I hope the U.S. Attorney’s Office has more evidence than I suspect it has to justify calling the Marshall University provost and a professor before a federal grand jury in the Emily Perdue grading matter.
As best I can determine, the only scenario that would produce an indictable federal crime is this: Someone made it easy for Emily Perdue to earn grades for her independent study because her father is the State Treasurer AND he or someone close to him somehow exerted influence inappropriately (not just as a concerned parent) to obtain a favorable outcome on behalf of Miss Perdue. I can’t imagine the second half of the equation being satisfied in the absence of some clear quid pro quo, which no one has suggested publicly to date. Furthermore, the quid pro quos available to a State Treasurer, unlike a Governor, Senator, or Congressman, truly are very limited.
While certainly worthy of internal examination by Marshall University’s provost and faculty senate, the Perdue matter hardly seems worthy of CRIMINAL investigation. To an outsider, these subpoenas appear to be political.
From the FBI Information page;
Does the FBI investigate graft and corruption in local government and in state and local police departments?
Yes. The FBI uses applicable federal laws, including the Hobbs Act, to investigate violations by public officials in federal, state, and local governments. A public official is any person elected, appointed, employed, or otherwise has a duty to maintain honest and faithful public service. Most violations occur when the official asks, demands, solicits, accepts, receives, or agrees to receive something of value in return for influence in the performance of an official act. The categories of public corruption investigated by the FBI include legislative, judicial, regulatory, contractual, and law enforcement.
After looking at the above and watching the entire Carrie Cline/Laura Wyant interview on the WSAZ web page in which Wyant said- “The dean and her and her father went into a closed door meeting,” Wyant said. “When the dean returned, she said, ‘I will be assuming the responsibilities for this student,’ and that was the end of the discussion.” It does look fishy at best. But to agree with you its hard to figure out what the students family could give in return to make it a crime. It was very unlikely that the Dean made any decision dealing with a politician’s family on her own without consulting with someone a little higher up. Some discussion theories at Marshall include;
• Future favors, just in case the family member was elected Governor
• Part of SB 603 allowing Marshall to invest some of their money outside the state treasurer run consolidated investment fund is up for review this year, support from the treasurer would mean a lot in allowing this to continue
• Dean was just in ahh of an elected official
• To garner favoritism with the wife? She is the Head of the grievance board of which The Marshall presidents Chief of Staff is a member
So there are a few “could be’s” that could come from this; as a person who works at Marshall I would say that its running around 80% in favor of Wyants version of what happened.
In regard to your last paragraph, an internal review was said to have been done by the provost. The student ran newspaper Parthenon asked for a copy of the review from the provost but he said that there is no written copy of this review, he had checked everything out and it was fine, “just a simple clerical error.” There is hope that the faculty senate will not cave in to pressure and perform a real investigation into the matter, but it will be tough. The Vice-Chair of the faculty Senate is the Husband of Marshalls Finance VP, and the Faculty Senate chair (who has been very reluctant to investigate) is already talking about new paper work that won’t let this happen again, before checking out what really happened.
Although I don’t know the how/why the FBI got involved,( I’m assuming that it went to their hot line) how do things like this get taken care of in an institution ran like Marshall? Rules are in place, they were not followed; who makes administration follow rules? (BOG? Please reread your “potty trained trustee” post) the institution gets a free attorney through the attorney general’s office, so they keep fighting until the employee wears down or conforms. Although not relevant to this case please Read the Grievance WATSON, ET AL. v. MARSHALL UNIVERSITY DOCKET NO. 2008-1789-CONS (9/9/2009) http://www.state.wv.us/admin/grievanc/Database/Dbase_search.htm Faculty actually won part of this one! Point being that Faculty followed all the rule/regulations/policies, but the president still said no. The rule/regulations/policies in this case didn’t work out to the presidents liking, look for them to be changed!
Joseph Ciccarelli, supervisory senior resident agent for the FBI, has neither confirmed nor denied that the FBI was investigating the matter at Marshall. But he said such an investigation would not center on a grade change. It would focus on whether a public official used his or her power to do something a regular citizen couldn’t do.
This is truly strange. I’ll be following it closely.