Thursday, October 21, 1993
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
TONKOVICH
Emil Tonkovich and Fred, his yellow Labrador, look over Tonkovich's 40 acres of farm land about a mile south of Lawrence in Douglas County. Tonkovich, who grew up in Chicago, finds the farm a welcome change from city life.
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On Sept. 27, 1991, Tonkovich says, the University handed down a sanction of paid leave for one year.
Tonkovich says he rejected Budig's offer and requested an open hearing.
During the next six months, the University and Tonkovich tried to resolve the issue through mediation.
Meanwhile, McVey, frustrated by what she perceived as a lack of progress by the University in handling her allegation, took her story to The University Daily Kansan. An April 23, 1992, Kansan article included the account by McVey, whose name was not used. The story named Tonkovich in the complaint.
A week before the article was published, Tonkovich says mediation between the University and him failed. Tonkovich says he thinks he did not receive a satisfactory resolution to the issue because the University acted in bad faith.
Aug. 27, 1992, one day after Budig publicly called for Tonkovich's dismissal, Tonkovich took his next step at the open hearing before the faculty committee on tenure and related problems.
For nine months, the committee tried to determine the validity of Budig's recommendation. Forty-nine witnesses testified, and 8,176 pages of testimony were generated. The witnesses made charges and countercharges against Tonkovich.
On July 30, 1993, the decision came in: Tonkovich had lost. In its final report, the committee voted 3-2, dismissing Tonkovich on grounds of moral turpitude.
Of the 20 allegations of sexual harassment, the committee found that two had violated the faculty code: McVey's allegations of oral sex and an allegation that Tonkovich held a student's hand and asked three times, "Who's your favorite teacher?"
Though it split on the decision to dismiss Tonkovich, the committee did conclude in its 250-page report that a sexual encounter took place between Tonkvich and McVey.
With that decision, Tonkovich became only the second tenured professor in the history of the University to be fired.
For Emil Tonkovich, the battle before the committee was lost, but the war to reclaim his name goes on.
ATTACKED THROUGH ALLEGATIONS
Through it all, Tonkovich says, he has kept hope that justice will prevail. He says that others in his position might not have made it.
"One out of 10 would have probably committed suicide," says 42-year-old Tonkovich, his words clipped. "One of them would have opened up a gun on the University."
Few in his position would have challenged the University administrators, he says.
"You don't treat someone who has a criminal record like they've treated me." Tonkovich says he fingerst the edges of his hand-written notes. "In fact, they wouldn't.
"The University used to be a place of freeflowing ideas. First, it was attacking the other person's views on merit. Then, it went to attacking the other person by calling names.
"This is the next step: You get attacked
through allegations."
He still harbors resentment about how the University handled his case, he says.
"I think the University was gutless and scared," he says. "There's no question about that. And then, when I had the audacity to say I was innocent and request a hearing, they became vindictive. They're used to people rolling over."
Victoria Thomas, University general counsel, says, "It would be inappropriate for the University to comment, other than to say: In our view, the University adhered to its procedures and acted appropriately."
But Tonkovich had much to comment on and much to criticize about what he called the "gutless" University administration. During the hearing, he thought it was inappropriate to speak to the press, he says.
"Now that the hearing is over, I feel free to speak about the record of the case," he says.
Beyond the record of the case, he is willing,
be it begrudgingly, to give some details of his
life before the University, before his life was
put on hold, before Emil Tonkovich, the
stand-out criminal procedure professor
became Emil Tonkovich, sexual harassment
ligitant and out-of-work law professor.
THE PATH TO LAWRENCE
"I grew up poor. I've never been a person who viewed other people as unequal." he says.
"Itreat people equally regardless of what their status is in life because that was inherent in my background."
Tonkovich was born in the south side of Chicago to immigrant parents. His blue-collar upbringing taught him early that people should be treated fairly even if life provides no guarantees, he says.
Tonkovich later worked three shifts a week at that steel mill to put himself through his first three years of college. In huge smelting furnaces, Tonkovich cleaned up the debris from blasts that released molten iron.
His Hungarian-born mother stayed at home to raise Tonkovich and his three sisters. His Croatian-born father drove a truck for the Inland Steel Mill in East Chicago, Ind.
"I used to shovel out this steely soot in an area that is only 4 feet high, at the bottom of the furnace," he says. "It wasn't as dirty work as the last two years. It was hot, sweaty work, but this is the worst I ever been through."
During his senior year at Indiana University Northwest in Gary, Ind., Tonkovich left his job at the steel mill to work as a police officer on the streets of Hammond, Ind., west of Gary.
After attending law school at Valparaiso University in Northeast Indiana for one year, he transferred to the University of Notre Dame Law School in South Bend, Ind. He graduated summa cum laude from Notre Dame in May 1977.
Tonkovic says his time as a police officer kept him in school an additional year. He completed his bachelor's degree in sociology in 1973.
Tonkovik continued working on the Hammond police force after college. He later joined the Department of Justice in Gary as a task-force agent before going to law school.
With a background in law enforcement and a
FIRED BY TRIAL
A profile of Emil Tonkovich
legal degree, Tonkovich found work the next year as a special trial attorney with the Justice Department in Washington. D.C.
Returning in August 1978 to his hometown, Tonkovich joined the Chicago Strike Force, one of 15 Justice Department units across the country that combat organized crime.
