Monthly Archives for April 2011

Robert Harlan Puts the “I Owe” in Iowa!

SEPTEMBER 26, 2011 UPDATE! Drake University embezzler agrees to plead guilty after charges consolidated. This sad, sad story began in April…

Another week, another academic arrested for embezzling from an institution of higher learning. Ho-hum. The miscreant du jour is one Robert Harlan, late of Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. Iowa educators have been in the news a lot lately, what with UI Professor Ellen Lewin self-medicating with profanity to cope with these difficult times, and now light-fingered Bob, who in his position of director of student accounts, managed to spirit away some $600,000 over the last seven years.

According to the Des Moines Register, Harlan has admitted to the theft, and, unlike the ethics-challenged Professor Carmola of Middlebury, seems dimly aware that what he has done is wrong, although he thinks the $600,000 figure is inflated. He can only account for $470,000 of the loot so far.

Like Professor Carmola, however, his defense is that he had a good reason for taking what wasn’t his: says the Register, Harlan “told investigators he gave the money away to friends, family, the needy and a church.” There are unconfirmed reports that the offering to the church arrived in the form of plaque engraved with the Ten Commandments. Suspicions were aroused, though, when it was discovered that one of the commandments was missing from the engraving.

It's understandable Mr. Harlan took the cash; the church's social hall needed reburbishing.

What it is about campus culture that makes it so easy for some employees to steal? I’m not talking about an absence of financial controls, but rather an absence of character in those faculty and staff who seem to have no problem pocketing other people’s money. I have no clue as to whether embezzlement on college and university campuses is statistically in line with embezzlement rates in other industries, but at times I think that conditions on campus make it easier for some employees to confuse sticking it to the man with sticking their hands in the till.

Why do I think this? Well, first of all, the myth of the underpaid academic is embedded so deeply in our collective national psyche it’s no wonder that the occasional faculty or staffer is led astray. Faculty, in particular, are convinced that their wages are below poverty level, even though their value to society as intellectuals, agents of social change, and teachers hovers somewhere beyond the ether. Neither conceit, of course, is true, but the cognitive dissonance these thoughts engender is enough to send a handful of academics around the bend.

For staff who live day after day with the knowledge that they are second among equals (faculty always come first in the democratic society that is the academy), and who year after year put up with reminders of their lowly status–such as the eight-week maternity leave they are granted as opposed to the fourteen-week leave a faculty member scores for the same activity–it also comes as no surprise that a few find unorthodox ways of making up the difference.

A faculty member performs her annual self-evaluation.

None of this excuses Harlan’s behavior any more than it does Carmola’s or Pletz’s or Sainfort’s or Jacko’s or the Fishers’ or Hardin’s or Burnham’s or Thornton’s or Davis’s. But it does force one to wonder if rather than yet another workplace training on diversity the campus might be better served by holding a session on that missing commandment.

Professor Ellen Lewin’s Civil Discourse SNAFU

Memo to the University of Iowa Class of 2015: don’t get Professor Ellen Lewin angry.  You wouldn’t like Professor Lewin when she’s angry.  Members of the current classes at Iowa recently learned this the hard way, when Lewin, Professor of Anthropology and Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies in the Department of Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies, let her opinion of them be known in a recent email.

As professorial emails go, Lewin’s was refreshing in its brevity.  No fancy academic jargon from Professor L.  She got straight to her point: “FUCK YOU REPUBLICANS” she wrote.  Needless to say, her use of such surprisingly gendered language raised more than a few eyebrows, and in the case of the student organization to whom she directed her suggestion, no little ire.

Professor Lewin keepin' it classy.

What prompted the professor’s outrage was a campus-wide email from the College Republican Club, exhorting

Conservatives in Iowa City it is now time to come out of the closet!

I know at times it feels like you are the only person that disagrees with this liberal town, but you are not alone! We are asking all Republicans, Independents leaning right, or just anyone slightly frustrated with the current one party controlling every level of Johnson County, and some levels of Iowa and U.S. government to STAND UP!

