Jul 05, 2013 10:04 AM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

The state ethics board ruled that two University of Washington (UW) state employees violated rules when they were found to have been surfing the web for images of Kim Kardashian, KOMO News, Seattle, reported.

Stan Ross and Don Hulse's Internet history revealed web searches for celebrity gossip, sports news and pictures of Kim Kardashian while earning overtime hours. Due to an increase in overtime rates, Ross and Hulse had been earning tens of thousands in each of the past few years.

While college students can sometimes get away with breaking the personal use of state resources rule, state employees cannot.

"So it seemed to me that it was an inappropriate use of overtime if they were getting paid to surf the Internet," said Melanie Deleon, the director of the State Ethics Board.

The revelation was detailed in a length report on UW's Fire Alarm Technician Department and their online practices.

"A lot of the time, it looked like they were surfing the Internet on days where they got paid overtime," Deleon said. "When a person is basically an hourly employee but they get overtime, and they're using that overtime to surf the Internet, to me, that's more egregious."

Records show one instance where Hulse spent five hours of overtime mostly on sports websites. In another, where Ross worked two hours of overtime, he spent nearly half the time on the website of the show "Access Hollywood," reading Khloe Kardashian's blog and viewing images of the Jenner-Kardashian family.

Fire technician Don Stephens said he saw the report and that it was worse than what he was expecting.

"I tend to believe that if I screwed around for four hours of my eight hour day, I would be in trouble," he said. "I didn't think it was going to be as bad as what I actually saw."

UW spokesman Norm Arkans said the two employees would be disciplined, but that UW has yet to do so.

"We were convinced that the overtime was legitimate and necessary and it was done properly," he said.

Ross and Hulse will either fight the Ethics Board's findings or settle with them. A decision is expected later this month.

"This is inappropriate use of the internet and resources," Arkans said. "You can't do that under our state ethics laws."

See Now: Covert Team Inside Newsweek Revealed as Key Players in False Human Trafficking Lawsuit