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Archive for the ‘Higher Education’ Category

Where was Jindal on decision to name Shetler to University of Louisiana Board? Answer: counting campaign donations?

Posted in Boards, Campaign Contributions, Governor's Office, Higher Education, Politicians on June 20, 2013| 4 Comments »

Carl Shetler is a survivor and now he serves on the University of Louisiana Board of Supervisors after having helped place one of the universities he now helps govern on NCAA probation a quarter-century ago.

For three years, in 1971-1974, Shetler served as an assistant coach and main recruiter for the McNeese State University (MSU) basketball team during his tenure.

You’d think he would know better than to openly flaunt NCAA rules but it was learned that others took ACT tests for two prospective basketball players.

Edmond Lawrence, who first said he would sign with the University of Southwestern Louisiana (USL—now the University of Louisiana Lafayette), changed his mind after he was promised money if he would sign with McNeese.

Shetler and then head basketball coach Bill Reigel were fired in 1974 but in 1986 Shetler, who by then owned an automobile dealership, was among a group of Lake Charles businessmen who provided illegal jobs, money and cars to McNeese basketball players.

The other businessmen, as identified in a June 15, 1992 letter from McNeese Athletic Director Robert Hayes to SLC Commissioner Bill Belknap, included Henry Carter, owner of a local Popeye’s Chicken franchise; Johnny Abraham, owner of a Lakes Charles grocery story; local attorney William Baggett, former construction company owner Bobby Nicholson and Bob Keyes, whom Hayes said he did not know.

Joe Dumars, who would go on to star with the Detroit Pistons, was one of those who received money from the boosters.

Another player, Mike Marshall who transferred from the University of Kansas to McNeese, said he was paid “thousands of dollars” by Cowboy boosters when he played for McNeese.

The NCAA and Southland Conference (SLC) Commissioner Dick Oliver placed McNeese on two years’ probation in 1987 and the SLC forced McNeese to disassociate itself from Shetler and the other businessmen.

McNeese was also forced to forfeit rights to all revenue generated by SLC members during the 1986-87 and 1987-88 academic years in men’s basketball and its number of scholarships was reduced to 11 for both years.

The NCAA further instructed the university:

• For each of the “disassociated boosters,” please indicate what steps were taken by the institution to advise them of the conference penalty. Please include with your response the dates such action occurred and all relevant written material including, but not limited to copies of correspondence to the disassociated boosters, internal memorandum and news releases;

• For each of the “disassociated boosters,” please indicate what ongoing efforts were made by the institution to ensure that the university’s relationship with these individuals remained severed. Please include all copies of all relevant written materials;

• For each of the “disassociated boosters,” please indicate each and every contribution, whether monetary or otherwise, made by them to the McNeese athletics department, an athletics booster organization of McNeese, or any other non-profit association affiliated with McNeese. In connection with this request, please provide a list for the years 1986-97, 1987-88, 1988-89, 1989-90 and 1990-91 of all individuals making contributions, whether monetary or otherwise, the McNeese athletics departments, an athletics booster organization of McNeese, or any other non-profit association affiliated with McNeese;

• For each of the “disassociated boosters,” please indicate whether they have employed McNeese student-athletes. In connection with this response, please provide a list of all those employed and (the) dates of employment;

• For each of the “disassociated boosters,” please indicate whether they have been involved in the promotion of McNeese athletics in any way including, but not limited to, membership in booster organizations, associations with coaching staff members, attendance at booster functions, advertising in McNeese publications, signage at McNeese facilities or the sponsorship of radio/television programming involving McNeese or any staff member of McNeese.

But even that crackdown didn’t last. Shetler, through former athletic director Sonny Watkins and MSU President Robert Hebert, was soon calling the shots again.

His presence was so obvious that MSU soon began to mean Mr. Shetler’s University, one reporter wrote at the time. Coaches and athletic directors came and went—all while Shetler called the shots from his auto dealership on LA. 14. Another joke emerged as Northeast Louisiana University and USL were changing their names to the University of Louisiana Monroe (ULM) and University of Louisiana Lafayette (ULL), the same reporter wrote: McNeese, the line went, would become the University of Louisiana at Highway 14.

