This article by Kristin Shrader-Frechette, Professor at the University of Notre Dame, documents one example in a series of appalling cases of serious harassment and intimidation by a group of highly corrupt individuals at the University of South Florida (USF) - not to be confused with the University of San Francisco (USF). Kristin's courage to stand up against this oppressor (by means of a class action law suit) and later publish this article helped heal other victims of similar practices at the University of South Florida.

Retaliation against Whistleblowers

The Case of the University of South Florida

Abstract

This essay uses a 1991-1998 case alleging federal grant skimming, false public records, unreported salary payments, salary discrimination, and criminal stalking at the University of South Florida to show that when whistleblowers do not have democratic protections, it is difficult to secure either social reforms or their own protection. Because the author and the whistleblower-victim are the same person, there is a potential for bias in this account. Although all claims in this paper are author's opinions, she believes the independent factual evidence speaks for itself and invites readers to draw their own conclusions. The case seems to support two preliminary conclusions. (1) In situations of severe corruption, the ethical imperative of attempting first to correct problems internally can lead to coverup and retaliation against whistleblowers. (2) Whistleblowers may gain little by fighting unwinnable battles in which they "play fair," but their well-funded and politically powerful adversaries do not. Together, these preliminary conclusions illustrate that blowing the whistle may be more complex than ethical norms suggest and more dangerous than the civil- and criminal-justice system can alleviate.

1. Overview

Founded in 1960, the University of South Florida (USF) has 24 doctoral programs on its main campus in Tampa and three other branch campuses. With nearly 2000 faculty and approximately 38,000 students, it is the 18th-largest university in the US.

Eager to begin a new doctoral program in philosophy, in 1987 USF recruited its first female Distinguished Research Professor (DRP).[1] With degrees in mathematics and philosophy, and post-doctoral work in hydrogeology, economics, and biology, the new DRP had held professorships at the Universities of Louisville, California, and Florida. 11 years later, she was forced to leave the university because of retaliation against her after she blew the whistle on alleged illegal grant skimming, illegal public records, unreported salary payments, and salary discrimination.[2]

When she came to USF in 1987, Dean Jim Strange told the new DRP that she was the highest-paid faculty member in the college. After blowing the whistle, her salary had fallen to 70 percent of that of her peers', despite 14 books, hundreds of research articles, outstanding annual evaluations, continuous National Science Foundation (NSF) research funding, and more doctoral students than anyone in the department. When she was forced out of USF, no females were among the 46 highest-paid faculty in all (non-medical) units of the university (the Colleges of Architecture, Arts and Sciences, Business Administration], Education, Engineering, Fine Arts, Nursing, and Public Health). Even in 1998, she was still the only female Distinguished Research Professor in all these colleges. Of the four highest-paid female faculty members in these colleges, three (including the DRP) left USF in 1998. What happened? 

Part of the answer is that state politicians captured a large educational institution that should be independent of politics. In the early 1990s, over the objections of the USF faculty, the politically-appointed Florida Board of Regents named a career Florida politician, Betty Castor, as President of USF. The new president lacked a Ph.D., research skills, scholarly publications, university teaching experience, and failed to meet the published job criteria. Yet her handlers touted her appointment as a victory for women's rights. After her arrival, people like Professor A,[3] who had barely achieved tenure, were given Deanships and placed in policy positions, and faculty like Professors B and C (see note 3), teachers without terminal degrees, became USF Associate Provosts. Given such qualifications, the rest of the USF story was predictable. Problems began in 1991.

2. Whistleblowing in 1991: USF Grant Ledgers and the Retaliation Problem

In 1991, grant ledgers of USF's first female DRP, Kristin Shrader-Frechette, showed that USF appeared to be skimming funds from the direct costs of her National Science Foundation (NSF) research grants. Even though these illegal deductions were small, she learned that USF had done the same to others' grants. A deduction of a fraction of a percent, given more than $100 million in USF's annual external-research monies, could amount to a large sum. After a year of repeated private requests to stop the deductions, nothing happened. Finally Shrader-Frechette said that she would report USF to NSF unless the deductions ended. They stopped immediately. Later, when she asked a USF Vice President if USF had stopped these deductions on all research grants, not just hers, he responded: "that's none of your business." 

