corruption scandals, great and small
the daily hampshire gazette has a series of stories by tom marshall in this weekend's edition about umass reporting deceptive figures to the attorney-general's office last year, while the office was investigating what it alleged were umass's violations of public bidding laws. the figure presented by the administration last october was $982,926. according to documents obtained by the gazette under public records law, the actual figure was $1,874,290. but even before this document was revealed, the attorney-general's office had found instances of corruption in the process, and had voided one contract between the university and garland construction co. of chicopee, because the company had failed to disclose a family relationship between company a project manager and a university project manager. afterwards, umass went and contracted with garland again, despite the voiding of the previous contract. according to marshall's article, "lawyers familiar with the state's procurement laws say the university subverted the basic purposes of those laws".
to observers of the umass scene, none of this will come as a surprise - except the fact that the gazette was able to obtain documents from the university under public records law. it has been almost a year since the secretary of state's office ordered the university to provide diversity figures to then-president of the SGA eddie bustamante. other requests for public records have been denied since then, including requests for the transcripts of the diversity commission meetings, where it was resolved to recommend the firing of the michael gargano, the vice chancellor for student affairs.
the GSS has been probing possible university corruption for years, including the case of the peoplesoft contract which, with apparent cost overruns in the hundreds of millions of dollars, makes the painting scandal look like chump change by comparison. when the grad voice goes online on the gss website (hopefully in the next few weeks), many articles on this scandal will become accessible. i urge everyone to check it out (i'll announce it on this list when the paper goes online).
to observers of the umass scene, none of this will come as a surprise - except the fact that the gazette was able to obtain documents from the university under public records law. it has been almost a year since the secretary of state's office ordered the university to provide diversity figures to then-president of the SGA eddie bustamante. other requests for public records have been denied since then, including requests for the transcripts of the diversity commission meetings, where it was resolved to recommend the firing of the michael gargano, the vice chancellor for student affairs.
the GSS has been probing possible university corruption for years, including the case of the peoplesoft contract which, with apparent cost overruns in the hundreds of millions of dollars, makes the painting scandal look like chump change by comparison. when the grad voice goes online on the gss website (hopefully in the next few weeks), many articles on this scandal will become accessible. i urge everyone to check it out (i'll announce it on this list when the paper goes online).
posted by Uri at 1:32 PM
<< Home