The club’s email was approved by the office of student affairs at the university, as required by school policy. It goes on to list a number of activities the club had planned for the coming week, and closes with an invitation to an “Animal Rights BBQ.” Undergraduate humor at its best–turning the cliches of campus life on their head, and using parody to make a deadly serious point.

Professor Lewin, however, didn’t see the humor. She saw red. When the president of the Republican Club complained to Lewin’s chair, the chair knew a losing battle when he saw one, and pretty much ordered the outraged professor to apologize for her lack of civility. So she did. Sort of:

This is a time when political passions are inflamed, and when I received your unsolicited email, I had just finished reading some newspaper accounts of fresh outrages committed by Republicans in government. I admit the language was inappropriate, and apologize for any affront to anyone’s delicate sensibilities. I would really appreciate your not sending blanket emails to everyone on campus, especially in these difficult times.”

Uh-oh! Take cover! It's Professor Lewin's "difficult time" of the month.

Pay attention, class! Note the sarcasm in the Lewin’s apology. We will return to it shortly. Note that her emotions eroded her capacity to grasp the most basic of rhetorical no-no’s when she warps into overdrive to hector the students who were “sending blanket emails to everyone.” Care for a tautology, anyone? Note her willingness to curtail the rights of a student group that had followed university policy in order to get its message out, to use the campus’s email system. And, finally, note her reference to “these difficult times.” I might apprehend this an allusion to A Tale of Two Cities. I suppose Lewin would accuse me of sexism if I did.

One of the characteristics of deep-thinking faculty such as Professor Lewin is the fanaticism with which they defend their work. This is generally a good thing for scholarship and research, but in rare instances it leads to unintended consequences. Such is the case with Lewin. Incapable of letting anyone else have the last word, profane or otherwise, and unable to keep her own yap shut, Lewin took to her computer once again, firing off a second email, to “clarify” her apology. Not being much of a deep thinker myself, I, on the other hand, always thought the words “I’m sorry” pretty much covered all the bases. But deep-thinking Lewin had to footnote her apology, just like the good scholar of Anthropology and Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies that she is:

I should note that several things in the original message were extremely offensive, nearly rising to the level of obscenity. Despite the Republicans’ general disdain for LGBT rights you called your upcoming event “conservative coming out day,” appropriating the language of the LGBT right movement. Your reference to the Wisconsin protests suggested that they were frivolous attempts to avoid work. And the “Animal Rights BBQ” is extremely insensitive to those who consider animal rights an important cause. Then, in the email that Ms. Ginty sent complaining about my language, she referred to me as Ellen, not Professor Lewin, which is the correct way for a student to address a faculty member, or indeed, for anyone to refer to an adult with whom they are not acquainted. I do apologize for my intemperate language, but the message you all sent out was extremely disturbing and offensive.

In other words, Professor Lewin is free to question the “delicate sensibilities” of anyone who might have been offended by her language, but herself has an attack of the vapors when a student has the temerity to refer to the Professor by her first name. Oh, the incivility! Oh, the obscenity! And if that alone was insufficient to justify Professor Lewin’s retracting her apology, then surely the “appropriation” of “coming out” a term to which, according Ellen Lewin, Professor of Anthropology and Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies in the Department of Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered students have exclusive rights (let’s pass over lightly the appropriation of the word “gay,” lest the top of Lewin’s head blow off) is enough for Lewin to affirm that her apology is indeed the joke she intended it to be. So afraid was she that the Republican students would be too stupid to figure out her apology was just another FU, Lewin felt compelled to spell it out for them.

Do you really wonder why Republican students at the University of Iowa are in the closet?

First Burnham, Now Davis. It’s a Jersey Thing.

