
Dr. Roy Lewicki’s Letter to President Drake
Dear Dr. Drake,
I am writing to you with regard to the 3555–5–04 complaint filed against Dr. Deborah Mitchell (respondent; clinical associate professor in the Fisher College of Business) by Mr. Paul Velasco (complainant; former staff employee of the Fisher College of Business). As you may be aware, Dr. Mitchell appeared before the Faculty Senate Panel at a hearing on April 29, 2019, as part of her appeal process regarding this complaint and previous findings at the College and Provost levels. I submitted a Declaration and personal testimony to the Committee on her behalf, and I am attaching that Declaration to this email communication. I unequivocally state that I do not believe that her conduct rises to the judgment of either ‘willful’ or ‘grave’ misconduct.
I believe that the College and University has made an unsupportable mistake in recommending her termination. Let me briefly spell out the reasons for coming to that conclusion:
1) The judgment and sanction against Dr. Mitchell provided by the Faculty Senate Hearing Panel, appear to be arbitrary and not consistent with the evidence presented.
In particular, her dismissal was based on the judgment that she committed ‘willful, grave/gross misconduct.’ The standards for meeting that charge are ambiguous in the University’s regulations, and the standards for meeting any lesser charge are not spelled out at all in the regulations. In short, both College and University Committees are required to make an arbitrary judgment about whether the allegations meet the standard of ‘willful’ and ‘grave’, without any guidelines as to what constitutes the threshold for meeting that standard, or whether her conduct might meet any of the (undefined) lesser standards in the policy.
Of critical importance, the Faculty Senate Hearing Panel apparently did not pay attention to significant evidence presented in the case in her support, including written declarations and testimony from three Fisher faculty members as well as written statements from the Ohio Department of Medicaid. This evidence clearly supports a decision of something different from ‘willful’ and ‘grave’.
2) The handling of the 3555–5–04 complaint against Dr. Mitchell by the Fisher College of Business is a travesty of procedural fairness and due process.
Mr. Velasco’s complaint was filed 18 months after the alleged violation, and without ever engaging with or informing Dr. Mitchell. The case sat in the Fisher Dean’s office for approximately eight months before it was picked up by the College Investigations Committee. This is after Dr. Mitchell’s department chairman found her to be innocent of the charges (within the initial 30-day window from the complaint being filed). By the time the College Investigations Committee provided a report to the Fisher dean, and he then again sat on the matter, it was not until mid-August 2018 that the Fisher dean provided a decision regarding the January 3, 2017 allegations filed against Dr. Mitchell — i.e., roughly 19 months after the complaint was filed, and more than three years after the alleged incident occurred.
The College Investigations Committee unreasonably relied on information from an employee in the original complainant’s office (i.e., Mr. Velasco, the Director who filed the January 2017 complaint, and was dismissed by the College due to poor job performance), without giving significant time to Dr. Mitchell to verify or rebut that information.
In addition, and as noted above regarding the Faculty Senate Hearing Panel, the rationale for the College Investigations Committee’s judgment and recommendations also appears to have relied on selective and limited information, and discounted compelling information that would not support a charge of either ‘willful’ or ‘grave’.
In short, this case of significant magnitude, which should have been resolved promptly to protect the best interests of the complainant and the respondent, has dragged on for over three years. During these years, there has also been bias in how evidence has been solicited and considered. I would consider these multiple procedural violations to be significant mitigating circumstances in any decision on the case.
3) Finally, the essence of these allegations are that Dr. Mitchell solicited and accepted a personal consulting arrangement with a client who was ‘discovered’ through Fisher Executive Education, and used intellectual property to which Executive Education claims ownership.
Dr. Mitchell has most credibly challenged both elements of this charge.
Further, the University’s policy states that in charges of this nature,
“As appropriate, department chairs, deans ,…. Will attempt, through the use of informal consultation, to resolve complaints to their satisfaction and that of the complainant.”
YET NO EFFORTS WERE MADE BY THE INITIATING UNIT OR THE DEAN’s OFFICE to follow this practice. Given that the charges state that her conduct denied revenue to Fisher Executive Education, a significant financial settlement could have been pursued at multiple points in this process, and other mechanisms of remediation could have been employed. Instead, the College has chosen to pursue a process that denied her both the opportunity to settle the grievance informally, and resolve the dispute locally. This failure has lead to an unnecessarily protracted process involving thousands of faculty and staff hours, and funds to pursue.
Collectively this breakdown may cost the University a gifted, dedicated instructor and valued faculty member, who is also an alumnus of The Ohio State University.
For these reasons, I ask you to reconsider and overturn the recommendation of the Faculty Senate Hearing Panel. The charges are not substantiated on either outcome or procedural grounds.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to present my concerns to you.
Roy J. Lewicki
Abramowitz Professor of Management and Human Resources Emeritus Fisher College of Business

