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Civil suit alleges discrimination at UW-Whitewater

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Photo by Associated Press

This 2006 picture provided by the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater shows Howard Ross. Ross, the school's former dean of letters and sciences, is suing several university officials for racial discrimination and retaliation. His case is expected to go to trial Monday, Feb. 8, 2010.

A trial expected to get under way this week will recall an ugly chapter at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, when two black administrators were each demoted within months for misusing university credit cards.

The university removed its graduate studies dean, Lee Jones, after an investigation in 2005 found he repeatedly broke rules on travel and credit card spending. Months later, the university demoted Howard Ross from his 13-yeartype:italic; position as dean of letters and sciences when an audit suggested he couldn't account for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Both cases stung, coming as lawmakers were scrutinizing wasteful spending in the UW System and the southeastern Wisconsin school of 10,000 students was trying to improve diversity.

Ross has claimed he was the victim of a witch hunt and guilty at most of shoddy record keeping that is routine on campus. He claims he was treated unfairly by an auditor who once said she wished black people were honest like Michael Jordan and by administrators angry that he questioned his treatment publicly.

His civil lawsuit alleging discrimination and retaliation by several university officials will be heard this week in U.S. District Court in Milwaukee.

Ross has continued to work as a professor of philosophy and religious studies at UW-Whitewater even as his lawyers have tried to expose the audit as flawed and prove white administrators with similar problems were excused and promoted.

"What we'll be talking with the jury about is the inequitable treatment of people, and the unfairness of the way they were administering the university," said Ross' attorney, Robert Kasieta. "Speaking as a taxpayer, I'm offended by what I saw happening at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater."