Kudos to Flagler College President William Abare and an unnamed faculty member and the Information Technology (IT) Department for catching MARC WILLIAR, a Flagler College Vice President, in the act of fraud.
For four (4) years, WILLIAR falsified freshman test scores, GPAs and class ranks.
This crime, this fraud, based on WILLIAR's professed "love" of his longtime employer, led Flagler College to get unjustified rankings and led students to apply there and spend money there.
A federal grand jury needs to investigate, starting with WILLIAR, who confessed to the St. Augustine Record.
False reports were admittedly made in Flagler College's name to U.S. News & World Report, Princeton Review, the U.S. Department of Education and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, et al. -- sure sounds like mail fraud and wire fraud to me -- these are possible federal crimes. So is providing false information to the United States Department of Education.
Flagler College must be treated as a crime scene.
All evidence must be preserved.
The FBI must investigate.
An outside investigation will commence of Flagler College by the 900-lawyer, 19-office corporate law firm of McGuireWoods, with Special Counsel of former American Bar Association President (and former Florida State University President) Talbot "Sandy' D'Alemberte.
The D'Alamberte/McGuireWoods investigation must now uncover who knew, who should have known, and (in the words of Howard Henry Baker, Jr., "what did they know and when did they know it?"
Flagler College hires former St. Augustine Record reporters to do its Public Relations -- one has had a weekly Record humor column for years. Flagler College's Vice President WILLIAR got Flagler College undeserved publicity -- dozens of front page articles about it being one of the "best" colleges.
Now we know it was all a fraud.
What else was a fraud?
Flagler's treatment of residents and St. Augustine's government?
Let us hope this searing experience leads to thorough reforms -- an end to the era of academic bossism typified by "MASSA PROCTOR" -- Flagler College Chancellor WILLIAM L. PROCTOR, an authoritarian despot who ran the school with an iron fist for four decades, firing faculty members at the drop of a hat, even in the midst of a semester, showing contempt for academic freedom.
Flagler College faculty members and students' free speech rights must be protected and not neglected.
Only because one courageous faculty member spoke out, the IT Department did its job, and both were empowered by President Abare, did this scandal get exposed.
To those who love our Nation's Oldest City, and to those living in the neighborhoods surrounding Flagler College and the Florida Schol for the Deaf and Blind, WILLIAM PROCTOR's arrogance is anathema.
WILLIAM L. PROCTOR has no respect for historic buildings and neighborhoods, long using political pull to destroy entire cty blocks of historic buildings.
Due to the climate of fear and retaliation that he fostered, WILLIAM PROCTOR must resign as Chancellor if reform is to work at Flagler College.
Let him take a bow, and bow out gracefully.
NOW.
Then Flagler College can realize its destiny.
It has fine faculty, good students and it can become something to be proud of here in St. Augustine.
Academic freedom requires that Flagler College adopt binding rules to protect the rights of faculty, students and staff to speak their minds, consisent with a "liberal arts" college (which Flagler College aspires to become).
Flagler College has been a bully in St. Augustine.
For decades, Flagler College has been devastating our historic buildings and historic area.
Rose Kennedy's favorite Bible verse was from Matthew: "To whom much is given, much is expected."
Flagler College had long promised to cap admissions.
Flagler College broke its word.
Flagler College does little for our community.
While Flagler College's online civil rights archive is a good start, Flagler must do more in terms of scholarships for local minority and low-income students; adult education; library access; and historic preservation.
Flagler College must mend its ways, halting its expansionism in our historic area. Let any future Flagler College expansions take place on West King Street, or at the St. Augustine Record's nearly-empty building at SR 207 and SR 312.
Flagler College, to whom much is given, must start paying Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT), like Harvard, Yale and other schools do.
WILLIAM L. PROCTOR mocked and blocked Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) as our State Representative from the 20th District in the Florida House of Representatives (and as self-serving chair of the pertinent legislative Education Committee).
Radical rightist WILLIAM PROCTOR's unseemly efforts to destroy four (4) historic neighborhoods to benefit his Edifice Complex are a stench in the nostrils of our Nation's Oldest City.
Flagler College Chancellor WILLIAM PROCTOR has an authoritarian personality. Under his thumb and nearly totalitarian tutelage, the Flagler College Board of Directors is all-white and nearly all-male. The student body is nearly all-white, with the exception of a few scholarship atheletes. There was more diversity among the employees of Henry Flagler's hotels and railroad during the Gilded Age than there is among Flagler College's faculty and studentry now.
Cranky, crabby, creepy Flagler College Chancellor WILLIAM PROCTOR will not be missed.
PROCTOR must be hailed before a federal grand jury and asked about Flagler College's misleading the Department of Education.
Would a mere Vice President have done so sua sponte?
Or did PROCTOR egg him on, or at least show willful blindness?
Was fraud committed before 2010?
Was there misprision of felonies?
What did the presitious Board of Trustees know?
What were they told?
Are they a working board, or were they kept in the dark by the fraudfeasor(s)?
Here are their names:
Flagler College Board of Trustees
Mr. David C. Drysdale - Chairman
Mr. Frank D. Upchurch III - Vice Chairman
Mr. John D. Bailey, Jr.
Mr. Mark F. Bailey
Mr. Eddie Creamer
Mrs. Viki W. Freeman '74
Mr. Horace A. Gray IV '88
Mr. Richard W. Groux, Jr. '79
Colonel G.F. Robert Hanke, USMC (Ret.)
Mr. Walter G. Jewett, Jr.
Mrs. Delores T. Lastinger
Mr. Robert E. Martin
Mr. Duane L. Ottenstroer
Mr. Lewis B. Pollard
Mr. Chris L. Regas
Mr. Randal L. Ringhaver
The Honorable John D. Rood
Ms. Nancy E. Rutland '80
Mr. Bradford B. Sauer
Mr. Frank C. Steinemann, Jr.
Mr. Robert J. Strang '79
Mr. Mitchell B. Walk '79
Mrs. Kim R. Wheeler
Mr. Brian L. Wilson '82
Mr. Jack Wilson
Hopefully, the Board will learn about fiduciary duty. Perhaps the Board will soon vote to accept the resignation of Flagler College Chancellor WILLIAM L. PROCTOR.
Otherwise, how do faculty members teach impressionable minds about morality, law, business ethics and right and wrong when the overbearing WILLIAM L. PROCTOR still stalks the campus, like Banco's Ghost, as lugubrious a goober as ever made a chair squeak, chilling faculty and student free speech rights by his words and deeds?
It is time for WILLIAM PROCTOR to go.
4 comments:
You talk a lot about doing the right thing Ed, but when it comes down to it, you're a coward. I hope that no one reads your garbage.
Absolutely. No way Williar acted in a vacuum. Proctor's buddy D'Alemberte is not an appropriate investigator. This really does need to go to a grand jury.
Proctor had to know. This was not some renegade going off reservation. It was policy, and at Flagler ALL policy comes from the top. Williar had to have cut a deal to fall on his sword for the old man. I imagine an FBI inquiry might provide all whom Proctor has injured a bit of schadenfreude with a Joe Paterno moment...
Spring semester came and went without further news or comment, eh?
D'Alemberte's whitewash commission appears to have done a very professional job of sweeping it under the rug. Well, that's what they're paying him for...
Post a Comment