Shetler even prevailed upon Hebert to hire Kirby Bruchhaus as head football coach. Bruchhaus resigned after only one season when it was revealed that he regularly bet on professional and college football games, a major NCAA violation.

So how is it that Shetler, who has displayed little concern for rules, came to be appointed not once, but twice, to the University of Louisiana System Board?

He was first appointed by former Gov. Edwin Edwards in June of 1992, less than two weeks after Hayes’ letter to the SLC that identified the businessmen who paid McNeese players. His appointment took effect on Jan. 1, 1993. Shetler even served as board chairman and chairman of the athletic committee where he was in charge of overseeing the very rules he so openly violated.

Parenthetically, in case you think the names Edwards and Shetler ring a bell, they do. Shetler’s son, Ricky Shetler was a casino consultant and close friend of Edwards’ son, Stephen Edwards and when the cheese got binding in his 1998 federal grail, the younger Shetler turned on his friend, cutting a deal with prosecutors to testify against Stephen in exchange for a lighter sentence.

Carl Shetler was again appointed to the board in July of 2008, this time by Jindal.

That raises the obvious question: did anyone in Jindal’s camp make even a token effort to vet this appointment?

The same question could be asked of Edwards.

The difference, of course, is Edwards never hid behind a façade of wholesomeness and all things good. He was a rogue and didn’t care who knew it. It was that candor that endeared him to voters.

Jindal, on the other hand, tries to project an aura of respectability and goodness, a “gold standard” of ethics, if you will.

So where was the application of that “gold standard” in this case?

For that answer, as always, follow the money.

Shetler, besides lavishing money on athletes at McNeese, is not above tossing a little cabbage in the direction of Jindal.

Shetler, Rosier Shetler (same address), Shetler Rental Service, Shetler Rental Properties and McDrig’s, Inc. (same post office box as Shetler Rental Properties) all combined to pour some $48,000 into Jindal’s gubernatorial campaigns of 2003, 2007 and 2011.

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What is real reason for LSU Board’s obsession with secrecy? (Hint: it’s got nothing to do with protecting the candidates)

Posted in Boards, Contract, Contracts, Courts, Education, Governor's Office, Higher Education, LSU, Public Records, Transparency on May 12, 2013| 18 Comments »

Sometimes you just have to peel back the layers to see what really lies beneath the surface of political decisions.

And nothing in the state of Louisiana is more political than the method in which F. King Alexander was chosen as the next president of Louisiana’s flagship university.

To put it as succinctly as possible, the entire charade was a crock.

And that, unfortunately, is the sorry state of affairs that higher education in general and LSU in particular finds itself in today.

Gov. Bobby Jindal, the LSU Board of Supervisors and attorney Jimmy Faircloth simply have no shame. That group of power brokers—power abusers, really—feels so secure, so insulated, so detached from the voters, students and alumni of LSU that they have arbitrarily decided that court decisions be damned, they can do as they please.

Apparently it’s not enough that higher education has seen its budget slashed by 80 percent during this governor’s reign of terror.

Jindal, the Board and Faircloth are so cocky that they obviously believe that not even a court order handed down by a Baton Rouge district judge can dislodge the names of the candidates for the LSU presidency for which one F. King Alexander was eventually chosen.

And to be sure, the credentials of Alexander, questionable at best, have to leave one wondering: is this the best a well-paid Dallas search firm could do? No, really, is F. King Alexander really the most qualified person in all of America this firm could find to lead Louisiana State University? If so, one must also question the credentials of the search firm, R. William Funk and Associates which was paid $120,000 plus expenses to come up with a man whose highest academic achievement was that of assistant professor.

Perhaps Funk and Associates is better suited to recruiting managers for Popeye’s Fried Chicken.

