July 17, 2013
THUGDATE UPDATES FOR YOU!!!!!
Sorry for being off radar but we've been providing docs and having discussions with governmental authorities in order to get investigations started, and we were requested to hold back on posting certain things so as not to tip our hands. However, we are now clear on the role The THUG Team will play the rest of the way, and we will be publishing the balance of our Indictments, as well as new evidence which has fallen into our laps, much from our now 90,000 readers! That's right, we are up to 90,000 of you, and growing daily. So stay tuned for an official THUGDATE Installment this week, followed by Installment 7C and Installment 7D, and then Installment 8 to wrap things up. And, included in all that will be a rather earth-shaking announcement as to the future of CSULB. So much fun! If only someone would pinch us so we could awaken from this surreality. Meanwhile, here's a shout out to our new friends at Oxford U, at the Kansas City Police Department, at St. Lawrence U, at U Wisconsin, and folks in Kentucky and Zurich. Boy oh boy is it a small world when people start sharing information about a common topic. Hint hint. Whoever you are, you can surely run, but you cannot hide.
Below is Installment 7B, as previously posted, in case you haven't read it or want to catch up again!
INSTALLMENT 7B
The Alexander Indictment Continues
(The Oxford Round Table)
(The Oxford Round Table)
(King Alexander of LSU, CSULB, and MSU)
(Kern Alexander of MSU and WKU)
(Shenette Alexander)
(The Alexander Family)
Are You Just Glad To See Me,
Or Is That A Ponzi In Your Pocket?
Good day, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I trust your recess has been a time of contemplation, research, wisdom, and faith.(Kern Alexander of MSU and WKU)
(Shenette Alexander)
(The Alexander Family)
Are You Just Glad To See Me,
Or Is That A Ponzi In Your Pocket?
Today we illustrate a microcosm of our case against The Alexander Family.
The case is vast -- it is without question The Biggest Academic Ponzi Scheme in History. Just one tentacle of it is well on its way to totaling 40 million dollars in undeclared income, mostly stolen from public coffers. And that's just one tentacle.
The entirety should lead to both criminal and tax prosecutions, as well as a massive class action lawsuit from which more than a few of THUG's readers would be due cash awards.
Therefore, the best way to get a handle on this is to focus on one clean and clear aspect which is patently illegal and obviously intentional, to leave no room for smooth-talking con artists to talk their way around it. Just one sucker on one tentacle, as we hereby invite The Alexanders to please respond to what we are posting.
So far there has not been a single word from them about THUG. One thing we can promise you: if they sue us, we finally get to subpoena them to answer our questions under oath. And we get to hit them back for malicious prosecution while we demand their well-guarded financial records.
We would love to hear from The Alexanders or their lawyers. We would love to tell our 80,000 readers and the authorities what The Alexanders have to say which is responsive to our allegations.
In the meantime, we consider their silence to be golden and extremely loud.
The present Installment 7B will cover the lies being told by The Alexanders this very day with respect to the bogus non-profit status of The Oxford Round Table ("ORT").
We are addressing this circumscribed issue in the hope of saving more ORT victims from sending in their final fees to The Alexanders this month for this Summer's ORT "sessions".
ORT is not non-profit. It is vastly profitable, and The Alexanders have made a mint from it, even while failing to declare that income to the IRS or State taxing authorities.
Naughty, naughty.
Hereafter we will post more Installments, covering the rest of The Alexander Conspiracy -- including lots and lots more on ORT, but also proving up bribery, the co-opting of State and Federal funds for private benefit and for use in a Congressional campaign, the sale and cover-up of social security numbers to sneak foreign nationals into the United States, and more and worse -- for what began as an investigation into simple greed has become a massive ongoing display of hubris and betrayal by a family who believes themselves to be above and beyond the law -- and we will lay out all these allegations and all the proof in careful order and tasty bites.
As for proof, we have vast documents, including smoking gun tax returns and various confirmations from IRS, even as our readers keep sending us more information daily, to help make our case airtight.
Dear Readers: thank you for that, and keep it coming!
Our recent delay in posting has been to allow us to assemble a full team -- forensic accountant auditors, criminal lawyers, class action lawyers, private investigators -- who have been handed our documents and conclusions, have affirmed our findings and given us the thumbs up to publish, and have already connected with IRS, State Franchise Tax Boards, and Federal and State prosecutors, in order to turn over absolutely everything we have. We will also be doing a full on-line wikileaks-like document dump, so you -- our readers -- can access everything we've got. And you will soon be introduced to our full team in a very public way.
