Ex-UConn dean fights school’s allegations

An attorney for a former dean at The University of Connecticut says his client is being wrongly blamed for the university’s own failure to deal with the alleged sexual misconduct of a member of the Department of Music.

After the release this week of an independent report on the alleged misconduct of music professor Robert F. Miller, UConn Thursday recommended the dismissal of both Miller and the former dean of the Department of Fine Arts, David G. Woods. The independent Report of Special Counsel, sought by the state’s attorney general, was done by the law firm Drinker Biddle & Reath.

The inappropriate behavior referenced in the report includes Miller’s taking students on trips, showering with them, accompanying them naked into a hot tub at his health club and touching them inappropriately.

Woods’ attorney, Stephen Bacon, of the Storrs law firm Kahan, Kerensky & Capossella, wrote in a statement, “This is a sad day for truth and justice.”

Bacon called the report “a compendium of hearsay, conjecture and rumor constructed to place blame on a single University administrator despite his diligent efforts to seek the assistance of law enforcement, university administrators at the highest levels and attorneys with the University to resolve issues with a problem faculty member: a faculty member hired by the University of Connecticut and on whom it bestowed tenure long before our client arrived at the University.”

“In seeking Dean Woods’ termination,” Bacon says, “the University is imposing on him a retroactive obligation to do something the University, as a whole, has failed to do for more than ten years.”