A former instructor at Evergreen State College who was fined nearly $120,000 for mishandling student fees in study-abroad programs has ignored a November deadline for paying the fine, reports KUOW, a public-radio station in Washington State.
The former instructor, Jorge Gilbert, was penalized not only for overcharging students and depositing their fees in his own bank accounts but also for running alcohol-soaked study-abroad programs to Chile through businesses owned by his family. Mr. Gilbert, who did not respond to requests for comment but has denied the allegations in the past, retired from the college in 2009 and returned about $24,000 to it. The $120,000 fine is owed to the Washington State Executive Ethics Board, but it was unclear what steps could be taken to recover the money.
According to KUOW, the college’s lax accountability standards and unusual administrative structure, in which faculty members serve brief terms as deans, left it especially vulnerable to Mr. Gilbert’s practices over nearly two decades. Ethical complaints against Mr. Gilbert in the 1990s, for example, were cleared by some deans even though he refused to cooperate, and their successors knew nothing of the allegations.