But now, to today's Installment.
This is the indictment of an entire family, including friends and lawyers who have been seduced inside. It is an indictment of a way of life. Make no mistake: this is organized crime, and it proves once and for all that racketeering and RICO violations are not a matter of culture or national heritage; they are, as one of our investigative team calls it, nothing more than the by-product of "piss poor protoplasm".
Bad guys are bad guys, rich or poor, any color of the rainbow, all languages spoken here.
But The Alexanders happen to be white and they happen to be privileged and they happen to be arrogant.
Understanding their crimes does not require specialized knowledge or expert witnesses. It is white collar crime and it is clever, but mostly it is just plain brazen and based on misdirection. It is essentially a stealth illusion, and beneath the smoke and misdirection is a simple motive informing simple acts which lead to simple and logical results.
Who are these people and why do they act this way?
The answer is that their actions paint gilt over their names and put public money in their private pockets, without paying all the taxes and fees that you and I pay on behalf of our businesses and our income.
Call it money laundering, call it tax evasion, call it fraud, theft, misuse of public funds, election campaign graft, call it what you will, it is all those things. But even when it rises to the level of betrayal of national security, for The Alexanders it is still just mercenary. They want money and prestige and power, whatever they have to do to get it.
And yet that hardly makes it understandable to the rest of us.
For you to truly grasp the breadth and the specificity of our allegations, you have to appreciate that The Alexanders do not act like overt and logical TV show scripted criminals, allowing you to clearly see how an act will lead to a result. They are better criminals than that, they are more pathological than that, they take risks they needn't take, their immediate goals are not what you would expect, and no matter how much they steal it is never enough.
Today's Installment illustrates this mindset.
THE OXFORD ROUND TABLE began as the brainchild of Kern Alexander, and is set up and owned as a for-profit business by Kern, his second wife Elizabeth, and sons Kern III, King, Klint, and Kane, all of them splitting the profits. Added to that equation from early on was Shenette Smith/Campbell/Alexander who has long functioned as ORT Coordinator and been paid handsomely for it, even after marrying King.
Yes, it's a family affair.
Now, to present this Installment 7B of THUG The Book and stick to the issues at hand, let's follow an FAQ format, with documents and discussion attached.
1. What is The Oxford Round Table ("ORT" for short)?
The name "The Oxford Round Table" is the name of a for-profit business owned and operated by The Alexander Family.
2. What does ORT do?
Each year ORT puts on conferences to discuss academic and political issues. ORT refers to these conferences as "sessions". Conference-goers are called "delegates" (also sometimes referred to as "members"). Sessions are four days over five nights. After the sessions, ORT publishes a book called "The Forum on Public Policy" which contains papers by delegates.
3. What is the ORT tie to Oxford University?
ORT's sessions are held at Oxford University, but The Oxford Round Table has no academic or peer connection with Oxford University. For several weeks a year when Oxford is not in regular session, The Alexanders rent dorm rooms and meeting spaces at the various Oxford Colleges, and invite folks to come there as "delegates" of The Oxford Round Table. Delegates are then allowed to bring "guests". (Guests do not attend ORT sessions, they tour around Oxford and its environs.)
Had The Alexanders rented space at your local airport Marriott, The Oxford Round Table would be called the Baton Rouge Airport Marriott Round Table.
Oxford makes money off of The Alexanders during the University down times -- that is the only tie between ORT and Oxford -- it is an economic tie and nothing more, but it is bigger money than you think. (Keep reading!)
4. What is the frequency and attendance of these ORT sessions?
At its height throughout the last 15 years, ORT runs twenty-one sessions per year, with forty delegates at each. Additionally, there is an average of more than one guest per delegate. Guests range from students to family members. Just so you understand the volume, that's 840 delegates per year, and more than another 840 guests per year, for a minimum total of 1680 attendees per year.
ORT has publicly confirmed the "delegate" total, but has only provided one public financial filing and various piecemeal testimonies as to the numbers of "guests", by quotes from delegates who brought multiple students or colleagues, spouses and children. We believe our guest number above to be a very conservative average, and we look forward to our readers giving us more facts and figures on guest attendance. We really believe it is at least 50% higher than we've said.
