University of Wisconsin System officials considered canceling a contract this year with a bank that declined to sign on as a corporate sponsor of a university sports conference, according to a report in Monday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The officials also pushed a vice president at the company, U.S. Bank, to reconsider the $20,000-a-year sponsorship, noting that the university did a lot of business with the bank.

An auditor with the state’s Department of Administration called the sponsorship episode “more like a demand” than a request, but a review determined that neither ethics laws nor procurement policy had been violated.

U.S. Bank declined in January to become a sponsor of the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, which is an arm of the Wisconsin system and includes the nine state universities that are in Division III of the NCAA. Soon after, the University of Wisconsin at Superior’s chancellor, Julius Erlenbach, chairman of the athletic conference, sent a U.S. Bank vice president a letter saying the firm should reconsider. A conference official and a Wisconsin associate vice president also looked into pulling the conference’s business with U.S. Bank, the newspaper reported.

Regardless of the audit’s findings, the incident was more bad publicity for the university system, which in recent months has faced criticism over a six-year, $26-million snafu with its payroll software (The Chronicle, May 5), its continued employment of felons (The Chronicle, April 10), and its granting of backup jobs and other perks to top officials (The Chronicle, November 25, 2005).