MORE ON THAT TEXAS HIGHER-ED SCANDAL: UT and Legislature Just Keep Digging That Wallace Hall Hole Deeper for Themselves.
From the very beginning, top Texas legislators and key officials at the University of Texas have offered only one response to revelations of wrongdoing brought forward by UT System Regent Wallace Hall of Dallas — absolute denial, backed up by a yee-haw hog-hunting bloodlust for Hall’s scalp. The more they do it, the deeper they dig.
In the last few days, the corrupt practices discovered by Hall — funny money at the law school, secret backdoor admissions for relatives of legislators, bogus accounting of endowment funds and more — have spurred a cascade of negative external consequences for UT.
Plaintiffs in the longstanding Abigail Fisher reverse discrimination litigation this week filed a new writ in the U.S. Supreme Court charging that the university’s system for achieving racial diversity “is a sham,” citing evidence first discovered by Hall and confirmed in subsequent investigations.
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni in Washington yesterday issued a blistering condemnation of efforts we told you about here Monday by a state senator who wants to pass a law against university trustees asking too many questions. Citing the Enron debacle, the council warns that putting directors in blindfolds and handcuffs is exactly the wrong way to go in seeking institutional responsibility.
No shit.
Just in case somebody thought there was anything “conservative” about Amarillo Republican state Senator Kel Seliger’s attempt to hog-tie university trustees and regents, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank in Austin, weighed in yesterday: Thomas K. Lindsay, director of the foundations’ Center for Higher Education, wrote an open letter to Seliger explaining to him the concept of fiduciary responsibility.
That’s a notion that more university trustees need to be familiarized with.