But then again, perhaps not. Maybe Funk and Associates scoured the country in search of someone willing and ready to walk into this political graveyard called LSU. After all, who in his right mind would want to come to this state where higher education has been decimated, disparaged and dismantled by a governor who over his five-plus years in office, has not displayed the faintest hint of fiscal responsibility or moral conscience and who is accountable only to campaign contributors and aspirations—delusions, if you will—of higher office?

It might be appropriate at this juncture to itemize the list of transgressions, omissions, power abuses, acts of corruption, contracts, appointments, campaign contributions, lies and blunders by Jindal and associates but frankly, it would take too much space. Perhaps another time.

For now, let us concentrate on LSU.

Let us ask ourselves why the LSU Board of Supervisors—and Jindal; after all, the board members would wet their collective pants where they sit before they’d go to the bathroom without the governor’s permission—are so hell-bent on keeping the list of candidates a deep dark secret.

The argument presented by the board through Faircloth—who, by the way, is 0-for-however many times he has been to court on the administration’s behalf (we long ago lost track as the losses mounted)—is that Funk initially identified 100 potential candidates before winnowing the field down to 35. The curriculum vitae and other data were placed on a secure website for members of the search committee to review.

From that number came a final group of “six or seven” who were “worthy of more intensive interviews.” In the end, King was the only candidate recommended to the full board by the search committee.

How convenient. How absurd.

Compare that to 1977 or so when I happened to be serving as managing editor of the Ruston Daily Leader. Long-time Grambling State University President R.W.E. Jones announced his retirement and the Board of Trustees for Colleges and Universities began taking applications for Jones’s successor. Every step of the way, Bill Junkin, the equivalent to today’s commissioner of higher education, and Trustees Financial Committee Chairman Gordon Flores kept the media abreast of each and every applicant (qualified applicants, by the way) all the way up to the selection of a new president.

There was the announcement in 2009 of all five candidates to be interviewed for the presidency of Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond. They were identified by name, their current positions, and their qualifications for the position—something woefully missing from the LSU selection process.

Or take the more recent case involving the selection of a successor to Louisiana Tech University President Dan Reneau. The names and a brief biography of each candidate who had requested to be included in the selection process was published in all the area newspapers. When the selection committee had narrowed the candidate list to two, those individuals appeared in an open public forum. They addressed the public and availed themselves to questions from not only the Tech faculty, but the public at large.

This should have been the method employed in the selection of the new president of the state’s largest university, public or private. The difference, of course, was that the LSU president was chosen by Jindal’s hand-picked Board of Supervisors, the crème de la crème of political campaign contributors while the Tech president was chosen by the University of Louisiana System Board of Supervisors.

The LSU Board, however, used the oh-so-very-lame excuse that to release the names of applicants could inflict career damage to those who were not selected. Hogwash. What tripe. The very purpose of establishing a career track in higher education or any other field is to advance one’s career and you can’t advance your career without attempting to move up. And you can’t move up without making applications.

It wasn’t exactly a secret that Nick Saban, then at Michigan State, wanted to come to LSU and openly applied for the position. Nor was unknown that he was ready to move on to the Miami Dolphins a few years later. Last year, just about everyone knew Louisiana Tech’s Sonny Dykes would be moving on as had his predecessor Derek Dooley.

But to settle on a candidate who had advanced up the career ladder to only the level of assistant professor before succeeding his (ahem) father to the presidency of Murray State as if he were some kind of prince suddenly elevated to the throne? And then to the presidency of California State at Long Beach by virtue of his political connections to the then-chancellor of the University of California System? To that, we can only say, hmmm.

We will be taking a closer look at Alexander’s qualifications in the coming days.

Could the secrecy around the selection of King possibly have anything to do with the fact that a close relative of U.S. Sen. David Vitter had expressed an interest in the position—and possibly submitted an application? It’s well-established that there is no love lost between Jindal and the state’s junior senator, particularly from Jindal’s end of the relationship. (Remember how Jindal threw money at favored legislative and BESE candidates but steadfastly refused to endorse Vitter for re-election because he felt it “inappropriate” to interject himself into a state campaign?)