Some posts back, I wrote about the financial chicanery of Brookdale Community College’s ex-president Peter Burnham.  Update, from Middletown, New Jersey and the Star-Ledger:

An audit of nearly three years of expense reports found former Brookdale Community College President Peter Burnham repeatedly misled college officials and billed the school for alcohol, personal trips, clothing and other expenses that had nothing to do with his job, campus officials said tonight.

The 91-page audit lists thousands in charges — including a $1,300 trip to Arizona, $109 in golf clothing purchased in Maine and $53 in drinks at a Philadelphia steakhouse — that school officials said should never have been billed to the county college.

In something of an understatement, the chairman of Brookdale’s board of trustees summed up the sordid affair for the Star-Ledger, “Peter Burnham abused his position.”

Of course I had to go to Maine for my golf togs. They do not sell beauties like these in the Garden State.

But if Peter Burnham let 20 years of running his fiefdom at Brookdale go to his head and then to his bank account, he still has a way to go before he catches up with the newly ex-president of Gloucester Community College (Sewell, NJ), Russell Davis.  Like Burnham, Davis has resigned his presidency of a community college in Jersey.  Unlike Burnham, Davis has a distinguished career behind him as a liar, embezzler, cheat, and apparent fugitive from justice.  Unlike Burnham, Davis has been given at least four second chances by boards of trustees who apparently do not understand that their job is protect the institutions they steward from conmen like Davis, not excuse behavior that in any other profession would land the perp in jail rather than the presidential suite of yet another campus.

Davis’s Second Chances

Second Chance #1: Davis improperly took $3,873 in 1993 from another nonprofit organization that he led. No charges filed.

Second Chance #2: A 1998 audit finds that Davis cannot account for $63000 in funds missing from the Bowie State Foundation, of which he was head.  No charges filed.  He resigns.

Second Chance #3 David claimed to hold bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Maryland, College Park, and to have a doctorate. In fact, he insisted upon being called “Dr. Davis” at Bowie State, where he worked and pilfered from 1988 until his resignation in 1998. According to his Gloucester Community College biography, alas no longer available on the college’s web site, Davis earned his undergraduate and master’s from Hampton  University.  His EdD from Morgan State University was awarded in 2005.

Second Chance #4: The Baltimore Sun (1998) reported Davis’s “trail of bounced checks, overdue taxes and loan defaults in his own financial history.” The Sun also cited “officials at the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services [who]…forwarded a warrant for Davis’ ‘immediate’ arrest in connection with a charge that he failed to return a rental car in 1991.” No arrest appears to have been made, and “Dr.” Davis bounced around the system—that would be the educational and not correctional system—until 2002, when, again, his own bio picks up the story

during a leave of absence from his professional post at Cecil Community College, Dr. Davis joined Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland, as a full research scholarship recipient and received the Doctor of Education Degree in Higher Education with a concentration in Community College Leadership in 2005. He also holds the Advanced Certificate in Educational Management from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Now that he is back on the job market, Dr. Davis is relieved he kept a stack of these handy.

And that just about brings us up to today, where Second Chance #5 appears to be just around the corner, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer:

The president of Gloucester County College resigned as the school turned over records to the county prosecutor involving the former school official’s “alleged financial actions,” officials said Thursday.

Russell Davis had been president of the college since September 2008 and was the sixth person to hold the title. He tendered his resignation to the college’s board of trustees.

County Prosecutor Sean F. Dalton said his office received information about Davis’ financial activities Thursday afternoon and is reviewing it.

“No charges have been filed,” Dalton said.

ADDITIONAL SOURCE: Diverse Issues in Higher Education

What are the Odds? In Jack Rappaport’s Class, It’s Even Money You’ll See More than You Bargained For

Phew! Let’s take a break from the embezzlement sweepstakes and revisit last month’s school for scandal, Northwestern University, where Professor John Michael Bailey procured the services of an exhibitionist and her “boyfriend” to demonstrate the finer points of female ejaculation, creative vaginal stimulation, and good old, down ‘n dirty public masturbation.

