The report issued by the state Legislative Audit Bureau yesterday detailing felons employed by the University of Wisconsin System hits home as troubling for both the criminal information it finally shares with the public and that which it conspicuously leaves absent.

Of the 40 convicted felons working for the System as of Sept. 2005, 27 of them — or 67.5 percent — worked on the Madison campus. Yet UW-Madison employs only about 40 percent of those working in the System. That these numbers are so clearly out of whack presents a disturbing dichotomy. Steven S. Clark, Lewis Keith Cohen and Roberto Coronado are not the only serious felons to have populated this family-friendly environment last fall, as The Badger Herald has now learned that the two System employees with homicide convictions were also members of the Madison payroll.

Unfortunately, the numbers presented in this audit likely represent only a fraction of the felons employed by the UW System, as the audit included only felonies committed within the state of Wisconsin, failing to take into consideration those that may have been committed in other states.

As a result, the audit may be particularly skewed for campuses such as UW-La Crosse, UW River Falls and UW-Platteville, among others, as these campuses are located near the border of other states. They are all absent from the list of schools employing felons.

Nonetheless, we are also led to ask why other certain UW campuses, including La Crosse and Whitewater, managed to survive this audit without the revelation of so much as a single felon on their respective payrolls. Why couldn't the other UW schools have achieved a similar clean slate?

Here in Madison, the unfolding truth of felonious staff on campus is cause for concern. The nature of the other 22 felons on this flagship campus remains vague and we look forward to reviewing more details as they emerge over the coming days.

In all of this, it is paramount to understand that not all felonies are equal and not all felons are equal. For an employer of UW's size, it is to be expected that certain members of the payroll will have unsavory histories. The majority of those listed in this report are categorized as classified staff members, which is to say that high-level administrators and campus professors — other than the three aforementioned convicts — are likely not the bearers of serious criminal histories.

There are still plenty of questions to be asked, including — but not limited to — how four incarcerated individuals remained on the payroll as of November, considering that they likely were not able to fulfill their job requirements from behind bars. What was the nature of the felonies committed by 15 employees after they began their employment and should such offenses have constituted grounds for dismissal? Are any of those convicted of sexually assaulting a child or various drug charges working in campus daycare facilities or research laboratories, and do they have regular contact with students? And why did it take an LAB audit to inform the System that so many of its employees are convicted felons?

With yesterday's report, plenty of pressing questions were answered. But, indeed, many more must now begin to be asked.