me, but you
must do these things, okay.
I'll tell you where it does get a
little stifling is where if
any of us talk to a chancellor,
they're supposed to call him or
maybe talk to any of you So
it got a little,
you know, where he wanted to make
sure he knew everything.
And you can't know everything when
you're managing an $8 billion
organization.
Maybe he could, but I just say
overall.
So it's that kind of
thing. Oh, you talk to so-and-so.
Yeah, I did.
You talk to the speaker.
Yes, I talk to speaker,
that sort of thing, thank you.
It was sometimes fightful, but I
want to be clear it was an
absolutely necessary
way of doing things.
Because people just don't cut their
budgets by millions of dollars.
They don't let people go
voluntarily, they don't.
So when we were in that process,
that was extremely beneficial.
Would you identify
that management style as top-down?
Or would you identify a
style as bottom-up?
It's distinctly top-down.
And again, depending on what you're
trying to do.
That was the kind of point I was
trying to make at the end of the
quarterback thing.
Depends on what your trying to,
right? Sometimes you need a
top- down command and control
structure. What executive doesn't
want a top down management?
Who the heck wants, governor doesn't
wanna listen to you.
He doesn't,
wasn't that crazy about us?
That's a natural tension that
exists, but it exists for
a reason, okay?
It exists for reasons, so we try to
get a good decision.
But that management style is
what brought fiscal sense.
I understand. I understand, I'm
asking you about these five things
that you've identified.
It's not helpful.
Is that helpful or not helpful?
It's helpful. So I'd like to hear
from you.
How is it not helpful when you're
trying to move the UW system
forward?
I, like you, appreciate this
financial management, but we've
crossed that bridge.
We need. Now we're talking about
moving forward for
the state of Wisconsin.
We need to have these discussions at
the board level by the Board of
Regents.
And were you?
No.
And why were you not?
Or are you?
Well, in my view,
we're not having the discussions
that we should have had about the
major issues, OK?
For instance, let's just talk about
AI for a second.
We've had a meeting where half the
day was spent,
what I call the dog and pony show,
because we had been saying, we need
a meeting on AI guidelines.
We need one, and we need one.
Half the day it was a dog and a pony
show about the truly great
things happening at all our
campuses.
Nobody questioned.
But they're doing it without any
guardrails or guidelines or
consideration by the Board of
Regents.
And I am a big believer in letting
the campuses be creative
and do great things.
That's where the strength is not in
the Board of Regent.
The strength is in the system.
You've got to let them.
But we're supposed to, just like
you are in this committee,
you're supposed provide some
oversight and some guidance.
We are too.
And in those kinds of situations,
there was a reluctance, and it was
wanting to control the entire
process from beginning to end,
rather than letting us, well,
sometimes make mistakes.
I'm sure this committee's never made
a mistake.
The Board of Regents might have a
couple times.
Okay, don't contest that, but
really, you've got to have some
public discussion on these
issues.
And not to quote words, thank you.
Oh, you can try.
No, no, not to put words in
your mouth,
Board President.
But did you
two feel
that there was a command and control
management style as
far as moving forward
on innovation in the
UW system?
I do believe that and
I think, you know, there are many
reasons, again, many that I can't
discuss but I
think when you're under a lot of
pressure in this position,
sometimes thought is given and
perhaps that's the best way to go
about things and the board,
I think didn't
find it the most helpful.
And again, I have no further
questions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you both for your dedication
and leadership.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Senator Larson, then Senator
Osborne-Garof.
Thank you.
And again, thank you both for your
service as a follower for the last
question I asked about why
you're doing the roles
that you're doing in your
service to our states.
Actually, at the end of the day,
too.
Yeah.
So as we are turning the
page,
There's a sense
of what
went not
as well.
And so, as we are moving forward,
and you are moving forward,
what can the legislature
do to make sure
that our universities are
as successful as possible in
recruiting quality
chancellors, retaining quality
chancellors, and
bringing in a
new system president that
is going to be responsive to the
needs of students
and to the citizens
of Wisconsin and to faculty
and to everybody who interacts with
our state's largest employers.
You of course have a good question,
but that was a good one.
Thank you, Senator Larson.
I'll start.
Excellent question.
I think that as we move forward
into the future,
and I apologize if I
alluded to that this is
divisiveness, that's not what I
was referring to and I'm sorry,
I really appreciate
all of you in having this
discussion because I think what
we need to make clear to
everyone in this entire state
is how much we all value
the universities.
And I know that when I
have conversations with everyone,
legislators on both sides of the
aisle, people that I have nothing
in common with, when you bring up
the University of Wisconsin, there's
pride.
And I don't think the system,
the universities itself, has
done a very good job in bragging
about all the incredible things that
we've done.
And we continue to do,
and I think that if we get the
messaging out there together,
we are what makes this state
run.
The Wisconsin idea is
so near and dear to so many
of us that the
opportunity to have knowledge
in the classroom that
turns out to the state and
the peoples and the people
of the state, and beyond.
