Don Metz Twists and Turns on the Witness Stand

I've been telling you how University VP Neil Besner lied on the witness stand about not knowing the reason I was banned from the U of W campus in January of 2013. Now I was about to catch Don Metz in almost the identical pattern of lying, except this time it was about being banned from the campus exactly one year earlier, in 2012. The most surprising thing about these lies is their utter pointlessness. There could be no doubt that Besner knew the reason I was banned, since (as he would later admit) he was personally involved in issuing the banning order. And likewise, there would be no doubt that Metz knew the reason I was banned the previous year: the paper trail was thick with his involvement. So why the pointless lies? We'll get to that eventually. But first lets recap the number of lies told by Metz before he was forced to admit the truth.

First I asked him if he knew why I was banned from the campus. He admitted to having written a formal letter of complaint on Nov 10 2011 and "assumed" that that was one of the reasons for the barring order. I've told you how, when I asked him if there weren't any other complaints he had made about me, he repeatedly feigned confusion about what I was asking before finally declaring, "No, nothing that I can recall".

So then I told him I was going to refresh his memory. And when I started leafing through the papers on the table in front of me, his memory did indeed improve. Was I talking about the day I was kicked out of class, he asked? Because if I was, "...I certainly did complain about the way he left the class."

Okay, now we're getting somewhere. You did complain about that? And would it have been an email?

"That would be the only way it would have been."

Now the subject of this email turned out to be not a small thing...in fact, it was a death threat that Metz had supposedly seen me make on the day I was kicked out. It was a gesture that Metz testified he was absolutely, 100% sure was a death threat. And he had sent an email about it...to whom, he couldn't remember. And when I asked him if he could produce it for the court, he said: "How would that be relevant to these proceedings?"

The Judge finally had to ask him if he was quite sure that he had indeed sent such an email. "I think, certainly, yes, certianly I can go back and look for that, okay. And it, I mean, ther was, I was very disconcerted with the gesture and the actions at that point in time."

And so the Judge instructed him to search his records and provide that email to the Court. Meanwhile, I continued to press Metz on how he responded to the "death threat". It was clearly a matter of great concern. Security was stepped up, locks were changed, and of course I was banned from the campus.

So why did Metz lie when I first asked him: did he know why I was banned from the campus on January 11 2012...the very day of the "death threat"? Why did he say that he "assumed" that the banning had something to do with a letter he had written two months earlier? Why did he insist that letter was the only complaint he made to the University "that he could recall"?

But I wasn't finished yet with Metz. It turned out there was yet another letter of complaint he had sent, this one on the 9th of January, two days before the incident with the "death threat", which Metz had also been conveniently unable to remember. I confronted him with the documentation which showed the existence of this third letter. Once again, when confronted with proof, Metz's memory began to clear up. Did he recall sending that letter? "I believe I did."

So there was not one letter of complaint from Metz, as he had originally testified, but three...so far.  And as for this third letter...did he believe it might have had any influence on the decision to bar me from the campus?

"I don't know what, what influence it had."

Oh yes you do, Professor Metz. Yes you do. But we'll talk about that when we return....