Table of Contents

Whistleblower Retaliation

McNeese State University retaliated against me, Kevin Day, for repeatedly reporting numerous violations of laws, policies, and procedures by Patrick Eustis. The most notable of which would be the violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act that occurred on April 3, 2017.

Summary of Retaliation

  1. McNeese State University exhibited hostile behavior for reporting actions of Patrick Eustis (see: June 2017 to July 2017) for violating McNeese State Universities own policies, contractual agreements, and numerous and repeated violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (cite).
  2. McNeese State University has been repeatedly informed of this actions in cases that involve my job as a Web Programmer at McNeese State University (cite) and has retaliated against me, Kevin Day, for reporting these actions to them (see: June 2017 to July 2017).
  3. Some of these violations perpetrated by Patrick Eustis and/or McNeese State University's Senior-Staff/Chain-of-Command are:
    1. Patrick Eustis' attempted rendering of unvetted content on www.mcneese.edu (cite).
    2. Patrick Eustis' use of a privately owned website outside of McNeese State University in one or more web forms related to the processing, gathering, and possibly presenting potentially confidential information related to the Banner system (cite) (cite witness).
    3. Numerous, and repeated violations (cite), of Americans with Disabilities Act (cite Internet archive) throughout Patrick Eustis' employment at McNeese State University (cite).
    4. Violation of Americans with Disabilities Act related settlement where McNeese State University swore that they would follow Section 508 and other related regulations (cite).
    5. Patrick Eustis' immediate violation of security policies by granting a non-technical user (full) technical administrative access the moment Patrick Eustis was granted admin access to www.mcneese.edu.
    6. The removal of Kevin Day from the web team (aka: only www.mcneese.edu website) following the reporting of Patrick Eustis' Americans with Disabilies Act violations (see: June, 2017 to July 2017).
    7. I was assigned to a new project that involved no programming and was directly told not to do any programming on this project, despite my being hired as a Web Programmer immediately following my last complaints against Patrick Eustis' Americans with Disabilities Act violations (in addition to security violations) (see: June, 2017 to July 2017).
    8. The lack of action against Andrew Mapley for also reporting, preventing, reversing Patrick Eustis' Americans with Disabilities Act (and other) violations (cite).
    9. The creation of non-existent jobs to, in multiple separate instances (cite), to provide Patrick Eustis a job, and possibly additional pay, without announcing a new position and providing an Equal Opportunity under the law for anybody to get the new job (cite).
    10. The sudden disappearance of that first new position following Patrick Eustis's move to the second new position (cite).
    11. The lack of removal or action against Andrew Mapley for not publishing Patrick Eustis's said violations when I, Kevin Day, had action taken against me for doing the same thing, aka: disparate treatment (cite).
    12. The lack of any formal complaint or action against me while I have consistent an above average Annual Performance Review, including highlighted notable accomplishments preceding my Termination (cite).
    13. Having never been told I did anything wrong nor having had charges or complaints of any kind filed against me, my, Kevin Day's, position was Terminated with no notification or awareness that I was doing anything wrong (cite).
    14. The immediate issuance of a University Bar Order against me, Kevin Day, without any basis for having done anything wrong (cite).
    15. The issuance of the said University Bar Order with the apparent attempt to harass, intimidate, and threaten me, Kevin Day (cite).
    16. The issuance of the said University Bar Order to prevent me, Kevin Day, from speaking to other University personnel and students in direct violation of my Constitutional Rights as established by the First Amendment, Section 1983 (cite).
    17. The rewriting and replacement of my Discrimination complaint against Patrick Eustis, Stan Hippler, Chad Thibodeaux, Robert Spinks, and other McNeese State University Chain of Command (aka: Senior Staff) (cite).
    18. The further rewriting and replacement of my complaint to McNeese State University for having rewrote and replaced my original Discrimination complaint (cite).
    19. The failure to comply with Section 44:32(D) of the Louisiana Public Records Act (5 U.S.C. Sec. 552) when I attempted to request for the evidence that is on public records, especially the clear and concise proof of my reporting of Patrick Eustis' violations (cite).
    20. The lack of any response to my Louisiana Public Records Act (5 U.S.C. Sec. 552) request by McNeese State University (cite).

Summarized Rundown

The McNeese State University hired me, Kevin Day, as an open-source programmer to explicitly perform open-source programming and to contribute to the open-source community. The main project that I was eventually assigned to was the McNeese Website, which is based on Drupal. The web team, that is the team that only worked on the www.mcneese.edu website, was instructed by Dennis Stutes (my Immediate Supervisor at the time) and Michael Graham (the Chief Technology officer at the time) to build the new website under Drupal and the rest of the websites would be slowly moved into Drupal projects and theme. At some point during the process Michael Graham and Dennis Stutes left the university and Chad Thibodeaux and Stan Hippler took over. During this, Chad had Patrick Eustis build a theme to be used for the McNeese website (www.mcneese.edu). This theme was implemented by me, Kevin Day, Andrew Mapley, and Patrick Eustis. We were directly ordered to use this theme (and Drupal) for all subsequent websites, including any non-webteam websites. These orders were never lifted. In particular, we were told and emphasized that we must follow the ADA codes.

