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Friday, September 23, 2005
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“There’s not one thing he was not entitled to.” According to the most recent article about suspended AU president Benjamin Ladner (it will appear in tomorrow’s New York Times), the board of trustees of that institution gave him a contract that featured no annual reviews and the freedom to bill the university for everything he does. [T]he contract was written in such a way that it gave Mr. Ladner full discretion over his spending, giving him a strong defense against any legal challenge. One trustee involved with trying to reinstate Mr. Ladner, asking that his name not be used because of the sensitivity of the negotiations, said: "There is nothing ambiguous at all about the contract. There's not one thing he was not entitled to." Here’s a frinstance: [Ladner’s] current contract, signed in 1997, explicitly allowed him wide latitude in spending, including the right to travel in a "first class" manner.  “Hm, what definition shall I choose? ... I know for damn sure I can sit in the front section of the plane... But what more might a ‘first class manner’ imply? Could it mean I can sit way way up in the front with the grownups? Hot damn. Still… contractually speaking, it’s arguably more responsible to locate myself somewhere around Rows 10 - 15 … That still means free booze and slave girls [Wait -- UD’s confusing AU presidents…]…And - ahem! - this is our students’ tuition money we’re talking about, after all… But --- You know what pisses me off?? The donors I golf with have their own private planes! On $800,000 a year I’ll never be able to maintain a Learjet. Looked at from that angle, taking any commercial airliner, no matter where you’re seated, is really an admission of personal financial failure… Great, now I feel like shit... First class it is!”
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