5. How are delegates vetted and selected for invitation?
There is no vetting. The Alexanders take all comers. They accept requests and they send out endless invitations to a range of academic and non-academic people, particularly from Universities where they have pre-sold ORT so that the Universities will cover the cost of the delegates' attendance.
As a source of delegates, The California State University system has been a particular target of The Alexanders over the years, all the more so after King Alexander became President of CSULB. Not coincidentally, King's new home -- LSU -- has also been a top target. And, when Kern and King Alexander presided over Murray State University, they specifically allocated State funds for ORT delegates and facilitators (there are specific allocations for ORT costs and for ORT tuition waivers in the MSU budgets, as well as various international studies and faculty travel dollars used for ORT). At CSULB, funds were similarly provided for faculty to attend ORT.
But The Alexanders also specifically target delegates at small schools and community colleges -- professors who otherwise are not known and published but looking for a way to become recognized.
And, when attending, ORT delegates are asked to provide names of friends and colleagues who should be invited the next year.
Finally, The Alexanders target non-academic community groups and associations, inviting all members en masse.
6. What is the cost of attending ORT?
For delegates, the cost of attending ORT since 2001 has ranged from $2725 to $2940 per session, with the average being $2895. Cost of attendance for guests ranged from $1625 to $1945 per session, with the average being $1900. The exchange rate between American dollars and British pounds seems to be the primary reason for the range in costs.
ORT attendance costs from delegates and guests are paid directly to accounts held by The Alexanders.
These attendance costs do not include travel costs to and from Oxford.
Finally, delegates have reported that The Alexanders required them to pay an additional $600 for their papers to be published in ORT's Forum on Public Policy.
7. How profitable is ORT for The Alexanders?
You need to be sitting down when you read this. And away from open windows or upper stories.
ORT INCOME:
(a) Using the average cost of attendance for both delegates and guests, the gross annual income from attendees is $4,027,800. Again, this presumes an average of only one guest per delegate, and we are advised that the guest total should really be higher.
(b) There is substantial additional income from sponsorships which The Alexanders get for ORT from many multinational corporations like Boeing and Apple, covering ORT's hard costs. The Alexanders brag about these many sponsorships on their ORT website. We won't even presume to put a dollar number to these sponsorships, but don't forget that this substantial income exists.
(c) There is income from the publication of The Forum on Public Policy. This is income from the authors as well as from sales to academic institutions and libraries. There appear to be four volumes published per calendar year.
ORT OPERATING COSTS:
In a U.K. financial filing, The Alexanders claimed annual operating costs of $700,000. We believe this to be an inflated number used to completely counter a portion of income which they were declaring, but let's take them at their word for the sake of argument.
ORT NET PROFIT:
Based on the foregoing, The Alexanders are bringing home a net profit minimum of $3,327,800 per year during the peak years of the last decade. Add to that the corporate sponsorships and publications monies.
This net profit is then split among Kern, Elizabeth, Kern III, King, Klint, and Kane, with a fee given directly to Shenette as well.
It is not clear whether the fee to Shenette comes off the top of the net profits or is already included in the $700,000 of costs deduction which gives rise to the net. Regardless, this fee was recently declared by her as $165,375 for one year.
Here's The Alexander Family ownership split template that's on file in Kentucky:
So that we are clear: we are talking about millions of dollars of profit per year for The Alexanders, for a business that has been ongoing since 1989.
And, The Alexanders do not report this income to the taxing authorities.
8. Don't The Alexanders insist that ORT is non-profit?
Yes, their ORT websites and all their solicitations and propaganda insist that they are non-profit, but this is a flat-out lie.
9. Why do The Alexanders lie about ORT's profitability and mislead as to any tie to Oxford University?
While it is reported that ORT attendees generally enjoy their sessions, they attend primarily because they believe this is a peer-reviewed academic event which they can list on their curricula vitae as invited paper presentations and subsequent journal publication. Such academic conferences are traditionally non-profit, tied to academic institutions. The purity of "peer review" is, by definition, not-for-profit. If The Alexanders were to admit that ORT is a family business, operated for-profit and accepting any attendee willing to pay their fee, attendance and presentation and publication would be nothing more than self-publication and would confer no brownie points in academia.
In other words, if The Alexanders told the truth about ORT, folks wouldn't attend.
