Amendment to Pursuant to 2018-775/2017-1205 LSA R.S. 42:1169, Freedom from Reprisal for disclosure of improper acts.
I, Kevin Day, wish to clarify and update my complaint 2018-775, which as I am told is now being rolled into 2017-1205.
First, I would like to clarify 2018-775. I wish to note that I have named the individual parties whose actions I believe to be whistleblower retaliation by each of those individual parties. To help further reduce any confusion or misunderstanding I will explicitly reference the individual parties in this amendment. Furthermore, I have suffered continued retaliation since my filing of 2017-1205 as outlined in 2018-775 and have more parties than those originally mentioned in 2017-1205.
I trust that by folding 2018-775 into 2017-1205 means that you are designating 2017-1205 as a complaint filing and not as a request for advisory opinion. I have submitted 2018-775 as a filing against all parties involved in whistleblower retaliation while working at McNeese State University as I have every reason to know beyond a doubt that I have suffered whistleblower retaliation by all of those individuals.
I have also received a partial response to my FOIA and I am immediately providing additional information in this request. I will send a response to McNeese for failing to fully comply with my FOIA requests and may provide follow up information at a later date.
Individuals I believe to be engaged in whistleblower retaliation: Chad Thibodeaux Daryl Burckel Michael Snowden Robert Spinks Stan Hippler
Individuals I suspect of being involved in whistleblower retaliation: Andrew Mapley Candace Townsend Patrick Eustis
Notes on Additional Documents and DVDs I noticed that I did not provide a digital copy of the e-mail list that I had printed out in the DVD-rom that I provided. I have re-created the e-mail list and provided both the complete list as well as a list of new e-mails. The list of new e-mails is a list of e-mails that were not in the original document being amended by this document.
email_list-2018_09_30.pdf = Complete list of all e-mails. email_list-2018_09_30-278_to_358.pdf = List of all e-mails added by this amendment (e-mails 0278 to 0358).
The e-mails 0278 to 0358 have been printed and provided along with this document. As with the previous document, the printed e-mails do not contain most of the headers. Please directly view the e-mails as provided on the DVD for the full and complete view of each e-mail.
FOIA response e-mailed to me – 2018_07_11 = Directory of e-mails sent to me by Eddie Meche containing a small number of e-mails attached. FOIA response with emails – 2018_08_17 = Directory of e-mails sent to me, copied off the provided DVD-Rom.
An additional DVD-Rom is provided that contains the FOIA response DVD exactly as it was provided to me. There are some additional e-mails provided by the FOIA response that were not on the DVD and were e-mailed to me. Those are provided in a folder under my DVD-Rom. The FOIA response DVD has a sha256 checksum of f850a37ec2d1000950054c0f873fb14913825d3200ec29321a47d984b137ef75. FOIA Request Response and E-mails
As noted in 2018-775, I sent an FOIA Request to obtain public information which contains strong evidence of the violations by numerous McNeese State University employees. On July 11, 2018, I received an e-mail or two containing a small amount of e-mails. On August 17, 2018, I received a response in the form of a DVD. This response failed to comply with most requests that I made. These responses do contain numerous e-mails pertaining to situations unrelated to my requests despite their claims that they were going to review the e-mails prior to sending. That is to say, e-mails that are very clearly not related to my request and may, in fact, be private. For this reason, I am providing a precise copy of the DVD presented. They also failed to provide notes on what was omitted and also failed to provide the reasons for omission. I would also note that most, if not all, of the requested information is neither confidential nor private, especially when related to content under open-source licenses. I will follow up this amendment with additional information given that I know where the information related to what they have yet to provide. Having said that, I did receive some relevant e-mails and will be providing a breakdown of those e-mails here. I must also note that the Jabber/Pidgin communications follow under the FOIA and none were provided despite evidence of their existence. I also am concerned that they may have individuals who are named here for whistleblower retaliation processing the FOIA (a conflict of interest).
E-mail 0278: The response from Michael Snowden where he gives me the correct Discrimination Complaint form to fill out. This Discrimination Complaint form is the form that I filled out in Charlene Abbott's office, which was witnessed by Charlene Abbott. This is evidence of Michael Snowden engaging in Whistleblower Retaliation via Fraud.