By attempting to correct the grant-ledger problem internally instead of "going public," Shrader-Frechette was following one of the classical ethical norms for whistleblowing: behaving as a loyal employee and allowing employers the chance to correct the problem privately.[4] She was naive, however, to believe that her going through channels would protect her from USF retaliation. Because employees typically are politically and economically more vulnerable than employers, when whistleblowers privately alert employers to a problem and allow time for it to be corrected internally, employers can engage in both coverup and in preemptive retaliation. A better option might be for whistleblowers anonymously to reveal the problem to employers, wait for them to correct it, but report it to authorities, again anonymously, if the problem is not corrected within a reasonable time. After she raised the problem of grant skimming in 1991, Shrader-Frechette never again received a substantial salary increase at USF, despite the fact that her annual evaluations were always at the highest level (outstanding). The provost, Tom Tighe, repeatedly overruled her department chair or college dean when they sought to give her significant salary increases.

3. Helping a Victim of Discrimination in 1993

In 1993, one year after the university had corrected Shrader-Frechette's grant-skimming problem, microbiologist Joan Rose phoned her for help. Although Rose had the highest teaching evaluations, the most grants and publications, and advised the most graduate students in her department, Rose's department and college (Public Health) had voted against her for tenure but, the same year, voted for tenure for two lesser-qualified men in the same department. Shrader-Frechette helped Rose secure the support of senior administrators and distinguished researchers, and they were able to reverse her tenure decision. Three years later, however, despite some of the best evaluations in her department, Rose's salary had fallen below average for her rank/department. 

Soon Shrader-Frechette learned that such discrimination was common at USF. Marine scientist Pamela Mueller, at least as well qualified as her male counterpart hired the same year, was paid $16,000 less. Carolyn Lavely ran an institute for at-risk children, published widely, and garnered more than $ 50 million annually in outside grant funding, more than any other USF researcher. Yet her salary was lower than that of less-accomplished men in the same college, some of whom had no grants at all. And university officials told Sara Mandell, in Religious Studies, that despite her seniority and her accomplishments, her salary was $ 20,000 below that of average males for her rank/department, "because you have a rich husband." 

4. Salary-Equity Study Requests in 1996 

In 1996, when the USF president invited faculty to request salary-equity studies, Shrader-Frechette did so. As a result of the study, the department chair confirmed the salary discrimination, but in 1997 Provost Tom Tighe justified the discrepancy by claiming that higher salary increases for comparable and less-qualified males were not part of "normal" pay raises and thus not subject to equity constraints. 

The cases of Rose, Muller, Lavely, Mandel, and Shrader-Frechette were not isolated, as USF public records revealed evidence of striking disparities between males and females generally. In the departments of Marine Sciences, Psychology, and Religious Studies, for example, female full professors made an average of $ .70, $.70, and $ .80, respectively, for every dollar that average males in the same rank/department made:

1997-1998 Public-Record Salaries of USF Full Professors, Selected Departments[5]

Department	Average Male Full Professor	Average Female Full Professor
Marine Sciences	$ 80,097	$ 56,277
Psychology	$ 78,710	$ 62,703
Religious Studies	$ 74,143	$ 51,995
Endowed Chairs and Distinguished Research Professors, all Colleges	$104,506	$ 88,279

5. The 1997 PEP Salary Increases and Public-Record Requests

In 1997, after USF Provost Tom Tighe implemented a Professorial Excellence Program (PEP) to correct salary inequities and award the most senior and distinguished faculty a 10-percent salary increase, PEP became another vehicle for USF discrimination and retaliation. In the College of Arts and Sciences, only 25 percent of the female full professors who qualified for the PEP increase received it from Provost Tighe, whereas 69 percent of the male full professors who qualified for PEP received it (see note 2). The Chair of the College PEP evaluation committee, Professor D,[6] said that at least half of the college males, who received the PEP salary increase from the Provost, had lower committee evaluations than some female faculty, like Shrader-Frechette, who qualified for the award, but did not receive it from the Provost. Such discrimination was consistent with what Shrader-Frechette discovered in a 1997 article in Nature. Using multiple-regression analyses that control for experience and productivity, the Nature authors concluded that a female scientist needs to be approximately 70 percent better (as measured by publications, research grants, and so on) than a male scientist, in the same field, to be evaluated the same as he.[7] Another study showed that female Ph.D.s fare better in nonuniversity positions in terms of senior-level salaries and advancement.[8]

To understand the USF rationale for paying male and female faculty differently, as in the PEP increases, for 9 months (March-December 1997) Shrader-Frechette made weekly, written, public-records requests for the same USF salary-equity studies and PEP documentation. Although USF was obliged by law (Florida Statutes 119, 286) to answer promptly her public-record requests, as of May 2000, it has never given her the salary-equity studies. Instead, USF retaliated in three ways. 