Also -- and this is a critical piece of the puzzle -- ORT has been the springboard for The Alexanders' own academic credits. Kern and his sons -- notably King and Kern III -- have all given themselves substantial publication and academic leadership credits for their work at ORT, as if they were published and hired based on accomplishment rather than the truth that they hired themselves in order to bootstrap bogus accomplishments.
And, having conferred themselves such credits to mask imposture, The Alexanders have sold this process to unwitting academicians who need credits for hiring, retention, tenure, and promotion.
This creates a vast set of victims who have been conned but don't know it and wouldn't want to know it, who, meaning no harm, sell others on following in their footsteps up The Alexander Pyramid of Ponzi. It is, quite simply, a gorgeous and self-perpetuating crime.
This creates a vast set of victims who have been conned but don't know it and wouldn't want to know it, who, meaning no harm, sell others on following in their footsteps up The Alexander Pyramid of Ponzi. It is, quite simply, a gorgeous and self-perpetuating crime.
10. How do we prove that ORT delegates have been misled into attending?
Sadly, the internet is rife with stories, some from victims angry at being victimized by this con, most from those who still do not realize they have been conned. But, as "reasonable persons" under the law, you should also judge for yourself whether you would be misled by The Alexanders' ORT propaganda.
Here is a current 2013 posting from the Palmetto Transgender Association of South Carolina. The posting is the invitation from ORT to the Association, seeking its members to attend this year's ORT sessions. Note the headline "Oxford University Religious Roundtable 2013", and the first line of the text in which the Association states that this invitation has been extended from Oxford University. Then note the contents of the invitation itself, from the ORT Coordinator who just happens to be Shenette Alexander in Long Beach (where husband King was President of CSULB until this week's move to LSU).
(You can click on the image to enlarge it.)
Now here is an invitation from a few years ago, including the ORT brochure. The recipient -- Professor Mary Long of South Mountain Community College in Phoenix, Arizona -- was extremely excited and researched all she could about Oxford University and speakers from Oxford, being led to confuse the ORT session with an actual Oxford University Summer Seminar. You be the judge whether she had any idea that her invitation came from an Alexander Family business that merely rented a meeting room at Oxford. You read the ORT invitation and brochure and see if you would have been misled as well.
As we said, the internet is rife with ORT attendees bragging about their attendance based on the academic credit they mistakenly believe it confers. And there are others -- like Dr. Lesley Di Mare, President of Colorado State University at Pueblo -- who was blindsided by criticism for claiming substantive academic credit as an ORT delegate; after which she looked into the matter, realized she'd been conned by The Alexanders, and totally deleted ORT from her C.V. and bio.
When THUG The book does its document dump for our readers, you will see the many ORT attendee stories we have found on the internet, but feel free to send us more in the meantime!
In fact, we are confidentially collecting names of ORT attendees who feel they were conned and want their money back plus other damages -- if this is you, send us an e-mail including the particulars of your date of ORT attendance and all your costs plus other damages -- as we will be cumulating and providing this information to our class action attorney for analysis. E-mail us at: oxfordroundtableclassaction@gmail.com
11. How do we prove that The Alexanders are lying when they say that ORT is a non-profit business?
First, let's examine what The Alexanders claim. At the beginning, in 1989 and for the next many years, they claimed that ORT was an interactive, educational get-together of the world's most prominent and concerned scholars and politicians.
Then, as they inflated the size of ORT and found themselves questioned in the academic press, The Alexanders covered their tracks and hid their booty, announcing that they were chartered as non-profit corporations in both the U.K. and Illinois, a claim they continue to make to this very day.
Now let's examine the The Alexander Family corporate chart, re-sorted to be chronological.
As you can see, The Alexanders had no active non-profit corporations of any kind or in any name from 1989 to 2001. They did have old corporations in non-ORT names which had been suspended and involuntarily dissolved by Florida years before ORT began. So, any insinuation as to operating ORT as a non-profit during these years was not merely a lie, it was an impossibility.
However, in 2001, The Alexanders did open an ORT non-profit in Kentucky. At that point, they already had two ORT corporations for-profit and one Oxbridge corporation for-profit. The first ORT for-profit was formed in 1995 in Kentucky, quite a few years after ORT held its first session in 1989. Then the 1998 for-profit ORT was formed in Illinois by King when he moved there. We will be addressing the for-profit ORT corporations in a next Installment of THUG -- we are only concerned with the non-profit entities in the current Installment 7B.