That is what we're here for, right?
We're here with that knowledge and
everywhere.
Beyond not just our country,
but the world. I mean we are valued
because the Wisconsin idea
and all that we accomplished and
the benefits that we receive
from this university.
And I think we have to give back
to that. We have to get back to
how important it is for educating
our people of the state.
And I'm not talking just 18 year
olds, I'm talking about everyone.
And I want more, I think, than we
had this great initiative at the
universities just recently
where the wonderful credit union has
given money so we can have online
courses for anybody living in the
state, I think there's nine
different courses for AI.
I mean, it's wonderful that
you can go on there now, like
you'll see all sorts of other
universities trying to get in.
This is free for our citizens.
And that's what we're here for.
And I think going forward, in a
leader, we want someone to see the
future.
We, I don't, someone that can,
that bring us to where we can
get the resources that we need for
our students and our faculty and our
staff. And they're so deserving.
I mean, when I spend time with
students on the campuses...
I sort of probably use leave,
but I was up at UW-River
Falls and I was meeting with D3
students, athletes.
And it just amazed
me. Their dedication, I
talked to one kid.
Thank you. Grew up on a farm up
there, and he was so
thrilled that he got to play
football at River Falls.
And you know how well their team has
done.
And he was so excited that
he had to talk to me, he didn't even
know what a region was, but that
I'm listening to him.
He told me his daily schedule of
when he would get up at 4 o'clock
in the morning, he'd go and work
out, then he would go to his job
at a diner working so
hard because his family didn't have
the money to send him, and then
he'd back to practice, then he go to
class, and then go back to work, and
back to practice.
And I was embarrassed because I
started to cry.
I mean, it was unbelievable.
The dedication of our students and
our faculty and
what they want
to better their futures
and the futures of their children
and to make their families proud
and those around them, that's
why we're all here.
So maybe I'm looking for a unicorn
and a president.
I don't know, but someone that
sees the full vision and what
we're here for that can make
bold decisions along with
the board of regents.
I mean, for me to have
a successful president and
a successful board, we move
in sync.
We move in sync whether there are
disagreements below, underneath, in
closed session.
We move together as
one voice because we have one
mission.
And that's what I'm hoping for.
I think your question was the
legislature.
Didn't you ask what the legislature
could do? Or did I understand the
question?
Whoever asked the question.
And part of it, yeah, what the
legislature can do to make sure that
you're...
Here's a couple of things you need
to think about.
Okay, number one, you need,
you understand we're competing on
the national level for
talent.
Okay, so we're talking like the
fusions. We're getting close to
fusion here in Wisconsin.
Are you interested? Thank you.
But we've got to pay
what they would make at
MIT,
all those places.
We've got be able to pay them
that money.
The other thing is, I'm worried
about becoming the fire
team for university
leadership.
We grow these people,
but because of what we pay them,
relative to what the market
is elsewhere.
Now you can say they're paid too
much. I'm being paid nothing,
so let me put it back there.
But if you use that
same logic, you should pay Jordan
Love $600,000
because he's in Green Bay.
You've got to compete in the
market you're in, so you
need to be aware of that.
What you let us do and what you
fund for us, that's up to you.
You are the elected officials.
That's sort of number one.
Number two is I would really like...
Legislators to go visit
campuses, because
the sense I get is
that to a number of legislators,
they're Mr. Potatoheads.
They're all potatoes.
But if you have different hats and
different ears and stuff, when you
go to the campuses, you understand
their unique qualities
and what they do.
And by the way, if you're getting a
little down and you want to get
kind of pumped up, you go talk to
these kids and these faculty
members.
And if you think you're having a bad
day, that'll help.
But to understand the uniqueness,
and that's the other thing we're
pushing toward, is each campus
sort of.
Having a specialty, but then
everybody's got to teach health
care. Everybody's got to teach
teachers. So I would like the
legislators to be aware
that we compete in a, particularly
Madison, competes in a
national market for talent.
And you've got to pay whatever that
market is, whether you like it or
not.
The other thing is I would light the
legislators, to the extent they
don't, For the number of you do,
go and visit individual
campuses.
Okay, and see what's
on those campuses talk to those
students talk to the staff
Talk to those faculty because
it helps Bring it
real Okay,
I know I know question anybody
Good thing here.
I just simply don't I don't
think people that put themselves
forward in public life and
public service are
Okay, what we're disagreeing about
sometimes is how to
do things. I would like to have
conversations with legislators
personally.
I know I have talked to the Vice
Chair, I've been to your office, you
may not remember.
Oh, I remember you.
Yeah, most people do.
I have as well.
I talk to the speaker every
year before, the past
two years I've gone to talk to the
speaker and I said, what are your
legislative priorities?
Okay, I want to know.
I've actually suggested bringing
legislative leaders into meet
with the whore of regions But that
was something else that was not met
with
Okay, if we invite you if we
actually invite you we'd like you to
come so we can keep this dialog
going We
want the same things.