E-mail 0279: My weekly/monthly report, sent on July 10, 2017, providing information to the team so that they know what I am doing. This e-mail reports that I discovered major accessibility violations. (FYI: these e-mails are shared with Stan Hippler and Chad Thibodeaux via shared folders.)
E-mail 0280: Another e-mail where I am talking with the web team, keeping communication up.
E-mail 0281: The e-mail where I send out a reminder about the emergency interface on the website. This e-mail is talked about privately between Andrew Mapley and Patrick Eustis, leaving me out of the conversation. This is evidence of the Harassment via ostracization.
E-mail 0282: My weekly/monthly report, sent on May 22, 2017. I report that there were major accessibility violations committed by the accounts hware, and doblanc. I mention the next generation www that Chad Thibodeaux told me to develop earlier this year. Furthermore, I report that there were no web team related meetings in which I was invited to. If there were any web team meetings during this time, then this would be evidence of Harassment via ostracization.
E-mail 0283: A follow up weekly/monthly report, sent on May 15, 2017.
E-mail 0284: My weekly/monthly report, sent on May, 15, 2017. I describe the status of the www.mcneese.edu website changes. I discuss the next generation www status. Furthermore, I report that there were no web team related meetings in which I was invited to.
E-mail 0285: My weekly/monthly report, sent on May 10, 2017. I describe the status of the www.mcneese.edu website changes. I discuss the next generation www status. Furthermore, I report that there were no web team related meetings in which I was invited to.
E-mail 0286: My weekly/monthly report, sent on May 2, 2017. I describe the status of the www.mcneese.edu website changes. I discuss the next generation www status. Furthermore, I report that there were no web team related meetings in which I was invited to.
E-mail 0287: My weekly/monthly report, sent on April 24, 2017. I describe the status of the www.mcneese.edu website changes. I discuss the next generation www status. Furthermore, I report that there were no web team related meetings in which I was invited to.
E-mail 0288: My weekly/monthly report, sent on April 18, 2017. I mention updates with the custom Acalog replacement that does not violate accessibility. I describe the status of the www.mcneese.edu website changes. I discuss the next generation www status. Furthermore, I report that there were no web team related meetings in which I was invited to. I emphasize that the webteam is supposed to be having weekly meetings as required by the harassment settlement and the rest of the team is ignoring that.
E-mail 0289: My weekly/monthly report, sent on April 10, 2017. This is my first weekly/monthly report where I try to promote communication between the team members by giving them an update on what I am doing. I remind the team that Andrew Mapley has the ability to Friday updates (which essentially is to remind Patrick Eustis). I describe the improvements I made to the accessibility compliant Acalog importer. (There is already a working quick solution in place and this is the more thorough/complete version). I discuss the next generation www status.
E-mail 0290: An e-mail where I, Kevin Day, forwards to the webteam for the team to be made available so that all three of us are aware of the e-mail. (Patrick Eustis was omitted and only Andrew Mapley and Kevin Day were e-mailed).
E-mail 0291: This is a reminder about the testing process to the webteam. Patrick Eustis and Andrew Mapley violated the update process and cause harm to the production www.mcneese.edu website due to their improper process. I fixed their mistake, corrected any problems it caused, and updated the sandbox accordingly. This e-mail was sent following me cleaning up the mess they made as a result of their policy violations.
E-mail 0292, 0293: Some e-mails that I sent relating to the regular weekly meetings that we are required to have as a settlement to my harassment complaint.
E-mail 0294: An e-mail where I, once again, am going out of my way to keep the Web Team informed on what I am doing. This involves upcoming bugfixes for a WYSIWYG editor (called ckeditor) that needs to be tested.
E-mail 0297, 0298: Evidence of my complaint against Patrick Eustis, in violation of security policies and access control policies, granted the user ahext unwarranted access immediately upon Patrick. The user ahext then immediately violated numerous ADA regulations. The user ahext may even have been granted access that would allow the user to delete the entire website. After I, Kevin Day, reported this (on June 29, 2017) to Andrew Mapley, as well as on Jira (www-1718), Andrew Mapley revoked Patrick Eustis' access as well as the access incorrectly granted to the account ahext. No action was taken against Andrew Mapley. Because I reported the violations against Patrick Eustis as well as those by the user behind the account ahext, I have been Retaliated against.
