SAN ANTONIO — A professor has been placed on paid administrative leave while his college reviews e-mail exchanges with a University of Texas at San Antonio instructor who was fired for viewing pornography on his work computer.
Duane Conley, a 61-year-old computer information systems professor at Palo Alto College, was the recipient of a series of e-mails in which UTSA professor Ronald Ayers fantasized about young women in his classes and teenage girls who worked at stores he frequented.
Conley didn’t write anything sexual about his students, but he did comment on photos of teens that Ayers sent him from the Internet, the San Antonio Express-News reported in Thursday’s editions. The newspaper obtained the e-mails through the Texas Public Information Act.
Alamo Community Colleges, which oversees Palo Alto, is reviewing documents to determine whether Conley violated any policies, spokesman Leo Zuniga said. Conley was placed on leave for a week.
“This will give us time to review all sides of the issue,” Zuniga said.
Ayers, a 60-year-old economics professor, was fired last year after officials went through his computer following complaints from a graduate student who said she heard sexual noises coming from his office.
A faculty hearing tribunal overturned Ayers’ firing in May, saying the school’s computer-use policy banning “obscene” materials didn’t apply because his termination letter accused him of accessing “sexually explicit” materials. A final decision from the UT Board of Regents is expected this month.
Ayers and Conley traded a Web site that offers advice on seducing younger women, according to the newspaper.
Conley’s lawyer, Michael Latimer, has said his client merely was responding to Ayers’ “rather off-topic discussions.”
In a February 2004 exchange, Ayers told Conley that he was looking for “that fountain of youth. You’ve found yours, I just wish I could get me one.”
“I have a confession to make,” Conley wrote back. “I may have lost mine (as of Jan. 3, when she stood me up). It’s sort of a long story if you want to hear it, call me.”
Back Story:- A porn-loving college professor described sexual fantasies involving female students and teenage girls in e-mails to a fellow educator, correspondence that may result in his dismissal after the University of Texas Board of Regents hears his case later this month.
In sexually-charged missives sent from his school account to a colleague, Ronald Ayers, a 60-year-old tenured economics professor, wrote that a “dumb” female student had the “full-figured nude model/pron star look,” and wondered whether she “waitresses in a nude or topless bar on weekends.”
Adding that the student seemed the type to seek “the approval of older men,” Ayers noted, “I make no predictions other than that I will get together with her.”
In another e-mail, Ayers described how a “exhibitionist” student “likes to show off her brief thong to me as I teach.” Another student is described as “a beautiful sexy grannie” who Ayers intended to ask on a date “when the class is over.”
In other 2005 e-mails to Palo Alto College Professor Duane Conley, Ayers reported on the “amazing variety” of 99-cent lingerie available at the local Goodwill store, where he purchased about 10 items, including an “unwashed thong with the delightful aroma.”
In other letters, Ayers recalls flirting with a former female student and details his dealings with young female salespeople, including one with a “cheerleader” look who was “eager to be liked, like my new dog I just got.”
When University of Texas at San Antonio officials learned that Ayers was surfing porn sites from his office, he was fired last year. Ayers appealed that decision and had his dismissal overturned by a faculty tribunal. His case is scheduled to be heard later this month by the university’s Board of Regents, which will decide on the fate of Ayers, who is currently on paid administrative leave. The professor’s e-mails were released this week by state officials following a Texas open records law request made by the San Antonio Express-News.