Give a boy a sports program. Give him his own fleet of planes. Watch him play, and watch Iowa State University pay!
ISU president Steven Leath thinks he can fly, and he thinks he’s exempt from rules about using university planes (why does an impoverished – apparently impoverished, not great university have a fleet of planes?) for personal trips.
No one at ISU seems able to keep Leach grounded.
I mean, far from being able to control the lad, university personnel struggle mightily to hide the expensive damage he does as he busts up said planes in order to fly to vacation homes.
Iowa State University President Steven Leath caused “substantial damage” to a university airplane he was piloting when it made a hard landing at an Illinois airport last year — a costly incident kept quiet for 14 months… University pilots were sent to pick up Leath and his wife with the school’s second airplane. The roundtrip flight cost more than $2,200 and was charged to the “Greater University Fund.” Leath controls that pot of unrestricted donations, which Iowa State says pays for its “most critical needs.”
What could be more critical to Iowa State University (famed for having inspired Jane Smiley’s Moo, a novel jammed with campus incidents just like this one) than supporting its president’s ongoing effort to figure out how to land a plane while the wind is blowing? The man is a treasure. He’s the guy who explains why the sports program is too poor to do anything about academics.
“We are facing a number of very large, comprehensive serious lawsuits related to athletics,” Leath said. “So before we would change our budget structure and put money into academics, we want to at least get past some of these immediate lawsuits.”
Games, games, and the president’s toys.
All jolly things for all jolly boys!
September 26th, 2016 at 8:43AM
There’s a lot of shady stuff going on at ISU surrounding President Leath his relationship with the Board of Regents president, Bruce Rastetter, and the university’s propensity for no-search hires of Republican operatives to fill high administration posts. This blog has a good roundup of the recent coverage: http://www.bleedingheartland.com/2016/07/10/weekend-open-thread-isu-cronyism-and-favoritism-edition/
September 26th, 2016 at 9:27AM
Many thanks for that, Rosalita.