The thorough investigation into the propriety of the post-class impromptu sex show is ongoing at Northwestern; however, it appears that what Professor Bailey started has caught on, if not in classrooms across America, at least in those of Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love—and lap dances.

One Jack Rappaport, Assistant Professor in the School of Business at LaSalle University since 1979, recently invited ecdysiasts to perform for a continuing studies class, according to a report in Phillydotcom, the online version of the Philadelphia Inquirer. There are conflicting reports on what the dancers were wearing and when they were wearing it (or not), just as there are conflicting stories about just how many, if any, laps were danced upon. But a couple of facts are clear: whatever happened in Professor Rappaport’s class on the application of Platonic and Hegelian ethics (I refrain from stating the obvious)

They werent real strippers; they were just the idea of strippers.

to business has led to Lasalle’s opening a “full-scale investigation into what took place and who was responsible,” according to university spokesman Joseph Donovan, who, while declining to say

whether the stripper reports prompted the university’s probe into Rappaport…confirmed the date of the class in question. He also said Paul Brazina, dean of the business school, broke up the session after walking into it.

The Inquirer also reports that Spokesman Donovan said in an email that

Until the investigation has been completed, it would be unfair to those involved to disclose any further information, let alone suspicions or allegations. While the university is proceeding as quickly as possible, we recognize the importance of guarding against a rush to judgment in this situation.

This must have been a deer-in-the-headlights moment for Donovan, who as any good member of an academic community, puts due process above all else. Including logic. For although he cautions against a “rush to judgment,” he also confirms that whatever was happening in that classroom was abruptly terminated by Dean Brazina. Whatever the facts of the case, the dean at least appears to have been in a rush.

While the student—Rappaport—in this case seems but a pale copy of the original—Bailey—once again one is forced to ask “where are the faculty member’s critical thinking skills?” Perhaps, in Professor Rappaport’s case, they’d already decamped to the VIP classroom for the one-on-one independent study module.

The professor does ask that students purchase their textbooks at a specific store.

While this classroom sexcapade raises disturbing but by now familiar issues, there is a kind of poignancy to Professor Rappaport. A permanent habitue of the lowest rung of the academic ladder, he says of his life’s work:

Being a professor at LaSalle gives me a great deal of joy. I live right at the campus and I am usually in my office most of the day. This allows me to be accessible to all of my students most of the time. I try to enrich my teaching by using interesting real life applications such as the use of the horse race betting market in the teaching of statistics.

In his spare time, he adds, he enjoys giving violin concerts and teaching the violin. Over at RateMyProfessors, more than one student makes mention of Rappaport’s b.o., a few describe him as “weird,” and several talk about his “obsession” with horse racing and strippers. There is virtual unanimity that a course with Rappaport pretty much guarantees an “easy A.” But. The students are divided in what they think they learned in Rappaport’s class, and what they think of him as a person–body odor aside. What emerges is a sketchy portrait of a soul if not lost then at sea. Having read these ratings I confess I am left wondering if there is less rather than more to this story, in spite of the dean’s rush to judgment.

UPDATE:  On April 15, LaSalle relented and let its student newspaper The Collegian publish a story about the class the administration had embargoed.  It’s well-written, and I suspect very accurate.  You should read it.

Presenting the Double-Dipping Duo, Professors Julie Jacko and Francois Sainfort

UPDATE: Mug shots of Professor Jacko and Professor Sainfort show them with his-and-her come-hither tilts of their chins.  I wonder what reactions those sultry looks will garner in the Big House.

For those of you who still believe in the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy and the idea that college faculty work a 35-hour week and then some, allow me to introduce you to Professors Francois Sainfort and Julie Jacko, who were recently indicted in Georgia for having accomplished the seemingly impossible: being in two places at once, Georgia Tech, where they were full-time members of the faculty, and the University of Minnesota, where they were full-time members of the faculty. Until they were indicted by the state of Georgia back in March, these mom-and-pop grifters (sound familiar?) were collecting paychecks for two full-time faculty positions at once. Well, make that four paychecks, since each half of this partnership in crime was pulling down a double payday.

