LACROSSE, Wis. – University of Wisconsin regents want the former UW-LaCrosse chancellor, Joe Gow, off campus once and for all. Gow received a good-riddance letter from his interim successor, Betsy Morgan. She wrote that Gow would not be kept on the faculty even though university practices always have allowed past chancellors to retire to faculty status. Morgan had been appointed to replaced Gow in the top campus job by UW regents in December after they fired Gow for producing sex videos and performing in them with his wife. Morgan said the decision followed a 300-page investigative report, but the fact was she acted the behest of UW System President Jay Rothman, who has obsessed on ousting Gow.
The case for Gow
Gow had been chancellor 17 years and was a popular campus figure. His supporters make these points:
> The videos advocated what Gow and his wife called “healthy sex.”
> Charges of salacious intent was more revelatory about prudish inferences than anything implicit in videos.
> The videos were not produced with university resources or on university time.
> The videos were a part-time Gow activity protected by his First Amendment guarantee of free seeech.
> Neither Gow nor his wife made reference to their UW-LaCrosse roles in the videos.
Up-ended university protocol
Rothman, as UW System president, discovered the videos in December — years after Gow, age 64, and his wife, Carmen Wilson, launched the series. Rotham then lobbied the regents in a blitzkrieg campaign to fire him. This was one semester before Gow’s announced plans to retire thus spring. Gow had planned in retirement to return to the university’s faculty and finish his teaching career in the Communications Department. It is this finale teaching role that has been cancelled in the latest Rothman initiative against Gow.
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Gow. Now a second set of walking papers.
Gow profile
Before being named chancellor at UW-LaCrosse, Gow spent three years as president of Methodist Wesleyan University in Nebraska. When hired at Wesleyan, Gow insisted on a salary tens of thousands of dollars less than what was offered. His salary decision was a stark contrast with this predecessor, who had secured a $750,000 retirement package when leaving. The campus press hailed Gow as a favorite with students.
Earlier Gow was liberal arts dean at Winona State University. He quickly earned a reputation as the guitar-strumming dean who would show up unannounced at offee houses for impromptu fsoft rock and olk jams. As dean, he was a faculty advocate with disdain for adminisrtative hijinks and policies and budgets that he saw as short-sighted and inconsistent with the purposes of a university.
During his own college studies Gow spent two years as the guitarist and frontman of the rock band Johnny Deadline, which released an EP titled “Whatever Happened to Rock & Roll” in 1982. The band broke up about that time but reunited for shows in 1987.
Gow’s scholarship included a 1993 study on the influence of MTV. The study found that male performers were substantially over-represented despite MTV’s claim to be a revolutionary force in updating culture. MTV “finds itself in the incongruous position of presenting videos that reinforce very traditional gender definitions,” Gow said.