January 31, 2008

Embattled President of Chicago State U. Steps Down

Elnora D. Daniel, president of Chicago State University, will step down, the Chicago Tribune reported today. The university’s board did not renew her contract.

Ms. Daniel’s 10-year reign at Chicago State was rife with controversy, especially related to her spending. She was criticized by the auditor general of Illinois for spending some of her travel allowance on Mediterranean and Caribbean cruises that offered minority professionals a chance to mingle at sea — money she eventually had to repay. She once said that her $75,000 annual housing allowance was “chump change.”

The Tribune had also investigated her relationships with student lenders and her purchase of two copy machines for $250,000 from a company owned by a full-time employee of the university. Those purchases, made from a multimillion-dollar grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development for a project to print textbooks for schoolchildren in Ghana, have led the agency to audit the program.

In an e-mail message to the university, which was forwarded to the Tribune, Ms. Daniel said that she was leaving the university “with both sadness and a great deal of pride” and that although she didn’t want to go, “all good things must inevitably come to an end.” —Scott Carlson

Comments

1. Steal a little and they put you in jail. Steal a lot and they make you university president…
   —Bob Dylan (w/apologies)

   — marci    Jan 31, 11:48 AM    #

2. Elnora is just another chapter in a familiar story. Her personal style, arrogance and sense of entitlement comes from the same school of thought which produced former president of Texas Southern U., Priscilla Slade, and others.

   — jon6707    Jan 31, 01:25 PM    #

3. What arrogance. Trying to justify a cruise. The Peter Principal is at work again.

   — Elizabeth White    Jan 31, 10:26 PM    #

4. A position of power and then abuse. Very familiar . . .

   — JBR    Feb 1, 08:29 AM    #

5. Who’s surprised? I’ve worked under eight presidents in my tenure, all but ONE did similar acts. Who knew?

   — MTK    Feb 1, 11:19 AM    #

6. Who’s surprised. Well, I am, a little. While I know these scandals do occur, it is a very small minority of college proesidents who go bad. In my career I have now served with six, and none of them ever even came close to this sort of misbehavior. Most of them are honest and hard-working, just like the faculty (from which most of them come).

   — pablo    Feb 1, 01:08 PM    #

7. At my previous Ivy League, a top student services admininstrator with close ties to the President, was known to be entertaining undergraduates in his home with drugs and alcohol. Top administration all KNEW of this for years and did nothing. The offending administrator was a member of a “protected class” and hence the “special” treatment. The President eventually left for his next stop on the Ivy/Big 10 Presidential migration route and carried on his “winning” ways there. Who knew? Everyone. Better question…who cared? No one.

   — g.    Feb 4, 12:59 AM    #

8. Finally! I guess that having a history of graduation rates in the low teens was not enough to get her fired. Who knew? Her Board. Who cares? No one. But, like their colleagues at many HBCUs, her Board ignored the abysmal graduation rates and only acted when there was misappropriation of monies. Perhaps now that Sallie Mae is threatening to have stricter lending requirements for colleges with high default rates, the trustees of HBCUs will wake up or continue to breach their fiduciary duties. We really need more provisions of Sabannes Oxley to apply to non-profits.

   — e    Feb 4, 09:18 PM    #

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