Complaint removed from UW-L dispatcher recently fired, then given job back

Asian student-employee whom
remarks were made toward has since quit.

A racial statement made by a University of Wisconsin-La Crosse police dispatcher was enough reason to get her fired a month ago.

A week later, however, she was back to work and the complaint appears to have been removed from her personnel record.

New records from the UW System do not list recent disciplinary actions against Kimberly Dearman.

The dispatcher was fired in March, after an Asian student-employee’s complaint that, “(Dearman) went on for about 5 minutes about how immigrants don’t belong and then turned to look at me and said, ‘but no offense to you.’

“She then went on to say how she believes she wasn’t a racist, but she believed that all immigrants deserved to go back to where they were from.”

(Update from March 20 story below)

Kim Dearman is back at work for the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse police station, a week after she was fired for a charge of abusive language to a student co-worker.

UW-L Chancellor Joe Gow told WIZM that Dearman returned to work Monday, after being offered reinstatement last week. The student-employee has since quit her job.

Gow believes this should close the matter, although he says Dearman’s attorney is demanding UW-L pay Dearman at $250,000 settlement. 

“What’s going on is (Dearman’s lawyer) has asked for a quarter of a million dollars,” Gow said. “We’re not going to pay that money. We’ve not done anything wrong”

Dearman was dismissed on March 13 for remarks about immigrants, which offended a student of Asian decent that she worked with.

According to that student-employee’s complaint, “(Dearman) went on for about 5 minutes about how immigrants don’t belong and then turned to look at me and said, ‘but no offense to you.’

“She then went on to say how she believes she wasn’t a racist, but she believed that all immigrants deserved to go back to where they were from.”

Gow says it’s not OK for a university employee to “intimidate a subordinate.”