I think we want to say things as
far as I can tell we do How
to get there I think is where we're
running up against the rub And I
kind of wish this never would have
happened.
So we're all going to deal with it.
And I understand why you're asking
me the question.
I love questions.
Yes, I got a couple here,
jot more down as Senator
Larson has made
clear.
So you talked about earlier
transformative leaders.
I would just say as we look at
the budget, I've jotted
some things down here.
We have $250 million
in new revenue that was brought in
the last budget.
We got $50 million in GPR for
the athletic facility.
We've got legislation
that NIL...
Just in the last floor session, got
over the final little bit there.
That was a close one.
It was close, but it got there.
Health care related wise, I mean
numerous buildings for health care,
hundreds of millions of dollars for
health care.
I think he did some pretty amazing
things and was transformative in
regards to getting
things within this budget and
policy.
I was a little bit kind of boned
after that budget was
passed, that then there was a 5%
increase amongst tuition.
And recently I just heard
that there's a possible another 2%
increase in tuition.
I guess my question is, is that
correct? I'm kind of curious because
when we're thinking transformative
leaders, I think he's done some
pretty amazing things here and still
there was an increase and now
looking at another potential
increase.
You know, it's pretty contentious in
this building at times.
And when this gentleman did come to
the office and we worked through
some of this stuff.
It's a rough atmosphere to be in
here. So as
you are looking for
somebody to fill this place,
I hope that there's
some sort of demeanor that Rothman
had that is able to work across
party lines and actually get things
done.
Because in this building
we talk a lot and a lot doesn't
get done.
It's frustrating.
And you know you get to do it, it's
not just one person.
It's many things that come together,
you know.
But I hope that as you find a
transformative person, whoever that
might be, that these discussions
and this policy continue to
be worked on and not just one side
or another.
And then I will just add here that,
you know, I appreciate
all the info that you have provided
here today. And as we talk
about transformative kind of
leadership.
I look for not the
great luck, just get to the point,
tell me what it is and let's get it
done.
I hope that when you go back and
speak with your regents that you are
not in some way punished for the
things that you have discussed here
today and that folks continue
to support you on your board there
because, again,
I hope this has been a productive
conversation that's not punitive in
any way towards you, sir.
There's a reason we were both sent,
as you might be able to tell,
there's a little difference in style
here.
I just hope that it continues to be
productive, and nobody is silenced.
That's all.
But 2% increases.
I've heard that is that coming this
way.
I will try to answer.
I know you mentioned Mr.
Rothman being
advocating for the universities.
Absolutely advocated for us.
And I am so pleased that
he really went in there
and advocated, along with many other
people from the system and from
the campuses.
And it was a group effort.
It was a great effort.
And in the end, so
pleased that I...
That both the legislature
and our governor got it
done. I mean, this
is the governor's budget,
and the compromises that were made
in the end benefited us
greatly, and we are very, very
grateful for that.
I think as far
as Mr.
Rothman, I think, you know, as any
good leader should do, he relied on
many other people to get it done as
well.
So we are grateful for that.
And as far a tuition increase,
you now, for example,
what we need, I have heard many
times from the wonderful Chancellor
Beebe of La Crosse who says,
we have a demographic cliff.
And I just toured the campus again.
I try to go to the campus as often.
We have a demographic clip, but I've
got kids that I can't take.
I've gotten students that are
applying.
And he showed me, of course, they
always like to show me the terror,
like the nightmare of buildings that
you see with the wires coming down.
But this was a dorm.
He's like, I don't have no place to
put them. I would love to take more
students. And so it seems like
building, building, building, but.
When we want our campuses to grow,
you can't let
them put them in tents.
So that's just one example of
moving forward.
The 2% increase is something as
far as an increase in tuition.
We have to consider the budgets.
We're looking at everything right
now that is nothing written in
stone.
This is just out there.
I don't know if it's going to
happen. We really have to kind of
drill down into what the campuses
need, talk to all the campuses,
and that's where we're at right now.
So potentially a
7% increase?
No, no, no.
Five after the budget.
That is,
in two years, right now, there's
no tuition increase right now.
We're looking at what the campuses
need and seeing if we can move
forward.
That's where it's at.
We've had discussions with
Mr. Rothman as well, bringing it
to us, trying to figure out
can we move forward without
it? What can we do here?
How can we kind of close the gap?
So there's current discussions, but
it has...
That's not been solidified, right.
Please keep that in mind though.
It does have 7% increase
within a very short period of time.
I'm checking that right now because
that was not my understanding, so
let me just turn this into a
clarification.
I'm going, yes, no.
I know you are, so am I.
There you go.
Board President, I've got a few
questions that I would just like to
follow up with you on if I may.
Questions that I...
Thought of that I thought were just
important as a part of our
discussion specific to the
hiring of Jay Rothman.
I'm just going to read them to you
since they're a little bit long and
if I need to read it to you I will.
