Regents for UW could make a final decision on Joe Gow’s tenure at La Crosse during Friday meeting

The UW board of regents began a two-day meeting on Thursday, with the second day of the session of great interest to people at UW-La Crosse, especially former chancellor Joe Gow.

The first agenda item for Friday is a discussion of Gow’s future with the La Crosse campus that he headed for 17 years, until last December. Gow was fired as La Crosse’s chancellor, after it was revealed that he and his wife had a hobby of making on-line porn videos.

The board is being asked to fire Gow from the university faculty, following a hearing that happened this summer in Onalaska. A firing recommendation was made after that two-day session in June.

The regents are meeting at the Parkside campus, but open portions of the session will be available over Zoom.

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Regents may also revisit a controversy over a movie star who graduated decades ago from the UW. The meeting agenda includes a discussion about naming a facility at UW-Oshkosh.

A few years ago, Oshkosh removed the name of actor Fredric March from a theater, after it was learned that as a student at Madison, he had belonged to a campus club called the Ku Klux Klan.

Although that club was not associated with the white supremacy group, the school decided the KKK name is too controversial to honor March or anyone who belonged to any group with the Klan name.