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This thread is going to be dedicated to keeping you updated on the proceedings with the Aramark "gift". As I have stated before, the longer this is drawn out the more the reputation of UCA and the way it is managed will be scrutinized and ridiculed by the public.

I think it is important to keep the pressure on in finding a quick solution to righting another wrong that has affected the integrity of this university. Myself, I'm having a hard time understanding how guilt has been admitted by some but no recourse has been administered to the already admitted guilty parties. This is not going to be a "swept under the rug" incident this time. Way too many people are, to put it bluntly - pissed, about what has happened and the people want appropriate action taken.

If anyone runs across new information on the bearing of this incident please post it on here to keep us all updated. I know many people don't buy print news anymore so I hope this thread will be helpful.

This is from today's ADG:

Another UCA group urges trustee recusal

Staff senate joins faculty in request DEBRA HALE-SHELTON
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

CONWAY — The University of Central Arkansas staff senate joined the faculty senate Wednesday in urging Trustee Scott Roussel to recuse from any board actions involving food-vendor Aramark and a related investigation.
UCA’s Office of Internal Audit is investigating a $700,000 offer by Aramark to help renovate the UCAowned president’s house in exchange for the company’s contract being renewed for seven years.
When Roussel announced the offer at an Aug. 26 board meeting, he described it as a donation and did not disclose the contract condition. Allen C. Meadors, who later resigned as UCA president, also did not disclose the condition.
Both men have said they were aware of it but made an honest mistake or an oversight.
Staff senate President Dianna K. Winters said the panel’s unanimously approved resolution asks that Roussel recuse himself from any involvement in Aramark contract negotiations and from anything related to the investigation.
Like the faculty senate, the staff senate tabled a proposed resolution asking Roussel to resign. Both groups decided to await the investigation’s findings.
Roussel did not return a phone message or an e-mail seeking comment.
Also Wednesday, the faculty senate released copies of the measures it voted on Tuesday.
The recusal resolution said Meadors, who resigned Sept. 2, and Roussel had publicly “admitted that they misrepresented Aramark’s” $700,000 offer to renovate the president’s house.
“The UCA Faculty Senate condemns the actions of Chairman Roussel and requests that Chairman Roussel immediately recuse himself from any Board actions relative to the Aramark investigation or other Aramark related issues, until the conclusion of the investigation,” the resolution said.
A tabled faculty senate resolution asking Roussel to resign immediately said he had withheld information from other trustees and “would or should have been aware of the potential damage to the reputation of the University.” The proposal called his action “a violation of trust and ethical conduct at the highest level.”
The faculty senate also tabled a proposed resolution expressing no confidence in the board.
That measure said the board “has failed to protect the reputation of this University in the selection and oversight of Presidents Lu Hardin and Allen Meadors and has so failed in the subsequent controversy surrounding the Aramark contribution to the president’s house, the Faculty Senate resolves that it has no confidence in the Board of Trustees to govern the University.”
The staff senate also approved a resolution focusing on the search for a new president. Winters said in an e-mail that the senate asked that trustees “make their selection based on the search committee’s ... recommendation(s) for presidential candidate(s) and not select one of their own choosing.”
Such a committee would be made up of faculty, staff and student representatives under that resolution, she said.
The resolution was adopted the same day that The Echo, UCA’s student newspaper, published an editorial saying the next president should be “picked in an open process” and be one “who will deal well with media relations.”
“Companies that search for candidates should not be included in the search for UCA’s president,” the editorial said. “Closed searches can help to bring candidates in by not revealing their names. This means candidates with jobs at other universities” won’t face as much scrutiny as they otherwise would.
The editorial said the university’s “biggest problems stem from Meadors’ unwillingness to be open and honest with the community and the media. ... UCA does not need to start off another presidency with secrets and closed doors.”

Sometimes I think they just use this lady's stories to fill up pages in the paper on a slow news day. I mean seriously the president stepped down and the school is investigating, my interest level in this story is now at 0. Go write another interesting article about how UCA spent $4000 on painting sidewalks...Oooo what a scandal.

That's a real shame then.

We don't currently have a University President (not counting the perfectly capable interim Tom Courtway) as a result of this so my interest level is still very high. As should every other UCA alum.

A couple of good questions from the three school committees regarding the "misunderstanding".

