| Blog and Media Roundup - Wednesday, July 1, 2009; News Roundup | |
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| Topic Started: Jul 1 2009, 04:46 AM (224 Views) | |
| abb | Jul 1 2009, 04:46 AM Post #1 |
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http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/30/duke.molestation.internet/?imw=Y&iref=mpstoryemail Police: Duke University official offered adopted son for sex * Story Highlights * Man allegedly offered 5-year-old during Internet chat with undercover police officer * Chat began after source told police he saw man performing sex acts on the boy * Frank Lombard, 42, is associate director of Duke's Center for Health Policy * Complaint: Lombard drugged child, wanted to hide abuse from partner WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Duke University official is accused of offering his 5-year-old adopted son for sex on the Internet, according to the FBI and court documents in the case. Frank M. Lombard, 42, was arrested last week at his home in Durham, North Carolina. During an Internet chat, Lombard allegedly offered the child to the person he was chatting with, who was a task force officer from Washington's Metropolitan Police, the FBI said in a statement. The chat was initiated after a confidential source facing child pornography charges told authorities they had witnessed a man, allegedly Lombard, performing sex acts on a child over the Internet. During the chat, according to the complaint filed against Lombard, he told the officer that he had performed multiple sex acts on the boy and that the officer could do the same if he came to Durham. According to a transcript of the chat, reprinted in the complaint, Lombard allegedly told the officer that he had to hide the abuse from his partner and that he drugged the child with allergy medication. Lombard was arrested June 24, and two children at the home, including the 5-year-old, were removed from the home by the North Carolina Department of Social Services, the FBI said. Lombard is the associate director of Duke University's Center for Health Policy, but was placed on unpaid administrative leave, effective immediately, last week, university spokesman Keith Lawrence said. The center is described on its Web site as a joint venture among the university's law, business and arts-and-sciences schools and "an instigator and facilitator of a broad range of research related to public health and the policies that address it." Lombard faces federal child sex abuse charges, which carry a prison sentence of up to 20 years upon conviction, authorities said. He made an initial appearance in federal court in North Carolina but was transferred to Washington to face the charges there, court documents show. Attempts to contact the Durham attorney who appeared in court with Lombard were unsuccessful Tuesday. Federal agents seized Lombard's computer, thumb drives, Web cams and other items when executing a search warrant upon Lombard's arrest, according to court documents. All AboutDuke University • Federal Bureau of Investigation • Durham (North Carolina) |
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| abb | Jul 1 2009, 04:53 AM Post #2 |
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http://heraldsun.southernheadlines.com/durham/4-1176774.cfm Bell-ringer still has what it takes By Neil Offen : The Herald-Sun noffen@heraldsun.com Jul 1, 2009 Bookmark and Share DURHAM -- It's all in the wrist, Timothy McIntosh explained. And he should know. For four years, 1958-62, five times a day -- except on Sunday, when it was just four -- McIntosh was the official bell-ringer at N.C. Central University. Now almost 70 years old and living in Mitchellville, Md., McIntosh got to show off his technique one more time Tuesday morning as his alma mater celebrated the 100-year anniversary of its birth. McIntosh rang the brown bell sitting on a scaffold outside the Edmonds Classroom Building three times as NCCU began a year's worth of celebrations of its centennial. The school was chartered as the National Religious Training School and Chautauqua For the Colored Race on June 30, 1909. McIntosh's forceful ringing almost drowned out NCCU Chancellor Charlie Nelms' opening "Good morning" to the crowd that had gathered for the ceremony. "You've got to give it a good wrist motion and then let the rope flow," McIntosh explained. "I was pretty good at it." He had a lot of practice. He rang the bell that stands in the center of the campus and that was used by the school's founder, James Shepard, to wake the students up, for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and for the beginning of classes every day. He did it on the weekends, too, although there were no