Or could it be that King was the choice all along and Jindal wanted desperately to conceal the inconvenient truth that there were, in fact, other more qualified candidates but who were unacceptable to this ego-driven governor?

One thing is for certain: Jindal, for whatever reason, desperately does not want the public—voters, students, LSU alumni or legislators—to know. And don’t think for a nano-second that the decision to resist releasing the names was that of the board. That’s laughable.

And stacking the board with supporters who contributed more than $175,000 to his various political campaigns can ensure the cooperation of board members long on loyalty but extremely short on honor, openness, transparency and accountability—the very selling points of one Bobby Jindal, who long ago eclipsed the late Dudley LeBlanc of patent medicine Hadacol fame as the foremost practitioner in Louisiana’s grand history of snake oil salesmen.

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in Boards, Contract, Contracts, Higher Education, LSU, Notable Quotables on April 17, 2013| 4 Comments »

“Our goal was to find a candidate that understands the traditions and practices of higher learning, but who also is willing to lead our great university through (anticipated) changes.”

—R. Blake Chatelain, chairman of the LSU Presidential Search Committee.

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Vetting of new LSU president by Board of Supervisors called into question over details of Steven Spielberg grant debacle

Posted in Boards, Contract, Contracts, Ethics, Higher Education, LSU on April 16, 2013| 5 Comments »

Vetting (v.): To subject to thorough examination or evaluation (The Free Online Dictionary).

Did the LSU Board of supervisors make even a token attempt at vetting the applicants for LSU President before settling on F. King Alexander, current president of the University of California Long Beach?

Vetting (v.) The process of performing a background check on someone before offering them employment (Wikipedia).

Did Long Beach State make even a cursory attempt at vetting F. King Alexander before he was chosen president of that university?

Vetting (v.): To make a careful and critical examination (Oxford Dictionary).

Okay, the last definition was in deference to the Oxford Roundtable Foundation, the organization headed by Alexander but not really affiliated with Oxford University.

The LSU Board of Supervisors meets today (Wednesday) to finalize the details of Alexander’s contract.

But back to the original question: was there even a perfunctory effort to vet the leader of Louisiana’s flagship university by the LSU Board of Supervisors?

Besides the fact that Alexander’s own curriculum vitae indicates that the highest level to which he rose as a teacher was a five-year (1997-2001) stint as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana before making the quantum leap to the presidency of Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky, where he served for another five years (2001-2005).

Apparently, it isn’t necessary to pose the vetting question with Murray State; he simply succeeded his father, S. Kern Alexander to the presidency of the school.

Assuming that it’s the norm for an assistant professor to scale the academic ladder to president of a 10,000-student university in a single move (which, of course, it certainly is not), it’s his handling of a major grant from a prominent movie executive http://thugthebook.blogspot.com/ while at Long Beach State that we will examine here. Additional analyses of his qualifications will be provided in subsequent posts which we will offer for simultaneous release to the LSU Reveille and a couple of other choice blogs.

In May of 2007, King signed off on a three-page pledge agreement by movie producer/director Steven Spielberg’s Wunderkinder Foundation in which the foundation pledged nearly $1.4 million to support Long Beach State’s Master’s in Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing Program within the Film and Electronic Arts Department.

The money was given by Wunderkinder in three incremental payments. The first payment, $590,000 was payable upon the effective date of the pledge agreement (May 31, 2007). The second installment of $400,000 was due on the first anniversary of the effective date of the pledge agreement (May 31, 2008) and the final payment of $388,000 was scheduled for May 31, 2009, the second anniversary date of the pledge agreement.

The pledge agreement said, in part:

• The pledged funds are designated to (i) support the Master’s in Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing Program at the (university); (ii) support the conversion of space for a soundstage and editing studio in the (Department), and (iii) support equipment maintenance, replacement, and upgrades within the (Department);

• If (the university foundation) should for any reason lose its tax-exemption so that gifts to it no longer qualify as tax deductible, or if the pledged funds are used for any purpose not specifically permitted under this pledge agreement, this pledge agreement shall terminate immediately and pledgor (Wunderkinder) shall have no further obligation thereafter to pay any amounts not previously funded.