Computers have made a faculty member's timesheets easier than ever to fill out.

This raises all sorts of interesting questions, doesn’t it? Starting with how, if a professor’s time is consumed by, as many of them claim, laboriously reworking lectures and classroom materials; long hours of scholarly research and writing; advising students and holding office hours for them; and committee meetings, meetings, meetings, how could even the most talented and energetic–as I am certain the Professors Sainfort and Jacko are–of them do all of this twice in one week? There simply aren’t enough hours in the day to get it all done! One also might be tempted to ask how stringent are the controls on faculty performance. I’m not talking about measuring the quality of their work, you understand, but simply its quantity. If you think the answer is obvious–not stringent enough–you’d be correct.

But what you need to understand about accountability is that the front line (department chairs) and sometimes the second line (school or college deans) of defense have too much of a vested interest in looking the other way. You see, department heads tend to rotate in and out of the chair’s office, so there is no incentive to ask your colleagues to be accountable and lots of incentive to turn a blind eye, because, in a couple of years, you’ll be out of the hot seat and someone else will be warming the chair’s chair. Although it doesn’t happen regularly, this kind of assured mutual forgiveness can remain intact when a faculty member is elevated to dean.

I doubt that these scenarios applied in the case of the Professors Saintfort-Jacko; you, however, should make up your own mind as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution picks up the story:

Sainfort and Jacko are experts in the field of health informatics, a speciality that focuses on analyzing huge amounts of computer-generated medical data. Sainfort served as director of Tech’s Health Systems Institute, which brings in millions of dollars in research grants.

According to documents, HSI routinely paid thousands of dollars to Robert Jacko, Julie Jacko’s brother, for helping collect data for the institute.

Robert Jacko, who holds a master of business administration degree, according to invoice documents, was paid $86,000 between June 2006 and January 2007. Checks were made out to Jacko listing the address of a UPS store off West Paces Ferry, down the street from where Sainfort and Julie Jacko lived. Their Buckhead house is now on the market for $1.6 million.

Phyllis Brooks, who was Sainfort’s executive assistant, signed off on the payments to Robert Jacko, according to check-request forms provided to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution under the state’s Open Records Act.

Notice how the accountable Professor Saintfort leaves his assistant holding the bag. How much would you care to wager she does not live in a $1.6 million home?

As always, there is more to the story. On the day of their indictment back in March, the Professors had their attorneys issue a press release. I’m not going to reproduce it in its hilarious entirety, because it is a tad long-winded, but its central theses are worth parsing, and, besides, it gives a far more detailed account of the indictment than any of the newspaper accounts; my interpretive comments are in italics:

“The facts show that the professors worked tirelessly during that time [i.e., the time they were claiming to be full-time at Georgia Tech and Minnesota] for Georgia Tech, thereby earning this money [in other words, since Georgia issued the indictment and not Minnesota, we'll claim the Peach State's money is what they actually "earned."], and made no secret that they were leaving the University,” said Martin B. Goldberg, an attorney at Lash & Goldberg, who has represented the professors during the investigation. “Indeed, despite Georgia Tech’s allegations of fraud and secrecy, the University actually held a ‘going away party’ for the professors [Red herring. Nobody said they weren't leaving. While still at Georgia Tech they were collecting from Minnesota.].”

Ever the careful planners, Professors Jacko and Sainfort were packed up and ready to go before enjoying their farewell party at Georgia Tech.

Georgia Tech also claims the professors took money via double travel reimbursements, all arising from a flawed process at Georgia Tech susceptible to mistakes by all involved; a process that was revised after this matter arose. [In other words, the claim is correct.]