E-mail 0298: Andrew Mapley describes how external software is not allowed to be injected into our website due to security and accessibility requirements (www-1678, www-1669). This evidence is more evidence showing that McNeese State University is following strict security and accessibility guidelines. The is particularly relevant in that one one the numerous complaints I made against Patrick Eustis (particularly with the April 3, 2017 incident that Chad Thibodeaux and Stan Hippler began openly retaliating against me).
E-mail 0300, 0302, 0303: These e-mails are related to Jira ticket (www-1276) where, on Dec 8, 2018, I describe that we are not allowed to change the University Policies but those policies have consistently, in certain cases, violated ADA requirements due to users being granted the ability to bypass the accessibility scanner. Given that there were some users who were violating ADA via the bypasser, I was asking how should we address these violations.
E-mail 0301: This presents yet another case where Patrick Eustis violates policies related to the website. On Dec 8, 2015, I described how Patrick and this “Web Task Force” was violating ADA as well as site design policies (www-1275). This is more evidence showing that he has a long history of violating policies.
E-mail 0304, 0305: This e-mails shows where I describe a software problem that caused ADA violation and setup a process to resolve the issue (www-778). This shows how I report problems regardless of the individual involved.
E-mail 0306, 346: On October 21, 2017, I sent an e-mail to Michael T. Snowden asking why he replaced or otherwise altered my discrimination complaint. This is evidence proving Michael T. Snowden Retaliating against me. He is very clearly trying to cover up the case by changing it from a Discrimination Complaint (where I named Chad Thibodeaux, Stan Hippler, and the chain of command. Micheal Snowden even tries to ignore the Unlawful Bar Order as evidence of direct harm to be as a result of retaliation as described in my Discrimination Complaint. This is blatant act of Whistleblower Retaliation. He is clearly trying to pretend that I did not file a Discrimination Complaint even after he literally sent me the Discrimination Complaint form (see email-0278).
E-mail 0307: An e-mail showing that as far back as Aug, 2011, I am explaining to Patrick Eustis how the themes work. Not only does this show how I go out of my way to help, it also shows that Patrick Eustis was involved with the development of the McNeese website since Aug, 2011. This was done despite how Patrick Eustis has show in the past that he does know this and does have the skills (see the git logs).
E-mail 0308: As with email 307, I go into detail explaining to Patrick Eustis how the development process works. This process, for the most part, has been unchanged and followed since 2011. This is of particular note as one of my many complaints against Patrick Eustis that resulted in Retaliation involves Patrick Eustis violating the development policies and processes.
E-mail 0309, 0327, 0328, 0347, 0356: An e-mail where I provide information to Charlene Abbott and Michael Snowden.
E-mail 0310, 0311, 0329, 0330, 0331, 0332, 0333, 0334, 0335, 0336, 0337, 0338, 0339, 0340, 0341, 0342, 0343, 0355: E-mails involving the “Grievances Committee” (the one that was supposed to address my Discrimination complaint but was prohibited from doing so according the Committee”.) or the information I provided.
E-mail 0295, 0296, 0312, 0314: E-mails where my Discrimination Complaint was forwarded by Daryl Burckel to Charlene Abbott and then from Charlene Abbott and then to Stan Hippler (Also forwarded by Brenda Gallow to Stan Hippler). This is interesting as they are providing my exact complaint to the Stan Hippler while simultaneously never provided any complaints against me (as stated by Robert Spinks). Should Stan be being informed of the Discrimination Complaint before it is even fully processed?
E-mail 0313: E-mail by Patrick Eustis to Chad Thibodeaux, referencing my Weekly/Monthly Report in August 10, 2018. What is interesting here is that Patrick Eustis is stating that he is confused about the e-mail (but not to me). This suggests that Patrick Eustis somehow knows that Chad Thibodeaux is removing me for complaing about Patrick Eustis' violations. Not to mention that this e-mail also references that there are numerous major web accessibility violations discovered and reported in Jira (by me, Kevin Day) in July of 2017.
E-mail 0315: E-mail from me, Kevin Day, to Michael Snowden, complaining about my Discrimination complaint being ignored/rewritten.