• A breach by (the university foundation) of this pledge agreement may cause irreparable injury to pledgor not readily measurable in money and for which pledgor shall be entitled to seek injunctive relief or to terminate this pledge agreement without further obligation to (the foundation), or both.

All three checks were delivered to the university’s Film and Electronic Arts Department as scheduled.

The third check of $388,000 was issued through Comerica Bank-California on May 18, 2009. But six weeks earlier, on April 6, Alexander had issued a directive suspending future admissions for the program, effectively killing it—even as Spielberg was said to have been preparing to renew the grant for another three years.

The check was not only negotiated in the full knowledge that it would not go for its intended purpose, but some of the money was then moved from the donor foundation account into the Film and Electronic Arts general account to be mingled with state funds and used for salaries.

Because there were still five students finishing the program, each received $10,000 under the grant, leaving $338,000 that went for other purposes—an apparent violation of the terms of the pledge agreement.

When the financial crunch hit colleges and universities across the country, Long Beach State was not spared and university faculty took a 10 percent “furlough” pay cut for the 2009-2010 academic year–ostensibly because of funding cuts. Later that year, however, Alexander announced that additional money had been “found.”

The terms of the furlough that came into existence in the fall of 2009 specifically said, “Faculty Unit employees whose salary is 100 percent funded from grants and contracts not funded from the state general fund shall not be subject to this furlough agreement.”

Yet a faculty member whose salary was to have been funded 100 percent by the Spielberg/Wunderkinder grant saw a 10 percent reduction in his salary. That 10 percent was apparently re-allocated for general expenses rather than for the purposes specified in the pledge agreement which could be interpreted as a breach of the pledge contract.

To make matters worse, Spielberg was never informed of the termination of the Master’s in Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing Program.

Spielberg, meanwhile, was experiencing problems of his own and for whatever reasons, did not pursue the matter. Wunderkinder in 2008 had become a victim of the giant Ponzi scheme perpetrated by Bernard Madoff. With assets of $12.6 million as of November of 2006, Wunderkinder’s financial fortunes had suffered right along with other investors in Madoff’s scheme.

By late 2009, even though Wunderkinder was financially crippled by Madoff, Spielberg continued his personal philanthropic activities on behalf of the University of Southern California, among others .

Vetting.

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Kostelka says he is serious about elected superintendent; Jindal sends in the clown, gets comeuppence from Regents

Posted in BESE, Education, Governor's Office, Higher Education, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, LSU, Politicians, Public Records, Regents, Retirement, Veto on March 28, 2013| 30 Comments »

Sen. Bob Kostelka, R-Monroe, wants people to know he’s serious.

He has already pre-filed SB 41, which calls for a constitutional amendment to be placed on the ballot which, if approved, would make the state superintendent of education and elective position as opposed to the current appointive one.

Kostelka also wants it understood that he wants current Superintendent John White to go.

He says he has seen enough of bloated contracts granted to politically-connected firms. He has seen his fill of contracts like the one that teaches kids how to play at recess. He has heard quite enough about contracts awarded to PR hacks to work out of their homes in other states for outlandish figures like $12,000 per month.

Most of all though he has grown weary of trying to obtain information and records from the secretive Louisiana Department of Education—and repeatedly encountering a brick wall of resistance.

And he is more than a little concerned about the approval of vouchers for schools which have no classrooms, no teachers and no desks—like New Living Word in Ruston.

And while he didn’t say so, he seemed to take some bit of pleasure in knowing that his bill has come under fire from Gov. Bobby Jindal’s chief apologist, Jeff Sadow.

Kostelka claim that the bill would make the superintendent answerable to the people instead of a rubber-stamp Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) was described by Sadow as a “curious mix of ignorance and illogic.”

