The Valve - A Literary Organ | Meet the Trustees, part I: Trustees Behind Bars

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Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Meet the Trustees, part I: Trustees Behind Bars

Posted by Marc Bousquet on 06/25/08 at 10:17 AM

photo: Louis Lanzano, Associated Press

Photo of handcuffed Ralph Cioffi (center)

cross-posted from howtheuniversityworks.com

So yesterday I suggested that some other person take up a camera and assist the trustees to introduce themselves.

But then I thought, why wait?

These clever, selfless folks have overseen the vicious gutting of the faculty--earnestly saving on our wages and benefits ("$1000 a class--what great managers we are! maybe next year we can get it down to $950! oh boy!") in order to build themselves business centers, business colleges, and sky boxes. Being such wizards of ethics, administration, and the greater good, many of these gentle, accomplished souls have already found ways to introduce themselves to wider public notice.

The inspiration for this series is John The Boot LeBoutillier, too much of a right-wing fanatic for even Reagan’s Congress, author of Harvard Hates America, now dividing his time between higher education trusteeship and his real passion, the Skyhook II Project, “dedicated to recovering living American POWs in Southeast Asia.”

In the typology of trustees, Ideological Nutters like The Boot probably make up the largest category, right after Insufferable Nabobs. But there are others worthy of scrutiny.

Take the interesting category of trustees running afoul of the criminal justice system. No shortage of candidates in this group, but here are three, just to get the ball rolling.

There’s Ralph Cioffi, pictured above, arrested last week and charged with insider trading, securities and wire fraud. A Bear, Stearns fund manager and proud 1978 graduate of St. Michael’s College in Vermont, he recently chaired the President’s Medallion Society for big donors, and served in the 1990s to “provide leadership” on the Board of Trustees on the Audit and Investment committees, the Burlington Free Press reported.

And Ignacio Pena, convicted of fraud in California for creating a shell company to provide over a million dollars’ worth of outsourced teaching, books, and sports programming to Compton College, where he served as trustee. A million bucks would have bought a lot of outsourced teaching, except Pena never delivered any.

Some of your trustees straddle multiple categories, like Peter Lewis, President and CEO of the Progressive auto insurance company, Princeton ‘55, and trustee of that institution. No question he’s an Insufferable Nabob, but he’s also a bit of an Ideological Nutter, bankrolling the movement to legalize medical marijuana (not recreational marijuana, just medicine for those who can afford the good scrips).

And like so many of us regular folks, his sincerely held values relentlessly led Lewis afoul of state power, as customs officers in New Zealand nabbed him in possession of more than quarter-pound of hash and quality doobage, not to mention “assorted smoking pipes and bongs.” That was in 2000, shortly after he made his first $50 million gift. To overcome his embarassment, he dropped another 60 mil on them the next year, and another $101 million in 2006. Now the entire campus is named after him.

And I laughed at all my Yale pals in the early 80s who, with cherubic sincerity over their bongs, kegs, and freemasonry, swore they were going into investment banking and white-shoe law firms in order to “fight the system from the inside.” None of those folks have delivered on their promise to build socialism while pulling in seven figures, but Lewis’s story gives one hope.

Good for you, trustee Lewis. They’re cheering you on in dorms, eating clubs and the crypts of secret societies up and down the Atlantic coast. You keep stickin’ it to the man like that and we’ll have a better world in our lifetime.

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Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Meet the Trustees, part I: Trustees Behind Bars

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