MILWAUKEE, Wis. – It’s been nearly three months, but Milwaukee Area Technical College still hasn’t completed its investigation into a nursing instructor who threatened financial harm against a company for displaying GOP campaign signs.

Kathleen Hohl, spokeswoman for the public college, indicated the probe involving Allison Nicol could end by Friday. It began in mid-November.

“The investigation is not completed and I expect to have an update … late next week,” Hohl said Friday in an email to Wisconsin Reporter.

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Nicol wrote a letter Oct.10 to Quality Healthcare Options owner Sally Sprenger explaining she stopped advising her prospective students to receive training through Sprenger’s company because Sprenger was publicly supporting Sen. Leah Vukmir, R-Wauwatosa, in the November election.

Nicol, who is represented by American Federation of Teachers Local 212 MATC, also asked at least 10 faculty members to follow her lead and started looking for other firms to offer training, according to emails obtained through the state’s open records laws.

“I just wanted to explore other options because I was so upset about QHO’s political affiliation,” Nicol said in a Nov. 3 email to her colleagues.

Dr. Dessie Levy, dean of MATC’s School of Health Services, issued a memo Nov. 17 advising faculty that anyone who participated in the planned boycott violated the college’s code of ethics and could face disciplinary action.

Rick Esenberg, founder and general counsel of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, sees Nicol’s actions as an assault on Sprenger’s free speech rights.

Although Nicol is protected under the First Amendment to express her beliefs and criticize public officials, Esenberg says she cannot use her position at the college to cause harm to someone based on his or her opinions.

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“Nobody is saying that the nursing instructor at MATC couldn’t express her views … she’s got a right to do that,” Esenberg told Wisconsin Reporter. “It’s another thing to say that she ought be able to use her power as an instructor at MATC to punish someone based upon their exercise of their own First Amendment rights.”

Nicol has been allowed to continue to work at MATC while the college investigates, Hohl said.

Other staff members aren’t being investigated individually and were only interviewed as part of the Nicol probe, according to Hohl.

Sprenger said MATC officials contacted her just once since she made the college aware of Nicol’s letter in October.

“They never asked me anything other than, ‘What do I think should happen?’ I said, ‘I think they should all be fired,’” Sprenger told Wisconsin Reporter. “But they’ve never called me to ask me any other questions or anything.”

Authored by Adam Tobias
Originally published here

Published with permission