Sadow chose to fall back on the argument that most of the BESE members are already elected and “answerable to the people,” apparently choosing to ignore the fact that most of the elected members’ seats were bought by out of state contributions from such people as Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, the Walton family and K-12.

Sadow also says Kostelka seems to have forgotten the “policy-making mess” that existed under the elected superintendent structure that existed prior to 1988. In saying that, Sadow appears to be overlooking the ever-evolving “policy-making mess” that is indicative of today’s DOE under a superintendent who doesn’t seem to have a clue where he intends to go or what he intends to do when he gets there.

“People like Mr. Sadow say I want to return to old-time politics,” Kostelka said. “To that, I would have them look at the political contributions to the BESE members and then explain to me what has changed under the present system.”

“They say my bill would cost the state the expense of another election, but it wouldn’t. I’m calling for the election to be held in the fall of 2014 at the same time as the Congressional elections, so there would be no additional costs. If approved, the elected superintendent would take effect with the 2015 gubernatorial election and White could leave with Jindal,” he said.

Kostelka is well aware that he has run afoul of the petulant Jindal and is certain to incur the governor’s wrath. His punishment could range from a loss of committee assignments to vetoes of key projects in Kostelka’s senate district. All one has to do is harken back to last year’s session when Jindal vetoed a major construction project in Livingston Parish after Rep. Rogers Pope and Sen. Dale Erdy had the temerity to buck Jindal on legislative matters important to the governor.

If that isn’t old-time politics, we don’t know what is.

But Jindal has proved beyond any doubt that he is not above such tactics.

But, at long last, those tactics appear to be coming back to bit him in the backside.

He has demoted legislators, fired a BESE member, an LSU president, doctors, various department and agency heads, appointed legislator buddies (Noble Ellington, Troy Hebert, et al) to six-figure deadhead jobs and in at least one case—that of Hebert—that appointment appears to be a major embarrassment to the administration.

But even after all of that, nothing compares to the damage done to his political stock as the recent dust-up with the Board of Regents.

Send in the clowns

As is his M.O., Jindal attempted to distance himself from the action—perhaps as a means of attempting to maintain deniability, a ploy that has consistently served him badly—by dispatching an emissary to do his dirty work. In this case, it was Taylor Teepell, brother of Timmy Teepell who seems to be running his OnMessage political consulting operation from the governor’s fourth-floor offices in the State Capitol.

What was Taylor’s mission? Nothing less than to demand the firing of Commissioner of Higher Education Dr. James Purcell. Purcell, you see, committed the unpardonable sin of criticizing Jindal’s repeated cuts to higher education. There is no run for dissention on Team Jindal.

But Taylor Teepell got a major surprise. Regents Chairman W. Clinton “Bubba” Rasberry, Jr. sent Teepell back to Jindal with a message: “Dr. Purcell works for the Regents.”

Whoa. Herr Jindal is not accustomed to such spunk from his subordinates. The governor does, after all, appoint the Regents members and he expects all appointees to toe the line, not draw a line in the sand.

Of course, Jindal could fire the entire board and replace the recalcitrant members with more compliant sycophants. But his brazen attempt to oust Purcell for the sin of independent thinking probably did more harm to Jindal than anything else he has done in his five-plus years in office. This attempt, coming as it did on the heels of three major court reversals of his education and retirement reforms and the word last week of a federal investigation into a contract with the Department of Health and Human Resources, has left him politically crippled.

And his blatant, quixotic pursuit of the presidency would be laughable were it not such a pathetic sight to behold. It somehow makes him look even smaller, more the little boy, in his ill-fitting suits.

Seeing his presidential aspirations slip away raises yet another spectacle that he would probably rather no one would know about. When he encountered occasional crises during his tenure as head of the University of Louisiana System, rather than facing the problems head-on, his solution of choice was to retreat to his office where he is said to have played video games virtually non-stop.

One must be wondering what video games he prefers these days. League of Legends, perhaps?

As one observer recently said, the Jindal waters appear to be circling the drain.

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