Perhaps my best decision as a father was to take my daughter to Rocky Mountain Marital Arts when she was in the second grade.

There, Delaney got to study under the late, great Master Jim Miller. He taught his students to never be a bully. He also taught them to never put up with a bully.

Master Miller taught his students self-defense, but more importantly, he instilled in them a sense of self-worth. He taught them to stand up for themselves and for others.

He taught them to never be the kind of people who look the other way when the going gets tough.

My daughter clearly took Master Miller’s teachings to heart. She has a keen sense of social justice, and she has never shied away from standing up for herself or for others.

When she was in eighth grade, Delaney punched out a boy who thought he could get away with calling her horrific names every day in class.

During her second year at the University of Montana, she punched a bully who had been threatening her and her roommates for several months. When the university would not protect her, she protected herself.

And Seth Bodnar punished her for that.

Now, Bodnar, who was the president of the university at the time, is running as an “independent” candidate for one of Montana’s seats in the United States Senate. We cannot let him win.

When it came to sexual discrimination against female employees at the University of Montana, Bodnar clearly looked the other way. At best.

Today I am not writing about the lawsuit and the awful comments attributed to Bodnar that are on the record.

What I can speak of is how Bodnar and his administration treated my daughter. I can speak how they did nothing to protect her, her roommates and countless other young women at the University of Montana from a female sexual predator and stalker.

In January of 2024, my daughter and two roommates got a new roommate at their apartment in the dormitory Pantzer Hall. From the start, her words and actions were troubling, to say the least.

She treated the women like they were her property. If they went to a basketball game without her, she would threaten them like she was a jealous husband.

Immediately, she made threats of violence against these young women. Some were not-so-veiled threats. Others were not veiled at all. She made it known to them that she was possessed by a demon and was very capable of killing them.

When the young women went to the student housing department for help, they got none.

On Jan. 26 and again on Jan. 29, I called the housing department to try to make sure my daughter was living in a safe place, and my calls were not answered. No university official ever returned a call after I left repeated messages.

This roommate from hell continued to threaten the young women as the semester went on. She tried to gross them out, and she exposed herself to them. Each incident seemed to be worse than the one before.

Eventually, my daughter and another roommate were allowed to move to another apartment, but the stalking and harassment did not stop.

By the time April rolled around, this roommate was known widely by UM students as the “Pantzer Hall Masturbator.” That is because she set up in one of the study lounges and masturbated so everyone walking by could clearly see her and what she was doing.

When my daughter and some of the other young women who were exposed to this scene went to the University of Montana campus police, they were quickly dismissed. Officer Mark Horner yelled at them for wasting his time, telling them it was not a crime.

At the same time, the threats to the young women were escalating, and the roommate made it clear that she was going to hurt my daughter — or worse.

That April 11, my daughter was on her way to class when the roommate quickly approached her in an angry-and-aggressive manor. When she lunged at my daughter, Delaney hit her with a one-two punch. It might have been a one-two-three combination.

The roommate cried and ran away, and my daughter immediately reported the incident to her resident assistant. It was a clear case of self-defense, and the aggressor was not seriously injured. Delaney only punched enough to defuse her assailant.

This came as I was reaching out for even more help for my daughter and the other young women. The school still made it clear to us that it was not going to anything about the repeated threats and sexual exposer.

So, my daughter and I indicated that she might talk to the school newspaper about the experiences her, her roommates and other women of the dorm experienced that semester. We suggested that, perhaps, the school did not learn its lesson from Jon Krakauer’s book “Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town” that followed the weak response to cases involving sexual assault by the University of Montana and the justice system.

That finally got the attention of the Bodnar administration, and suddenly my daughter faced disciplinary action for defending herself from the attack. Instead of helping her, they figured they would intimidate her into silence.

My wife and I received a phone call from Amy Capolupo at the University. She assured us that if any of Delaney’s roommates tried to file charges with Missoula police against the “Pantzer Hall Masturbator,” then charges would also be field against Delaney.

She told Delaney the same thing in a phone call a few minutes earlier.

About the same time, Delaney got an intimidation letter from Darby Waldbillig of the University of Montana. The letter stated that Delaney could not talk to anybody about the many incidences that led up to the April 11 encounter.

She somehow figured that the University of Montana has powers that trump the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Waldbillig is the same UM official who, during a hearing over Zoom, kept trying to take Delaney’s description of what happened as an admission of guilt. She was clearly trying to silence a student who threatened to go to the press.

As a result, my daughter was given a year of probation by the school, and the roommate from hell was never charged. She was also never given the help she so badly needed.

My daughter left the school for more than a year because she did not feel safe or welcomed there. The predator was transferred to another dorm, as if she was an abusive priest being moved to another parish.

For more than a month in April and May of 2024, I repeatedly emailed Bodnar. I called his office. Not one time did he get back to me. Not one time could he even pretend to be interested in the safety of the female students of the University of Montana.

He was too busy looking the other way.

Clayton Christian, Montana’s commissioner of higher education, replied to the same emails. He expressed his concern about all the young women involved. Bodnar did not, even though one of his top assistants assured me that he read all my emails.

Now, Bodnar wants to represent Montana in the United States Senate. He is being supported by former Democratic Montana senators Jon Tester and Max Baucus, along with Nancy Keenan, the former superintendent of the Montana Office of Public Instruction.

They also seem to be at least associated with those leading a charge to call for Alani Bankhead, who won the Democratic nomination for the seat on June 2, to drop out of the race so Bodnar can take on Republican nominee Kurt Alme in November.

They surely did not know about my daughter’s story when they threw their support toward Bodnar. But they must have seen the comments attributed to him in the lawsuit. They know he was accused of telling a woman she was too fat to be the face of UM. They know that all happened well after the “Me Too” movement took hold, too.

Tester, Baucus and Keenan must know that, at the very least, Bodnar has dropped the ball when it comes to standing up for women and victims. When the going gets tough, he looks the other way.

Montana does not need another senator like that.

— Bill Foley, who will never look the other way, can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74 or Bluesky at @foles74.bsky.social. Listen to him on the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.