Shades of Papa Doc
Diamandopoulos.
And Ben Ladner.
To these two spirits of university presidents past, who remind us that high-end, er, spirits are often part of general presidential misbehavior, we can now add a third.
But first, from an earlier post of UD's:
It’s not that the presidents are unmasked as alcoholics and carted off; rather, it’s their extravagant taste in spirits that does them in. While his charges are out getting blasted on Boone’s Farm, the American university president may be home getting quietly tight on “daily wine for lunch and dinner at $50 to $100 per bottle,” as the now-notorious anonymous letter to the American University trustees about President Benjamin Ladner has it.
Or, like Peter Diamandopoulos, dethroned despot of Adelphi University, he may be out on the town with friends, racking up (as the Chronicle of Higher Education reported at the time) a “$454.65 bar tab” by sharing "$150 glasses of cognac” with “[John] Silber, a former Adelphi trustee, who later said that he had been unaware of the cost of the drinks."
And yet man does not live by drink alone. Artnet.com, citing the New York Times, described “the $707 dinner Adelphi President Peter Diamondopoulos [sic] and art critic and Adelphi trustee Hilton Kramer shared at the fancy Links club in Manhattan -- charged to big D's university expense account -- not long after the scandal broke involving Diamandopoulos's $523,000 salary, the second highest among college presidents in the nation. According to the report, $552 of the tab went for a 1983 Chaval wine and Martel cognac.”
UD sucks at math, as you know, so she's not about to line all of these people up and compare, but it seems to her that Priscilla Slade's more than competitive:
'Ousted TSU President Priscilla Slade racked up a $100,000 bar tab at Scott Gertner's Skybar and Grille during her tenure and stuck Texas Southern University with the bill, prosecutors said Wednesday.
TSU routinely paid for $100 bottles of wine for Slade and drinks for her friends and staff, despite a prohibition at that time on state monies being spent on alcohol, Assistant District Attorney Donna Goode said.
Slade's former executive assistant, Erica Vallier, said that the rules for purchasing have since changed, but at the time, Slade told her not to worry about the prohibition. She said her boss drank bottles of Far Niente with her friends and staff at expensive bars, such as the Four Seasons bar and the Skybar.
Slade led the historically black university from 1999 to 2005, after being pressed into service from her post as the dean of the business school.
Slade is on trial on charges of misapplication of fiduciary property of more than $200,000, accused of spending school money on personal expenses. If convicted, she faces a punishment ranging from probation to life in prison.
... Out of the presence of the jury, Goode asked the judge for permission to tell jurors about her accusation of Slade siphoning money from the TSU Foundation.
Goode told Thomas that Slade and her staff reclassified accounts to ''suck money out of the school's foundation."
The foundation, started by Slade, was created to raise money for scholarships and endow chairs for professors.
"These started out as business expenses, and things got so out of whack that they had to look to the foundation for these unreasonable expenditures," Goode said.
Slade's defense attorney battled back from Vallier's testimony that seemed to keep him on the ropes.
Mike DeGeurin spent Wednesday morning stumbling through cross-examination of Vallier on details related to her years traveling, dining and drinking with Slade.'
---houston chronicle---
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