In February the CU Boulder Office of Institutional Equity (OIEC) initiated an inquiry into the university’s response to allegations that former assistant football coach Joe Tumpkin abused a woman with whom he had a relationship. Today the university is concluding that inquiry and releasing its findings, which include the actions President Benson intends to take with the unanimous support of the board after reviewing the facts.
Before going any further, I would like to apologize again on behalf of the university to the woman who brought this to our attention. We cannot and will not tolerate domestic violence.
To help us with the inquiry, the university hired two of the nation’s most prominent law firms in this field, Cozen O’Conner and WilmerHale. Cozen O’Connor partners Gina Maisto Smith and Leslie Gomez are nationally recognized experts in college and university responses to sexual misconduct and intimate partner violence. They conducted the inquiry.
WilmerHale partners Ken Salazar, Bruce Berman and Danielle Conley have acted as outside counsel to the board and president to ensure our process was thorough and unbiased. The three of them represent tremendous expertise in higher education Title IX investigations, sexual misconduct policy, and high-profile, complex investigations.
The experts we retained and the time we took to conduct this inquiry should be clear indicators of the seriousness with which we took our responsibility to ascertain how university personnel responded when the allegations against Tumpkin surfaced and what actions, if any, the university should take in response. The process turned out to be longer than any of us originally thought or wanted. But we were not going to be rushed on such an important matter.
Our goal was to get this right, both in our findings and our actions. We thank the university community and the community-at-large for their patience as we conducted this process with the thoroughness and care we thought it deserved.
This process was one of deep collaboration between the president and the board. At the end of the day, final decisions on any management and personnel matters are rightfully the purview of the chief executive, not the board. We have spent many hours discussing this matter and possible outcomes with President Benson. He has had the benefit of hearing the full spectrum of board member viewpoints. In our role as the Board of Regents, we respect his responsibility as CU’s chief executive to make the final decisions and to oversee their implementation.
Finally, I want to thank my fellow board members and President Benson for the manner in which they have engaged in this process. Our discussions were often spirited, but they always were focused on arriving at the fairest conclusions in keeping with the values and integrity of our great university.
Irene Grigio,
Regent, University of Colorado
