Degree Scandal Sparks Rare Forum

By VICKI SMITH Associated Press Writer


MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — As best as anyone can tell, it’s been more than 30 years since the full-time instructors at West Virginia University considered anything important enough to call a special meeting of the little-known University Assembly.

But faculty are so enraged over a degree scandal involving the governor’s daughter, high-ranking academic administrators and President Mike Garrison that they they’ve scheduled a three-hour session for May 14.

The gathering of virtually all full-time faculty, believed to be the first special meeting since 1977, will be held in a concert theater that seats 1,440 — just enough for the 1,418 who could potentially attend.

Though the agenda for the meeting had not been prepared as of Wednesday, faculty clearly have one thing on their minds: Garrison’s demanded but undelivered resignation.

But the president has no plans to leave.

Garrison says he still has work to do as president, including implementation of recommendations from the independent panel that concluded WVU gave Mylan Inc. executive Heather Bresch an executive master’s of business administration degree she didn’t earn.

Bresch is a longtime friend of Garrison, and Mylan chairman Milan “Mike” Puskar, who has given tens of millions of dollars to WVU.

Provost Gerald Lang and business school Dean R. Stephen Sears resigned their administrative posts after the report found they added courses and grades to Bresch’s transcript, then retroactively awarded her the 1998 degree.

No other disciplinary actions or reassignments have occurred.

Earlier this week, the Faculty Senate overwhelmingly voted no confidence in Garrison and demanded he step down to help restore the school’s tarnished reputation.

Technically, the University Assembly has no more power than the senate, but the organizers of next week’s meeting are hoping that 1,400 voices will be harder to ignore than the senate’s 114.

“The only authority it has would be its numbers,” said former senate chairman Christopher Wilkinson, “and whatever further emphasis those numbers already give to the consensus.”

It also gives all faculty opinions equal weight. At meetings of the senate, faculty may only speak if recognized by a senator. At assembly meetings, everyone can talk.

The Faculty Constitution allows a special meeting to called if 5 percent of the University Assembly so petitions. Otherwise, it requires only that the assembly hold one meeting a year, to provide an audience for the president’s annual State of the University address.

Secretaries to the Faculty Senate could find no record of a meeting for any other purpose in the past decade and said there are no records dating to the ’70s.

Barbara Howe, a professor of women’s studies who wrote a history of WVU, says she’s taught for 28 years and cannot recall a special meeting.

Wilkinson, who’s been with WVU 32 years, thinks the last was in 1977, under then-president James Harlow. It was not, he says, particularly memorable.

“There was nothing substantive done,” he said.

What action could come of Wednesday’s meeting and how many faculty will attend remain to be seen. The meeting occurs in the middle of the week after final exams, but before graduation ceremonies.

Wilkinson, however, says many professors will still be on campus: Their final paychecks of the semester are due Friday, May 16.

On Wednesday, faculty members announced both the formation of a new group, Mountaineers for Integrity and Responsibility, or MIR, and its plan to protest “in a respectful way” at graduation ceremonies May 17-18.

MIR hopes to convince legislators and others that systemic change is needed to restore WVU’s academic integrity, including new procedures for picking the president and provost.

“In the short term, however, MIR intends to keep the pressure on Garrison to resign because of the enormous, negative long-term impact of flawed and compromised leadership on everything from graduate student recruitment to fundraising to awarding of grants to hiring new, dynamic faculty,” the group said in a statement.

Physics professor Boyd Edwards was elected chairman, while psychology professor Michael Perone was elected vice-chair.



AP-CS-05-08-08 0006EDT