From today's ADG:

Groups at UCA question buyout

Letters bring up Meadors, ‘gift’ DEBRA HALE-SHELTON
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

CONWAY — Three University of Central Arkansas organizations on Tuesday released letters expressing questions about the buyout of former President Allen C. Meadors’ contract, whether anyone ordered document shredding and why Scott Roussel is still board chairman.
The concerns appear in one or more of the letters sent to Pam Massey, director of UCA’s Office of Internal Audit, by the faculty senate, the staff senate and the Student Government Association.
Massey’s office is investigating events related to food vendor Aramark’s $700,000 offer to renovate the UCA-owned president’s house in exchange for renewal of its seven-year contract with the university. While such contracts are common among colleges, Meadors and Roussel initially described UCA’s offer as a donation and did not mention the contract condition.
Disclosure of that condition led to Meadors’ resignation Sept. 2 in exchange for a buyout totaling $563,312. Roussel has said he does not need to resign because he made an “honest mistake.” “Faculty members are gravely concerned about the admitted mishandling of the Aramark ‘gift’ at the highest levels of our administration and the subsequent damage to the reputation of the University as a whole,” says the letter sent by Janet Wilson, faculty senate president.
Meadors’ buyout includes $225,325 in public funds with the remaining $337,987 coming from private donors who gave money for that purpose. His buyout also includes healthcare coverage through June 30.
The faculty senate’s letter questions whether the buyout of Meadors’ contract was “an appropriate response to his stated ‘mistake’ of not revealing” the contract contingency.
“Unless the Board is legally obliged, is it possible to not pay the buyout to Former President Meadors?” the faculty senate asks.
The staff senate letter asks, “If it is found that Meadors committed fraud or any other illegal activity, is it legally possible for his contract buyout to be reversed?”
The faculty senate letter also questions whether the Office of Internal Audit is the best entity to handle the investigation.
“How can a body that reports to the Board of Trustees then investigate the activities of members of the Board?” the faculty senate asks.
“Shouldn’t an external body (possibly the State’s Division of Legislative Audit) be investigating thus alleviating any suspicion of the university’s transparency, or lack thereof?” it continues.

The faculty senate also asks why Roussel remains a trustee. “Doesn’t his continued presence cast a negative image on the Board?” its letter says. “Was it not improper for Chairman Roussel to allow a vote on spending money for architectural plans using the ‘gift’ when the contract had not been extended thus guaranteeing the ‘gift’? That is, did he not allow for an expenditure on money they did not have to spend at that time?”
Roussel did not return a phone message or an e-mail seeking comment.
UCA officials now say the $700,000 is off the table, and the school will take competitive bids on the food-vendor contract.
The faculty senate further questions Roussel’s explanation of why he did not tell a committee reviewing the president’s house about the $700,000 offer until 30 minutes before the board meeting when he announced it.
Roussel has said he couldn’t get the committee members together earlier. The faculty senate memo, however, says Roussel talked to the committee by phone Aug. 16 as it worked on a report to the board.
The letter in which Aramark advised UCA of the $700,000 offer was dated Aug. 12, a Friday. Meadors said he believes that it was handdelivered to Diane Newton, vice president for finance and administration, on Aug. 15, a Monday.
Meadors, interviewed by telephone Tuesday, said he did not know that Roussel spoke to the committee Aug. 16, but said, “I know he talked with Diane two or three times that day.”
Newton was a committee member.
The staff senate letter asks if Meadors directed Newton not to disclose “the true nature of the gift.” The group further asks, “Was she pressured to lie or withhold information? Was she asked by Meadors to shred the letter?”
The Student Government Association letter also asks if Newton was “instructed to shred any documentation of the details” of the Aramark offer.
Regarding the weeks surrounding the Aug. 26 board meeting, the student group asks if Newton was “in fear of losing her job if she was to reveal further details about the $700,000” offer.
Meadors said, “I did not tell anyone to shred anything. ... This is amazing. You think about that. Aramark would have that [letter]. It would make no sense. Things people come up with. ... It’s like the IRS sends you a letter, and you throw it in the trash. Well, the original” still exists. “I don’t get it.”
.
Asked if Newton had reason to be afraid she would lose her job while he was president, Meadors said, “Absolutely not.”
Newton has declined comment on the Aramark issue, saying interim President Tom Courtway told her not to discuss it during the investigation.
Meadors said Tuesday that Aramark had talked to UCA “maybe a year or so ago about donating some money for renovation of the house. ... We said, we wondered if they still would do that.”
He said he did not know who was present for that first conversation, which he said probably took place in the spring or summer of 2010.
“I told Diane I’d heard about it and that she might ask them [Aramark representatives]. ... I have never talked to Aramark.”
When Newton got the letter, Meadors said, she showed it to him, “and I showed it to Scott Roussel.”
“The chair [Roussel] asked us not to say anything” because he wanted to share the news with the committee and announce it, Meadors said.
Aramark’s offer has been described as an “unrestricted grant,” a description prompting the faculty senate to ask, “If the funds were unrestricted in use, how was the decision made to spend it on renovations of the President’s house?”
In an interview Tuesday, Wilson said that faculty members are concerned about the buyouts of Meadors and Lu Hardin, who resigned under pressure in August 2008 after misleading trustees with a falsified memo aimed at getting them to accelerate a $300,000 bonus and at getting other compensation.
Wilson said a concern is the now-repeated problem of “a president makes a mistake — mistake, put quotations around that — and when they leave the university, there’s a payment made to them. There are some questions as to the legitimacy of that. How often can we keep doing that where a president makes a mistake, criminal or not, and still gets the buyout?”
The UCA board has said the buyout of Meadors’ contract was justified because he had tenure.
State Sen. Sue Madison, DFayetteville and co-chairman of the Legislative Council’s higher-education subcommittee, said Tuesday that it seemed to her that “if you resign, you lose the benefits of a contract.”
“We have a real pattern at UCA,” Madison said.
UCA also bought out the contract of the president who preceded Hardin, Winfred Thompson. Thompson was UCA president from April 1998 until Dec. 21, 2001.
UCA reached a $334,019.14 settlement with Thompson