E-mail 0316, 0317, 0318: An e-mail associated with a jira ticket mobile-13 where Stan Hippler gives me tasks not relating to my job about something in which I was given no programming access to. The first test, I have no access to perform any upgrades. The second task, was old news that I already new and reported to him in the ticket. The first task had absolutely no bearings on anything as the accessibility is defined and controlled by the app programmers (which has nothing to do with me because I neither have no access to the source code nor was I allowed to do any programming). This “mobile app” appears to be old software started by Dan Boitnot (who left years before), see other “mobile app” jira tickets”. This project was likely started by Michael Graham (see username/password) in e-mail. This app seems pointless because there already is a new app in use. In addition, none of the programming I was involved in was in any closed-source/proprietary software (nor have I ever signed a non-disclosure agreement to my knowledge and understanding). I believe this project is made up “busy-work” assigned to me in retaliation of my complaints of Patrick Eutis' numerous violations. My tasks were not technical and impossible given the access and instructions that I was granted. I suspect that Stan Hippler was trying to set this up as a front to pretend I am not doing was was assigned to me and hide the fact that the tasks are impossible to accomplish given the restrictions imposed by Stan Hippler. This is likely fraud used to Retaliate against me. I would further emphasize that as I was hired as a programmer but I was specifically told that I was not to do any programming in this task (see recordings Rec-2017-06-01-08-30-09, Rec-2017-06-07-08-06-34.ogg). Futhermore, the random emphasis on accessibility by Stan Hippler provides more evidence that this is an act of Whistleblower Retaliation.
E-mail 0319: My monthly report e-mails. Includes relevant information such as accessibility violations and topics related to jira ticket mobile-13.
E-mail 0320, 0321, 0322: Conversations between Andrew Mapley, Patrick Eustis, and a 3rd-party vendor “Pantheon”. This shows that not only does Andrew, Patrick, and my replacement lack the skills to continue working as I was, it also shows how much that I was providing the university. This supports my Annual Progress Reports, supporting the evidence that the university has no reason to terminate me other than as Whistleblower Retaliation. Of particular note is that they are mentioning the McNeese website was using Wordpess. Which is interesting because it never was and during my entire time working with www.mcneese.edu we were required to exclusively use Drupal. (Given that this states Patrick is a Wordpress developer and we were using Drupal, it shows that at the time that Patrick was assigned to the “Redesign Team” position (the one in which no body else in the world was offered an Equal Opportunity to get the position), he lacked the technical skills in the technology currently used by www.mcneese.edu.
E-mail 0323, 0324, 0325, 0326, 0354: These e-mails are evidence of Patrick Eustis and Andrew Mapley talking to each other about tasks directly involve my, Kevin Day's, job. They omit me from the conversation and even mention my statements on the matter (which they outright ignore). This is harassment via ostracization. Furthermore, the e-mails with the following Message-IDs were not supplied in the FOIA response: 39ea2717-c661-5fe5-ba47-4fe92272286a@mcneese.edu, b5228e41-44b4-2146-1788-73a17512bbc2@mcneese.edu, 6c5644c6-4b64-2503-8460-4f4215632fa6@mcneese.edu.
E-mail 0344: An e-mail between Mike Powell and Robert Spinks involving my complaint about the Unlawful Bar Order. This is ironic as it includes the Bar Order Policy as well as my attempts to ask for information. As seen here, Robert Spinks denies my appeal despite my never having formally sent one. It shows Robert Spinks claiming that he had an In Depth Review, despite the e-mail timestamps showing that he only responded within a very short amount of time (an hour or less). Given the extent of information that I have provided so far in this Whistleblower Retaliation case, I find it hard to believe that Robert Spinks had any in depth review. This gives me reason to believe these statements are outright Fraud. Furthermore that same University Bar Order Police states “…The actions or presence of persons who threaten the safety and security of the campus community, including actions that demonstrate a refusal to cooperate with reasonable requests of University officials…”, but in e-mail 0266 and 0344, Robert Spinks states “…It is not necessary to have committed a crime nor ne involved in an act of violence or aggression…”. Seeing has I have done nothing wrong and never received any complaints about bad conduct (of any kind), how can I have become a threat of any kind? This is clearly Fraud by Robert Spinks, an act of Whistleblower Retaliation by Robert Spinks. A bar order prohibits me from any University activity, including Football games and Piano Recitals. This is significant harm to me. (Not even talking about the fear and psychological trauma this has caused me). What is further amazing is that Robert Spinks even admits to the Whistleblower Retaliation when he states that I am being barred “..because of what I said..”.