I appreciate all the discussion
around what we should be doing for
universities and all the positive
things that we need to be moving
forward on.
Unfortunately, this hearing is
really specific to the understanding
of the process with Jay
Rothmen and our
understanding of it.
Just because I think we need to have
the awareness to be if we need to be
concerned about what precedent
looks like as well as best practices
relative to individuals
that are at will employees
in this case and are dismissed.
But you had indicated that
there was a clear evaluation with
President Roth and all to his
performance.
Suggestions made around improvements
that the board or you as
the board president were asking him
to take on
a little bit redundant again, but
can you clarify whether
that discussion
and that
That additional request for
improvements was
put in writing and
was documented.
It's a part of his employment
or employee file and
if if so, is that documents
available to us as a
committee to have access to.
I appreciate the question again.
The way that all of these are
conducted just as
Mr. Rothman has done with other
employees is that I
took copious notes that
I didn't share with anyone.
I mean,
I was trying to find my notes and
I'm at.
I never shared those with anyone
on purpose, because that's what I
was told, how to conduct the
evaluation.
It made it a lot more difficult for
me to conduct this evaluation,
because I would sit there and
talk to so many constituents,
chancellors, regents, other
stakeholders, and
ask them the same questions over and
over again, and it took
notes, and when
I gave Mr.
Rothman that evaluation, I was
reading from my notes.
I was told that I could
not make any record, that
that was not okay.
Personnel evaluations are always
conducted that way.
So unfortunately,
I am unable to share those.
Can I just interrupt really just
ask? Sure.
Can I just interrupt, really just ask who
advised you of
your inability to
document or have anything written
in terms of protocol?
Right, well besides the
fact that I knew that was all the
way, that it had been done that way,
but also the general counsel and
Mr. Rothman.
So that's the way I conducted it.
And believe me, I would have loved
to have done it in a different way
because it would have been, it
would've saved me a lot of time.
So you took quite a few personal
notes as you heard.
Formulating your evaluation as you
were to talk to several people to
right gather their thoughts and
opinions right totally understood so
you have a lot of your own personal
copious notes on that but we
don't in terms of best practices
currently in the system have a means
for however that evaluation
is constructed for that to be
transferred into a formal document
that he then reviews
agrees to or disagrees to signs off
on and is in a permanent
place for that ongoing
litigation that doesn't exist
today? Is that what I understand
we're saying?
Yes, and I
probably don't remember this.
I don't know if General Consul
had him sign off.
I don't remember that.
I apologize.
Now that you're saying that, I don't
know if he signs off that we did an
evaluation or not.
I can find
out. I didn't think he did, but
I'm just not positive.
I don's know.
I mean, obviously, he acknowledged
it in their ongoing discussions.
But I don don't if
there's anything. Thank you very much.
I mean, nothing written down of what
was in the evaluation.
But as far as I'm confirming that
one was done,
honestly, I don't remember that.
I apologize for that.
I can get back to you.
I will definitely get back.
We should appreciate that.
Yeah, I'm sorry. I appreciate that.
You mentioned you took several
of your own notes in preparation
for that evaluation.
Are those notes still accessible
and available to this committee if
so requested?
They're not available because
they're considered confidential, and
I never, I shared it with them
orally, but I never shared it with
anybody else.
I don't know if it would,
the way that I write,
I don't t know how helpful it would
be. I mean, again,
if Mr. Rothman waives
confidentiality, I'll try
to look at my notes and
go further with you.
Sure. And I'd be happy to do so.
Okay, thank you.
I've got just a couple of other
questions if I may.
I know you
referred to several good faith
discussions with Jay Rothman.
Set of what those may be or
not,
were you in a position where
based on those discussions you
were able to document the,
just to cover the basis for the
regents, cover the
dates and times of those discussions
and have anything formally
as follow-up and writing to those
discussions that we would have given
to Jay to say based on
the discussion we had yesterday at 2
p.m.
Here's a summary of what we
did discuss.
Please review it to make sure that
we're agreement to
what those discussions were in terms
of some formal
document there again that was signed
or at least provided to him.
He never received a document,
but he received the summary
of the evaluation,
I want to say numerous times.
I mean there were certain things
asked of him and
he was repeated to him
by me and by
the board in closed session and
then again by other members of
the board.
So we
don't have any documentation of
that.
I can try to figure out
the dates and I think we have
records of the closed session of
when the dates of the closed
sessions were and
there's Shortly after the
evaluation, I know we him and
I also met
With this chief of staff to go over
those it was I
want to say five days later
And I can turn over get my calendar
and see what those dates were But I
apologize that there were no written
notes
in not being critical to you
or anybody, but maybe
a little bit concerning regarding
the process.
Those are pretty high stakes when
we're talking about the UW system
and leadership across the board.
That's a lot of good memories, don't
necessarily make up for
things being documented.
In my case, I would concur with that
as well.
So in terms of
best practices, you folks are in
the legal business for
a lot good reasons that we
haven't applied some of those
disciplines within the UW systems
that relates to key employees.