It appears to me that Roussel is exhibiting the same arrogance as Hardin did during his ordeal. Saying it was an honest mistake is like saying " I only meant to point the gun, not pull the trigger". Deception is not an honest mistake. However, incompetence could be. Either way, these two traits are not something I, and probably most of you, do not want a representative of our BOT, much less the president of the BOT, to possess in leading this university.

Sometimes respect is easier to accomplish by admitting one's mistake and doing what's right to compensate for that mistake, than it is to try and cover up one's mistake to preserve one's own integrity.

I'm sure we have all had to face this kind of dilemma a time or two in our lifetime. How we chose to handle it shaped our character in life. In my opinion, Mr. Roussel's character is now in question. The injustice of it is the rest of the board's character is being questioned also because of Roussel's "honest mistake". In this instance, the other six members don't deserve the comparison to their president.

This reporter keeps writing in circles, last week the ADG had stories that said that what Aramark offered UCA was common among all universities (yes, including those in Arkansas). The UAF Chancellor and half dozen other confirmed this to a Legislative committee last week. No laws broken, no ethical policies breached. These types of articles are just to keep folks worked up so, another article can be written tomorrow and the next day. As has been mentioned numerous times, the entire process will be discussed when the food service contract is brought to the board as a whole. This was just an offer by aramark. UCA has the same types of arrangements with Pepsi (the indoor practice field was paid for by them), the bookstore and others.

You just don't get what people are so upset about do you? It has nothing to do with the contract. It has everything to do with how it was handled by a few people.

Ok, lets take another look at this, Aramark sent a letter over to the vp, who shared it with the president, who shared it with the chair of the board. The chair acknowledges this, he ask the vp and president to not tell anyone about the offer, because, he wanted to tell the house advisory committee and other board members before it became general knowledge. the chair said in his discussion with the vp and president, he acknowledged that these transitions were normal for uca and the vp said they were normal for arkansas universities. the chair said he just assumed that the board members he spoke with knew the norm for offers from the vendors because they had accepted several other similar offers in the past. you can fault this but to make it more than a honest mistake seems a little over the top.

So where is the big mess? when the food service contract come up for review, the entire board will have to decide if they re-bid, rolled over the contract (as the UAF has done) or consider some other options. this is typical for us, we make big issues out of things (like a $3600 bill for a retreat for 23 people)because the adg writes it up.