E-mail 0345: This e-mail is a response by Stan Hippler to my weekly/monthly report on July 10, 2017.
At #1, Stan Hippler is talking about getting Ellucian Mobile app up and running. There is nothing to do to get it up and running, it comes up and running. What is he talking about? There is nothing to do here.
At #2, Stan claims that it is an “opportunity” to ask questions. There is nothing to ask questions about. It is not a technical project. It is simply an interface with a few fields for putting Name and toggling colors. Everything else is automated or otherwise configurable in under an hour. Stan then responds to “what students want”. He claims this to be a misquote (which he did, in fact, say, listen to audio recording Stan Hippler - 2017/05/23 12:54). So Stan Hippler is very clearly lying here, which is Fraud. Furthermore, “already provided by existing systems” as I have said it is referring to that this is an app that loads data from other systems thus the functionality is already provided by existing system because that is what it does. Stan then starts talking about me not being authorized to talk to factulty/staff/students. What? What does that even mean? I've never signed a non-disclure agreement to my knowledge nore has there ever been some sort of super secret operation here. We have already operated by directly contacting faculty/staff/students. Why would this suddenly be different? Furthermore, stopping me would be a violation of my 1st Amendment. I believe Stan Hippler here is trying to cover up that they put me on a non-technical/non-programming task in Whistleblower Retaliation for my complaints against Patrick Eustis. This becomes very obviously Whistleblower Retaliation where Stan Hippler is talking about other tasks conflicting with www.
At #3, Stan starts talking about him being the Director and only he calls meetings. First, Stan rarely has involved himself with calling meetings for web-team or project related stuff. Meetings have always been handled by the individuals who even meet. You can see the long history of this. So what is this sudden “Only I call the meetings” when the exact opposite has always been true? This is clearly Whistleblower Retaliation because he suddenly changed policy and then only for me and then only after I made my complaints about Patrick Eustis' violations.
At #4, Stan Hippler talks about how there is no team and that he did not call a team. Again, Stan is lying and committing Fraud (see Audio Recordings Stan Hippler - 2017/06/07 08:06 and Stan Hippler - 2017/06/01 08:30). It becomes more and more obvious that Stan Hippler is trying to create make me look bad by committing Fraud. This is Whistleblower Retaliation with the intent to provide false evidence against me. If Chad Thibodeaux was not Retaliation against me, it would only have been my word against Stan Hippler and with Chad Thibodeaux Retaliating against me he can just pretend Stan Hippler was right. Having said that, I never received any complaints nor was I terminated for having done anything wrong. This is very clearly Whistleblower Retaliation to me.
At the end of the e-mail Stan Hippler says something about this being a good place to present some information from your investigation. There is nothing to investigate. All the user does is type text in a few input fields, select a few colors, and done! It is a turn-key app. Just put a sticker on it and its done! Its like trying to explain what a plain white sheet of paper is. It is plain. It is white. What is there to investigate and explain? There is literally nothing to say or do here.
E-mail 0348, 0349, 0350, 0351, 0352, 0353: These e-mails show Andrew Mapley and Patrick Eustis openly engaging in Harassment via ostracization. Andrew Mapley even says “Team” to talk to the team, which consists of Patrick Eustis, Andrew Mapley, and Kevin Day. When he does so, he talks about “..in light of discussion with Patrick..”. In other words, the Team (of only 3 people) excludes me, has a private conversation, then includes me saying that the team has made a decision without me being allowed to take part. I even ask about what discussion they are talking about and here Andrew Mapley decides to reference a Jabber/Pidgin conversation. This is evidence of not only Harassment but also that there is evidence in the Jabber/Pidgin information that the University is withholding in direct violation of the FOIA request. I believe this is an attempt to withhold pertinent evidence to an ongoing investigation in an attempt to affect its results in their favor (Which I would go so far as to say is continued Whistleblower Retaliation). I still went forward with the meeting as Stan Hippler was still there to take part. I would remind you that the meetings between the team are required as a result of the Harassment complaint that I filed against Patrick Eustis and witnessed by Charlene Abbott.
