ENDEMIC CORRUPTION...
...where basically everybody steals everything not nailed down, is relatively rare on any particular American university campus; yet UD has chronicled several cases of it on this blog, at places like the New Jersey University of Medicine and Dentistry, Texas Southern University, and large segments of the University of Alaska system (no one, in the entire State of Alaska, seems able to figure out how to get rid of a university trustee on trial for massive theft of federal funds -- a man who missed half of the trustees' meetings last year).
These are, again, rare cases of sweeping institution-wide crime. One of UD's readers, Fred, sends her another.
Bishop State's president has two jobs - she's both the college's chief executive and an Alabama state legislator. Her two jobs produce a very special sort of synergy which allows her and her colleagues to extract public monies at every point in the educational process.
... [I]t's hard to top the story of a [Bishop State] employee (since charged with a crime) whose 67-year-old disabled grandmother was receiving athletic scholarships to play three sports at Bishop State just months before she died.
But in an audit released this week, the true scope of the problems at Bishop State comes into focus. The picture is not pretty.
The Examiners of Public Accounts identified more than $438,000 in financial aid abuses, including other athletic scholarships to employees' relatives who did not play sports.
Indeed, the athletic program awarded $87,000 in scholarships to 42 relatives and others who didn't play on teams. Among the transactions cited in the audit were scholarships for men's baseball given to two women, three scholarships given to the daughter of the school's softball coach, and two scholarships for the spouse of the women's basketball coach.
The audit also found that tuition was wrongly waived for 15 employees and 31 relatives, that 48 people received federal aid for which they weren't eligible, and that employees manipulated grades and attendance records. One instructor received 23 credit hours for taking 10 courses he taught.
...[C]riminal charges already have been filed against some Bishop State employees and others who are accused of financial aid fraud. Let's hope a similar fate awaits anyone who took or awarded aid money in a fraudulent manner. Remember, those who wrongfully received aid did so at the expense of people who were entitled to assistance and surely could have benefited from it.
...Bishop State President Yvonne Kennedy cannot escape responsibility for all that has happened under her watch. She can't claim she wasn't aware of the problems. State auditors have been citing problems with aid money at Bishop State at least since 2001. The campus also knew there were problems in its handling of federal grants, having already agreed to repay the federal government $155,000 for wrongly dispensed aid. (The latest audit suggests the debt may be closer to $300,000.)
If the school is ever going to emerge from this scandal and regain the public's confidence, Kennedy must go.
It won't be easy to make her leave. Two-year college presidents are politically powerful. Kennedy is even more so because she is also a member of the state Legislature. But it's clear she has not been running Bishop State as it should have been run. Perhaps she was too distracted by her legislative duties and is another example of why legislators shouldn't be allowed to hold a second state job.
Regardless, Kennedy should step down from the two-year college job. If she can't bring herself to resign, interim Chancellor Thomas Corts should show her the door.
As with the trustee bandit at the University of Alaska, it's possible Kennedy will be able to continue, until retirement, on her merry way.
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