Part 63: Terms of Whistleblowing and Love – Institutional Retaliation and Community Response
Published January 11, 2024
Photo of snow and trees on Mount Waterman in the San Gabriel Mountains by author (GoPro Hero 11 Black).
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By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist
I have no grand journalistic ambitions for this part, we’ll save that for tomorrow, but for now I want to deliver on a long considered idea to write broadly about how love and whistleblowing relate, and how institutional retaliation targets both workplace and private relationships. I was planning to do this after reading Whistleblower of America founder Jackie Garrick’s enterprising 2022 book The Psychosocial Impacts of Whistleblower Retaliation: Shattering Employee Resilience and the Workplace Promise, but my copy somehow was not provided by the vendor despite weeks of hope.
Still I’m not going to let a little snafu like that get in the way of timely story telling. If you’re considering being a whistleblower, and value your family, even the love of your life, the employer playbook is to absolutely go after that in a targeted way to not only rob the whistleblower of their income pursuant to hostile termination, but also simultaneously damage their personal relationships. People often question my story, but I’m not saying anything radically different about the University of Southern California than was said by one of their own workplace investigators in July 2020.
USC beat her lawsuit on procedural grounds, and she was compelled to arbitration set for March 11-15 of this year before Judge Ann Keogh (Ret.). USC has a mandatory arbitration agreement that forces all claims into the JAMS alternative dispute resolution process, JAMS stands for Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services, Inc, where a retired judge whose services have already been paid for as part of the employers will collect fees from your attorney simply for hearing the case. Attorney’s tend to work on contingency for lawsuits, but not for arbitration.
So if your love of whistleblowing is such, just remember that if you have an arbitration agreement outside of the world’s most clear cut civil rights violation case that secures an end-run around that agreement, you don’t stand too much of a chance. This is just based on my discussions with attorney’s from my own ill-fated search. The last thing I want is another USC employee reading any of my work and thinking that somehow going whistleblower guarantees a lawsuit. I never really thought that, even as I desperately desired representation for USC’s internal process for such matters.
USC doesn’t have an actual whistleblower policy, so you’re de facto forced into a retaliation claim whereupon you need to prove that your manager alone vindictively fired you simply for upholding the law. Plus, if you believe the July 2020 whistleblower claims, playing by the rules is about the last thing USC is going to do in your case. USC’s Equity, Equal Opportunity and Title IX office is where you’ll go if you’re terminated for such activities, which tends to be a probable outcome if you don’t quit on your own from the institutional retaliation. They will absolutely try to wear down your resilience to pursue a complaint using catch-kill tactics.
The July 2020 whistleblower states in her lawsuit that she was assigned to investigate “two high ranking USC employees, and Plaintiff received significant and consistent reports of severe and pervasive workplace misconduct (bullying) by those two employees.” I believe that these were likely employees within the USC Human Resources Division, and I have a pretty good idea of who the July 2020 whistleblower is although I’ve chosen not to out her out of respect. USC has denied her claims of such machinations entirely soon after they were published with USC General Counsel Beong-Soo Kim rejecting faculty demands for an internal investigation.
Respected journalist Larry Altman writing in KCET describing the complaint summarizes it after noting a habitual trend toward destruction of evidence, or concealing records, writes that USC “maintained ‘shadow files’ on employees, and used their accountability office as a ‘hit team’ to retaliate against professors that spoke out against university leadership.” This is absolutely true from my experience, USC concealed a complaint from an ex-girlfriend made after a break-up from the time it was resolved until the week of my termination when it was used as pretense for threatening me and then writing up my response.
To be clear, between July 2019 and August 2022, this Title IX file did not appear despite multiple requests for my personnel file, the first of which Human Resources provided was so woefully incomplete that it did not contain even my current offer letter with pay rate. After I made a formal Staff Complaint because of that and prior retaliation including threats against my career from one of USC Human Resources Divisions leading bullies, USC hired an outside attorney to investigate. I cooperate fully, and in return received an extremely skewed investigation report denying all claims, even documentation that I had previously been given a week less time to complete my performance evaluation after not receiving it with other employees.
My supervisor literally shoved the policy back across the table at me when I tried to share a copy with him, before getting the then top HR official at USC Janis McEldowney to approve the plan for speeding up my evaluation in response to my complaint of not having received one at all. Literally, I sat there and watched as the call came through, and when I complained about that, I was accused of “documentation fraud” for having suggested that they were out of line. USC doesn’t follow its own policies, and it only follows the law when it has to, if you believe the Jane Doe behind the July 2020 lawsuit.
Most significantly, that alleged victim of retaliation and harassment states that a preservation file related to George Tyndall was destroyed, a potential criminal act. I have a few suspects in mind for this, but don’t wish to speculate, but I do think that it did happen, that incriminating emails were destroyed so that they wouldn’t fall into the hands of the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, which was fairly miffed that USC hadn’t told them about Tyndall at all despite having the legal obligation to do so under their prior Resolution Agreement.
To be clear, I was not fired for harassing anyone, and I repaired my relationship with my workplace ex-girlfriend, with whom I had only had a brief relationship after years of collegiality. We remained friendly until the week I was fired, when I even made her laughed. USC did not produce the Title IX resolution file, keep in mind that resolving the complaint is the goal, and especially without a formal investigation. I was never investigated, and the sole piece of evidence against me was the break-up text after things fizzled out romantically.
