A former Dixie Technical College professor is suing the school, saying it fired him because he shared concerns about the college and wouldn’t lie about program growth in a government funding document.
Milan Tripp, who was hired to teach in the college’s Diesel Technology Program in 2014, said officials began to treat him differently in April 2017, after he refused to falsify a funding request form from the Utah Legislature to say his program had grown, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in 3rd District Court, says Tripp’s employment was terminated in June because he refused to lie for the school and spoke out against the school’s use of funds to an official with the Utah System of Technical Colleges, which oversees technical colleges across the state.
When Dixie Technical College President Kelle Stephens gave Tripp the legislative form showing program growth, he said he was “concerned,” the lawsuit states.
While Tripp had grown the program's enrollment during his first year and a half at the college, he'd more recently been trying to shrink it, the suit says, because he wasn't given enough funding to support the larger number of students.
The lawsuit says the college’s leadership knew he was trying to shrink the program’s enrollment.
When Tripp asked his supervisor, Vice President of Operations Jordan Rushton, what to do, Rushton reportedly said Tripp “should fill out the form showing fictional growth because the school needed more money.”
Tripp didn’t fill out the form, although he says Rushton did — and reported 0.01 percent enrollment growth to the Legislature.
Soon after, Tripp says, officials began to act out against him.
The lawsuit points to a tour of the technical college’s newly built campus. That tour included Tripp, his wife, his mother and Owen Olsen, a director at the college.
During the tour, Tripp mentioned his concerns about the campus, including a shortage of teacher offices.
The lawsuit alleges Olsen was angry by the end of the tour. Two weeks later, Rushton and Stephens reportedly confronted Tripp, accusing him of threatening to punch holes in the walls and rip out carpet during the tour.
Tripp denied that he’d said anything to that effect, even jokingly. Stephens reportedly told him “she did not want to hear anything from him unless it was positive,” and said he could be fired.
On May 31, Tripp was called to a meeting with Dave Woolstenhulme, an official with the Utah System of Technical Colleges, to discuss Dixie Technical College and its leaders.
Woolstenhulme told Tripp he was chosen at random and that their talk was confidential, according to the lawsuit. Tripp told Woolstenhulme about his confrontations with the college’s leaders and about the disagreement over the funding form.
No one followed up with Tripp about his concerns, although the lawsuit says Utah System of Technical Colleges officials relayed Tripp’s comments to Stephens and required that he be fired.
Tripp was fired in July. When he asked why, human-relations manager Sam Draper reportedly said the college didn’t need a reason to fire him.
The lawsuit says Tripp’s termination violates Utah’s Protection of Public Employees Act, under which an employee can’t be fired for communicating “in good faith” information about misuse of public funds or violations or suspected violation of a law.
Officials at the Utah System of Technical Colleges and Dixie Technical College didn’t respond to a request for comment Wednesday evening. Neither did Tripp’s attorney.
The technical college system has a history of falsifying records to achieve goals.
In 2015, a legislative review found that the Utah College of Applied Technology — now the Utah System of Technical Colleges — had inflated its graduation rates to meet Gov. Gary Herbert’s “66 by 2020” objective of 2 in 3 adults having a post-high-school degree by 2020.
The audit found that the college had inflated its graduation rates by more than 40 percent by counting eight-hour courses and 60-hour job trainings as certificate programs.
