The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse’s former chancellor, Joe Gow, is facing unanimous recommendations for termination from the UW-La Crosse faculty committee. The committee cited his involvement in, promotion of, authorship of, and earnings from pornographic content as grounds for this decision. Additionally, Gow’s lack of cooperation with the ongoing investigation was taken into consideration.
Gow lost his role as a high-ranking university administrator back in December when the scandal first came to light, but has been allowed to keep his tenured faculty status. The university’s new chancellor, James Beeby, is now tasked with deciding whether to accept or veto the committee’s ruling, which will completely sever Gow’s ties with the state university.
Factors that contributed to Gow’s initial termination and the committee’s recent decision include his use of the university email system to receive communications from vendors about sexual products and to purchase pornography books from Amazon, publicly mentioning his UW position in videos, and his 2018 decision to pay thousands of students’ tuition dollars to a porn actress for a lecture.
According to the report, the investigating committee advises terminating Gow due to what the document describes as “unethical and potentially illegal conduct.” The report also criticizes his actions as indicative of “poor judgment” for a member of the UW faculty.
