When your report on–or comment on–controversial subjects, there are always people that will oppose what you have to say. “You are wrong, Jonathan.” they will say. “You misunderstand what’s going on, Jonathan.” they will argue. And my personal favorite, “The whole truth will come out eventually, and then you will see” are comments that I will get from folks not happy with what they hear on the radio. But in the vast majority of cases, as “more facts come out”, I never hear from those people again–or they change their excuses–“Well that’s just one version of the facts” or “We’ll never know the whole story” becomes their new comments.
I can tell you that there is now a change in the responses to our coverage of the UW-Oshkosh Foundation financial scandal. What started out as “They didn’t do anything illegal!” and “There was no personal financial gain–so how could they be accused of fraud?” is taking a different direction. The new excuse that I’m hearing now that former Chancellor Richard Wells and former Vice-Chancellor Tom Sonnleitner are facing criminal charges is “Well, the people in the UW System and the Board of Regents knew all along what was happening”.
Now that is a pretty serious accusation to make–that those who oversaw Wells and Sonnleitner were aware that they were filing documents that would bind Wisconsin taxpayers to debt accrued by a private organization AND then allowed those administrators to work with Foundation officials to hide transfers from the school budget to cover those initial debt payments. To me, that sounds like grounds for Conspiracy to Commit charges.
Of course, there are a lot of holes in that excuse. For starters, why were red flags raised and investigations launched after new Chancellor Andrew Leavitt was presented with details of this “special arrangement” and brought it to the attention of the UW officials that allegedly “already knew about it”? Wouldn’t those same people open themselves up to investigation and scrutiny–and basically be “blowing the whistle” on themselves? They could just have easily told Leavitt, “Yeah, that’s okay–just don’t let anyone else know about it”.
And why wasn’t this same practice found anywhere else in the UW-System? Education is a copycat industry if you will. If one school finds a way to spend more money every other school wants to do the same thing in the name of “progress”. And yet an audit of all college budgets and all foundation operations could not find similar letters of guarantee from chancellors or payments going from the schools to the foundations–instead of the other way around–like it’s supposed to be.
I can guarantee that as the case continues and “all the facts do come out”, that those trying to defend the wrong-doers will continue to amend their complaints and excuses. Next will be “They just wanted to do good things for Oshkosh” and then finally “It’s time that we just move on”.
