Two must read articles about the Wallace Hall fiasco; first up,
the American Spectator:
IN HIS 1951 book God and Man at Yale, the
document that, to simplify only a little, launched the conservative movement,
William F. Buckley, Jr. lamented what he later called “the phenomenon of the
somnolent college trustee.” Looking back in 2007, Buckley concluded that little
had changed in the intervening 56 years. “Mostly, the college establishment is
regnant,” he
wrote. “Trustees are expected to be affable creatures, preferably rich and
generous. They are not expected to weigh in on college affairs, which are
adequately handled by presidents, provosts, deans, and lesser administrative
folk.”
This was
not always the case. Decades previous, boards of trustees (for private
universities) or regents (for public universities) had real power, since they
were composed of donors and alumni on whose good opinion the university
depended for financial support. By Buckley’s day, their influence had waned,
but the final act that cast regents and trustees off the seat of power came,
along with much other mischief, in the 1960s. The federal government got into
the higher-ed game with loans and grants. This opened college to students who
otherwise couldn’t have afforded to attend—and that’s a good thing. But it also
permitted schools to increase tuition and declare financial independence from
private donors.
….
WALLACE
HALL, HOWEVER, means business—and it has landed him in the middle of a you-know-what-storm. The
University of Texas regent, appointed by Rick Perry in 2011, faces potential
impeachment in the state legislature for, primarily, filing too many requests
for public records. State Rep. Jim Pitts, the man who has arguably led the
charge to impeach, has
accused Hall of conducting a “witch hunt” aimed at ousting Bill
Powers, the president of the system’s flagship institution, the University of
Texas at Austin.
Hall has filed requests
under the Texas Public Information Act for large amounts of information,
including correspondence among UT Austin administrators and emails between
Powers and state politicians. But he contends the method has achieved results.
In a letter
to state legislators, Hall’s lawyer pointed out three substantive findings
from the regent’s efforts.
The first
relates to a now-defunct program, intended to help the UT Austin law school
retain talent, under which a private foundation gave “forgivable loans” (an
oxymoron if there ever was one) to faculty as off-books compensation. The dean
of the school, Lawrence Sager, received a $500,000 such loan but was forced to
resign when the affair became public in 2011. Hall’s attorney wrote that, based
on documents he has reviewed, Hall now believes President Powers knew of Sager’s
loan as early as 2009.
Second,
the lawyer wrote, Hall has corrected the university’s method of reporting
donations. In one case, the letter states, UT Austin had included temporary
grants of software licenses in its fundraising tally, which inflated the number
by $224 million.
Third,
Hall has evidence, according to the letter, that state legislators have
contacted university officials and used their clout to influence the school’s
admissions process. For instance, Hall’s attorney wrote that one senator,
lobbying for a favored applicant who previously had been rejected, “reminded
the UT Austin official of recent legislative action taken to benefit The
University.”
….
ONE
THEORY IS that legislators are practicing politics through different
means. Higher-education circles in the state have been roiled over the
past several years by a
set of proposals backed by Governor Rick Perry and the conservative
Texas Public Policy Foundation, some of which seem to have percolated into the
UT chancellor’s Framework
for Advancing Excellence. The plan aimed to increase learning and keep
tuition and administrative costs in check by, among other things, ranking
faculty on the number of students taught per unit of salary, putting more
emphasis on student evaluations, and instituting bonus pay for particularly
effective professors.
UT Austin
certainly does have room to improve. The school is ranked by U.S. News as no. 52 in
the nation, though its $2.3 billion budget is about the same size as two
schools ranked much higher, the University of Virginia (no. 23) and the
University of Michigan (no. 28).
….
BUT
OTHERS SAY the situation is much more simple: Hall, on his march to reform,
walked straight into a tangled web of powerful interests. UT Austin wields
tremendous influence within the state in its own right. With its independent
government relations office, PR shop, newsletters, magazines, and Texas Exes
alumni association, the university can move public opinion. The school doles
out prestigious alumni awards and gives prominent politicians free football
tickets, or seats
in the president’s box during home games.
Personal
and familial connections abound. Hall continues to push investigation into the
“forgivable loans,” and the man under whom the program probably started,
according to a university investigation, was none other than…president Bill
Powers, who served as dean of the law school prior to the ousted Lawrence
Sager. Hall claims to have evidence to prove legislators interceded in the
admissions process, and one state representative has now admitted that he wrote
a recommendation letter on behalf of his son. That politican’s name?
