This UVA fiasco may have put Virginia taxpayers on the hook for potentially tens of millions of dollars in damages from civil lawsuits.
… What did UVA officials know and when did they know it? Under state law, the UVA Board of Visitors is fully responsible for all areas of campus life, including student safety. Many students have been expelled for violating the honor code. But how many for rape? …
UVA’s leaders made a fatally flawed choice for years. Because of that, Virginia taxpayers now face huge financial risks, not to mention suffering a terrible blow to the state’s reputation.
[Eh. When your last leader was the soon to be imprisoned Governor Vaginal Probe, there ain’t much rep to lose.]… Bottom line: Virginia forgot to take care of its own on state property, at a place of learning where young minds are to be educated, not where bodies are to be sexually tortured.
Well, that last phrase certainly gets it said. Well done.
Just for comparison purposes: Post-Sandusky, Penn State has (so far) paid out roughly sixty million.
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Update: On Penn State, a reader points out:
$60 million is just the victim restitution. Another $80 million in costs, and $36 million still due to the NCAA fund.
November 26th, 2014 at 12:21PM
$60 million is just the victim restitution. Another $80 million in costs, and $36 million still due to the NCAA fund.
November 26th, 2014 at 12:34PM
Anon: Many thanks. I knew that couldn’t be the full amount, but couldn’t find a source for it. I’ll amend the post.
November 26th, 2014 at 1:59PM
Keep in mind that public unis must maintain prime debt rating, otherwise, they’ll lose state funding and accreditation. Piling on increasing liabilities, at some point, will lower debt rating to below public mandates. Moody’s put Penn State under review in 2012, and purportedly, the admins fixed things. The result, PennState is one of the most expensive public unis in the nation. How many thousands of PA taxpayers are precluded from attending the school because of the cost? How many graduates are burdened with an over sized debt, a large measure of which goes to pay for the criminality of the putative adults who ran the joint?
November 26th, 2014 at 3:42PM
Good questions Charlie. To my friends who love college sports I ask the same kinds of questions but they think every college is Alabama with its huge income. On another note, a poster on another web site referred to UNC as the University of No Classes.
November 26th, 2014 at 8:00PM
Easy to get sucked into believing what your buddies think, when CFB is on cable four days a week during the season. All that coverage, everyone must be making huge money, at least that what the admins get you to think.
University of No Classes, epic….
November 27th, 2014 at 1:22PM
Charlie, Penn State was one of the most expensive public unis LOOOOOOOOOONG before Sandusky. The combination of declining support from the legislature beginning in the 1980s and rising admin costs common in most universities put them near the top. Pitt and Penn State are #1 and #2 in the nation.
And, the notion that this has a huge impact on students, student attendance, or debt burden demonstrates a ludicrous misunderstanding of higher education financing. Even if Penn State charged that entire amount to students in the academic years from 2011 to now, it’s under $500 per student per year. While not huge, that’s still not insignificant. But, actually, however, the dollars are being paid by Penn State’s liability insurer and from profits from auxiliary enterprises (like athletics, where PSU has drawn down from its athletics reserve fund).
November 27th, 2014 at 2:15PM
@Anon, so, not only was Penn State facilitating a pedophile for quite some time, it was scamming its students for even longer.
And what kind of insanity have you plunged into that you would think that simply having your insurer pay for the crimes is some kind of palliative to the massive incompetence of the admins? Are you trying to say that as long as we keep our premiums current, the students, faculty, alumni and taxpayers have nothing to worry about?
And that’s not even the half of it. The Second Mile Foundation, which Sandusky founded in the late 70’s, was where the heavy lifting of all his crimes took place. But on BOT were some of the big hitters of Penn State, including the pres, JoePa, and assorted political wheeler dealers, which did business with PSU. Yet, despite the fact they knew of Sandusky, they retained him only until a couple of years prior to his arrest. That is all in the wake of a prior investigation of his criminal activity. They still allowed him to work with SMF.