classes on Sunday. McIntosh rose at 5:30 a.m. so he could ring the bell to wake the students up -- at 6 in the morning. "He was none too popular with the folks in the residence halls nearest the bell," Nelms said. Nevertheless, McIntosh was back at his stand, every day, for a good reason. "It was a good job," he recalled. "It got me through college." For his exertions, he was paid $60 a month. Tuition and room and board at the time, he remembered, was around $1,100 a year, so "$60 a month was very good money." McIntosh, a math major at NCCU and a retired civilian financial analyst with the Army, was asked to reprise his old role as bell-ringer at the centennial kickoff a week ago. "They just asked if I'd like to ring the bell again," he said. "It was an honor." |
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| abb | Jul 1 2009, 04:55 AM Post #3 |
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http://heraldsun.southernheadlines.com/durham/4-1176767.cfm Suspected killer's bond is rescinded BY JOHN MCCANN : The Herald-Sun jmccann@heraldsun.com Jul 1, 2009 Bookmark and Share DURHAM -- The man charged this past weekend with killing his half-brother made his first appearance in court on Tuesday. District Court Judge Brian Wilks told Lewis Scarlette, 56, revoked the $500,000 bond under which he'd been held since Saturday and ordered him held without bail. Scarlette's next court date is July 16. The state has to decide whether to seek the death penalty, Wilks said. Scarlette had been charged with shooting his half-brother, Joseph Best, 40, Saturday evening shortly after 5 p.m. But the initial charge of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, inflicting serious injury was changed to murder after Best died on Sunday at Duke University Hospital. Best and Scarlette were said to have been arguing at their mother's house at 18 Zelko Court, a few blocks behind Erwin Road's Durham VA Medical Center. Both men lived at the house. Police found Best's body on a staircase at the house and arrested Scarlette at the same location. |
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| abb | Jul 1 2009, 04:59 AM Post #4 |
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http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/ Wednesday, July 01, 2009 The Iqbal Briefs: The Falsely Accused Players As I noted Monday, several new filings in the lacrosse case have come in, all dealing with the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, described by one commentator as “an unexpected gift for the business community.” Today’s post summarizes the filings in the three falsely accused players’ lawsuit. Some of the briefs are repetitive, and, as I noted Monday, the Iqbal finding probably will benefit the DPD supervisors against whom no direct evidence exists. But there were four items worth noting in the batch of new briefs. 1.) The Most Craven Defendant It appears as if disgraced ex-DA Mike Nifong has taken time away from writing poetry and singing in the church choir to write legal memoranda. Though the nine-paragraph brief filed on his behalf was signed by James Craven, its tone and content suggests that much of the drafting came from the disbarred Nifong himself. The brief features the combination of poor lawyering, ill-concealed rage, and treacly self-pity for which Nifong became infamous during the case itself. The nine paragraphs include almost nothing in terms of plausible legal analysis. Instead, Nifong uses his filing to lash out at the three innocent people he tried to send to jail, and at their parents—even though his doing so runs the risk of alienating Judge Beaty. “It is alleged,” writes the Craven Nifong, “that Nifong and others, aware of occurrences they may or may not have been aware of, ‘willfully ignored and/or were deliberately indifferent to this evidence demonstrating Plaintiffs’ innocence1 in their rush to charge the three innocent2 Duke lacrosse players.’” Footnotes in legal briefs normally reference additional case law, or explicate a minor point not significant enough for inclusion in the body of the text. Not so, however, for the Craven Nifong. Footnote 1 merely says, “Does it?” Even more stunningly, footnote two—which follows the word “innocent”—reads, en toto, “Were they?” Like Gollum with his Precious, Nifong is determined to cling to his “something happened” theory—even if, as occurred with Gollum, he loses all vestiges of his humanity in doing so. The Craven Nifong also uses his experience as a formerly regular participant in local, state, and national media to reinvent himself as a media critic. “It must be remembered,” he sniffs, “that the complaint in this case, though utilized to begin the lawsuit, was hardly written for the