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Three days after a top lieutenant revealed he had not started a promised examination, Oregon Health & Science University president Danny Jacobs told staff he had hired a lawyer to review the institution’s response to allegations that a senior doctor took unwanted pictures of female students in a class.
The review will be conducted by Scott Schneider of Schneider Education & Employment Law, who has “deep expertise in Title IX matters,” Jacobs said in an email to OHSU staff.
Title IX is a section of a 1972 law that protects people from discrimination based on sex at institutions that receive federal financial assistance, as OSHU does. Schneider’s firm is based in Austin, Texas.
“As part of my desire and effort to establish better trust and build the culture we want at OHSU, I am writing to follow up with details about the review I announced on Friday, Jan. 19,” Jacobs wrote.
The review will be done in time for OHSU’s next board meeting, on April 19, Jacobs said.
Jacobs’ email comes three days after OHSU dean David Jacoby sent a seven-page letter to select staff explaining his role in the scandal. Jacoby supervised Dr. Daniel Marks, who was forced out of OHSU after a student alleged he surreptitiously took pictures of women in a required class. Jacoby taught the class with Marks.
In his letter, sent Monday, Jacoby said he was the first person to hear about the accusations. He expressed remorse about not acting on them sooner, and for not realizing that the alleged picture-taking was sexual in nature.
“Given that there continues to be a great deal of public discussion and concern about my role in responding to concerns about Dr. Marks’s conduct, including statements that, from my perspective, reveal a misunderstanding of my actions and the larger process of OHSU’s response, I thought it would be beneficial to share this statement now, rather than wait to submit it privately to the investigator whenever that process may begin,” Jacoby wrote. “To my knowledge, however, no investigation has yet been started.”
Now it has. The investigation by Schneider will look at “policies and actions taken or not taken by the relevant leadership involved in this incident” concerning “the reporting, response and investigation of the reported behavior” and “the authorization of the one-time payment, or President’s Recognition Award, to Dr. Marks during that period of time.”
Before he left OHSU, Marks collected a $46,000 bonus, unrelated to merit, as part of the much-criticized President’s Recognition Awards program, which stirred union protest first reported by WW.
The Oregonian first reported the bonus given to Marks. OHSU rescinded the awards to OHSU’s eight executive vice presidents after WW’s reporting and a petition by union members. The executive vice presidents were going to be among the biggest beneficiaries of the bonuses, collecting a total of $947,140.
At the time, an OHSU spokeswoman said the bonuses weren’t given because funds in the bonus pool ran out, not because of any media attention or union protest.
Schneider will report to the OHSU board of directors and “will act independently of OHSU management and any of the people who were involved,” Jacobs wrote.
By dint of their name alone, Jacobs, a board member, was responsible for the President’s Recognition Awards. But Jacobs won’t recuse himself from supervising the inquiry because he only authorized the expense of the program and announced it, OHSU spokeswoman Sara Hottman said in an email.
“The first-ever President’s Recognition Award was one way that OHSU leadership wanted to acknowledge and celebrate the essential roles that employees have played in helping the institution fulfill its missions—especially over the last few years, which have been some of the most challenging in OHSU’s history,” Hottman said. “Dr. Jacobs authorized the expenditure and announced the award. HR possessed the list of eligible employees. Managers were asked to verify their eligible employees.”
The inquiry will, in part, seek to determine if Marks was eligible, Hottman said.
Jacobs said the inquiry was necessary to build trust.
“This external expert was chosen to help ensure that the review is thorough and trauma-informed, and that the findings are unbiased and independent of management or other internal OHSU influences in answering questions about where there were failures in policy or leadership action,” Jacobs wrote.
“I must also be clear about what this review is not,” Jacobs added. “This is not a new investigation into Dr. Mark’s actions. That investigation occurred, and the findings were reported to the National Institutes of Health. This is a review of the facts involved about the response to the incident by all involved, including whether policies were followed as expected by OHSU leaders and whether our policies adequately.”