The Record and the Wound — Part I: A Hobby Gone Wrong

Evidence suggests Texas Tech edited my med school dismissal hearing record: documents and sworn testimony inside

So, I’ve been filing a bunch of public records requests lately. FOIA‑type things. Casual stuff. I do it in my free time. It’s becoming my hobby.

Richard Feynman picked locks and played the bongos. Claude Shannon was a juggler. On a unicycle. Shakespeare was quite serious about real estate investment. Tycho Brahe? When he became bored of challenging the idea that the planets orbited the Earth, he had a pet moose that he would give beer to at a hideaway island castle. One night the moose missed a stair and died.

So yes, submitting public records requests is my hobby now. A strange hobby, perhaps, but lawful. Necessary.

As part of my hobby, today I submitted a complaint to the Texas Office of the Attorney General, Open Records Division. This was after submitting several records requests to Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center.

Request. No response. Notification. No response. Notification. No response. Notification. No response. Texas Attorney General complaint.

I tried.

The institution is Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center—the same one that dismissed me after my public writing on COVID‑19. During the pandemic, many there participated in the response; some won awards. Open debate was uncomfortable.

The pandemic response had catastrophic consequences for the country and the world. Some argue lockdowns caused substantial collateral mortality; others dispute the scale. This is an argument Jay Bhattacharya made when I spoke to him in 2023. Antivax beliefs have mainstreamed. Trust in public health and science has plummeted. Many people feel they do not know what to believe anymore.

But people won awards. The awards were aspirational, not meretricious. They are not meant to recognize healing, but to hide the wound. People notice. The wound is visible. And its effects can be seen no matter how much hiding is done.

When a student with a large platform questioned NIH and CDC positions and pointed to the fracture inside the medical community, the reaction followed a pattern.

I didn’t know what I’d stepped into. I don’t regret it.

Yes, I have been submitting public record requests to my former medical school. The one I attended on a full scholarship and earned a PhD from.

Curious. I keep returning to the same conclusion.

See, I do seem to recall on December 11th, 2023, that my dismissal hearing was video recorded. I do seem to recall being warned not to record it myself, according to official policy. The school could. Not me. That should have sent off alarm bells. It did not. After all, surely, these people were respectable. They are doctors. They would play fair.

I seem to recall something else. I seem to recall during that hearing, after testimony I believe contained falsehoods, one dean of the medical school, Dr. Bethany Nunez, said that another dean had told her something about me that, in her words, was not true.

By “seem to recall” I understate on purpose. Precision over volume.

If senior administrators circulated unverified allegations about a student, that is serious misconduct.

The world I believed in does not exist. In my 20s, I believed there might still be one refuge where I could go where something pure and true—healing—might exist. A sanctuary of good where I could work and live, where we worked against death and darkness. That’s why I applied to medical school. I entered medicine believing it was a refuge for truth. I worked like it was.

Medicine is not supposed to destroy those who tell the truth about it.

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I visited campus to review my dismissal hearing recording on September 13th and 16th, 2024. Visiting campus was required to review the record. But why? Why couldn’t I just… receive the hearing recording? I would soon find out why.

My wife took off work to accompany me. We were worried that the school might fabricate more “evidence”. For a while, every time I visited campus, I wore a hot mic. But I wasn’t allowed to bring electronics. So I had to bring my wife.

Twice they had accused me of threatening to harm people. Once it was alleged that I had criminally trespassed. The police officers always expressed confusion. They knew me as the cheerful student who often lost his ID badge and had to be helped to open doors. None of that seemed to matter.

All that matters is fear. And there is a lot of it. They accuse you of doing terrible things so that they can justify doing terrible things to you. They leave a paper trail with these things. They then tell their friends, who join in.

When we met with the lawyer in charge of my recordings on campus, Joanna Harkey, we discussed access to the recording.

The technical person allowing me to view my hearing recording apologized that it was only audio. He did not give any explanation. I brushed this off.

But while listening, I discovered something: the audio suggests portions of the hearing recording are missing. If video exists, its absence prevents verification. Video with excised portions would show skipping frames.

