Rocky Mountain News Editorial

06/20/07 

The University of Colorado just let Donald Stevens retire with full benefits. It promised the professor and former head of its Institute for International Business that it wouldn’t “pursue additional legal actions in any forum.” It allowed him to deny, in a settlement agreement, that “his actions were in any way improper.”

It did everything but plant a kiss on Stevens’ cheek as he sauntered out the door — after he’d reimbursed the university for $269,000 that he allegedly misappropriated over the years.

Do these guys ever actually fire anyone?
Now admittedly, any attempt to give Stevens the boot would have been messy, expensive and a protracted PR nightmare (check the encyclopedia under “Ward Churchill, employment history”). So you can see why university officials would want to square accounts with Stevens and let him move on.

But what if you’d pulled some of Stevens’ stunts? Would your boss have let you skate?

Let’s say you’d told your employer that you planned — and here we quote from one of Stevens’ travel authorization requests, as recounted in a university audit — “to attend the Annual Intnl Trade & Finance Assns Conference in Vaasa, Finland, on May 28-June 1, 2003,” where “Global trade issues and entrepreneurship in Europe will be addressed .. . ."

Suppose you duly showed up in Vaasa on the afternoon of the 28th, hobnobbed that evening at the opening reception, but bailed out the next morning to return to Norway (where you’d already spent several days) for an excursion to the town of Longyearbyen on an island in the Arctic Ocean.

Once back in the States, suppose you wrote your boss confirming that “I just returned from a trip to Finland and Norway to attend the International Trade and Finance Association annual meetings. .. . . This year there were special sessions on entrepreneurship in Europe and a number of sessions on the impact of globalization.”

Wouldn’t such language suggest that you’d attended the meetings? And wouldn’t that have been a fabrication?

In that particular trip’s post-mortem, Stevens also did mention he’d traveled to Norway, “to look at a developed relatively wealthy economy and society” — which is pretty much what every other tourist there does, too. As if sensing the banal nature of his claim, he quickly added that he’d also “met with people in various segments of society to discuss the EU, global economy, U.S.-EU relations, etc.” No doubt the shopkeepers in Longyearbyen were especially helpful with insights into these issues.

How would your employer react to the revelation it had shelled out $8,011.87 for such a trip?

Precisely.

The Koreans get it

During a recent visit to South Korea, an acquaintance noticed an editorial in The Korean Times beating the drum for higher quality English instruction — which from the looks of things, appears to be pretty good already. In fact, South Korea takes the study of English so seriously that it builds “English immersion villages” so students don’t have to travel abroad to learn at an accelerated rate.

“Korea understands the importance of English, even if Sen. (Sue) Windels doesn’t,” my correspondent wryly noted.

He was referring to the fact that the Arvada Democrat was the sole state senator to vote this year against a bill mandating English competency for Colorado high school graduates.

Unfortunately, Windels was not alone with her head in the sand. Senate Bill 73 died in a House committee after the education establishment picked up its club and entered the fray.

Common sense will have to wait at least one more year.