First, USF tried illegally to demote Shrader-Frechette, despite her having the most doctoral students in the department, the most grants and publications, continuous NSF funding, and so on. Without her knowledge, USF changed her job classification and title on the USF mainframe computer. Shrader-Frechette was hired in 1987 as a "Distinguished Research Professor," salary classification code 9006, yet USF tried in spring 1997 to change her title and job to "Distinguished Service Professor," code 9007. The salary range for her correct 9006 position was approximately $ 25,000 higher than for the position to which USF tried to demote her. Amazingly, Dr. F (in the USF School of Nursing) said that, several years earlier, USF had successfully changed the job-classification codes of all the female nurses after they requested salary-equity studies. After illegally demoting the nurses, USF argued that they were not underpaid, relative to their (changed) job-classification codes. 

Second, USF also retaliated, despite a staff of at least 9 in-house attorneys, by hiring an expensive, external attorney, Thomas Gonzalez, at taxpayer expense, to respond to Shrader-Frechette's public-records requests. Gonzalez had made headlines 5 years earlier after his law firm admitted hiring people to do "surveillance" on whistleblowing faculty who sued USF for retaliation (see note 11). 

Third, when Tampa Tribune Reporter E made the same public-record request as Shrader-Frechette, USF gave the salary-equity study to the reporter within a week, but neither USF nor Gonzalez has given it to Shrader-Frechette, contrary to Florida law, even after more than three years. Associate Provost Phil Smith repeatedly lied when he told Shrader-Frechette there were no such USF documents. Such retaliation, in response merely to public-records requests, might explain why, in the four years immediately prior to the appointment of President Castor, only 4 federal lawsuits were filed against the university, but in the subsequent 4 years , there were 17 federal lawsuits.[9] From 1989 through 1998, federal lawsuits against USF increased by 425 percent, even though the student-body size remained roughly the same, and the faculty grew by only 12 percent.

USF's illegal refusal to supply public records, its subsequent intimidation and harassment through an outside attorney, and its attempting to demote her after it had touted her for years as one of its "star" faculty members, puzzled Shrader-Frechette. In violating public-records laws, what was USF trying to hide? 

6. Discovering Secret Salary Payments and Multiple Budget Books in 1997-1998 

Evidence showed that USF had three crucial things to hide: illegal discrepancies in salary payments; illegal "surveillance" on whistleblowing faculty (that it admitted under oath in an earlier whistleblower trial); and salary inequities that were larger than it claimed. This section discusses all three. 

When USF did not promptly answer her public-records requests for salary data and equity studies, Shrader-Frechette used her password (available to USF federal grant recipients) to examine coded payroll records on the USF mainframe computer. She found that a number of USF employees were paid on multiple accounts, some of which exceeded the salaries listed on the legally-required USF public records. Shrader-Frechette placed date-stamped computer pages, evidence of the discrepancies, in a safety-deposit box. 

During the summer and fall of 1997, Shrader-Frechette repeatedly met with USF President Betty Castor, Provost Tom Tighe, and several Associate-Provosts, especially Phil Smith, to tell them about the salary discrepancies. She promised to remain silent if they corrected the salary books and inequities. 

Within two months after Shrader-Frechette spoke privately to the president, vice president, and associate provosts about the salary records, her department chair was removed, and another philosopher was appointed to replace him, even though the new chair retained his full-time position on another campus, an hour away. One of his first acts as chair was to move Shrader-Frechette's office, overnight, without her knowledge or consent, and to dump all her books, records, and personal materials, in disarray, in another office (the same size) only 4 feet away from the original office. Although Shrader-Frechette was the senior faculty female, by rank, at USF, suddenly her secretarial support was withdrawn, her grant reimbursements were lost or delayed, she was without a computer for 5 months, and her graduate students were not paid for months. Interestingly, the new chair was one of those who received additional salary dollars not reported in USF public records, as required by law (see section 8). Shrader-Frechette was playing by the rules, working within normal channels to correct a problem, but the university was not. 