Again, just is surprising
to me.
Disappointing to me, I think, that
that's kind of where we're at in
that regard.
That leads to a lot of
verbal hearsay and he said,
she said, I
believe.
And President Rothman
has been clear that in those
discussions that there was no
mention of potential termination
if So-and-so
didn't happen or wasn't
going to happen
Was that the case wasn't the case
we will know because That
may have just been verbal discussion
with you and he
Appropriately so without anything
documented that said here's
what actually took place just from
good governance, but also from a
legal perspective
And I agree with you, I mean the way
things are done is very difficult.
We are a very public facing board, I
think the most public facing
board in the state.
And I do agree with, it made it much
more difficult for me.
But I think things were said over
and over again and because of that
it's, you know, the fact that the
board lost confidence in
our leader and that's really truly
what was the outcome.
But no, it's absolutely something
that we need to re-evaluate
and see how we can proceed
further.
This is something that's been done
over and over again.
I know many areas of
employment, an
outlaw employee and personnel
evaluations are always confidential.
But because we are such a
public-facing board, maybe perhaps
there is a better way to do it.
So I appreciate that.
Well, thank you.
Appreciate you back on there.
Again, I know there continues to be,
unfortunately, it's reflecting fully
on the regents in this case,
in terms of comments made
publicly or privately regarding
what was clearly communicated
as relates to a
lead-up to the actual termination.
And again, I think it would be
helpful for folks
that are in our roles of fiduciary
responsibility on behalf of the
taxpayers, and I don't know
about my colleagues, but I've
certainly received enough
communication from residents
not even in my district around the
state that are huge,
huge advocates for
UW, but are concerned
about this process and how it played
out and why it played it out.
I think those taxpayers demand
transparency and answers to that.
Hopefully are available in
a form that can be public
because there's written
documentation for the facts.
Which is all I think we'd all want
to see, and
the access to those facts.
So I appreciate your thoughts and
comments on that in terms of how
that played out.
Hopefully we can figure out going
forward truly what best practices
should look like in that case
in that regard.
Is it a fair statement to say
that...
Without going back to specific dates
or years that there were evaluations
done with then President Rothman
that were very
affirming and very positive
based on the work that
he was doing and
had been doing.
Again, I don't know if those are in
writing or not. I think those would
be helpful to see as well.
Because I think my takeaway based
on all the good feedback and
that we've had is
you certainly give proper
recognition to President Rockin for
a lot of the great things he did do
and a lot of initiatives that he did
lead and push forward.
Were those evaluations clear in
his mind as to, job well done,
we really appreciate what you're
doing, we can do to support the
world that you're taking us down,
and can that be found somewhere in
terms of just the base relationship
between President Rockman and the
board?
Because at some point in time, it
appears that.
There was a quick veer
to the left or quick veers to the
right that what
he was and had been doing
changed and what he
was or wasn't doing going forward
became unacceptable to the board.
And again I'm phrasing that as I'm
phrasing it, it may not be as I
really said, but something
happened at some point that
he went from being a board president
that was, I'm sorry, an assistant
president that was highly supported
by the board to a
systems president that was
very unsupported by the board, for
lack of a better way of saying it,
that ultimately led to his
firing by the United
States Board.
And I'm just, again, I know some of
those things have been alluded to.
It would be, I think, really
beneficial for the systems to
have a track record of what that was
and why.
It could be for very legitimate
reasons, obviously.
Don't doubt that or question that.
But the process for which that was
done, again is somewhat concerning.
I'm just wondering if you can,
kind of on a thousand foot view,
quantify the fact that
what was very supportive
in terms of, was it Rothman's
accomplishments on the board at some
point became very unsupportive
and was that just
out of left field or was that
Growing sentiment over time because
there were hypothetically
20 initiatives that the board really
felt like needed to get done that
weren't or was this a slow,
we just don't see this moving in
the right direction type decision
by the board.
I just want to clarify something.
When I gave Mr.
Rothman his review,
I did, it was really difficult,
somewhat of a 360 review.
And as Mr. Rothman,
his own words, when he
has said publicly in media,
I've given hundreds and hundreds
and hundreds of evaluations he would
tell us all the time.
You've got to give at least four
positives to every negative, okay?
And I was very certain of
myself that I did that.
I gave him many positives to,
you know, at least 4
or 5.
And my Vice President and I, you
now, thought we had that covered,
that we pointed out
the positives and we were happy
with, but then the negatives came.
And he was very disheartened by
those And I'm
very upset by that.
And I was surprised
how upset he was by
that.
These are things that we
tried to work on.
It was not sudden.
It was no sudden.
And Mr. Rothman knows that.
It was ongoing situations that
we had many discussions with him
about.
I didn't want to pile on, so
of course there are many positive
things that are happening.
So it's, you know, in any good
review, you do want to say
the positives, and we all felt
confident that there are positive
things.
But there are things as we
move forward together that
we needed him to work on.