I'm sorry UncleIrby but this whole ordeal and the way it was handled was not transparent as had been promised since the Hardin fiasco. What's the old saying, if it smells like a pile of crap it usually is a pile of crap. The only way to remove the smell is to remove the pile, imo. Also, if the people leading this university are so inept at their job by letting something like this happen, then they need to be replaced. This isn't an elementary school situation we're dealing with here.

The dealings with Aramark, pretty much along the same lines as other schools in the state. OK, fine. It's all in big print and mostly interpreted the same way by the schools. However, the way Meadors and Roussel interpreted the fine print was not okay. No excuse for what they did considering the position that they held/hold.

Is it normal for every university president to have a buyout clause in his/her contract?
I am not real good in math, but UCA has spent somewhere in the neighborhood of
two million dollars on buyouts of our last three presidents. Are the buyouts based on
being fired or resigning.. or do we just pay them no matter what?

Seems a little strange to me.

My friend Foot84, roommate of my friend, Randy Huffstickler, the faculty was literally burning little fat dolls voodoo like to display their disgust with Win Thompson, I was the little chubby doll. Dr. Thompson had a contract. Dr. Thompson had tenure. Dr. Thompson never did one thing that could ever be considered even a remote breach of the highest ethical behavior. The faculty just did not like him and wanted him to go. To secure his resignation, we had to negotiate the buy out of his contract.

Lu Hardin was a popular president that did many good things for UCA. He had to go for several things but primarily the "memo" which he penned and attributed to three VP's. His contract was bought out to encourage his speedy departure. If we had known everything we know now, that would not have been done. However, once all the facts were discovered, his contract buyout was funded with 100% private money designated for that purpose. Not one cent of public money or one cent of Foundation money was used.

Dr. Meadors came to UCA to try and help his alma mater and he helped us in many ways. I do not have all the facts on this recent incident. Our directive to AM's was "no surprises", this vendor contract, while common, was not presented to the Board properly and it was a "surprise". We wanted to be swift, decisive, and direct with our reaction and we did what we did to get his resignation within 48 hours of our discovery. Again, after this fiscal year ending 6/30/12, not one cent of public money will be spent or not one cent of current funds at the Foundation will be spent. It will be paid from gifts specifically designated for that purpose. This was done to try and get this behind us quickly with no after taste. The taste is lingering. I wish we were not having to deal with this but we are.

WT was a really good President, no monkey business, a real professional in every sense of the word, he was simply not Mr. Wonderful in all of his relationships. Lu was/is a good man who made some terrible personal choices that has hurt him, our school, and his family in a terrible way (I feel for him and wish him the best as he tries to rebuild his life), and Dr. Meadors is a good man that I feel made an error in judgement, tried to please his Board Chair and got caught up in a whipsaw that overwhelmed him before he knew what happened. These are just my thoughts based upon what I know now, I am sure there are facts yet to be discovered that might change these current thoughts. You asked the question, that is my answer.

State Police getting involved now. The following is part of an article from the LCD:

Arkansas State Police, at the request of 20th Judicial District Prosecuting Attorney Cody Hiland, will investigate the contractual arrangement and specifics of the business contract between Aramark food vendor and the University of Central Arkansas.

Hiland said that the request, based on “information sufficient to warrant an investigation,” was made by his office Thursday.

“We have formally requested today that the Arkansas State Police open an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the contract with UCA and Aramark,” Hiland said.

Spokesman for the Arkansas State Police Bill Sadler said that an agent would be assigned to “investigate the contractual arrangement and specifics of the current contract between Aramark and the University of Central Arkansas.”

Ark Times Blog

I guess more was going on behind the scenes than anyone else knew. My question to Old Bear (or anyone for that matter) is when is our BOT (namely our chairman) going to be held accountable for this mess?
What will it take for the Gov. to step in and dissolve this BOT?

Thank you Old Bear for your response. I understand that a large percentage of the
buyout money come from private funds. I just think that that money could be used
for a better cause in some cases. I agree with you... I thought the world of Lu Hardin.
I wish him the very best. I did not have an opportunity to meet Dr. Thompson. I
was around Dr. Meadors only a few times, but I think he had the personality of a
rock. I know he was an educated man far and above that of mine and I have no
personal experience about his ability or non ability to run the university.
So I fully trust your opinion on this matter. Thanks for all you do and have done
in the past for our great university.

___________________________
GO BEARS

Since he's not up for reelection for anything and worried about making the electorate mad on his inaction of the incident, I look for him to do nothing.