So the point is that, from 1989 to 2001, The Alexanders had set up only for-profit auspices, and they were operating for private gain rather than public good, no matter any misdirection to the contrary.
Then they opened a non-profit in Kentucky in 2001, and closed it in 2008. Throughout that time, they failed to file any tax returns at all for this corporation. That's right, no tax returns. They were making millions of dollars a year through ORT, claiming that it was tied to this non-profit entity, but they filed no tax returns whatsoever.
In the meantime, they opened a new ORT non-profit in Illinois in 2007. This corporation was recently given "bad" standing by the State of Illinois for The Alexanders' failure to timely file the annual report due in 2013. Also, like their previous non-profit entity in Kentucky, The Alexanders have never filed a tax return for this Illinois company.
In another Installment of THUG, we will be addressing the forged signatures and phony names of folks involved in the Illinois non-profit ORT and the old Kentucky non-profit ORT, but what is relevant to the current Installment is that The Alexanders were making scads of money through these ORT years, and they were not reporting it on tax returns because they were failing to file tax returns.
At the same time, in 2008 The Alexanders opened an ORT corporation in England. As you saw in the ORT website screengrab three graphics above, The Alexanders claim this corporation is non-profit. They even link to their official government-stamped documents and they set up a dedicated website called oxfordroundtablecertification.com, just to make sure no one could possibly miss this.
Here's what they post to that link:
What you have no doubt noticed is that there are pages missing in these certification documents provided by The Alexanders.
This is no accident. What it is, is consciousness of guilt. And intentional misdirection.
But we have acquired the full set of documents from the British Government, and you can see all the pages by clicking on this highlighted link.
A careful reading of what The Alexanders did not want you to see is that this ORT is for-profit, specifically providing for its constituent owners and directors to receive benefits, pay, bonuses, property, and club memberships and other perks for themselves and for their families. It is all carefully and generously laid out. It is a business for the benefit and profit of its owners, not the public.
Had this been a non-profit, its papers would have looked like the following exemplar for a real non-profit U.K. corporation -- this is for the Republic corporation, no relation to ORT or The Alexanders, just showing you what ORT should have looked like were it in fact non-profit -- click on this line to review the exemplar.
So, The Alexanders are lying when they say that ORT is chartered as non-profit in England and Wales.
Even worse, they are lying when they say they are presently chartered in the U.K. at all.
As we noted in a previous Installment of THUG, The Alexanders only opened the U.K. ORT corporation after they were attacked in the academic press for claiming false ties to Oxford University. They only opened the ORT corp in the U.K. so they could get their hands on those certification pages they linked to their website, so that they could convince potential delegates that ORT was substantively tied to the U.K.. In fact, within a few months of opening that corporation, they filed dormancy papers, saying they were no longer in business.
Of course, ORT was still in business and thriving, but The Alexanders did not want to accede to the U.K.'s legal requirements for income filings. Here's the dormancy notice they filed in 2009 in order to evade further audit.
And lest The Alexanders try to falsely claim that they were somehow not the owners of the short-lived Oxford Round Table Limited corporation in the U.K., proof of their involvement -- behind various straw men -- is the telling signature of none other than Shenette McCandless.
Yes, that is the Shenette whose real and true legal name at the time was and continues to be Shenette Alexander, wife of King. On behalf of The Alexanders, she illegally used her long ago maiden name so that the name "Alexander" would not appear in the U.K. paperwork, so that folks like us would not be able to just Google the true ownership. Here she is -- Hi Shenette!
Finally, there is one last telling bit of evidence as to The Alexanders' continuing lie that ORT is non-profit.
In 2007, The Alexanders tried to intimidate an ORT critic by suing her. She was a Professor at Oxford who felt that The Alexanders were misusing the Oxford name and reputation in their misleading ORT pronouncements. The lawsuit filed by The Alexanders was in fact filed on behalf of the ORT for-profit corporation which existed in Kentucky at that time; the non-profit ORT there was not a party to the action. Klint Alexander -- 20% owner of that for-profit ORT -- was one of the two named attorneys who drafted and filed that complaint. And, of course, the complaint claims that ORT lost profit thanks to the criticism of the Professor at Oxford.
