Women Say Her Husband Harassed. Now She’s Under Fire.

U. of Wisconsin at Whitewater

What did the chancellor know of her husband’s lingering hugs with younger women or where his unwelcome hands came to rest?

Those are the uncomfortable questions that now confront Beverly A. Kopper, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater. An investigation, the details of which were made public last week, concluded that Alan (Pete) Hill, Kopper’s husband, had sexually harassed women employed on the campus. As a result, Hill was stripped of his honorary title of associate chancellor, an unpaid position, and banned from the campus.

Now more women are coming forward. One, a former graduate student who worked in the chancellor’s office, described to The Chronicle multiple instances of sexual harassment by Hill, who she says hugged her despite her complaints, kissed her neck, and told her he was attracted to her.

As the allegations mount, pressure is growing on Kopper to resign, and the university system says yet another investigation is warranted.

“Given the University of Wisconsin System’s unwavering commitment to provide a safe educational and work environment, we are opening a new investigation into the most recent allegations related to UW-Whitewater,” Heather LaRoi, a spokeswoman for the system, said in a written statement.

Hill, whom The Chronicle attempted to reach through his lawyer and his wife, did not respond to detailed descriptions of the new allegations. He has previously denied wrongdoing.

The University of Wisconsin System’s previous investigation, which was first reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, looked into allegations brought by two anonymous women, who both described unwelcome touching by Hill. A report on the investigation also noted that two other unnamed women had been contacted about “their reputed experiences” with Hill, but declined to speak on the record because they feared retaliation.

The investigation concluded that Hill’s “physical acts have taken place frequently enough to be considered pervasive.”

Two other women, one of whom spoke with The Chronicle and another who detailed her harassment allegations in a lengthy Facebook post, are now speaking publicly about Hill. Both also say that Kopper is culpable in part for the harassment and that she should resign.

Kopper, in a statement on Tuesday, said she had been blindsided by the allegations against her husband.

“Throughout my role as an educator I always have encouraged everyone to follow the official process for reporting allegations of misconduct, no matter who is involved,” she wrote. “I have always implemented proper procedures in such situations.

“I was notified by the UW System about the allegations involving my husband,” she continued, “and they took me completely by surprise.

“At the end of the independent UW System investigation, I concurred with the need for disciplinary action, and I immediately implemented it. My focus remains on a commitment to excellence at UW-Whitewater,” she said.

In an email exchange, Kopper did not respond directly to The Chronicle’s questions about whether she believed her husband’s accusers, and records show that she quibbled with some of the investigation’s findings.

“I do have concerns regarding certain statement [sic] of facts and interpretations made by the investigator in the report,” Kopper wrote to Raymond W. Cross, the system’s president, on July 10.

The email was provided to The Chronicle in response to a public-records request.

‘Can I Really Say No?’

Hailey Miller first met Hill in 2015, when she was a 22-year-old graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in higher-education leadership. Given her area of study, Miller was happy to accept a position as graduate-student assistant in the chancellor’s office, where she answered phones and did clerical work.

It was impossible to miss Pete Hill, a gregarious man who commanded an audience whenever he entered the office, she says. He was charismatic. He made everyone laugh.

Miller says she was unaware that Hill had any formal role on the campus, and she found it curious that he would ask her to scan personal documents that appeared related to real-estate deals or taxes.

“When he would come in and ask me to scan these documents,” she says, “it was like ‘Oh, he’s the chancellor’s husband. Can I really say no?’”

In time, Miller says, the two started conversing about their shared interests in higher education. But Miller says she was uncomfortable with Hill’s routine of hugging her with each hello, so much so that she started documenting her interactions with him.

In contemporaneous notes, which she shared with The Chronicle, Miller recorded an exchange on July 29, 2016, at approximately 1:45 p.m. Hill stopped at her office doorway, she wrote, and “walked behind my desk with his arms open, looking for a hug.” As she stood up to hug him, Hill said, “damn.” He embraced Miller, longer than she was comfortable with, and asked, “How long can we do this?” she recorded.

Hill “kissed my neck,” she wrote, and “as I pulled away, he slapped my lower back.”

Miller considered reporting the incident but decided not to, jotting down her rationale in notes on her phone.

“I did not immediately report this because I don’t want it to have a negative impact on my job or my graduate-school career in the semester before I graduate,” she wrote. “I am afraid of potential retribution if I report sexual harassment against the chancellor’s husband. Although Pete Hill should more than know that his actions are inappropriate, I believe he is using his authority and access to young women to further his own wants.”

The Sweet Spot

When Miller read the details of the university’s investigation last week, she says, she identified with a woman who had told officials she was reluctant to report Hill’s harassment because she feared it would put her job — and her health insurance — in jeopardy. The woman told investigators of three incidents, in 2015 and 2018, including one in which Hill grabbed her knee at least three times under a table at a function where the chancellor was seated nearby. (Hill told investigators that he was massaging a calf cramp, and that he had moved the woman’s leg away to reach it.)

Despite Miller’s discomfort, she saw Hill as a potential resource. She was interested in the intersection of higher-education leadership and athletics, an area where Hill had some expertise by virtue of his fund-raising role. Shortly after her uncomfortable exchange with Hill at her office, Miller agreed to meet him at The Sweet Spot, an off-campus coffee shop, to discuss his fund raising and how she might get involved in it as part of her practicum.

Miller says she was expecting an uncomfortable embrace, even though she had told Hill, “I’m not a hugger.” Hill’s response, reflected in Miller’s notes of the meeting, was that they would “have to practice” hugging.

“At that point, I was 23 years old, and I know I don’t want to hug you,” Miller says. “I’m not 13; there’s no kind of confusion. He just didn’t take no for an answer.”