And that's where we got stuck.
And again, this was not overnight.
It was a process that was going on
and on and one.
Until the board completely,
every one of us, lost confidence in
his ability to move forward.
Let me suggest that
we were caught by circumstances,
both Mr. Rothman and the board.
I first got on the board in May
of two years ago, 2024.
The word was, for God's sake Nixon,
keep your mouth shut because we're
in a budget negotiation.
Don't raise any of this stuff, don't
talk about it, we're negotiating a
budget, so don't raise
this stuff.
Okay, fine, we are in a budget
negotiation, I'm not going to raise
this, I'll be good, but that's
really hard for me.
Then, when you passed Act
15 and we went to enforce
it, and I am...
I liked some things in Act 15,
this would get me in trouble, but I
did like some things in Act15
that took an inordinate
amount of time.
So for the period that the budget
was in process in Act-15,
anything that was sort of
boat rocking was pushed
aside.
Okay?
So.
I'm thinking about what you're
saying, Senator.
It's kind of like that's sort of
what happened. We were not publicly
talking about a lot of things
because we were trying not to
rock the boat.
And then we were to implement Act
15 without
a full revolt.
But both those things are done now.
And so now these things have, you're
right, they have sort of stacked up
over time.
And now they're there.
And in
Fairness President Rothman and us.
I kind of think that's a bit of what
happened here was
You know at least for me.
I know they asked me not to say
things out loud, and I didn't
Well by the way may I address the
vice chair quickly?
Two percent is up is
being proposed and talked about
it's not locked in it is not
Seven percent it was five
percent not if you want to get
that's right
Say it.
If you're handing back,
yeah, we're doing, we're proposing,
or they are proposing.
It hasn't been presented to us, it's
just another one of those things
where we have these little
round-robin discussions where
you bring in two regions at a time
and then you brief them so you don't
have to, you know, come through
the thing with everybody.
There are other things that we're
throwing out as well, though,
and whether we do it or not.
It's in the discovery of
what we're looking at.
It's under discussion,
not been brought to us yet.
I just, you know,
as somebody that used to teach at UW
Oshkosh, as a student of UW
Oashkosh UW Milwaukee, I
mean, it's a big deal, affordability
is a big deals. So, we talk about a
transformative leader and we talk
about keeping those tuition costs
down.
Hey, there was a lot of money in the
last budget, current budget,
5% shortly after and another
2% and I've had people reach out
to me.
We can talk about that.
We can talk about that 579
employees that you talked about
there. We can cut that and
save that 2%.
I bet you we could cut 4%.
But 579 people are a lot of
people that if we don't need them,
we only need 50.
That's a good spot to start.
Just throw that out there.
I'm not going to count those.
I was one of the lowest tuitions
in the Big Ten and...
Still, 7% is a lot in two
years. Higher education,
this entire country would all look
to this and say, you know,
when I was in school,
it was a much higher percentage from
the state.
I was very, very happy
because I couldn't afford it.
I still had to take loans out,
but I look at what I paid
and what's being paid by the
students now is a tremendous
difference. So I
would love to work together to
figure out ways to make it more
affordable where we keep quality
education.
You just can't keep cutting where
students lose out.
Just an observation.
Worthy one for sure
Poor president can
can you speak to and certainly
region picks as well the
strategic vision
That the board I'm presuming
put together in 2022
That again, I'm assuming is
all encompassing in terms of the
system in general
Is that strategic vision,
if you will, still in place?
And did it
come out of a
broader discussion with the
board of regents in terms
of who is driving
that strategic division?
Can you speak to President Brotman's
involvement with or lack thereof?
How that vision
garnered, hopefully,
bipartisan agreement in that regard?
And are we still kind of running on
that same strategic vision?
And is there copies of that
somewhere that the board reviews
consistently?
And is that something that's available
to us as a committee also?
I'm sure it is.
I mean, I will definitely check and
get back and get it to you as soon
as I can. I mean, that was in 2022.
I think one of President
or Mr. Rothman's first
jobs and duties was to do that
strategic plan.
And I think he went to work right
away.
I take you brought in constituencies
for that 2022 plan.
I thing one of the
issues was the
board has brought in on the later
side We all
talked about it,
and I think that we all went pro
with it, but now, of course, as...
As you know, things move so
fast and change so fast.
Some of that strategic vision was
carried out.
Some of it really didn't
make sense because things were
changing so quickly.
I don't have it, I apologize, I
can't answer it.
Because I don't have it in front of
me to tell you what we
carried out, what we didn't carry
out.
But part of it going forward is that
we're trying to come up with what is
needed at this moment in time,
which is different from what
happened in 2022.
But I will get you, I know we have
it.
I appreciate that, as we
know, all vision documents
are fluid and forever changing
because times change around us,
so keeping those up to date and
current are always a challenge,
but we're glad to see good
guideposts for where we're
going in a whole variety of things
in our communities.
Great, thank you.
I would just say
that part of the
formula.
