BOWLING GREEN, Ohio — A university has suspended a professor after erotic stories were included in a batch of computer files he returned to the state Department of Transportation at the end of a research project.
Alan Atalah, a construction management professor at Bowling Green State University, was suspended “effective immediately” on release of a state watchdog’s report on the matter Tuesday, university spokesman Dave Kielmeyer said.
Ohio Inspector General Randall Meyer determined Atalah violated university policy by having the material on his work computer.
Based on a probe that began in September 2015, state investigators determined that Atalah included a file containing the sexually explicit stories on a USB drive he returned to the state after a project he’d been working on was terminated. By doing so, they said, he had “accessed and disseminated erotic literature using state equipment.”
According to the report, a Transportation Department program administrator found seven pages of narrative “that described sex acts involving adults, children and animals.” More erotic stories were later found on his laptop, along with evidence of deleted stories and erotic videos.
A call Wednesday to a phone number listed under Atalah’s name in nearby Perrysburg indicated the number is disconnected.
Under questioning by investigators, Atalah suggested that he didn’t write the sexually explicit stories but sometimes read them for entertainment.
