Ohio State Army ROTC Lt. Col. Michael Kelvington, as pictured on the university’s Army ROTC website, was denied a plea deal during a military trial. Credit: Courtesy of The Ohio State University
A military judge rejected Lt. Col. Michael Kelvington’s guilty plea during a Tuesday hearing.
The former Ohio State military science and leadership professor’s sexual harassment case will now need to be litigated in a contested court-martial, said Michelle McCaskill, director of communications for the Army Special Trial Counsel, in an email.
The court-martial will weigh six charges and 10 specifications against Kelvington, which include sexual harassment, abuse of a training leadership position, willfully disobeying a superior commissioned officer, assault consummated by a battery and conduct unbecoming of an officer.
Originally pleading not guilty, Kelvington offered a guilty plea as part of an undisclosed agreement. The plea deal would have been publicly revealed if the judge accepted it, per prior Lantern reporting.
Kelvington and his defense counsel did not respond in time for publication.
In August 2024, Ohio State’s Office of Institutional Equity, also known as OIE, concluded in an investigation that there was “sufficient evidence” of Kelvington having a prohibited relationship with an ROTC cadet, which included stalking and continuous sexual misconduct, per prior Lantern reporting.
Kelvington was relieved of his university position a month later and reassigned from Ohio State within the Army Cadet Command.
Kelvington submitted an appeal of the university’s findings, but it was found there was no basis for re-examination, per prior Lantern reporting.
Kelvington was anonymously reported to OIE in December 2023 and in January 2024. The office began investigating Kelvington’s actions in February.
In the investigation, the primary complainant, an ROTC cadet, described how she and Kelvington developed an inappropriate relationship, despite repeatedly asking him to stop contacting her.
Throughout the relationship, Kelvington would reach out to the cadet using Signal, an encrypted messaging app that deletes messages after one hour, to “meet and engage in a sexual relationship with him,” the report said.
“He’s the head of our battalion… a mentor that I’ve looked up to for years, and I felt like really uncomfortable, but I also felt like I couldn’t say anything to like, kind of get out of that,’” the cadet said in the report.
Some instances, recorded in the report, included Kelvington having non-consensual sex with the cadet. Kelvington denied all of these claims to Ohio State investigators.
In the report, one witness said they saw Kelvington and the cadet meet on campus where the two discussed the cadet’s worries about the investigation.
Kelvington and the cadet also met at a hotel which violated Kelvington’s no contact order given by the Army to stop communicating with ROTC cadets, the report said.
The OIE spoke with 17 witnesses, most of whom were Ohio State students and ROTC cadets. Kevin Cullen, the assistant vice provost of military and veteran services, and Doug Huber, president of the ROTC Alumni Society, were among the four named witnesses, according to the report.
The Lantern can confirm the reported incidents had a primary complainant in addition to the alleged reports from other people. The identity of who reported what cannot be confirmed, as identifying names, dates and events were redacted from the university’s investigative report.
