North Carolina State University has agreed to pay $95,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a former assistant to the campus’s police chief, who accused her boss of illegally recording her telephone conversations in order to intimidate her and cover up his alleged misdeeds, the Associated Press reported today. The university said it had settled the case to avoid prolonging the litigation, which began in 2001. The police chief, Ralph Lex Harper, was forced to retire in 2000 after it was disclosed that he had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in university funds on personal items, including a leather coat and dozens of pieces of electronic gear, as well as on travel and office decoration (The Chronicle, July 28, 2000).