Court alone. Rather it was clearly written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Court TV, and of course the parents of the three plaintiffs.” “Of course” there is “clearly” no evidence for Nifong’s assertion that the plaintiffs’ attorneys used their filing to influence the media rather than for a legitimate legal purpose. (Nifong appears to assume that all other lawyers are as unethical as he was.) Beyond that, the claim is an almost laughable one. Court TV no longer exists—the network disbanded on December 31, 2007, with its legal coverage taken over by CNN and its programming fare becoming “TruTV.” And perhaps the disgraced ex-DA has forgotten that throughout the case, the New York Times served as his de facto stenographer, even to the point of producing major articles riddled with factual errors that slanted the portrayal on his behalf. Why the “parents of the three plaintiffs” would expect fair, much less sympathetic, coverage from the Times the Craven Nifong never says. In any event, the filing proves that despite having lost his power with his forced resignation, Nifong still has no class. 2.) The Return of Mr. Obfuscation In the Nifong ethics trial, Lane Williamson labeled former DNA Security lab director Brian Meehan “Mr. Obfuscation,” and the label continues to apply. Attorneys for Meehan filed a three-paragraph memo, claiming the following: “At the time of the events alleged in the Complaint, Meehan was the Laboratory Director for DNA Security, Inc. (‘DSI’), the DNA testing laboratory retained by the State of North Carolina. Accordingly, the legal arguments set forth in DSI’s Supplemental Brief in Support of Motion to Dismiss which refer to ‘the DSI Defendants’ apply with equal force to Meehan.” It’s worth remembering that the brief for DNA Security president Richard Clark had cited Iqbal to suggest that no evidence exists that Clark knew of what transpired at the key meeting between Meehan and Nifong—that Clark himself attended. (This was the “Our President Is Clueless” defense.) But Meehan has testified, under oath and in great detail, about what occurred at his meeting with Nifong. He so testified (albeit inconsistently) not once, not twice, but three times, in three different courtrooms. So now Meehan is claiming that the court should simply ignore all that testimony, and accept his new claim that, because of his title as “lab director,” no evidence exists that he knew what occurred at a meeting that he himself chaired, to present findings from DNA tests that he himself conducted. In a case that has seen more than its share of breathtaking legal claims, this might be the single most outrageous assertion. 3.) Arguing the Plaintiffs’ Case? In her somewhat peculiar brief, Durham attorney Patricia Kerner tries to argue that ex-DPD officers Mark Gottlieb and Ben Himan did nothing wrong (or if they did, it was all Nifong’s fault) and that the behavior of Gottlieb and Himan conformed to departmental norms in a city that has no pattern of practice of allowing poor police behavior. On at least two occasions, she falls off this tightrope. The first time comes when Kerner describes the performance of the DPD as “police doing the best they could to faithfully execute their investigatory duties under trying circumstances.” Keep in mind that, in the case of former Sgt. Mark Gottlieb alone, the DPD: * claimed to have taken no notes at the key initial meeting with the complaining witness; * conducted a lineup that flagrantly violated city procedures; * inexplicably declined to take any notes at a key meeting with the man selected by the department to conduct DNA tests; * produced a months-after-the-fact typed “memorandum” transparently designed to paper over holes in the case That behavior, according to the City of Durham, represents the conduct of an officer trying to “faithfully execute [his] investigatory duties under trying circumstances”? If we take that claim at face value, it would seem to directly undercut Kerner’s subsequent assertion in her brief that the normal patterns and practices of the DPD aren’t designed to violate citizens’ constitutional rights. Kerner makes another odd statement, one directly contradicted by the evidence in the case. Dismissing claims that Gottlieb lied to the grand jury, she maintains, “Indeed, given the secret nature of grand jury proceedings, Plaintiffs could not know what was said during those proceedings, [emphasis added] so they cannot make specific factual allegations about Gottlieb’s and Himan’s testimony at all.” Yet Gottlieb—under oath in a deposition to the State Bar—went on record about what he told the grand jury. And what he told the grand jury—that Crystal Mangum’s story was consistent from the time she met with