Jim Pitts, the appropriations committee chairman gunning for Hall’s
impeachment. (Pitts contends the letter for his son was a “form letter” no
different than any other recommendation he sends, though one suspects UT Austin
officials noted the applicant’s surname.)
There’s a
whole lot of circular backscratching that Hall has the potential to disrupt.
Witness how, when the temperature began to rise, those in politics and academia
began to circle the wagons. Just weeks ago, the Association of American
Universities elected Powers its leader. “He has been explaining to his state
and the country the vital role these extraordinary institutions play in solving
the nation’s most serious problems,” Hunter Rawlings said. In February, after a
particularly contentious meeting between Powers and the regents, the Texas
Senate passed a resolution in support of the UT president. For 40 minutes,
senators sang Powers’ praise in what one Austin-American Statesman columnist called
a well-choreographed performance. “So flowery were the comments,” the columnist
wrote, “that Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, assured Powers, ‘This is not a
eulogy.’”
….
Legislators, clearly, would
prefer the potted plants. The committee investigating Hall, which meets again
this week, has not allowed the besieged regent to cross-examine those giving
testimony against him. Nor
has it notified Hall when—or whether—it will call him to tell his side
of the story. Impeachment in Texas does not require any finding of criminality,
leaving Hall’s fate to the personal opinions of members of the statehouse. “I
think the standard for impeachment,” an attorney
for the committee told the Texas
Tribune, “is pretty much what the majority of 150 people are going
to say.”
The
message from the whole affair is that any board member who raises his head
above the foxhole can expect to take fire from all sides—from politicians, from
faculty, from students, from the press. Already the lesson seems to have been
internalized. Three current regents phoned about Hall’s case did not answer or
return calls.
But Hall
himself seems ready to take on all comers
Meanwhile, Tony McDonald of Empower Texans was
at yesterday's 'proceedings':
The committee also claimed that the open
records requests sent to UT by Regent Hall were “abusive.” But testimony yesterday
from UT System attorneys revealed that all Hall did was ask that the University
comply with the legally required deadline to respond to Hall’s requests as a
citizen under the Public Information Act. Those requests required UT and UT
System to work over a weekend in June to complete the review required in order
for Regent Hall’s requests to be released. Essentially, the complaint was that
Regent Hall made some government employees work over the weekend.
The
major theme of the day, however, was a complaint that the committee and the
committee’s self-appointed leader, Democratic State Representative Trey Fischer, pushed. Fischer
alleged that Hall violated FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy
Act, by giving some important documents to his attorneys. The complaint was
that Hall inadvertently received documents that were protected under FERPA
(after asking the University not to release FERPA-protected documents to him)
and then revealed those documents to his attorneys after members of the
legislature began impeachment proceedings against him. The committee seems to
expect that Hall would be aware (and would legally respect) a 2008 Department
of Education “Guidance Letter” which suggests that FERPA-protected information
can’t be shared with a person’s independent legal counsel. Fischer even went so
far as making the legally dubious claim that Hall had violated state law by
sharing the documents with his lawyers as part of his impeachment defense.
….
The
documents in question — I am led to infer — are emails between
soon-to-be-retired Texas House Appropriations Chairman Jim Pitts and UT
President Bill Powers’ staff in which he attempted (successfully) to get his
adult son into UT Law despite being previously denied. The take-away of
Holthaus’s testimony was that if that document was released to Regent Hall
before the younger Mr. Pitts began attending the law school then the documents
weren’t protected under FERPA at all. I also am led to ponder how a
communication between an elected official and a university president can
possibly be an “education record,” but I have yet to investigate FERPA in
enough detail to make that determination.
….
The
testimony of lawyers from UT System’s Office of General Counsel was also
enlightening. It was revealed, for the first time, that Regent Hall discovered
documents in his search that, when put together, revealed that a crime may have
occurred. The System’s lawyers said that Hall wanted to take the materials to
the authorities but that he was hamstrung by FERPA. UT System General Counsel
Dan Sharphorn also poured water on a sob story told by UT CFO Kevin Hegarty at
the last meeting of the Select Committee. Hegarty had complained that he was
denied legal counsel other than Sharphorn, who he had a conflict with.
Sharphorn explained that, in reality, Hegarty had never made a request for
outside counsel and that he actually has four of five attorneys at his disposal
in UT’s Office of Vice President for Legal Affairs. This was just another
revelation that the case against Hall isn’t what his persecutors pretend it to
be.
Read the whole thing
here and
here.