The school delayed for more than a month before allowing me to view—well, listen—to the recordings. I couldn’t figure out why it took so long.

The lawyer responsible for providing the hearing record was Joanna Harkey.

And the man who oversaw my review of the recording was Vice President for Information Technology / Chief Information Officer Vince Fell.

I’m requesting chain‑of‑custody records, access logs, retention schedules, and file hashes for the hearing files.

If parts were deleted, I don’t know all of them. But one portion that appears missing corresponds to testimony in which a physician described her motive in terms of an alleged threat involving Rachel Forbes.

I will not speculate about future accusations.

Notably, the most serious allegation against me—a threat—never made it to the hearing. More interesting, the allegation was dropped by the person who made it. Yet it continued to circulate informally. No due process. The trace—wiped clean.

Now, to be clear: if any student records were altered or deleted, that conduct may violate Texas law and could, depending on the facts, amount to misdemeanor or felony offenses.

Gov’t Code § 552.351 (TPIA): Misdemeanor to willfully destroy, mutilate, remove without permission, or alter public information. Penalty: $25–$4,000 fine, 3–90 days jail, or both.

Gov’t Code § 552.203(2) (TPIA): Officer for public information must protect public information from alteration, loss, or unlawful removal.

Gov’t Code § 552.004(b) (TPIA / SB 944): If public info is on a personal device, the officer/employee must forward/transfer it to the agency or preserve it (original + backup) for the retention period.

Gov’t Code § 552.233(b) (TPIA / SB 944): Temporary custodians must surrender or return public information to the agency within 10 days of request.

Gov’t Code § 441.187: A state record may be destroyed only after the approved retention period expires or on approval of a records destruction request by the Director and Librarian (TSLAC), or if exempted by rule.

Penal Code § 37.10(a)(3): Tampering with a governmental record includes destroying, concealing, removing, or impairing its verity/availability (with an exception for legally authorized destruction/transfer).

Penal Code § 37.09(a)(1), (c): Evidence tampering—altering/destroying/concealing a record knowing an investigation/proceeding is pending; 3rd‑degree felony (higher in specified circumstances).

Penal Code § 39.02: Abuse of official capacity—misuse of government property/services, etc., with intent to benefit or to harm/defraud; grading tied to value. (“Misuse” is defined in § 39.01(2) as dealing with property contrary to law, agreement, oath, etc.).

FERPA, 34 C.F.R. § 99.10(e): A school may not destroy education records if there’s an outstanding request to inspect/review.

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These details come from my own recollections and from the documents I’ve reviewed over the past year.

TTUHSC is required by law to release the video. TTUHSC has been provided a preservation notice and is required by law to preserve all records.

Sworn testimony regarding the deletion allegation is attached to this thread. Right‑to‑response emails to Joanna Harkey, Vince Fell, and Bethany Nunez are attached. The AG complaint is also attached.

As for lawsuits, let’s just say. It’s not out of the question. Lawsuits against me? That’s another battlefield. I will respond as needed.

Next week: the “threat”.

Wrap‑up notes:

There were no replies to the right‑to‑response emails.

A document hub will be posted and pinned on my website on Saturday. It will contain a chronological list of documents and incidents, all sworn testimony, etc.

I’m going to make this material easy to find. Google, DuckDuckGo, whatever crawls the fediverse: just breathing will surface the receipts.

The story will be further fleshed out by records requests and potentially discovery.

Obviously a lot of this is going in the book, though trimmed down. The book is about what is wrong with medicine, science, and technology and the reforms required to fix them. It will be a radical book with new ideas. More in a forthcoming book.

More actions will be taken over the coming days. Some will need to fly under the radar for a while.

If you know anything about what happened to me at Texas Tech, you can contact me at kevinnbass@proton.me or over DM, or alternatively, you can get in contact with my lawyer. You have the protection of many whistleblower laws. However, please consult an attorney. I will provide more information in the coming days.

If anything happened to you at Texas Tech, please share your story with me. Any story you have is confidential unless you specify otherwise.

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