March 25, 2016 : Gretchen Ritter's email to Fontaine predating Michael Fontaine's letter to palintiff

Michael Fontaine is an Associate Professor within the College or Arts and Sciences. His promotion to full professorship depended on Gretchen Ritter, the Dean of Arts and Sciences. At Gretchen Ritter's behest, he refused the University Committee's binding instructions to appoint an external committee of experts to make a decision on Prof. Vengalattore's tenure. Ritter's "amended process" outlined below was clearly to circumvent scrutiny of the flawed, incomplete and unfair tenure review process accorded to Prof. Vengalattore.

In her email to Fontaine, she falsely states that the Committee's findings of continued "serious deficiencies" was her first indication that additional corrective steps needed to be taken. In truth, the Committee had unambiguously stated that false allegations and misrepresentations had prejudiced each layer of the Professor's tenure review and that Ritter should (a) resolve the false allegations as per University policies, (b) remedy the damage to Prof. Vengalattore's productivity caused by the discrimination and smear campaign conducted against him, by including new publications and evidence of his scholarly productivity, and (c) remedy the false perceptions of his mentoring ability by including new evidence such as the Strausser report. Ritter refused each of these instructions, and then claimed to Fontaine that she was never given any indication that these corrective steps needed to be taken. Even more incongruously, she gratuitously ignored the unanimous recommendation of the ad hoc committee that Prof. Vengalattore be given tenure. Ritter betrays her prejudice in this letter by claiming that giving Prof. Vengalattore tenure would be a "perverse result". Lastly, in attempting to bypass the external committee by claiming that they would "exposed" to the false allegations during their review, Ritter conveniently fails to mention that the Provost Kotlikoff was also well aware of the same allegations and had already been copied on several communications discussing these allegations. (The Cornell attorneys Tarlow and D'Antonio would later remove these communications from the legal record while falsely claiming to the Courts that Kotlikoff was unaware of these allegations.)

Realizing that Ritter's "amended policy" was fraudulent, and that Ritter did not have the authority to unilaterally "amend" established Cornell policies or concoct her own ad hoc procedures, Fontaine then lied to Prof. Vengalattore claiming that the University Committee "had no further issues with Ritter's determination". In reality, the University Committee had clearly stated that the tenure case still had "serious deficiencies following the actions of Gretchen Ritter". Shortly after Fontaine's deceit, his promotion to Full Professor was approved by Gretchen Ritter.