E-mail 0357: Another e-mail providing evidence of me attempting to help Patrick Eustis get the documentation and information. This is done, despite his known and established working knowledge (as seen in the Git logs as well as in email-0307). This again shows me going out of my way to help Patrick Eustis despite him apparently going out of his way to ignore me and disclude me.
E-mail 0358: An e-mail sent by Andrew Mapley on October 6, 2015 to numerous individuals on the accessibility guidelines that the University will follow. This shows that Andrew as well as numerous other people know about the accessibility rules that we follow and have know for some time. For the most part, our accessibility rules have never changed. The e-mail also references the McNeese websiteaccessibility documentation (https://www.mcneese.edu/documentation/website/web_accessibility).
Roberts Spinks Terminated? Fraud?
I would note that I heard rumors that Robert Spinks has been fired or otherwise terminated. I do not know if this is true or not and I will therefore add this to my FOIA follow up. If this is true, then this shows that Senior Staff at McNeese State University, possibly the University President, have engaged in Whistleblower Retaliation via Fraud. The reason why I claim this is that in all of my complaints that they responded to, the (Dr. Daryl Burkel, Michael Snowden, or the so-called Grievances Committed) tried to claim that nothing wrong has been done. If nothing wrong has been done, then why has Robert Spinks been fired/terminated? I must remind you that I do not know if he was Fired/Terminated, so I will investigate to confirm/deny this. Summary It is amazing how Daryl Burkyl would engage in Whistleblower Retaliation by claiming he would review my Discrimination Complaint after I had informed him that Michael Snowden has engaged in Whistleblower Retaliation by replacing my Discrimination Complaint with a Hostile Work Environment complaint and then removed the Chain of Command from my list of accused. With Chain of Command, obviously referring to everyone from Stan Hippler up to the University President, Daryl Burkyl. The Chain of Command and Robert Spinks Whistleblower Retaliated against me in concert with Chad Thibodeaux and Stan Hippler for repeatedly reporting numerous violations by Patrick Eustis and now, based on my investigations, Andrew Mapley.
It seems to me that nearly the entire Chain of Command at McNeese State University has unilaterally decided that they are above the law and can rewrite, alter, and ignore any complaint filed against them. The evidence that I have provided is only a small portion of what I believe is most relevant. Because I do not know what specifically is most relevant for you, I have withheld the thousands of e-mails that I currently to have in my possession solely for the purposes of not overwhelming you with potentially useless information. I do not wish to waste your time, but I do intend to give sufficient evidence. If you wish for a copy of all of the e-mails that I have in my possession, I have no problems with releasing that information, but given the size of the information I will not be able to document it as thoroughly as I have with the e-mails I have provided you thus far.
Because they have failed to fully comply with the FOIA Request, I am going to write a follow up request and will provide a copy of that request to you as well, for records purposes. Much of the information that has been requested, I can break down and explain without the e-mails but it will not be accurate nor will it be as precise as I believe these statements should be. But if they continue to withhold evidence in violation of FOIA in an attempt to interfere with the investigation, then I will break down the details of why I am requested what I am requesting and where the evidence is and what the evidence is about to the extent of my abilities to remember and recite.
There is plenty of evidence here of the University Chain of Command lying and providing false records. The “Hostile Work Environment” and my complaints to the Chain of Command are a perfect example of this. Stan Hippler's statements in the Jira tickets where he says that he never said something when I have audio recordings of him saying exactly that is another example. Patrick Eustis has shown time and time again to lie as was proven when I file my Harassment complaint that the Stan Hippler and Chad Thibodeaux promptly ignored.
I believe stating that they hear nothing but good things about me, state they they like what I are doing, tell me to keep doing exactly what I am doing, but by the I am fired because I am not the kind of person the University wants and I did nothing wrong but here is a bar order for doing some unnamed and unexplained thing wrong following my complaints of wrongdoing to be clear and blatant Fraud and to be very clear and blatant Whistleblower Retaliation.