Georgia Tech also claims a relative, Robert Jacko, received monies for work he did not perform on a privately funded project. The evidence shows that Mr. Jacko’s work, performed over the period of nearly a year, was needed, was performed, and did in fact assist in the completion of a successful research endeavor. [Apparently homeless while performing this work, Mr. Jacko picked up his share of the loot at a drop-site.]

In responding to the indictment on the professors’ behalf, Goldberg said, “Drs. Sainfort and Jacko are devastated by this attempt to criminalize their decision to leave Georgia Tech, yet they remain steadfast and committed to addressing their innocence through the judicial process.” He also added, “The way this matter was handled over the past three years by Georgia Tech sends a scary and chilling message to other successful professors and employees at that institution.”

“Dr. Sainfort regrets that Georgia Tech has sought to prosecute this matter [No kidding.] and looks forward to having all the facts presented,” said Buddy Parker, an attorney with Maloy Jenkins Parker who represents Sainfort.

Added Robert Rubin, an attorney with Peters Rubin & Sheffield, representing Jacko, “Dr. Jacko has always been forthright and honest in her dealings with Georgia Tech and fully expects to be exonerated at trial.” [It was all the executive assistant's fault.]

Please bear with me as I reproduce additional lawyerly prose. University of Minnesota General Counsel Mark Rotenberg’s statement, however, regarding the criminal indictments of Professors Sainfort and Jacko is bracingly and refreshingly direct:

This morning the University of Minnesota was informed that professors Francois Sainfort and Julie Jacko were each indicted on multiple felony counts by a grand jury in the state of Georgia. According to the Georgia Attorney General, the indictment alleges that Sainfort and Jacko “conspired to be employed full time and receive salary from Georgia Tech while simultaneously being employed full time and collecting salary from the University of Minnesota. The indictment also charges that the two fraudulently billed Georgia Tech for travel expenses, inappropriately directed payments to a relative, and lied about their dual employment and the purpose of the Georgia Tech-funded travel.”

On December 14, 2010 Professors Sainfort and Jacko were disciplined by the university [of Minnesota] after a review of the facts surrounding their transition from the Georgia Institute of Technology to the University of Minnesota in 2007-2008. Both professors received letters of reprimand and were required to pay the university [of Minnesota] approximately $59,000. As part of their reprimands, the university advised them that there may be grounds for further university review and action in the event material new facts come to light.

Professors Sainfort and Jacko’s employment activities at the university will be managed in accordance with relevant University Human Resources policies, and the university will adhere to all regulatory notification requirements governing any affected sponsored research in which the professors are involved.

It’s probably no accident that the disciplined duo wound up at the University of Minnesota, home of the Golden Gophers. They have proven they can go fer the gold, and, just like the rodents they are, they have no compunction about taking what’s theirs and what’s there.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT.

Professor Jacko stands guard at the West Paces Ferry UPS.

This is Getting Serious, Folks! Vassar’s Short $1.9 Million–More Academic Embezzlers Out on Bond!

Every year about this time, the competition within the academic world revs into high gear.  High school seniors are frantic to know if they made the cut at their first-choice institution. Admissions officers are holding their collective breath in the hopes that their offers of admission will yield the perfect class: students whose parents can pay the full freight of the whopping tuition bill; students whose high school GPAs and board scores will make the class look smart; students who have a special talent with an oboe, a tennis racket, or a paint brush; students who are not white.  The competition in the world of college admissions is gloves-off, bare-knuckled, and implacable.

This year is no different, except that in 2011 the competition is not about who gets in and who does not as much as it is who steals what and how much from the campus coffers.

First there was Middlebury Associate Professor Kateri Carmola’s penny-ante pilfering of historical society funds up in Vermont.  Not to be outdone, the heartland’s own Queen of Embezzlement Karen Pletz scored something in the neighborhood of $1.5 million from the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences.  Now comes a mom-and-pop appropriations committee late of Vassar College, located in scenic Poughkeepsie, New York.