In an interview with investigators, Hill, who has three adult children, said he frequently hugs both men and women in professional settings, rather than shaking hands. “I don’t discriminate,” he said. The report concluded, however, that even on a smaller campus like Whitewater, where the “standards for professional gatherings may be different” than in a larger city, Hill’s behavior crossed the line.

“This does not explain walking into a female colleague’s office without invitation and giving her a long bear hug, or kissing her in a conference room,” the report states. “It doesn’t explain touching a female colleague and making a suggestive comment about her appearance. And no informal standard of professional behavior encompasses grabbing a woman’s knee under the tablecloth.”

At the coffee shop, Miller says, Hill continued to make her uncomfortable. He had brought printouts of PowerPoint slides, and he sidled up close to her as he discussed them.

“He would then angle his body so we were closer than we needed to be,” Miller says. “It wasn’t uncomfortable to the point where somebody else in the coffee shop would realize, but we were sitting very close to each other.”

Then, she says, “he flat-out told me that ‘I’m very attracted to you, but I’m sure you know that already.’”

Miller’s notes reflect the exchange.

Miller told her mother at the time that she was uncomfortable with Hill, and her mother confirmed to The Chronicle that she recalled the conversation. Her mother advised Miller to steer clear of Hill, and she said in an interview that she regretted not urging her daughter to report it.

Miller also shared her concerns with a friend who was beginning her graduate studies at Whitewater. The friend, who asked not to be identified because she did not want to insert herself into the news coverage, confirmed to The Chronicle that the two had talked about Hill less than a year ago. When Miller’s friend heard about the investigation into Hill, she says, she immediately texted Miller to confirm that Hill was the person they had discussed.

After the coffee-shop meeting, Miller says, she developed strategies to protect herself from Hill’s unwelcome advances. In August 2016, while working at a golf tournament to raise money for Warhawk athletics, Miller says, she made sure she was always holding a clipboard or a box of brochures in Hill’s presence so that there would be a physical barrier between them.

According to Miller’s notes from the event, she told her fellow female graduate students that “Pete likes to get close and likes to hug, so they should be aware of that.”

Guns and Ugly Women

Working in the chancellor’s office, Miller sensed that at least one other person appeared to tense up around Hill. But she says she never discussed the issue with co-workers or her supervisor, Kari Heidenreich, the chancellor’s assistant.

Heidenreich was present in the chancellor’s suite, however, on August 4, 2016, when Hill made two inappropriate comments, according to Miller’s notes. The first was a joke that Miller says she did not entirely follow about “why men prefer guns to women.” Hill then mentioned, Miller says, that “ugly women only get love past 1 a.m.”

Miller says that Heidenreich laughed, as did Sara Kuhl, the assistant vice chancellor for university marketing and communications. That response did not necessarily surprise Miller, who says she often deflected Hill’s advances with laughter.

Heidenreich did not reply to an email detailing the incident, nor did she respond to a voicemail. Kuhl also declined to respond to direct questions about the incident, beyond saying that she respected the university’s process for dealing with reports of wrongdoing.

On another occasion, Miller says, she was alone with Hill in a conference room in the chancellor’s suite when he looked out of the large uncovered windows and remarked that “we have to get curtains on those windows.” In the context of what Miller viewed as Hill’s serial harassment, she interpreted the comment as yet another sexual innuendo.

“Maybe he just thought it was too sunny in the room,” Miller says, “but I interpreted it as he wanted curtains so people wouldn’t be able to see in and see what was going on. You obviously don’t need curtains if you’re having a meeting. If you have other ideas of what can go on in that room, maybe you want curtains.”

‘You Put Us in His Path’

Miller’s allegations come on the heels of new charges leveled by Stephanie Goettl Vander Pas, a Whitewater city councilwoman who says that Hill harassed her during her years as an undergraduate at Whitewater.

Vander Pas detailed her allegations last weekend on Facebook in an open letter to Kopper, the chancellor. The councilwoman wrote that Hill had commented on her body and her weight loss, and told her he was attracted to her. Vander Pas said that she holds Kopper partly responsible for this treatment.

“I don’t purport to be a marriage expert,” Vander Pas wrote on Facebook. “I do believe I know the content of my husband’s character — and I believe you do, too. I believe you know and understand who he is and what he’s done. I believe he violated your trust, but I refuse to hold you harmless for my pain and the pain of others — because you put us in his path — and you either knew or were irresponsible enough not to know. For that, we deserve better. I’m asking you to resign.”

The Chronicle was unable to reach Vander Pas for an interview, but she told the Journal Sentinel that she had related her experiences in an email that she sent on Monday night to Cross, the system’s president.

The pressure on Kopper to resign is likely to keep mounting, Vander Pas said.

“I absolutely think Beverly should resign before things get worse for her, and they will,” she told the Journal Sentinel. “Women are starting to feel OK about coming forward, and they will not stop coming forward.”

Miller agrees.

“Without Chancellor Kopper being on campus, Pete Hill wouldn’t have been on campus,” she wrote in an email to The Chronicle. “Indirectly, she is responsible. I put blind trust in her that she wouldn’t put the campus at risk. Maybe that trust was naïve of me, but it was broken nonetheless, and the pain hurts the same.

“In my eyes,” she went on, “Chancellor Kopper did great things for the university. I believe she still could. However, I do not believe she deserves to lead UWW after this. It was her responsibility to keep the campus safe, and she did not do that.”

Jack Stripling covers college leadership, particularly presidents and governing boards. Follow him on Twitter @jackstripling, or email him at jack.stripling@chronicle.com.