Feb 26, 2014

Last year, members of the current University administration became aware of serious allegations that had been made in the past regarding a professor in the Music Department, Robert Miller.

Initially, these allegations were related to alleged sexual misconduct on his part with minors off campus.

The allegations originally dated to 2006, 2008 and 2011.

In February of 2013, a faculty member brought a letter she had received in 2011 containing allegations about Miller to the attention of the new dean of the School of Fine Arts, Brid Grant.

Dean Grant immediately notified appropriate university personnel.

UConn Police immediately opened a criminal investigation and worked with the Connecticut State Police and Virginia law enforcement.

In June 2013, as part of the criminal investigation, a search warrant was executed at Miller's residence. The information in the warrant received press attention.

Soon thereafter, another faculty member received allegations of possible misconduct involving Miller and UConn students. These were the first allegations involving UConn directly.

Within 48 hours of the first report of those allegations, President Herbst met with senior UConn leadership and directed that the university administration do the following:

• Broaden the scope of the police investigation.
• Commence a Title IX investigation.
• Commence a personnel investigation of Miller.
• Engage an outside forensic investigator to assist in the inquiries.
• Hire outside Special Counsel to do an independent investigation of the University's handling of the allegations.

That is the report we are receiving today.

The president sought to hire outside counsel because she and her leadership team were concerned that the allegations made in earlier years may not have been properly handled by University personnel at the time they were received.

In light of that, the president believed that the University's prior actions needed to be independently reviewed and evaluated ' and that the independent counsel needed to report directly to the board so that they could remain completely independent from the University administration.

She recommended that the investigation be conducted under the board's supervision and that the Board of Trustees form a committee to oversee it.

The Board agreed and formed the Special Committee for Investigation, with myself as the chair.

The attorney general's office selected the firm of Drinker Biddle and Reath as Special Counsel to undertake the independent investigation and produce a report of their findings.

The special committee was briefed regularly by the firm throughout this review.

Special Counsel's initial draft report, including their independent conclusions, were presented to the special committee orally on Jan. 29, 2014.

Special Counsel's report was received by the committee on Feb. 24, Monday of this week.

The committee met this morning in open session and voted to formally accept the report.

The Special Counsel team at Drinker Biddle and Reath was led by Scott Coffina, a former deputy White House counsel and a former United States attorney.

 

(Mr. Coffina presented report to Board of Trustees in open session. Presentation was followed by questions from board members before Chairman McHugh's remarks continued, as reflected below).

I want to first thank Drinker Biddle and Reath for the enormous amount of work they have done on this.

To underscore Mr. Coffina's comments: they interviewed dozens and dozens of staff, faculty, students and individuals outside of the University.

They reviewed tens of thousands of records. This was a very complex and time-consuming undertaking.

I would also like to acknowledge current university employees, as well as those former employees who agreed to be interviewed, and who gave the Drinker Biddle and Reath team unfettered access to themselves and their records.

I would like to thank my fellow members of special committee for their time and attention to this important matter.

The committee was composed of Trustees Andrea Dennis LaVigne, Marilda Gandara, Tom Kruger and Tom Ritter.

The special counsel has submitted an excellent report. I would like to take a moment to share the board's perspective on it.

To that end, the University undertook a comprehensive investigation on its own initiative.

The University and the board were interested in facts and evidence, no matter where they took that investigation, and regardless of how the findings reflected on the University.

Our objective was to do the right thing, not to avoid the consequences of past actions.

In the end, two conclusions are abundantly clear, as the Drinker Biddle and Reath report outlines:

First, that the allegations pertaining to Robert Miller were not properly handled by University employees when the allegations were originally received in 2006, 2008 and 2011, and even prior to that.

That is what makes this report so disturbing.

We as an institution believe firmly in the presumption of innocence, but at the same time, serious allegations need to be taken seriously and acted on.

As the report makes clear, the University's past response was not adequate and that is unacceptable.

Second, it is equally clear that once these old allegations came to the attention of the University's current leadership in June 2013, President Herbst and her senior team took swift, decisive and absolutely appropriate action.

I am pleased to see this confirmed in the independent report.

Doing so meant that they were doing their jobs - which we as a board rightly expect of them.

The board further expects that the president and her leadership team will review the report and its conclusions and that they will take whatever further action they believe is warranted.

Lawrence McHugh
Chairman
University of Connecticut Board of Trustees

Chairman
University of Connecticut Board of Trustees - Special Committee on Investigations