Patrick Eustis was not part of the UCS department at the time and worked under Chad Thibodeaux in some manner. Once the theme work was done, Patrick Eustis was not involved with the web team or any UCS projects until years later. At some point before joining the UCS, Patrick Eustis was assigned to work on the McNeese Radio Station (kbys.fm). Patrick Eustis violated the requirements that we must use Drupal, that we must maintain the same primary theme, and the ADA requirements (See Internet Archive for kbys.com). (Which to this day, continues to violate the ADA requirements McNeese State University, under law, claimed they would follow.)

Eventually, Patrick Eustis was suddenly added to the UCS department without any job opportunities being posted to a position that never prior existed (as far as I can tell). When added to the department and subsequently to the webtream, I, Kevin Day, went out of my way to make sure Patrick Eustis had access that he needed. He was given the rules and requirements, by which he immediately began to violate. Furthermore, Patrick Eustis began excluding and ignoring me, effectively harassing me (which took me a while to notice because I was not aware that I was being ignored until much later). On a number of occasions, both Andrew Mapley and I, Kevin Day, had to limit Patrick's access or correct problems caused by Patrick Eustis not follow proper protocol.

Patrick was then suddenly moved out of the UCS department into a brand new (and not clearly defined) position that didn't exist before, again without any job opportunity postings. The passive aggressive behavior of Patrick Eustis, by ignoring and excluding me, Kevin Day, then increased tenfold. Andrew Mapley and Patrick Eustis were apparently talking and meeting without me on a number of occasions that directly involved my job. I had filed harassment complaints and Patrick Eustis, Andrew Mapley, Stan Hippler, and Chad Thibodeaux subsequently ignored the complaints, for the most part.

Patrick Eustis then violated a number of security policies and ADA requirements that I then refused to publish as-is. Instead, I spent an hour implementing an immediate solution and asked if Patrick Eustis if it was a Hotfix (aka: needed to be immediately be applied to the production system). Patrick Eustis ignored the request. Chad Thibodeaux and Stan Hippler seemed to have an issue with me refusing to violated the law in regards to ADA after having reported the violations (via a tool and a system called Jira). Instead of addressing Patrick's violations of the law and security issues (that could potentially put the university and its students at risk), they decided to remove me from the web team (but not the other web projects, oddly enough) assign me to an unrelated non-programming job and directly told me not to do any programming for that project. (Bear in mind that I was hired as a programmer, this is blatant whistleblower retaliation.)

That was apparently not good enough for them, so they decided to then terminate my position at the university without explanation, without every telling me I did anything wrong, without any bad performance reviews, and with extreme prejudice. Chief of Police, Robert Spinks, stepped in to unlawfully bar me from the campus, admitting that what I said was the reason for the bar. So the campus Chief of Police has no problems admitting to retaliating against me for saying that Patrick Eustis was consistently violating numerous laws, policies, and procedures.

I then filed a Discrimination complaint, because at the time I was not aware that “retaliation” and “whistleblower retaliation” were two different things in the eyes of the law. McNeese State University decided that since I mentioned Patrick Eustis, Stan Hippler, Chad Thibodeaux, and other Senior Staff (possibly including Robert Spinks) in my complaint that they would just alter and replace my Discrimination Complaint with another.

After discovering that Patrick Eustis, Chad Thibodeaux, and the other Senior Staff were removed from the Discrimination complaint that I filed on July 18, 2017 and that the Discrimination Complaint was replaced with a Bullying Complaint, I e-mailed the university my own complaint about these violations. The McNeese State University president, Dr. Daryl Burckel, claimed that he would have the complaint reviewed by a special committee. After waiting a months, the committee finally met with me, electronically. The committee was not even aware of the discrimination complaint that the committee was supposedly set up to address. Furthermore they directly told me that they were not allowed to review anything related to my termination. Keep in mind that my termination is the entire focus of the Discrimination Complaint. I therefore, have no clue what the committee's purposes was or what they were reviewing. All I know is that the president disallowed the committee from investigating and reviewing the complaint that he told me they would investigate and review.

At this point, I am convinced that McNeese State University thinks that they are above the law and are allowed to discriminate, harass, intimidate, violate laws, and retaliate against whistleblowers with impunity under the law.