And yes, the college did cause harm to the international students and the Siouxland community.

Commentary By Gary Dickson, Editor – Siouxland Observer

I would have thought that Western Iowa Tech Community College president Terry Murrell’s legs and feet would have tired from all the dancing he’s been doing this spring. And then there’s the fast-talking. Wooee! I’ll bet his jaw needs some rest from talking out of both sides of his mouth, too. Great Googly-oogly! Ol’ Terry has learned quite a bit about gaslighting from watching Donald Trump on the telly.

As reported last week by the Iowa Capital Dispatch in a story we printed in the Siouxland Observer, WITCC has agreed to pay $2.3 million to settle a lawsuit initiated by 10 students from Brazil. In April, the school agreed to pay $3 million to settle similar claims brought by 13 students from Chile.

Court documents confirm that while the lawsuits have yet to be dismissed, settlements between the school and the students have been finalized.

College President Murrell said earlier last week that he took responsibility for the problems in the school’s J-1 visa program that was intended to offer educational opportunities for foreign students.

“The J-1 program is complex, it’s complicated,” Murrell stated, “and I don’t think we appreciated that when we stepped in, and all of that is my fault … We got too deep into something we were not overly familiar with, and we didn’t do a good job.”

No, you didn’t do a good job, President Murrell. And what happened is you and the WITCC board of directors tried to duck any blame or being the cause of any harm to the international students.

The lawsuits alleged that WITCC recruited the students with the promise of working in the culinary arts or robotics industries. However, the culinary arts program students signed up for was allegedly rebranded as a “food-service diploma program” and the robotics program students signed up for was rebranded as an “electromechanical technician program.”

Ahh, the ol’ college program title switcheroo, right? Sounds like “Bait n’ Switch” to me.

After arriving in Iowa, the students were put to work on meatpacking production lines to help fill a labor shortage in western Iowa. Some of the students had to work 12-hour overnight shifts and then report to class by 8 a.m., one of the lawsuits alleges.

The school allegedly arranged for J & L to put the students to work at Tur-Pak and Royal Canin. The arrangement allegedly called for the two companies to pay $15 an hour for the students’ labor, with $7.75 an hour of that routed to the college to offset the expense of the students’ housing, tuition and fees.

Murrell of course wants to make it look like WITCC is the victim in all this. (Who does this sound like?) In a Sioux City Journal story on July 25, he said, “Unfortunately, the issue has been characterized very differently, which is simply not accurate, and frankly unfair to all involved.”

Really?

I would guess the president wants us to produce a tear or two for him and his human trafficking buddies at this point. By the way, Murrell didn’t provide any details to say how the issue was characterized inaccurately.

He went on to say, as board members had said when the college settled the first lawsuit back in April, that the decision to settle was “purely financial”, a business decision. And the board member, Tricia Sutherland, said the college denied any liability in the lawsuit.

At the board’s regular meeting in mid-May, several members of the public expressed displeasure with the board. Local lawyer and former WITCC student and instructor Rosanne Plante said in her experience, defendants don’t agree to large settlements if they’ve done nothing wrong she told the Sioux City Journal in a story dated May 17.

“This was not a business decision. This was a decision, I believe, to quiet the situation,” Plante told the Journal.

Why sure the decision was made to quiet the situation. Also, if the lawsuit was allowed to continue to trial from the way things looked, and with Murrell admitting the college hadn’t done a good job, well maybe, with additional fees and fines the college could have ended up paying millions more. And they just want the damned thing to go away.

Yet that didn’t stop Morrell from trying to gaslight the public. In a July 25 story in the Sioux City Journal reporting the second settlement of $2 million, he said, “Students were paid for every hour that they worked.”

Say what? Paid what? Come on President Murrell, you can do better than that. We know that the students were paid $7.75 an hour. Now they’re back home and you’re implying that WITCC paid them the full $15.00 an hour?

As my Dad used to say, “Son, don’t pee on my boots and tell me it’s raining.”

