Dean Resigns After Giving Glowing Reference About Employee Fired for Purchasing Porn

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The University of Florida’s dean of students gave a glowing job reference for an ex-employee — and ended up losing her own job because of it.

Jen Day Shaw, who also held the title of associate vice president for student affairs, abruptly resigned this week. The university was ready to show Ms. Shaw the door if she had not left voluntarily.

Ms. Shaw made “a critical error in judgment,” university officials said, when she provided a very positive written reference for Chris Loschiavo, who was seeking a job as Title IX coordinator for Florida Polytechnic University. Mr. Loschiavo had previously been associate dean of students at the University of Florida, but he was fired last summer under a cloud.

University officials now say that Mr. Loschiavo lost his job because “he used his UF work computer account to purchase pornography.” The university criticized Ms. Shaw, who was his superior, for writing a reference that included “misleading and incomplete information.”

“I am serving as a reference for Chris Loschiavo,” she wrote to Florida Polytechnic officials on March 17. “Fantastic. Incredibly knowledgeable. Amazing work ethic. Superb supervisor. Strategic. Great collaboration. My very highest endorsement!!!”

Florida Polytechnic hired Mr. Loschiavo on April 17. He was fired a month later when he admitted to his new employer that the pornography purchases had been an issue in the past.

“Mr. Loschiavo disclosed it to us on the afternoon of May 18,” wrote Maggie M. Mariucci, a spokeswoman for Florida Polytechnic. “Subsequently the basis of his termination was the failure to fully disclose information that would have been critical to the selection process for the Title IX coordinator position.”

Reached by The Chronicle, Ms. Shaw declined to comment. Mr. Loschiavo would only say that the X-rated DVDs he purchased on eBay were bought at home, on his personal computer, outside of working hours. Mr. Loschiavo said that his mistake was forgetting that he had set up his receipts to automatically go to his university email account.

Those receipts, which became public records, show purchases such as “Wild Wet T.Com 13 Dream Girls Gone Wild 18+" and “Deep Sleep Threesome Sleeping Sex.”

Ethical Questions

The forced ouster of Ms. Shaw rekindles a question that higher education has struggled with: How forthcoming should colleges be about the transgressions of their former employees? Some institutions have been criticized for not disclosing sexual-harassment claims against faculty who later landed jobs elsewhere.

Mr. Loschiavo’s position in handling complaints filed under the federal gender-equity law known as Title IX also raises another issue: Should Title IX coordinators be held to a higher standard of conduct than other university employees? The position, which he held at both the University of Florida and Florida Polytechnic, requires rendering judgment on allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault.

“What will happen as a result of this is that a lot of institutions will sit down with their Title IX coordinators and talk through what they think the appropriate boundaries are,” said Peter F. Lake, a law professor at Stetson University with an expertise in higher-education law. Going forward, Mr. Lake speculated about the possibility of colleges adding “morals clauses” to the employment contracts of Title IX coordinators — just like the contracts signed by star professional athletes.

The staff shake-up at the University of Florida can be traced to an ongoing — and escalating — dispute between university leaders and a local Gainesville lawyer known for representing college athletes who get in trouble. It was that lawyer, Huntley Johnson, who asked for investigations into both Mr. Loschiavo and Ms. Shaw. Mr. Johnson’s law office had previously interacted with both of the former University of Florida employees in Title IX cases.

Mr. Johnson’s law partner, Amy Osteryoung, said “the university will be a better place without Ms. Shaw. We consider this to be step one in what we hope will be more steps to come.”

Before the pornography issue surfaced, Mr. Johnson had accused Mr. Loschiavo of having a conflict of interest on Title IX cases, as the university administrator was also a consultant for the Ncherm Group, which advises colleges on various risk issues, including how to comply with Title IX. A University of Florida internal audit, released several months after Mr. Loschiavo left the university, found that he had “both a conflict of interest and a lack of independence” when it came to one particular Title IX case. The name of that case, however, was redacted when the audit was released to the public.

When Mr. Loschiavo landed a new job at Florida Polytechnic, Mr. Johnson pulled his personnel file at the new employer through a public-records request. It was in that personnel file that he found Ms. Shaw’s positive reference for him.

In a May 18 letter to University of Florida leaders, Mr. Johnson wrote that the reference represented “arrogance” and a “reckless disregard for the truth.”

“Jen Day Shaw is aware of why Mr. Loschiavo was fired,” he wrote.

Less than two weeks later, Ms. Shaw was out of a job.

Michael Vasquez is a senior investigative reporter. Follow him on Twitter @MrMikeVasquez, or email him at michael.vasquez@chronicle.com.