former SANE nurse-in-training Tara Levicy to the time of the arrests—was a lie. Mangum’s story wasn’t consistent. In fact, she never told the same story twice. The version of events the false accuser presented to Levicy on March 14, 2006 differed markedly from the version of events she presented to Gottlieb and Himan on March 16, 2006, which in turn differed markedly from the version of events she presented to Samiha Khanna in her March 24, 2006 N&O interview—each of which, in turn, differed markedly from the version of events she presented in the rigged lineup on April 4, 2006. Was Kerner unaware of Gottlieb’s deposition to the State Bar? Or is she now suggesting that Gottlieb lied in his deposition, and in fact gave truthful testimony to the grand jury? 4.) Linwood Is Back The always entertaining Attorney pro-se Linwood Wilson, proving again the aphorism that a man who represents himself has a fool for a client, filed a three-paragraph memo on the matter, asserting the following: “In order not to be repetitive and overbearing on the court, Defendant Linwood Wilson joins Defendants Mark Gottlieb, Benjamin Himan, and the City of Durham, North Carolina, Durham Supervisors, in their Supplemental Briefs In [sic, cap.] Support of their [sic, cap.] Motions to Dismiss.” Yet the whole thrust of Attorney Wilson’s previous arguments has been that his client, fired ex-Nifong investigator Wilson, should not be considered in any way a Durham employee, and that his legal status as an employee of Nifong gave him absolute immunity for any of his misdeeds. So why, now, are Wilson’s interests and those of former DPD members Himan and Gottlieb aligned? The Wilson brief doesn’t say. Perhaps Attorney Wilson can consult with Client Wilson and file a supplemental brief in the future. [A reminder: My clearing a comment implies neither that I agree nor that I disagree with the comment, either in tone or in substance. My opinion is expressed in the 1351 posts on the blog alone. The comments policy is explained in greater detail on the sidebar.] Posted by KC Johnson at 12:01 AM 2 comments |
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| abb | Jul 1 2009, 05:25 AM Post #5 |
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http://www.myfedgrants.com/federal-grants/when-the-press-isnt-accountable-you-cant-expect-it-from-the-government/2009/07 snip Still, the power to avoid reporting a story on a national scale remains a formidable one, such as the latest Duke rape case. We all know the first one. A black stripper accuses the mostly white Duke lacrosse team of raping her. Despite the fact that her story has holes that a 747 could be flown through by a drunken pilot, an ambitious D.A. pursues the case in the press, which is only too eager to declare the young men guilty. Their names were ruined, and their academic careers destroyed before the case unravelled, and the D.A. was facing charges himself, and yet, this was all ok because the real victims were perceived to be privileged whites. Now, a much more heinous case has emerged(here and here…go read them, really, you should know), one which really does have racial implications, and could also be perceived as dangerous to the newly-minted institution of gay adoption, but because the story could be damaging to the story the “Deciders” have dictated, namely that there should be no impediment to gays adopting children, regardless of race, this story is largely unreported in the old media. It certainly isn’t as sexy to the reporters, who are probably afraid of the OUTRAGE! likely to come from the usual suspects. I suspect that this is not unusual. I imagine that there are number to true OUTRAGES! that never squint in the bright light of the old media scrutiny, and its willingness to co-opt itself in the area of political reporting means that the only ones who can hold government accountable now is us, and that is a tragedy of Homeric proportions. |
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| abb | Jul 1 2009, 05:30 AM Post #6 |
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http://cancelthebee.blogspot.com/ Study: Raleigh TV station had 3 times more internet hits in April than the News & Observer web site A report published today by Internet Broadcasting says WRAL, a TV station in Raleigh, had more than 3 times the number of web site hits in April than the News & Observer newspaper site. And the trend is working against newspaper sites. The report also found that average television station web site usage grew in April and that station web sites are continuing to gain share. WRAL reaches 27 percent of the Raleigh market, according to the report. Click here to see the full study. |
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| abb | Jul 1 2009, 06:58 AM Post #7 |