Tell me this is not true,
but my understanding is part of the
formula of how much is charged
for tuition is dictated
by how much aid you get from
the state and how much we
support our institutions, and I
believe that percentage has been
in a steady decline.
I know that having
conversations across generations,
there was folks who were
paying nothing
to go to school or could
afford to cover tuition by
working a couple of weeks.
I just did the math.
It would require I believe
38 weeks working
a 40-hour week at minimum
wage to cover
a year's tuition.
So the idea of
working to cover
tuition has
grown on the breach and I believe a
lot of that is because the state's
dedication to the universities
as a percentage of where they're
getting the revenue from has been a
steady decline. Is that correct?
That is correct.
I mean, I think that it's
very fair to say that all our
campuses have food pantries.
There's a lot of food insecurity
because they want to go to school
and they don't have enough.
They don't make enough at their jobs
and many of them work.
And also, you know, I
know a couple students, friends of
my daughter, that lived in their car
the first year.
I mean housing is enormously
expensive. I don't care what campus
you're talking about.
It's very, very expensive.
I mean, it's not just here in our
state, as all of you are very well
aware.
I mean housing is extremely
expensive, food has gone up
enormously.
I mean I go to the grocery store and
I'm in shop.
So for students to be able to
eat themselves, buy books.
It's enormous.
So when we talk about Pell Grants
or tuition remission,
we're not talking about housing.
We're not taking about food.
We're just not talking of just
existing, right?
I mean, families can't
afford this.
They have both parents,
one parent, one guardian, making a
minimum wage, working two jobs.
That's the state of our country
right now.
We're committed to trying to help
address that to make sure it's
accessible to more folks to make
sure that we're not
gatekeeping knowledge, gatekeeping
education, right?
Which is to make sure that you have
a smart population, which is
the Wisconsin idea, and the reason
we have public education is because
we have smart neighbors.
And I just want to add that one
of the biggest populations who are
losing are young men, right?
And to me, that's very, very sad,
because when you're offered a
job at Jiffy Lube with a $1,000
sign-on bonus, that
looks pretty good to you, right,
and to not have the support of
our state to help those
people makes me
sad. And I know that many
of them would rather go, and
even I know friends of
friends that are having a tough time
trying to make a go of it and
it would be great to have
that support, so thank you.
Sir, I received you.
I know, I see the tan.
I think that we
worked very hard on the last budget.
We're not going to sit here and
debate that. We are not going
too. But I fought very hard for
hundreds of millions of dollars for
health care buildings. And what
you're telling me right now is that
maybe shouldn't have been our focus.
It should have been more focused in
other areas. Thank you very much.
I don't know where the solutions
are, but I do know nothing is for
free.
And as we talk about increasing of
tuition, possibly again,
as we talked about compensating that
through tax dollars, nothing is
free. I hope that all of you guys
can work together as well as the
individuals in this building to find
the right number.
But again, you know, you brought up
579 employees.
I mean, that's a lot of bucks.
A lot of bucks.
So as we talk about it in a
responsible fashion, I just hope
that for the people of Wisconsin
that utilize our programs,
that we can find a great solution.
And I don't
I mean, that's part of the
discussion. Is it the 2%?
Is it increase in
funds from the taxpayer pots
that we have here?
I don't know what that is.
All I know is that costs continue to
increase and increase, which is
concerning on many levels.
I mean I can tell you my sad story
about my time attending at UW
schools and the other schools that
I've attended also.
Makes us stronger in the end when we
make it through and then we are
successful. I'm back.
I would just say as a whole I
hope that there will be continued
productive discussions with your
transformative leader, whoever that
might be, to address these issues
so that our taxpayer base
isn't bled and
our students aren't bled.
But you've given two
examples today of things that need
to change.
And I will not forget 579.
I will continue to bring it up every
opportunity because now I think we
can get down to 529.
And all of that money that goes to
those 529
other people can possibly go to the
pockets of our students.
Mr. Rothman has never admitted
that 571 is the wrong number.
Whatever number it is, we can get
down to those tech numbers at 50.
So I look forward to continuing
to talk about those now 529
salaries that can
go to our students' tuitions.
So as the
chair of the committee, I have the
dubious duty of allowing for
some bandwidth of discussion,
which is more than fine,
but I'm also tasked with bringing
you back to our narrow focus for
the respect of your time and the
committee's time as well.
If I can ask, and this goes back
to again, I think concerns we're
hearing from taxpayers in terms of
transparency within all our
agencies, including UW,
and some of those questions
have.
Been prompted by constituents
relative to how the
Board of Regents conducted our
most recent process with President
Rochman.
I'd just like to guess, have some
sense of understanding of the
last two or three
Regent Board meetings.
When did those take place and what
were the topics of those
meetings and were they centered
around?
President Rothman and a
little decision that was going to be
there to Have to be
decided on by the board
and was there a
a comprehensive board meeting
of all of those regions represented
through
that ultimate decision in
the process of your communication
ultimately happening with President
Rothman.