USC didn’t produce the file either in response to my July 2022 request for personnel files, and only after I complained that it still wasn’t being appropriately updated with documents, particularly in regards to pay, did they seemingly come-up with it. I figured it out at first from the look my boss gave me as the dragnet was closing-in. It was amusement, and now people do talk about their dating lives at work, but we had never disclosed it to him. Then USC went into overdrive, I was summoned, at first for an in-person with USC’s Vice President of Professionalism and Ethics Michael Blanton, to which I refused on the grounds I hadn’t been placed under investigation.
The spring prior my supervisor had angrily yelled at subordinate for a nonsensical reason on his cellphone in front of me, her assistant hearing it on the other end described it as a “tantrum.” USC’s Office of Professionalism and Ethics refused to even so much ask a question about what had happened, and instead I was further retaliated against when they denied a promotion request that had been stalled for more than 7 months after we returned from the pandemic. USC would never grant overtime, despite the hectic responsibilities of working on operations and legal matters for the USC Office of the Provost.
It's an environment that almost delights in making people, particularly administrative staff be meek so that they can be controlled, and keep a lid on things. After being threatened by Blanton, the words were, “what happened with your girlfriend? Have a break-up?” with a sneer and wink, I let it go off my shoulder before rebuking him for the comment only later in the meeting. I confronted Blanton directly about this remark, the prior allegations, and his intent and he did not deny that he knew what he was doing. USC maintains that this is some-kind of discipline, and that the remark and process were within bounds. In legal terms, this is Title IX Retaliation, the purposeful abuse of our nation’s fundamental process for gender equity in schools with the express goal of deterring me from speaking out.
You cannot intimidate a person in such a way. After USC then slipped in the Title IX complaint with my long delayed personnel file, man that blackmail really works. I may have ended a relationship that wasn’t working for a number of reasons, but I was still very much adoring towards my former flame and had even worked with her on a number of projects. What’s worse, USC didn’t expect that I would check the file so quickly and discover it. They were totally taken by surprise when I confronted them about the intimidation, only later would USC seek to justify this act without any sequencing or contextualization.
They were caught red-handed because I went in there like a man out of hell, and mind you I was both a park ranger and a trained civil process server, so I’m like the last man on earth. I’m used to being out there alone in the wild, in the housing developments of Honolulu doing the hard job of having people served legal papers. I knocked USC hard on August 26, 2022. USC didn’t just lose control of that termination hearing, their own senior security specialist intervened in my favor after turning red-faced as I confronted them and there were no good answers given. Later USC would criticize him for even daring to defend me that day in the boardroom.
Back at the time, I entertained to that Blanton particularly delighted in doing this because I used as my Outlook avatar a picture of my later girlfriend and myself with sunglasses on so you couldn’t quite see my eyes. I’ll make no apology for loving beautiful women passionately when they let me, and I sent out dozens of emails engaging in protected activity with that picture. Something like that becomes part of your identity. USC absolutely weaponizes files as dirt. One thing I noticed immediately in the new Graduate Student Workers union contract is that includes a provision for disputing the contents of a personnel file, which is not available to staff.
Last December, because of the reporting in this column on sexual violence at USC, and particularly in regards to a specific case for which I reported alone the dates, case status and “significant public profile” of the accused, USC turned around and is now after more than two years’ time offering a “Live Hearing” to close the complaint. I’m not even sure if they have the authority to do that since the accused has graduated. Review by an expert with significant public sector legal experience confirmed my analysis that this represents misconduct. Going through these processes can be extremely traumatic for victims of sexual misconduct. In this case the repeated delays, and even the wording of the Notice of Investigation itself demonstrates corrupt motive.
Then a second person came forward to tell me about a case involving staff, where the harassment in the workplace was severe, the victim had quit her job after the investigation was weaponized to intimidate the witness she made the complaint with against the accused, who is now on administrative leave pending investigation, the status of which is uncertain. I need more people to come forward with their own stories about these processes at USC. If you have a story about these types of issues at USC, please don’t hesitate to contact me via email at zachary.b.ellison@gmail.com or on my cell at 310-415-4253, including using Signal and WhatsApp. You are not alone in this fight, and I want to help to tell your stories.
Link: Whistleblowers of America
Link: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-19055-1
Link: Doe v. University of Southern California (2:20-cv-06098)
Link: Lawsuit Alleges USC Deleted Evidence, Maintained Negative Files Against Employees
Please support my work with your subscription or for direct aid use Venmo
Zachary Ellison is an Independent Journalist and Whistleblower in the Los Angeles area. Zach was most recently employed by the University of Southern California, Office of the Provost from October 2015 to August 2022 as an Executive Secretary and Administrative Assistant supporting the Vice Provost for Academic Operations and the Vice Provost and Senior Advisor to the Provost among others. Zach holds a Master’s in Public Administration and a Graduate Certificate in Sustainable Policy and Planning from the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. While a student at USC, he worked for the USC Good Neighbors Campaign including on their newsletter distributed university-wide. Zach completed his B.A. in History at Reed College, in Portland, Oregon and was a writer, editor, and photographer for the Pasadena High School Chronicle. He was Barack Obama’s one-millionth online campaign contributor in 2008. Zach is a former AmeriCorps intern for Hawaii State Parks and worked for the City of Manhattan Beach Parks and Recreation. He is a trained civil process server, and enjoys weekends in the great outdoors.