During 17 months of constant harassment and retaliation, the university did nothing to correct the public salary books and inequities, although the President repeatedly promised her, "I'll take care of it." In December 1997, after remaining silent for 6 months, Shrader-Frechette wrote the President a final letter which she had date-stamped by the President's office. In it Shrader-Frechette asked her to correct the situation so that she would not be forced to blow the whistle. 

7. The 1998 Lawsuit and Stalking by Two Convicted Felons

Because USF did nothing to correct the situation, several faculty members hired attorney David Linesch on contingency to sue USF in a class-action suit. Linesch said that because the problem of multiple salary books was more difficult to prove than salary discrimination, the case should focus on gender discrimination and introduce the multiple-books and retaliation problems as part of the equity issue. Linesch chose Professors Kimmel, Lavely, Mandell, Muller, Rose, and Shrader-Frechette as plaintiffs for the class of female full professors. They voted for Shrader-Frechette to be lead plaintiff. Linesch filed suit on February 2, 1998. 

Within a week after the suit was filed, three different men began stalking Shrader-Frechette, blocking her driveway egress, cutting her off, and prowling at night outside her bedroom window. During conversations, her home phone began clicking and having extreme volume changes. Repeated phone-service records kept recording a "minor short" on the line. An independent telephone-software expert confirmed that the line was tapped. After several weeks, Shrader-Frechette was able give auto tag numbers and descriptions of some of her stalkers to the police, so they could question suspects. Later, Shrader-Frechette identified two of the stalkers, convicted felons Galen Jelskey and Felon Y (see note 3), from a police photo pack. Jelskey served time for assault and battery on women and on police officers, and Felon Y had four grand-theft convictions, some for stealing weapons. Both were on parole when they stalked Shrader-Frechette. The police identified Jelskey and charged him with criminal (felony) stalking. The third stalker was USF undercover policeman, Z (see note 3). Because Felon Y and Z had followed Shrader-Frechette for months, but had not cut her off or overtly threatened her, as Jelskey had, the police said they could not charge anyone but Jelskey.[10]

Yet, under oath, USF and its attorneys, including Gonzalez, denied engaging in "surveillance" of Shrader-Frechette. Nevertheless, 6 years earlier Jelskey appears to have stalked the wife of USF whistleblower and orthopedic surgeon, Phil Spiegel, who won a million-dollar judgment against USF. Carol Spiegel wrote that Jelskey was "almost certainly" the man who stalked her earlier. When one of the USF lawyers admitted, under oath in the Spiegel case, that the university had done "surveillance" of whistleblower Spiegel and his wife, the admission hit the front pages of Florida newspapers. The Tampa Tribune said that Attorney Gonzalez had selected the "investigators" doing the "surveillance,"[11] and the USF attorney who admitted the "surveillance" was promptly fired. But why were convicted felons stalking the wife of whistleblower Spiegel while he was away at work? 

In addition to Carol Spiegel's corroboration of Jelskey's apparent tie to USF, another witness, graduate-student Peter Shea, also witnessed a stalker, with USF-related auto tags, at Shrader-Frechette's home. Shea signed an affidavit for police. Fellow plaintiff Sara Mandell, President of the USF faculty union, also was followed by a car whose tag appeared to be the same as Jelskey's. Other faculty members who were subjected to USF stalking or "surveillance" include Drs. G, H, and I (see note 6). After Professor G refused to lie for a USF administrator who wanted him to fire an innocent person, the administrator said he would "get" G, and the "surveillance" began. Dr. H, whose spouse had been a faculty union president, experienced telephone surveillance at home when doing USF faculty-grievance work. Dr. I had his office repeatedly broken into, at night, and an FBI informant said that USF undercover policeman J (see note 3) had done the "surveillance" on him. USF undercover policeman J was also the person identified by USF Official K (see note 3), to the author, as the person arrested on campus for attempting to enter a faculty office building at night. Likewise, retired USF Police Officer L (see note 6) confirmed that his superiors told him not to arrest USF undercover Policemen M and N (see note 6), in case they were caught on campus "someplace where they shouldn't be." 