Just, again, I think it's valuable
to understand the process within the
North regions,
knowing that unless we have things
in writing, which maybe we do and
maybe we don't from those board
meetings, a
lot to conjecture with
the citizens of the state as to how
that process did play out,
either very well or not very well,
and covered to that.
So, when you speak to that process
with the board in terms of the
most recent meetings and how they
tied into the development decision
with President Raffna.
I'm trying to go back to
the last
meeting.
Well, we had the meeting on,
I apologize, it's
blurry, but the
meeting we had in closed session was
to discuss a personnel issue
of Mr. Rothman.
And we all discussed where
we were at with his evaluation
and the tasks that we asked him to
do.
And it was a closed session
on that, and I think it was
noticed as a personnel evaluation.
And discussions were had by the full
board.
I believe that every,
I'm trying to think of those full
board, there may have been perhaps
one personnel, but I do think that
one was a full board meeting.
I will get you all this.
I don't remember if there
was one person missing.
And...
We had talked about what comes
next, and that's when we
put the notice out for
his, to discuss Mr.
Ruffin's termination.
I am, I apologize.
I can't remember the meeting before
that when we had a closed session.
It wasn't, it wasn't that far apart,
I don't think.
And then we can get the information.
I will give you the information and
I can tell you that we have
at least, I want to
see the full board
and discussions again about
personnel issues and
it wasn't that far apart
but I can give you those
records I apologize I should
have had it with me
And I know I particularly
have asked for quite a bit of
information here in the hearing.
We're happy to summarize that,
and if that's helpful, because I
know it. Yeah, no, that would be
great.
I tried to write down stuff, but
I...
I think my last
question, which may be profound,
may not be profound.
I just think it's an interesting
question to ask.
Can you remind me
how long Jay Rothen's tenure
was in the role as
systems president?
I think he started in June
of 2022,
is that right?
Okay, so roughly four years.
Mm-hmm. That'd be four years to
stand.
Four years this June.
Okay. As the board president
and as a regent
board member,
if you had to
do it all over again.
Would your decision be different
relative to the hiring
of Jay
Rothman in that role?
If yes, if no,
some context to it?
Yeah, it's just.
To go back and tell the
future. It might not be a perfect
answer to it, I've just got a few
minutes. I mean, that may not be a perfect answer to it.
I'm just kind of curious, because I think it
gives context to
the overall discussion around his
role would be better otherwise,
and the decision that the board
may not only hire him, but also
consequently to dismiss
him.
I would say that I
would stick with what we
did. I think we were proud of that
choice.
I think Mr.
Rothman worked very, very hard.
He didn't come from the sector of
higher education.
He was a lawyer.
With Foley and Lardner, his entire
career, which I give him a lot of
credit for sticking with that.
And he came into this
with a lot of eagerness to do his
best.
And, you know, it's a huge,
difficult role.
So I would say yes, and
it's unfortunate we got to this
point.
I would rather have not done this
and display this
out in public, and I apologize
for that.
But I would I say yes.
I think it was a wise decision at
the time.
And you never know how the future
plays out and the complications of
the world that exist and
how we maneuver that,
so.
I'll run that.
You will, don't worry.
Wait 10 seconds.
I was on the board when President
Rothman was created.
And obviously,
I'm part of the major law firm in
Milwaukee South, pretty familiar
with Mr. Rothman's law firm
and everything.
At the time they did the
hire, I was
pleased it wasn't an academic.
I was pleased they went outside
academia to look for somebody.
Now that was just, that's a
citizen's kind of view of the world,
okay?
Because I tend to believe any
group...
Has too much inbreeding,
whether it's lawyers or academics or
everybody else, right?
They all pick each other.
They all like each other, and
so to bring somebody in from the
outside struck me as a good idea.
In addition, I don't know what their
other choices were.
You know, it's not just in the
abstract. It depends on, OK,
who all applied for this and can we
pick them, but at the time, I
thought it was a good decision, and
I don't think there's anything that
would change me to
say that bringing in an outsider
wasn't a good idea and in fact
some of the results prove that
that's true okay
because I don't know that academics
would have been
as um
I didn't pick a good word there,
but cutting on some of these.
Very good. Appreciate that candid
response to a development question.
I think it gives some
clarity for the decisions that may
have been otherwise and why we're
here today.
That's all good.
The request is
any information shared by
the those who testify to
the chairman share that with all
members of the committee.
Absolutely.
Any other questions
from the committee?
Anybody on the phone with a
question?
Okay. Hearing none, thank you
so much for your time and the
availability to be here and sit
through a committee to answer some
questions.
Thank you very much for that. Thank you for your service
on behalf of the state.
Well, thank you very much for your
service to everyone engaged.
Thank you.
Next up to speak is
Shiri Keltzer.
Can you tell me that again?
Gallant, sir. Oh, that wasn't
terrible, but I wasn't very good
either, so.
Thank you very much.
And now we're going to let
that one down.