An audit of the University of Wisconsin System released Tuesday revealed 40 felons were employed within the system as of late last year.

The Joint Legislative Audit Committee compared the Sept. 2005 payroll to the Department of Corrections' list of convicted felons, including only those who have been convicted of one or more felonies and remain under supervision because courts have determined they "may continue to pose a risk to others," according to the audit.

According to David Walsh, president of the UW Board of Regents, the findings of the audit are welcome as part of an ongoing process of personnel policies and practices in the UW System.

"We asked for this audit," he said. "We're looking for all the facts and we're going to follow up on this."

The audit also noted some felons may have been missed, as criminal records from jurisdictions in other states were not included in the investigation.

UW-Madison was found to have employed 27 of the reported felons, amounting to two-thirds of the total and numbering 23 more than next highest campus, UW-Milwaukee.

While some, such as Rep. Scott Suder, R-Abbottsford, believe this number is "shocking," UW law professor Walter Dickey noted "in a school as large as this, for us to have 27 doesn't seem like an extremely large number."

Following UW-Madison, the next largest concentration, four, was at UWM; and the remaining came from UW campuses at Oshkosh, Stevens Point, Eau Claire, Green Bay and Extension campuses. One employee who had been convicted of a felony was from UW System administration, but has since been removed from her position for performance reasons, according to UW System spokesperson Doug Bradley.

Twenty-five of the felons were convicted prior to their employment with UW.

A UW System release yesterday noted the total number of convicted felons reported in the audit amount to less than one-tenth of one percent of the system's 41,000-plus employees, and that 12 of those identified in the audit are no longer employed by the university system.

The audit was commissioned by the Legislative Audit Bureau in November at the request of UW System President Kevin Reilly; it came in direct response to the revelation that three convicted felons were employed at UW-Madison.

Medical school professor Roberto Coronado, currently serving eight years in prison for child molestation, was released from employment at UW-Madison last month.

In addition to Coronado, medical school professor Steven Clark is serving a one-year sentence for stalking.

And Lewis Keith Cohen, a comparative literature professor, was sentenced to 30 days in jail and eight years probation in the summer for child enticement and using the Internet to send explicit material to a child.

Controversy flared last fall when it was revealed that Cohen had returned to work at the university, commuting from jail to campus for work release.

Clark and Cohen have not yet been terminated from their positions, but the university has taken steps to fire them, and is currently awaiting completion of appeals processes in both cases.

Additionally, the Board of Regents recently completed a proposal which would expedite the process of terminating felons found to pose risk to students or other staff in their position at the university.

According to Darrell Bazzell, vice chancellor for administration at UW-Madison, the university has looked into all 27 Madison employees mentioned in the audit and all but two of the felons committed crimes that did not relate to their positions at the university. The other two, he said, "do not pose health or safety concerns" but are performing other work now as the investigation continues.

Bazzell noted there are a large number of convicted felons working in the state of Wisconsin, and the university, like other state institutions, is careful to allow these people to be employed in only safe positions.

"We would not do anything to put our campus at risk," he said. "But we cannot deny [former felons] positions if they do not pose a risk in those positions."

Walsh expressed a similar outlook, noting there must be a nexus between the felon's crime and its relation to the person's job at the university for that person's employment to be terminated.

"It would be very cavalier of me to say no one should be nervous [with the audit's findings]," he said. "But we have a responsibility to make people safe and to rehabilitate convicts in this state."

On the other hand, Suder said he believes the UW System is "not an institution for rehabilitating murders and child sex offenders."

Suder said he will be pushing for the termination of some of the listed felons, most specifically those with violent felonies who have "no reason to be on the payroll."

The 40 employees reported by the audit combined for a total of 54 felony convictions, nine of which were categorized as violent felonies. Two of these counts were homicide, which date to the 1970s; The Badger Herald has learned that these employees were from UW-Madison.

Other violent felonies included five counts of sexual assault of a child by four employees; two were convicted in the 1990s, and the other two were convicted since 2004.

Robbery, battery, theft, drug possession, operating a vehicle while intoxicated, fraud and forgery were among the other felonies listed in the audit.

"The magnitude of the crimes as well as the number should be alarming," Suder said. "If I was a university student, I would want to know where they are and whether they're working with students."

Yet Dickey said the audit's findings shouldn't make those at the university feel unsafe.

"This tag [of convicted felon] covers such a broad swath of territory," he said. "To assume that automatically means people are at risk is an unwarranted assumption."

The felons listed in the audit comprise varied employment categories; the 40 total felons include four academic staff, three faculty members, one graduate assistant and 32 classified staff.

According to Bradley, classified staff members are state civil service employees, working in areas such as food service, janitorial work and office support personnel. Because they are state represented, classified employees fall under the jurisdiction of the Office of State Employment Relations.

Among the recommendations made by the audit was that UW should conduct internal investigations to determine if the convictions are substantially job-related, and to determine the types of university jobs for which background checks should be conducted.