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PARODY ALERT!!!! http://townhall.com/columnists/MikeAdams/2009/07/01/duke_professors_condemn_gay_racism Duke Professors Condemn Gay Racism Mike Adams Wednesday, July 01, 2009 Author’s Note - In response to my last two columns, 88 Duke University professors have issued a joint statement condemning gay racism at Duke. The professors wanted to shed light on the gay Duke Administrator accused of molesting his black adopted son. They believe his actions must be seen as one part of a larger set of pathologies at Duke. Their statement follows in its entirety: We are listening to our students. We’re also listening to the Durham community, to Duke Staff, and to each other. Regardless of the results of the police investigation, what is apparent everyday now is the anger and fear of many students who know themselves to be objects of gay racism; who see illuminated in this moment’s extraordinary spotlight what they live with every day. They know that it isn’t just Duke, it isn’t everybody, and it isn’t just individuals making this disaster. But it is a disaster nonetheless. These students are shouting and whispering about what happened to this young boy and to themselves: “We want the absence of terror… But we don’t really know what that means … We can’t think. That’s why we’re so silent; we can’t think about what’ on the other side of this. Terror robs you of language and you need language for healing to begin.” “This is not a different experience for us here at Duke University. We go to class with gay racist classmates, we go to gym with gay people who are racists … It’s part of the experience.” “If it turns out that this administrator is guilty, I want him fired. But his firing will only bring resolution to this case and not the bigger problem. This is much bigger than him and throwing him out will not solve the problem. I want the administration to acknowledge what is going on and how bad it is.” “Being a big, black man, it’s hard to walk anywhere at night, and not have a campus police car slowly drive by me. What about the gay administrators at Duke University? No one seems to follow them.” “Everything seems up for grabs—I am only comfortable talking about this event in my room with close friends. I am actually afraid to even bring it up in public. But worse, I wonder now about everything … If something like this happens to my child … What would be used against me – the way I dressed him? Would the fact that I hired a gay babysitter matter?” “I was talking to a white woman student who was asking me, ‘Why do people—and she meant black people—make race such a big issue?’ They don’t see race or gay racism. They just don’t see it.” What Does a Social Disaster Sound Like? “You go to a party, you get grabbed, you get propositioned by a gay man, and then you start to question yourself.” “… No one is really talking about how to keep the young child himself central to this conversation, how to keep his humanity before us … he doesn’t seem to be visible in this.” And this is what we, the Straight 88, are thinking right now—Duke isn’t really responding to this. Not really. And this, what has happened, is a disaster. This is a social disaster. The students know that the disaster didn’t begin on June 25th when Frank Lombard was arrested. And it won’t end with what the police say or the court decides. Like all disasters, this one has a history. And what lies beneath what we’re hearing from our students are questions about the future. We’re turning up the volume in a moment when some of the most vulnerable among us are being asked to quiet down while we wait. To the students speaking individually and to the protestors making collective noise, thank you for not waiting and for making yourselves heard. We thank the following departments and programs for signing onto this ad with African & African American Studies: Romance Studies; Psychology: Social and Health Sciences; Franklin Humanities Institute; Critical U.S. Studies; Art, Art History, and Visual Studies; Classical Studies; Asian and African Languages and Literature; Women’s Studies; Latino/a Studies; Latin American and Caribbean Studies; Medieval and Renaissance Studies; European Studies; and the Center for Documentary Studies. Because of space limitations, the names of individual faculty and staff who signed on in support may be read at the AAAS website: http://www.duke.edu/web/africanameric/. |
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| ~J~ is in Wonderland | Jul 1 2009, 11:01 AM Post #8 |
~J~ is in Wonderland
