October 17, 2007

Scandal at Oral Roberts U. Prompts President to Step Down

Richard L. Roberts announced today that he was stepping down indefinitely as president of Oral Roberts University, a post that has been overshadowed in recent weeks by accusations that he used university resources to back a local politician and to lavish extravagances on his family.

“I pray and believe that in God’s timing, and when the board feels that it is appropriate, I will be back at my post as president,” Mr. Roberts said, according to a transcript posted by the Tulsa World.

The riveting saga began on October 2, when three former professors at Oral Roberts sued Mr. Roberts and the university, accusing him of pressuring them to work on a local political campaign. The suit also said the professors had been harassed and intimidated after they accidentally came upon a document that purported to list dozens of instances of financial and ethical misconduct committed by Mr. Roberts and his wife, Lindsay Roberts.

According to that document, among many other accusations, Mr. and Ms. Roberts gave out scholarships to friends of the family, and in an allegation that became public only last week, Ms. Roberts repeatedly brought underage men to spend the night with her.

The suit also accuses the university of negligence and of destroying documents relevant to the case.

Mr. Roberts, Ms. Roberts, and the university have denied all those charges. “They sicken me to my soul,” Ms. Roberts said of the accusations against her. —John Gravois

Comments

1. What a shame. Jesus did not leave his ministry with an erstwhile son and now we know why. This guy like his counterpart over at Liberty are plain and simple mulchers. Living the good life on their inheritance…and that is not consistent with Jesus. They are not Christians peroid.

   — russ james    Oct 18, 09:09 AM    #

2. Please pardon me, russ james, but I am unfamiliar with your use of the term “mulchers.” Does that refer to the shredded pine bark they put on their flower beds? And so Jesus was a gardener, in addition to being a carpenter?

   — Richard Millhouse PhD    Oct 18, 09:52 AM    #

3. Problems such as those alleged at ORU are always compounded by ‘holier than thou’ hypocrisy that informs these kinds of institutions and their putative leaders. We are conditioned to expect better, on the one hand, from self-proclaimed men of God. The Truth, on the other, is that we are all Men, not gods.

   — Monkey    Oct 18, 11:05 AM    #

4. There is an opening at Texas Southern University. Mr. Roberts seems like he might be qualified.

   — Stuart E Dryer    Oct 18, 11:12 AM    #

5. I do not know if Mr & Mrs Roberts are guilty or innocent—that’s for the inquiry or eventual trial, if there is one, to determine. I do give Richard Roberts his props for removing himself from the presidency in the midst of the turmoil. Like Martha Stewart and her company before him, he is falling on his sword now to limit the continued damage to his university’s reputation. Not many leaders would do so. Whether his board “encouraged” (pushed) him to do so remains to be seen, but his public statement indicates this was his decision — and I give him due credit for it.

   — JPS    Oct 18, 11:25 AM    #

6. At least Richard didn’t ask for $8 million from donors, lest god “calls him home.” That tactic backfired on daddy decades before. WWJD, indeed.

   — Vanessa    Oct 18, 11:47 AM    #

7. Mulder – moocher. I’ll accept that as a regionalism. I am baffled by the use of erstwhile.

   Then again, I’m baffled that for millenia the politicians and the clergy have used their unholy alliance to prop one another up – at the unending expense of the gullible.

   You want to be a decent, upright human being? You don’t need to be a member of a self-servuing “club,” to do so.
   You want to wage wars, murder women and children, bugger little boys by the busload, introduce ravaging diseases to new populations – for that maybe you do need a club, of one sort or another.

   — Reason    Oct 18, 04:43 PM    #

8. To reject God because people of faith fail isn’t logical. The problem is obviously not with God but with people. Yet time and again, it’s God who gets the blame. It’s time for people who say they love God to repent of the behavior that brings shame on his name, and it’s time for people who don’t believe in God to reconsider their logic. Humanity’s failure is a sign that we need God, not that we don’t.

   And by the way, it’s not a club—it’s a family. God is the Father, and those who believe in him are given the undeserved privilege of being called his children. If only we would act like God’s children!

   — theophilus    Oct 19, 04:34 PM    #

9. I entered ORU in 1977 a zealous, talented, starry-eyed 18 year old freshman. I emerged four years later a cynical, barely Christian, bitter, but well-educated 22 year old. Since then I have worn the stinking, rotting ORU albatross around my neck through two additional graduate degrees from major universities and hundreds of rejection letters from schools leery of the ORU connection. There are good people still there. Richard, Lindsay and their minions are not among them. I hope that the regional accreditors who visit them this month will pull the plug on what has become a travesty of a school. Let ‘em hang!

   — Graduate    Oct 20, 05:52 PM    #

10. i want to believe in richard but he will never be the man of GOD THAT oral is.

    — bonnie k.    Oct 22, 01:59 PM    #

11. We focus so much attention on the allegations that we forgot that there are thousands of young men and women who are worthy of a good christian education and our prayers and concerns should be with them, so this great university can continue to send out good christian young men and women to the entire world. Our prayers are with the entire Roberts family, and the dedicated staff.

    — Dr. Tyrone Moses    Oct 23, 10:48 AM    #

12. Richard Roberts and wifey#2 should call it a day on both fronts. I was never impressed with how his dad put this pair together in the first place. So I’m not surprised, years later, of their stumbling, bumbling, and fumbling case of character. I hope the young people can get a good education; I pray for them. ORU...get your act together!!!

    — brooklynjazz    Oct 24, 11:32 PM    #

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