There's that profit word again.
Therefore, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, please absorb today's facts and figures, and we will see you shortly with our next Installment of THUG The Book.
Believe it or not, you have only seen the tip of the iceberg of The Alexander Family crimes.
Several THUG The Book Installments to go, along with news updates about our chats with the Feds.
Dear Readers, please check back with THUG every few days, as we endeavor to publish shorter Installments more frequently and more responsively to other press and to reader comments and information. For example, we will imminently post our vetting of the King's brand new but, as usual, false credits which popped up in a puff piece article in The Advocate the other day.
Sleep on this. Conjecture. Research. Post questions and comments below, or e-mail us at info@thugthebook.com.
It is not just that only the truth will set us free, it's that no matter how fast you run, in the end you cannot hide.
And for some, this will be the end.
THUG The Book Is designed so you can read the Installments in any order you want.
Installment Eleven - If A Para Falls In The Forest, Does Anyone Care?
Installment Ten - Cookin' The Books Alexander Style
Installment Nine - The Riddle of The Stinks
Installment Ten - Cookin' The Books Alexander Style
Installment Nine - The Riddle of The Stinks
THUG The Book and all the foregoing material is
copyrighted for all purposes in all media
-- all rights reserved by Brian Alan Lane -- 2022
All original documents have been maintained and are available by justified written request to: Michael J. Olecki, Esq. -- Grodsky and Olecki -- 2001 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 210, Santa Monica CA 90403
Please comment and interact.
Great work, Brian. I'll be watching my mailbox for an invite from the "Baton Rouge Airport Marriott Round Table"!
ReplyDeleteThank you for this very cogent presentation. I ask this in complete ignorance of how such things work and recognizing that it probably pertains to a future installment of the book. But, how do you know you have a complete list of the Alexander family's corporations, profit and not for profit? Could they not have another one that you have not found because it is registered in a jurisdiction you have not searched, like the Cayman Islands? Maybe ORT is depositing its income in the bank account of that unknown corporation and filing tax returns in its name in whatever jurisdiction it is located, all legit and above board? Don't you need to actually "follow the money," as they say, in order to establish the income is ending up in particular pockets without ever being declared in any jurisdiction? When I one pays an ORT fee, can you actually trace where that money went, immediately and ultimately?
ReplyDeleteKeep up the great work, though! You are an amazing detective-scholar and I look forward to reading more as soon as possible.
Thank you so much for your comment and questions. Indeed you have anticipated what we will be covering in a next Installment. The short answer is that there may well be more Alexander corporations since they use false identities and post office box addresses masquerading as "Office Suites". We have investigated off-shore corps -- there is actually an amazing wikileaks-like database -- and we have traced money to Switzerland where Kern III resides. What I very much need is for some ORT attendees to send me cancelled checks or credit card receipts that we can trace, to see what accounts their payments went into. We have requested some of these things from CSULB under the Public Records Act, for profs whose ORT attendance was paid by the school, and we are awaiting the docs. Anyway, we will have an Installment on how we have "followed the money" -- because there is much to tell and much we have found!
DeleteContact Ivor van Heerden, the former LSU prof who was fired and successfully sued LSU. He is another whistleblower, regarding Katrina and the Corps of Engineers, who was retaliated against. He went to an ORT in 2007: http://www.oxfordroundtablekatrina.com/
DeleteWill do. I was going to get to him -- ORT has an entire page devoted to him.
DeleteHe is exactly the sort of person who thinks ORT is legitimate.
DeleteHe seems to have the tightest direct tie to ORT of any one I've encountered -- based on how ORT promotes him: http://www.oxfordroundtablekatrina.com/ -- but, again, I will contact him directly for a quote!
DeleteI did receive an ORT "invitation," much like your example letter to Prof. Long, and immediately recognized it as bogus for a few reasons. Most basically, it was not personalized beyond my name and address. In other words, it gave no invitation the writer knew anything about my research and publications or how my interests might fit with the conference theme. There were a lot of other more minor "tells" as well, such as that the crest on the letterhead is obviously not that of Oxford University and instead looks like a gaudy mash-up of various heraldic elements, perhaps one of those vanity coats of arms for the Alexander family name that various companies sell on the Internet. But the big one was that unlike a legitimate invitation, which would indicate a familiarity with my research, the ORT invitation was quite generic. I expect any accomplished academic would have the same reaction as me, and that that serves to weed out people who might arrive at the ORT with a critical mindset. In other words, the letter is carefully crafted to target unaccomplished, naive academics who nonetheless have travel funds available from their universities. At least that's may take on it.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to more, Brian! Academic frauds really irritate me. Maybe I am too idealist, but despite much evidence to the contrary, I still believe that academia should be an intellectual meritocracy.
