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University of Texas employees investigated for child porography viewing
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by cy Waite
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
University of Texas employees investigated for child pornography
By Stacy Waite
College Editor
The University of Texas Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are investigating whether 10 employees at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston accessed child pornography on university computers.
Jane Brust, assistant chief of public affairs at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, said a manager in an unnamed department suspected his employees of accessing restricted sites in the workplace and tipped off university administration.
Brust said the university filed no lawsuit against the center’s employees because no distinction was made between child and legal-age pornography in the university’s initial investigation of the case last September. She said the issue was only raised after the university received a letter from the campus’ audit manager at the time, stating suspicions that the pornography viewed by the employees involved children.
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the university’s ex-audit manager, Cynthia M. Davis, wrote the letter, and shortly after resigned when the university refused to take her conclusions seriously and threatened to retaliate against her department.
“The order of events is very important,” Brust said. “The issue had been dealt with, and a month later, out of the blue came this letter alleging child pornography.”
The employees were issued a written reprimand and a notice prior to Davis’ letter, stating if they accessed pornographic materials on university computers again, they would be terminated.
Brust said the names of the employees were not yet released but were from different areas of expertise, such as physicians and other faculty departments. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Davis wrote in a memo that a certain pediatric dentist used his office computer to view pornographic websites every morning.
The University of Texas police called the FBI for expertise in the allegations, but their investigation is limited to determining whether the pornography viewed by the center’s employees involves children, Brust said.
“The age of a model, even in a full-page magazine ad, is hard to tell, so you can imagine that a smaller image on a computer screen would be significantly harder to discern,” Brust said.
The University of Texas Police Department did not return calls Tuesday.
In response to the viewed pornography and the allegations of the material involving children, the university will install a web filter to prohibit users from connecting to pornographic sites on all university computers accessible to both students and faculty.
“If [an employee or student] were to try to access a pornographic website from a university computer, a screen would pop up, telling [the user] that they can’t go there,” Brust said. “We treat the allegations very seriously, seriously enough to install [the web filter] on all university computers.”
Brust said the university plans to have the filter active within the next month.
Sandra Courter, director of the Engineering Learning Center at the University of Wisconsin, said the correct use of computers on campus is an issue that is taken very seriously.
Courter said that before faculty can set up their electronic e-mail accounts, they must enter a contract with UW to guard against misuse.
“There is a contract that you’re to have read online, and once you consent, you are granted the account,” she said. “Within that (consent) are the ethical practices, and any wise person would follow it very carefully.”
Courter said she was aware of similar cases involving probationary employees who were fired over the issue, but UW handled the incidents extremely well, Courter said.
“The few cases I’m aware of, I’ve been very impressed with how the university handled them,” she said. “I do think our people at UW are on top of things.”