Fortunately, as a construction manager Fisher could borrow the equipment necessary to scoop up the cash he removed from Vassar's ample supplies.

According to the Journal News, Arthur Fisher and his wife Jennie have brought the embezzlement record back to an East Coast elite institution, where some might argue it belongs. The Fishers stand accused of ripping off Vassar to the tune of $1.9 million over five years.  Mr. Fisher, until December, was a “project construction manager” at the college.  His management skills netted himself and his little woman quite a haul:

four late-model BMWs and one Ford F150 truck, worth approximately $500,000 combined; three Rolex watches valued at $50,000; 10 unregistered handguns and one military style .223-caliber rifle; and various fraudulent law enforcement IDs and badges from a host of agencies, including the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the FBI and the New York Police Department, among others.  Police said the IDs contained Arthur Fisher’s name and photograph.

Found among the badges cops seized from the Fishers.

You’ll be relieved to learn, as I was, that police are fairly certain the fake badges and ID’s do not “appear to be stolen….They appear to be replicas.”

Perhaps you’ll also be comforted to learn, as I am not, that Vassar was all over locking the barn door that in their haste the Fishers left wide open when they absconded with their loot.  Says hapless college spokesman Jeff Kosmacher, “There have been steps taken at the college in terms of financial and project management oversight that will strengthen how we handle the business of the college in the future.” Kosmacher went on to insist that “the college maintained strong control systems before the alleged embezzlement.”

Artist's rendering of Vassar's strict financial controls.

I am not comforted because I feel so bad for Vassar.  It’s just announced a fundraising campaign with a goal of $400 million, $262 million of which is already in hand.  Will donors who give less than $1.9 million now wonder if the college will be able to keep track of their giving?  Imagine the donor contemplating a gift of $1.5 million.  Will she now feel compelled to make the donation directly to BMW and Rolex, rather than letting the funds pass through the college?  What a terrible state of affairs!

The Fishers' garage, before the Feds arrived.

But, this story has a punch line.  Guess where the Fishers live: Ossining.  How convenient.

The Fishers prepare to enjoy conjugal relations at their home on the Hudson.

Move Over Kateri, There’s a New Queen of Embezzlement in Town…

…and she makes you look like the small-time petty thief that you are.  All you faculty-wannabes out there who aspire to a career in higher education take note. If your career path includes embezzlement, you’d do well to consider the shining example of banker-turned-academic Karen Pletz.

From the March 31 Kansas City Star:

former president of Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences president Karen Pletz today was named in a 24-count indictment alleging she embezzled more than $1.5 million from the university, made false statements on her tax returns and engaged in money laundering. 

Not part of the indictment–nor illegal in any way–are the questionable employment opportunities that Pletz made available. Standing tall for women in the workplace, and acting as a one-woman affirmative action employer, Ex-President Pletz hired not only her daughter, who lives in Hoboken, New Jersey, but also the daughter-in-law of her trusted Vice President of Institutional Advancement Douglas Dalzell–you know who that is, don’t you?  The head fundraiser, of course.  The one who apparently directed a staff member at the University to keep the books of his son’s Kansas City restaurants.

Says former-president-soon-to-be-convicted felon Pletz, in the February 7 Star,

“I believe we operated with integrity, and I will stand by that always,” she said. “We don’t give jobs to people who aren’t qualified or aren’t committed or aren’t weighed against other people.”

And I’ll bet her daughter’s qualifications were held up to scrutiny in a nationwide search. The Star story continues:

“It’s a very family-oriented institution,” Karen Pletz said. “Osteopathic medicine has always been about family.”

That would be the Corleone Family.

President Peltz gave this stylish mouse pad as a Christmas gift to the trusted members of her "family."

Soon to follow: the continuing saga of Embezzlement Queen Karen.