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http://www.newsobserver.com/2187/story/1590758.html Mississippi's still fattest but Alabama closing in snip http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1590828.html Report: Assistant dean at UNC Charlotte arrested snip |
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| Payback | Jul 1 2009, 12:35 PM Post #9 |
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http://media.www.dukechronicle.com/media/storage/paper884/news/2009/07/01/News/Health.Director.Lombard.Faces.Child.Sex.Charges-3749959.shtml?reffeature=htmlemailedition I don't see this listed here. Health director Lombard faces child sex charges By: Julius Jones Frank Lombard [Same photo that's been posted] Frank Lombard A University employee was charged by the FBI with child sex abuse June 24 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Frank Lombard, 42, associate director for the Health Inequalities Program at the Center for Heath Policy, is charged with enticing an undercover police officer over the Internet to take part in interstate travel in order to engage in an illegal sex act with a minor during a sting conducted by the FBI and Metropolitan Police Department for the District of Columbia's Child Exploitation Task Force, according to a news release from the FBI. According to The (Raleigh) News & Observer, Lombard waived an extradition hearing June 26 and was held without bond in the Durham County Jail until his extradition to Washington, D.C. this week. The FBI declined to give further comment on a pending investigation. Lombard has been placed on unpaid administrative leave pending the conclusion of the investigation, said Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations. He added that the University is cooperating with the investigation. According to Detective Timothy Palchak's affidavit, a confidential informant told the FBI he had knowledge of people engaged in child molestation online. The report said the criminal prosecution against the informant is still pending, but no plea deal was reached in exchange for the information. The informant told investigators that a customer of ICUii-an online program that offers "adult, discreet videochat," according to the company's Web site-with the user name "cooper2" or "cooperse" had performed acts of child molestation and broadcast it over the Web site. A subpoena sent to ICUii June 15 confirmed that the "cooper2" user name identified by the informant belonged to Frank Lombard, according to the affidavit. After the sting operation began, the officer alleges that over the course of a Yahoo! Instant Messenger conversation June 23, Lombard-using the display name "F L"-confessed to multiple acts of sexual abuse online using the ICUii video chat program. Lombard identified the minor he had molested as his 5-year-old, black adopted child. Lombard also offered to allow the undercover officer to watch him perform sexual acts on the child via ICUii and fly to Lombard's home to have sex with the child himself, according to the affidavit. "He further told your affiant that he lived in Durham, North Carolina with his live-in homosexual partner," Palchak wrote in his affidavit. He went on to write that "F L" said his partner did not know about the abuse, but when his partner leaves for an upcoming business trip, it "would allow him the ability to molest the child just as he did the last time the partner had left town." Lombard has been employed at Duke for 10 years. In addition to his responsibilities at the Center for Health Policy, Lombard taught an undergraduate course in the public policy department-"Intro to the U.S. Health Care System"-in the past and was scheduled to do so Fall 2009. Students described Lombard as a good teacher and someone who knew a large amount about the subject he was teaching, although they said they were not close to him outside the classroom. "He was definitely very knowledgeable on the topic we were covering in class and I can't say much bad about him as a professor," senior Bryan Fox said. "He was a great teacher." Multiple colleagues of Lombard declined to comment for this story. Edited by Payback, Jul 1 2009, 12:37 PM.
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| nyesq83 | Jul 1 2009, 01:22 PM Post #10 |
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"He was definitely very knowledgeable on the topic we were covering in class and I can't say much bad about him as a professor," senior Bryan Fox said. "He was a great teacher." Who on earth would go on record like this????? |
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| chatham | Jul 1 2009, 01:35 PM Post #11 |
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http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1398690432&hiq=bryan%2Cfox ETA: Duke '10 Edited by chatham, Jul 1 2009, 01:39 PM.