8. USF Attempts to Coverup Its Multiple Books 

Five weeks after stalkers began following Shrader-Frechette, on March 13, 1998 USF issued a third set of salary data, in addition to the (secret)computer and public-record data (see note 5). These new salary figures confirmed exactly what the lawsuit claimed: there were discrepancies between what USF claimed to be paying people and what it actually paid people:

Sample Faculty Member	1997-1998 USF Public Records	USF Mainframe Payroll Data, 2 Feb 1998	USF IRP Report, 13 March 1998
Arsenault	$59,369	$59,369	$71,400
Fellows	92,140	102,180	109,310
French	119,038	129,611	129,611
Hevner	91,844	131,206	131,206
J. L. Smith	90,003	97,884	97,884
Wieand	70,990	76,119	93,055

 

Through a tip from Tampa Tribune Reporter E, Shrader-Frechette discovered that there was a fourth set of books, one maintained by the Florida State Comptroller at the capitol in Tallahassee. Evidence showed that USF actually paid some of its administrators more than it admitted in public records:

USF Administrator	1997-1998 USF Public Records	State Comptroller, Phone Verbal Report, 23 Feb 1998
USF President Betty Castor	$ 190,892	$210,775
USF Provost Tom Tighe	169,958	183,672

 

USF attempted to coverup its paying some faculty more money than reported in the public records not only by issuing the new salary report on 3-13-98 but also by three other methods. First, the USF President and Provost lied in their press releases about salaries. Second, the state comptroller stopped reporting salaries to citizens, since that was the way Shrader-Frechette learned about the additional money President Castor and Provost Tighe received. Third, USF raised the President's salary, the next year, 1998-1999, by the large amount necessary to make her public-record salary consistent with the State Comptroller data.

The first method of coverup, the lies, were most blatant and disturbing because each lie was contradicted by written public records. For example, 10 days after Linesch filed the class-action lawsuit, on February 12, 1998 USF President Betty Castor and Provost Tom Tighe called a press conference and distributed a press release that selectively discussed and misrepresented the salaries of approximately 40 top USF faculty members. Among its many falsehoods, the press release listed Shrader-Frechette's job title and position incorrectly and gave her job classification according to the lower-paid 9007 salary code (mentioned earlier), rather than the correct, higher-paid code of 9006. The press release also lied in saying that her salary was "the highest in the department": public records reveal a less qualified male made $ 30,000 more per year. The press-release lies would have gone unchallenged had not St. Petersburg Times Reporter O faxed her the press release. 

9. How the Multiple Salary Books Covered Up USF Salary Discrimination 

The multiple salary books at USF and the resultant coverup are significant for at least two reasons. First, because all USF discrimination or equity investigations/suits employ the false public- record data in their assessments, their conclusions likely underestimate USF discrimination and inequity. Second, if one uses the secret computer data to calculate USF salaries, then the gap between male and female average salaries appears larger that what USF reports to national professional agencies. USF claimed male professors were paid an an average $5,"100%" more than female professors for 1997-1998. In reality, the secret computer data suggest the difference is not $5,"100%" but $8,362, and USF may underreport its gender gap to national authorities. [12]

If AAUP (American Association of University Professors) data are correct, and if the 1997-1998 USF gender gap for full professors was $8,362, then it was more than double the reported AAUP gender gap of $3,638 at US institutions that the courts forced to work toward gender equity.[13] Once one controls for effects of experience and department, nationwide professorial salary data suggest that the average salary deficit for female university professors is 6.6 percent.[14] According to the analysis of Pamela Hallock Muller, the uncorrected USF salary difference for female full professors is 13 percent or approximately double the national average.[15]

10. USF Stalkers Stopped in August 1999 

When large state institutions like USF can use their political power and almost-unlimited taxpayer money for corrupt purposes -- to attempt illegally to demote whistleblowers, to tell PR lies, to hire expensive attorneys so as to disobey public-records laws, to conduct "surveillance" on whistleblowing faculty, and to employ retaliation -- the deck is stacked against whistleblowers. In spring 1998, when the stalking continued, Shrader-Frechette was forced to leave the university, her home, and her family in order to escape severe stress and retaliation. As a consequence, Shrader-Frechette is now O'Neill Professor of Philosophy and Concurrent Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame. She and her husband commute between Florida and Notre Dame.