I'm with you -- academia is either academia or it's not. ORT is not. It's a scam. A brilliant one which preys perfectly on academic psychology. The thing that blows me away the most is The Alexanders getting away with awarding themselves credits through ORT, and than turning those phony credits into big jobs in academia! It's like buying those little "World's Best (blank)" plastic trophies at a five and dime, and having the rest of the world believe it! Thank you so much for your comments.
DeleteFantastic, Brian! I eagerly await your investigative team's "vetting of the King's brand new but, as usual, false credits which popped up in a puff piece article in The Advocate the other day." I particularly want to know if he was as much of a student-athlete as he claims. In that Advocate article, they (he?) claimed he played college hoops for the UW-Madison Badgers while a doctoral student there. That is so unlikely given his age, NCAA rules, the amount of focus required in grad school, and so on, that I went to the UW library website, where you can find all the basketball media guides for the 1990s, when he was a grad student there. No mention of any Alexander on the team. I don't know if he actually claimed that to the Advocate reporter or if said reporter simply wrote what he did say down wrong. What I want to know is how could the reporters and editors at the Advocate, or anyone who knows anything about college sports be such a bunch of idiots as to print that? The Advocate should go through that entire article, fact check it, and then run a long correction and apology to its readers for journalistic malpractice.
ReplyDeleteDid not remember that from the Advocate story, but it sure is there, as below. Amazing!
DeleteLSU's new leader: Earning Respect
BY KORAN ADDO
Capitol news bureau
June 25, 2013
"Alexander says part of his philosophy for wanting to increase access to higher education stems from watching his teammates on the University of Wisconsin basketball team struggle financially."
Maybe he meant while he was an undergrad at St. Lawrence University and the Advocate got mixed up (no surprise there!). He did play on the St. Lawrence basketball team. On the other hand, that doesn't make much sense because St. Lawrence is a private college, for kids from rich families, sort of like Tulane and with similar tuition ($40,000 per year). So those teammates would not have been struggling financially or provided motivation for Alexander to work hard to increase access to college for kids from modest backgrounds. Maybe the Advocate will get of their behinds and clarify their "reporting"?
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteI'm a sports nut. King Alexander did NOT play for Wisconsin. Period. The end. The Advocate has lost their minds to believe that, let alone repeat it. King played for St Lawrence. He played a few minutes in 5 games in his freshmen year, then most or all of the games as a sophomore, junior, and senior. You can look it up at the NCAA stats site. That used up his NCAA eligibility. He could not have played at Wisconsin, and he did not play at Wisconsin. His other claims are also problematic. He used the Wisconsin "teammate" story to give himself credit for creating CSULB's Project Greenlight. Except... our CSULB Project Greenlight was fully devised and implemented THREE YEARS BEFORE KING ARRIVED. We will be covering all this in a THUG Installment, but you can easily Google it now. I am saddened by the quality of reporting these days -- it's not reporting at all, it's "Repeating". All reporters do is repeat what they are told, verbatim if it happens to be an ad buyer. I have had so many new reporters call me and ask "We wanted to hear your side of the story." What kind of a question is that for a reporter? It shows no research. Let's just start calling these folks "Repeaters". Modern journalism is terribly broken. And King Alexander is a notorious liar. Thank you so much for your questions and comments! We shall persevere.
ReplyDeleteThe beginning of the invitation to 'Professor Long' should have been a tip off that something was not quite right. At a University level, when you send a personalized letter, invitation, etc., to someone, a first name is AWAYS used in the address. You can refer to them as Dr. John Smith or Professor John Smith, but JOHN is always in the address lines. In the salutation, he becomes Dear Professor Smith... As proper as it appeared to be, that particular 'invitation' reminded me of slick junk mail that I probably would have tossed or shoved into the 'not critical' stack.
ReplyDeleteLots of us did toss the ORT invitations into the trash as junk mail, but this must be something like the Nigerian letter scams. If you send out 10,000 and only get 10 responses, you can still make some dough.
