Opinion

Bascomgate

The University of Wisconsin — and the public at large — has known since March that Lewis Keith Cohen is something more than just an unsavory character. He has admitted to charges involving the electronic transmission of child pornography and using the Internet to arrange for a sexual rendezvous with a 14-year-old boy.

That Mr. Cohen is a professor at UW is almost beside the point. With so many individuals on staff, the school is bound to discover a few rotten apples in its midst.

Rather, what comes as so supremely disturbing is the manner with which the school has handled this disheartening affair.

The Badger Herald learned from the chair of the Department of Comparative Literature that Mr. Cohen has in fact been back on the UW campus for some time now, possibly never missing so much as a day of work because of that pesky predatory conviction. Mr. Cohen has remained in his office within Van Hise hall all this time. Parents on campus were given no warning to keep their children away from the building. Former students of Mr. Cohen's could have wandered by at any point and an office was being occupied by a man who has turned Vladimir Nabokov's finest work on its head.

A veritable mountain of red tape has apparently prevented the university from terminating Mr. Cohen, although with media pressure quickly descending upon the school late Thursday, this process seems to have been sped up exponentially. But UW had a choice to make when it became clear that prison would not hold Mr. Cohen off campus: allow the convicted felon to continue residing at UW, or place him on paid administrative leave and protect the children of Madison.

The school apparently opted for the former. And while word has now come down that the more responsible course of action will be heretofore followed through upon, it comes as too little, too late. Once again Bascom has acted in a supremely reckless manner. And with every passing day, we must wonder how badly this university must be marred before a policy of openness and sensible decision making will be implemented.

Once again, the words "cover up" seem all too apt. A dirty secret has been kept from the student body — and public at large — for which UW has seemingly no rational explanation. Only when the press applied pressure was the proper course of events embarked upon, and we are becoming increasingly aware that, given the school's cries of innocence and stammering pronouncements that all that can be done is being done, a massive cover-up has been perpetrated upon the good people of Madison.