In fall 1998, attorney Linesch urged the USF plaintiffs to settle the case. The other 5 women -- none of whom endured retaliation and stalking -- settled. They subsequently received substantial base-salary increases (some as much as 40 percent) and annual stipends, as well as lump-sum monies from the $ 144,000 settlement. The settlement also assured that USF would alleviate the gender discrimination faced by the approximately 60 other USF female full professors in the entire class. To date, nothing has been done for these other women. Attorney Linesch urged Shrader-Frechette to drop the stalking and retaliation charges, on grounds that they were irrelevant to the case, despite the fact that he had included retaliation in the original complaint. Worried that USF would continue to stalk and intimidate other whistleblowers if she settled, Shrader-Frechette hired another attorney, Steve Wenzel, to handle her civil-liberties violations and stop the stalkers. Shrader-Frechette believes that one of the most devastating aspects of this case was having Linesch use her stalking evidence as a bargaining chip with the university but then tell her to ignore the stalking and retaliation charges. Several of the plaintiffs are not happy with Linesch's behavior. 

Despite Linesch, many law-enforcement officers (who requested anonymity) helped Shrader-Frechette pursue justice: a Temple Terrace Police Detective who filed criminal (felony) stalking charges against Jelskey, many Temple Terrace Police who repeatedly responded to stalking calls and did their best to protect Shrader-Frechette, half of her department colleagues who braved retaliation by urging the administration to try to keep Shrader-Frechette at USF, the state legislator who took copies of the 4 sets of books to the governor and state prosecutor, the Special Agent of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) who is investigating USF's civil and criminal violations, and the two Tampa Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents who spent months trying to follow the trail of skimmed federal grant funds at USF. One FBI agent, in particular, finally stopped the stalkers, in August 1999, after a year and a half of intimidation. 

11. Spring 2000: Two Key Witnesses  

Two key witnesses are able to tie Shrader-Frechette's stalkers to USF. One is Carol Spiegel, wife of USF whistleblower Phil Speigel, who also was stalked in 1992-1994 and who identified Jelskey in writing as "almost certainly" her stalker. The other is graduate student Peter Shea who saw a car tied to USF undercover policeman Ramirez stalking Shrader-Frechette. Carol Speigel died three days after Christmas, 1999. Did USF's admitted "surveillance" contribute to her cancer? 

In January 2000, Shea underwent his third surgery for melanoma. If Shea testifies in the Shrader-Frechette case, their opinion is that USF attorney Thomas Gonzalez could use the same bullying and character assassination in deposition and in trial as that attempted on Shrader-Frechette. Without Shea, Attorney Wenzel says Shrader-Frechette has "no case," no independent proof that ties USF to her stalkers. Yet Shea's family wants him not to testify, not to leave himself vulnerable to what USF and its attorneys could do to him. Instead they want him to fight his cancer. Without Shea's testimony, Shrader-Frechette has no choice except to settle the case without trial. She plans to donate the settlement monies to a church group at USF. 

12. Gains and Losses 

What has come of the attempt by six plaintiffs to force USF to keep correct salary books, to pay its faculty equitably, to refrain from retaliation against whistleblowers, and to obey the state's public-records laws? The results are mixed. 

On the one hand, the whistleblowers won several victories. Five of the plaintiffs now have additional compensation that, over their lifetimes, likely will reach a million dollars. The FDLE is working on civil and criminal charges against USF. The USF President has been forced to resign, and the Provost has been replaced. In spring 2000, the state of Florida hired a new USF president, a woman who is a distinguished university scholar. The Police Department filed criminal (felony) stalking charges against one of the author's stalkers, and in August 1999, the FBI was able to stop the stalking of Shrader-Frechette. 

On the other hand, the business of the whistleblowers is unfinished. In 1998, three of the four highest-paid female (non-medical) faculty, including the author, were forced to leave the university. Despite the police charges against Galen Jelskey, State Prosecutor Harry Lee Coe did not bring him to trial. (Under investigation by the FDLE, Coe committed suicide on July 12, 2000.) Despite a state official's promise of a grand-jury investigation of USF, it has not yet come. Carol Speigel, who wrote that Jelskey was "almost certainly" her stalker, is dead. And despite all the evidence against USF, it will be necessary for Shrader-Frechette to settle the case, without a trial, and to hope that the FBI and FDLE can achieve justice. 