The college strongly denies any wrongdoing, and says it did not engage in human trafficking. The school’s president says the program was hastily put together and was not well executed, but in their view it was not illegal.

Dave Bernstein, an officer of State Steel, has been outspoken about the damage the lawsuits and ultimate settlements have caused to the Sioux City area. He remains skeptical about the college’s denial and minimization, pointing out during a television interview on KTIV television with reporter Matt Hoffman that at least some of the students were given “T visas,” according to court paperwork, meaning they helped law enforcement investigate the school.

Hoffman reported that, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the T visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows certain victims of “severe” trafficking to remain in the United States for up to four years. So, to be eligible, the students would have been required to give assistance to law enforcement for the investigation, detection or prosecution of human trafficking.

Bernstein said the term “human trafficking” seems to fit, even if Western Iowa Tech didn’t hold the students in the U.S. against their will. The school said students were free to leave at anytime, and that their tuition, laptop computers, books, housing and health insurance expenses were covered.

“It’s probably a pretty challenging and daunting experience for those kids,” he said. “It seems that term (human trafficking) was the legal term that was applied to what the State Department felt they were doing.”

In other words, it looked like a duck, walked like a duck, quacked like a duck.

The Western Iowa Tech Board includes the following members who voted for the settlement:

Micah Lang, Brad Griffin, Blanca Martinez, Linnea Fletcher, Tricia Sutherland, Mary Parker, Jeremy Ogle and Russell Wray.

Board Member Erin Muck was absent from Wednesday’s vote.

Bernstein also expressed concern in the interview about how the college will pay for the settlements, which total $5.3 million, on top of $2 million in legal fees. Murrell indicated Wednesday that the school was still in discussions with its insurance provider on payment and that any excess would be taken out of the school’s reserves.

“(The college) doesn’t write checks for $7.3 million and not have it impact something somewhere for this community,” said Bernstein. “This is a taxpayer-funded entity, and they need to be accountable and the elected officials who serve on that board need to be accountable to the public.”

“As a board, we are pleased to put this matter behind us,” said Board Chair Russell Wray in a written statement. “The decision to settle gives us the opportunity to learn from the experience but also look to the future and fulfill our mission to elevate our diverse learners and strengthen our communities through inclusive and innovative education.”

Of course the board is happy to get the matter behind them. They’d like nothing more than if the entire population of Woodbury, Plymouth, Union, Ida, Cherokee and Sioux Counties would forget about this sordid matter. The board and the president of Western Iowa Tech will do all manner of contortions, shuckin’ and jivin’ as well as playing “hear no evil, see no evil, and definitely, see no evil” to move along and keep their positions. They’ll probably play a game of hopscotch with you just to get you to like them.

These folks in charge at WITCC have done irreparable harm to at least 23 students from Brazil and Chile. The students are likely suffering from PTSD, let alone crushed hopes and dreams thanks to WITCC and their codefendants in the remaining lawsuits, J & L Staffing and Recruiting and their associated business Premier Services, Tur-pak Foods and Royal Canin.

At WITCC I think it is time for Terry Murrell to go. He’s been at WITCC since 2011. Since he has stated publicly that he is responsible for the failings of the J-1 visa program that brought the 23 international students to Sioux City and WITCC’s campus and has cost the college at least $5 million. Or rather it’s insurance company that much. Then I think it’s time for Murrell to hit the dusty trail and look elsewhere.

And as Dave Bernstein said in his interview on KTIV last week, I believe it’s time to replace the WITCC board. The members have demonstrated a belief that they consider the settlement of the lawsuit with the Brazilian and Chilian students like a private matter, that it concerns only them. There’s no transparency. Instead, we find only arrogance towards the public. The board forgets who is providing a lot of the funding for the institution. They also seem to have ignored the fact that this incident is a slap in the face to the other businesses and nonprofit organizations in the community who support the college and depend on it for training future employees.

It is time for the song and dance to end and real accountability to begin at WITCC.

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