Cameron Wright, the ousted engineering dean at the University of Wyoming, filed a lawsuit against the school this week, alleging retaliation from university President Ed Seidel.
Wright’s large group of vocal supporters on and off campus has kept Seidel in office after he protested the transfer of funding from the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences to a new computing school. The new school is run by Seidel’s romantic partner.
Wright, who is still a university professor, has largely kept quiet in public. However, in his legal complaint, filed Thursday in Albany County District Court, his attorney claims Seidel “personally and through third parties improperly pressured” Wright to sign off on the transfer of $500,000 to the College of Computing, despite university guidelines requiring Seidel to stay out of the matter given his relationship with computing dean Gabrielle Allen.
According to the complaint, Seidel orchestrated the former dean’s ouster after he refused.
Wright declined to comment Friday, citing advice from his attorney, May Elizabeth Galvan. She also declined to comment on the lawsuit. In a brief statement, UW spokesperson Chad Baldwin said the school disagrees with Wright’s depiction of events.
“The university disagrees with allegations made in the complaint and will vigorously defend against it,” Baldwin said in an email.
According to previously disclosed records, Wright opposed the transfer because he believed it violated legislative directives to spend the funds on the engineering college. Wright argued that the money was allocated to a long-held goal of state leaders to propel the college into the top tier of engineering schools nationwide.
Seidel and other university officials, including the school’s trustees, have argued that the budget transfer was appropriate and that Wright was fired for failing to adequately advance the school’s Tier 1 goal.
Finally, the trustees voted to remove Wright from his deanship, not Seidel. They agreed to do so unanimously in a closed session in early April. However, Wright’s attorney claims in the complaint that the board made the decision “at Dr. Seidel’s insistence,” though the complaint does not explain how the former dean is aware of this.
The complaint alleges that Seidel retaliated against Wright prior to his demotion by “public dissemination of false information concerning [Wright’s] tenure as Dean of the College of Engineering and Physical Science.”
The complaint claims that after the vote, as the university community erupted in outrage over the widely popular dean’s removal, the trustees also harmed Wright’s reputation.
“Following [Wright’s] removal as Dean, the University of Wyoming Board of Trustees, acting in their official capacities, publicly disseminated otherwise confidential information falsely denigrating his performance as Dean,” according to the allegations.
According to the lawsuit, Wright was demoted despite receiving positive performance evaluations and having no disciplinary or negative incidents on his record. The demotion also came despite the objections of the ten engineering college department heads, who supported Wright and attempted to prevent his demotion in a letter to the trustees before they voted.
The lawsuit requests that a judge order UW to reinstate Wright as dean, award him back pay and attorney fees, and provide “further relief as may be just and equitable.”
On April 7, an overwhelming majority of the faculty senate voted no confidence in Seidel following Wright’s demotion.
It also prompted the deans of the university’s other colleges, with the exception of Allen, to write to Seidel and the trustees, expressing their “deep concern for the trajectory of the university.”
Two major donors to the university also publicly stated that they were reconsidering their financial support following the demotion.