Despite the partial successes of the USF case, it reveals ethical problems both with the norms governing whistleblowing, such as trying first to solve problems internally, and with the harms that come to whistleblowers who underestimate, as Shrader-Frechette did, the capacity for evil of those they accuse. The case also suggests that whistleblowers should recognize, ahead of time, as Shrader-Frechette did not, how difficult it is to obtain justice when one "plays fair" against those who do not, those who have access to virtually unlimited political power, to the media, and to deep taxpayer pockets. Surely citizens deserve better than this. 

Endnotes

[1]. The original title for this position was "Graduate Research Professor." The university later changed the title to "Distinguished Research Professor."

[2].Copies of original documents (such as USF press releases containing false data, faculty contracts, downloaded salary pages from the USF mainframe computer, public records of reported USF salaries, USF salary-equity studies, date-stamped public-record requests to USF from the author, photos and videotapes of stalkers and the cars, correspondence, faxes, and so on) to corroborate all these charges are located in the author's safety-deposit box at Terrace Bank, Temple Terrace, Florida.

[3].Shrader-Frechette's attorney advised her to delete the name here.

[4].See, for example, Marlene Winfield, "Whistleblowers as Corporate Safety Nets," in Gerald Vinten (ed.), Whistleblowing, New York: St Martin's, 1994, p. 29 of pp. 21-32; M. V. Heacock and G. W. McGee, "Whistleblowing," Business and Professional Ethics Journal 6, No. 4 (1989): 35-46; Richard DeGeorge, Business Ethics, New York: Macmillan, 1986; Norman Bowie, Business Ethics, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1982, p. 143; and J. Otten, "Organizational Disobedience," in A. Flores (ed.), Ethical Problems in Engineering, Troy, NY: Center for the Study of the Human Dimensions of Science and Technology, 1980, pp. 185ff. Marcia P. Miceli and Janet P. Near, Blowing the Whistle, New York: Lexington, 1992, p. 61, indicate that most whistleblowers try to correct a problem internally before blowing the whistle.

[5]. Central Florida Regional Database, CFRCICS, USF mainframe computer.

[6]. Shrader-Frechette's attorney advised her to delete the name here, lest the person become the victim of USF retaliation for revealing this information.

[7]. Christine Wenneras and Agnes Wold, "Nepotism and Sexism in Peer-Review," Nature 387 (22 May 1997): 341-343.

[8]. S. F. Zevin and K. D. Seitter, "Results of the Survey of Society Membership," Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 75 (1994): 473-490; Julie Winkler, Donna Tucker, and Anne Smith, "Salaries and Advancement of Women Faculty in Atmospheric Science," Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 77, no. 3 (March 1996): 473-490.

[9]. The lawsuit data are from Clerk of the Federal Court, Middle District of Florida, (computerized) Case Docket Information, 801 N. Florida Avenue, Tampa, FL 33602.

[10]. Temple Terrace Police Department, Case 98-1783; Information Report 99-03043, Temple Terrace, FL 33617.

[11]. "USF Spied on Demoted Department Chairman," The Tampa Tribune, May 15, 1992, front page. See also "Spied Upon Doctor Dreads USF Decline," The Tampa Tribune, June 2, 1992, Florida Metro, p. 4, and "USF Settles with Former Chairman," The Tampa Tribune, July 2, 1994.

[12]. This reported gap appears in Part A of report 041637 and USF reported it to the AAUP journal Academe (March 1998 issue). It is based on the USF-reported male salary average of $70,356 and the USF-reported female salary average of $64,443. For actual USF salary data, see note 5.

[13]. Office of Institutional Research, Oregon State System of Higher Education, The Status of Women Faculty, Salem, Oregon, State Board of Higher Education, June 1997, used to be available at http://www.osshe.edu/irs/statwomn.

[14]. Marcia Bellas, "Faculty Salaries: Still a Cost of Being Female?" Social Science Quarterly 74, no. 1 (March 1993): 62-75.

[15]. See USF IPEDS Faculty Salary Sex Differences Database, "Per Capita Faculty Salaries by Rank and Sex". For Muller's analysis of covariance, see P. Hallock Muller, "Statistical Evidence for the Glass Ceiling for Academic Women at the University of South Florida," unpublished manuscript available from Muller at Department of Marine Sciences, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, FL 33701.