As special trial attorney on the strike force, Tonkovich headed two successful prosecutions: one against a former Teamsters union president for his involvement in a conspiracy to bribe a U.S. senator and another against a Kansas City organized crime family involved in skimming profits from a Las Vegas casino.
After staying in Chicago for three years, he savs he thought it was time to move on.
That yearning for something different and a desire to move to a midsize college town brought him to the KU law school in Fall 1981 as an associate professor.
During the 10 years that he was at the law school, the clinic was one of the most popular courses, Tonkovik says. Every year, between 50 and 70 third-year law students applied for the 12 available positions. His other classes consistently filled to capacity, and students gave him some of the highest evaluations in the law school, he says.
In April 1991, one month before Jerry heard about the first harassment allegations, the dean's evaluations of Tonkovich were glowing. Tonkovich says.
"Of all the schools, I liked KU the best," Tonkovich says. "KU offered me exactly what I wanted to teach. You couldn't get a better package."
"I was at a point where I had been a federal prosecutor," he says. "I had done everything I could do in that area. I had done two national investigations. I was at a point in my life where I wanted to do something different."
He says he interviewed with the University of Kentucky and the University of Arkansas law schools before choosing Kansas.
"Dean Jerry wrote in his annual evaluation, 'It was a very good year. The students continue to be excited about your courses. Your willingness to step to the plate to assist students is very, very important.' Tonkovik says.
The package the University offered included an opportunity for Tonkovich to start his own criminal law clinic.
A RESPECTED PROFESSOR
Mike Davis, professor of law and dean of the
law school from 1980 to 1989, hired Tonkovich, who he says was an extremely popular teacher.
"He could translate theory into understandable applications for students." Davis says.
Tonkovich says that he was popular with students not only inside the classroom but also away from law school. He often socialized with students at bars and parties, a practice that he says was common for law faculty and students for many years.
"This notion of treating students as adults and socializing with students was promoted by the law school," Tonkovich says. "I think it was very positive. It had always had that reputation of being as fun a place as you can be in and still be in law school."
Davis says he agrees that for a long time law students and faculty met outside the classroom. When Davis first came to the University in the 1970s, he says, the atmosphere of the law school was relaxed. Faculty and students met frequently at parties, bars and intramural sporting events. Davis says.
Since the 1980s, informal mingling between faculty and students has declined. Davis says, and the Tonkovich case probably has had a recent "chilling effect" on faculty-student interactions.
Tonkvich says that law students have a different relationship than undergraduates with their professors.
"I'm sorry if I treat 25-year-old people as equals," he says.
RELATIONSHIPS WITH STUDENTS
For Tonkovich, the faculty-student relationship did not preclude romantic relationships. During his time as a teacher, Tonkovich dated law school students from his classes, he says.
One relationship, with then-law student Amy McGowan, began in the summer of 1982 and lasted almost four years.
In October 1985, he met his fiancee, Chris Kenney, 32, his former student and the assistant district attorney in Douglas County.
When the furor of the sexual harassment allegations finally passes, Tonkovich and Kenney say, they plan to marry.
Kenney says, "We haven't been able to sit down and think that far ahead. Right now is not the right time to make plans for the future."
Tonkovich agrees that the impending appeal
with Regents has left his marriage to Kenney on hold. He also says that he needed her support to make it through the ordeal of the hearings.
Tonkovich and Kenney share a midsize home adjacent to the public golf course at Alvamar Country Club in west Lawrence. Their backyard borders the green of the course's third hole. Sometimes in the late evening, when the green clears of late afternoon players, Tonkovich says, he takes his yellow Labrador for a walk on the course.
When he is not working on his appeal, he spends his time watching Cable News Network. He considers himself a "news junkie," he says.
But otherwise, he remains unemployed. He says he lives off his savings while he waits to try to get his job back.
Having gotten through hearings that cost him $40,000, Tonkovich says, he feels confident about winning his appeal.
"I fully expect to be a success in this at some point," he says.
But to find success, Tonkovich says, he must expose what he calls the sham of the sexual harassment allegations and the subsequent hearings.
Tonkovich says that it was his politics, not any University policy, that brought charges of sexual harassment.
UNFAIR TREATMENT
Tonkovic says he spoke out during law school faculty meetings about some divisive issues. He says that many faculty members had opposed his conservative views on military recruitment and affirmative action.
"I was definitely a thorn in their side, and they didn't like hearing these things," Tonkovic says. "I don't think this would have been done to anyone else on the faculty."
The best way to attack a conservative, Tonkovich says, is to make an allegation of sexual harassment because it undermines a conservative's natural base of high morality.
Tonkovich chooses not to comment on McVey. Her accusations two years ago are minor compared to what has happened to him since then, he says.
"The University is the culpable party here," Tonkovich says. "I'm not going to let them forget it, though. They wee me a public apology. I did nothing wrong. They treated me as unfairly as they could treat a person."
His curled index finger beats the rhythm of his logic, point by point.
"I followed every rule," Tonkvich says. "I followed every procedure. I did everything that I could possibly do in terms of doing this correctly and by the book, but this is how I was repaid."
His argument builds, but his voice remains level. His words precise.
"If there was some fundamental problem, why didn't anything appear in the thousands and thousands and thousands of student evaluations of professors?" he asks. "Why didn't any professors ever hear of it? Why didn't any female professors ever hear of it?"
"You know why?"
"Because there was nothing."