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| Kerri P. | Jul 1 2009, 05:12 PM Post #12 |
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http://www.wral.com/news/news_briefs/story/5484521/ Three correctional workers charged with assault on inmate Posted: Today at 5:01 p.m. Updated: 24 minutes ago Hookerton, N.C. — Two correctional officers and a former officer are accused of assaulting a Greene County inmate. State Bureau of Investigation agents arrested Gregory Allen Beck, Terry Lynn Bell and Brian Steve Bostick on Wednesday. They were charged with assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury, according to George Dudley, with the state Department of Correction. The charges are related to a use of force that occurred in March of last year at Maury Correctional Institution in Hookerton. Beck resigned from his position last year. He was a captain at the time. Bell, a sergeant, and Bostick, a correctional officer, are on investigatory suspension. Formal disciplinary action against them began Wednesday. “Our job is protecting the safety of the public and the inmates in our institutions,” Correction Secretary Alvin Keller said in a statement. “This agency has zero tolerance for employees who abuse inmates or operate outside the bounds of the law and our policies and procedures.” The Department of Correction referred this case to the SBI for investigation last July. |
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| abb | Jul 1 2009, 06:38 PM Post #13 |
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http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1590406.html Published: Jul 01, 2009 05:15 AM Modified: Jul 01, 2009 05:16 AM Scandal spooks NCSU donors Some decline to open checkbooks BY ERIC FERRERI, Staff Writer For three decades, James Arthur was perfectly pleased to send an annual donation to N.C. State, the university that granted him three degrees. But last year he began reading about Mary Easley, her pay raise and the university's handling of the matter. And he put the checkbook away. "If NCSU can afford to give Mary Easley an $80,000 salary increase, it no longer needs my support," he wrote in an e-mail early this year to the head of NCSU's annual giving initiative. "That the chancellor of NCSU would give such a rich reward to the wife of a sitting governor has lowered my respect for the chancellor and, sadly, for the school as well." Arthur isn't the only alum displeased with NCSU's handling of the Mary Easley affair. University administrators have gotten an earful from graduates, creating a dicey situation for development officials who have scrambled to repair relationships and keep the money flowing. By some measures, NCSU is still doing fine. The university received cash donations of about $74 million in the fiscal year that ended Tuesday, almost exactly the same as last year's take. Donations to the annual fund, those $50 and $100 gifts, are up 15 percent from a year ago, said Nevin Kessler, NCSU's vice chancellor for university advancement. But new commitments, gifts pledged but not yet actually paid, are down 22 percent from a year ago. Kessler thinks the decline is due more to the weak economy than the Easley situation. "There's really no way to measure cause and effect," Kessler said, referring to the Easley saga and its potential impact on fundraising. "That isn't to say we don't have an issue and have to rebuild confidence and trust." One wealthy donor displeased with the Easley situation has withdrawn plans for a gift in the $10,000 to $25,000 neighborhood, Kessler said. Others have called to complain, or they vent when a student working the development office phone bank calls asking for $50 or $100. In that situation, students are instructed to remind donors that their money can be designated for whatever use they choose. Small checks matter Although a university loves the big gift, it also puts a lot of resources into keeping the slow-and-steady donors happy. Arthur, now 76 and retired, received two bachelor's degrees and a master's degree from NCSU in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Though he moved to South Carolina, NCSU never left his heart. But when he read of Easley's raise, he did the only thing he could think of to send a message. "I thought about the amount of money I'd given to the school over a long period of time, and it paled in comparison to what they were giving her as a raise, so I figured, if you need money, go ask her," Arthur said. "It's the only way I can make a statement." Even if donors such as Arthur ease up on donations, the damage to the university likely will be brief, said Rae Goldsmith, vice president for advancement resources for the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, a membership organization for fundraisers. "If there's a blip, it's a short-lived blip," Goldsmith said. "As long as people feel the institution is moving forward and getting past it, their connection to the institution tends to outlive their anger." Jim Pomeranz chooses to see the bigger picture. He is an NCSU alum and a member of the Wolfpack Club since 1977. Pomeranz gives to athletics and academics and was outraged by the university's handling of the Easley issue. He wrote e-mails and made phone calls to complain, but he continues to write checks. "People who say they're not going to give anymore, they need to go the other way," said Pomeranz, who lives in Cary. "They need to continue giving, and say 'act better!'" eric.ferreri@newsobserver.com or 919-932-2008 |
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5:14 PM Nov 9