DeleteI have now been personally in touch with St. Lawrence, Wisconsin, Oxford, and the Watford (now Ware) Rebels about Alexander's involvement (or non-involvement) with their basketball teams. Oxford and the Rebels are searching records and promise me answers soon. As to St. Lawrence and Wisconsin: Alexander played four years on St. Lawrence -- he played a few minutes of five games as a freshman and is not listed on their NCAA stats roster. Thereafter he played in most of the team's games as a sophomore, junior, and senior. He was not Captain in his junior year, he was co-captain with a chap named Scott Palmer, so that Alexander credit is exaggerated. Alexander did not and could not have played for Wisconsin. He had no NCAA eligibility and he was quite simply not on the team, and Wisconsin is pissed at any claim to the contrary. Even mored importantly: the only reason this matter was discussed was because Alexander was seeming to lay claim to "his" motive for starting CSULB's Project Greenlight. BUT THE FACT IS THAT PROJECT GREENLIGHT WAS CONCEIVED AND FULLY IMPLEMENTED BEGINNING IN 2003, THREE YEARS BEFORE ALEXANDER ARRIVED AT CSULB. So that is the bigger lie. In all events, as a prof at CSULB since Fall 2002, I can also say that I have absolutely no personal knowledge of Alexander ever getting involved in that Project once he arrived, and I met with him more than once to discuss the problem of our high-drop rate and our students' inability to be able to afford the costs of attendance. My words fell on deaf ears as Alexander raised not only tuition but fees specific to our campus alone!!! And where did those extra fees go? To sports public relations and advertising, per Alexander. That's all he cares about. THUG will shortly be publishing a document from CSULB which shows Alexander's personal cutting and awarding of program funds. He does not like that we got ahold of this. LSU should be forewarned: he will cut funds to the Daily Reveille and to African-American Studies and to the arts. He will cuts funds to any program led by anyone who questions him. And he will take all the funds he cuts and hand it to sports and sports p.r..
ReplyDeleteWhat you say is highly disturbing, Brian. I saw the story in the LA Sentinel a few weeks ago about Alexander cutting Africana Studies, apparently his parting gift to CSULB.
ReplyDelete"The California State University at Long Beach (CSULB), under the direction of University President King Alexander, is seeking to eliminate the entire Department of Africana Studies" - See more at: http://www.lasentinel.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11069:cal-state-university-long-beach-targets-closing-of-africana-studies-department&catid=80:local&Itemid=170#sthash.CaYYaK8D.fe581Jlq.dpuf
That is especially sad because the department chair there is Prof. Maulana Karenga, who I think actually founded Kwanzaa back in the 1960s, and is a highly respected scholar in the field.
The budget cuts we will face this year, and even worse ones at mid year, will give the perfect excuse to cut arbitrarily anything that does not fit the football and business mindset of the Board of Supervisors and their minions. LSU is already a very anti-black place, unless you are a student athlete.
Please prioritize your release of the document you mention so people at LSU can begin to understand the consequences of inaction.
Hard for me to get worked up over the loss of "Maulana Karenga" (obviously not his real name). This guy is no scholar, and has a very ugly and violent personal history that he has never apologized for.
DeleteYou are indeed correct about Prof. Karenga and Kwanzaa! Sadly, you are also correct about the cuts. If you send me your e-address (you can send to me at brianalanlane@earthlink.net), I will send you the document immediately. Otherwise it will probably be next week that it is posted in a THUG Installment on Alexander's cronyism and bias. Also, I can give you contacts of other professors, department chairs, and associate deans at CSULB who will be only too happy to tell you the horror stories of Alexander and his budgets. Hang in there. Best -- B
ReplyDeleteIs the David Alexander in your table of corporations the M. David Alexander here at Virginia Tech? Is he Kern Alexander's younger brother, who also attended WKU and Indiana? I looked at the following to find out but had no luck with that particular question: http://wku.pastperfect-online.com/35749cgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=Alexander,%20S.%20Kern,%20Jr.%20b.%201939;type=702
ReplyDeleteIf you don't know about this resource yet, you can google "samuel kern alexander wku installation file"
It is the file of newspaper clippings and other documents, including his vita and contents of his correspondence files, dating to his stint as WKU President. Some of it is digitized so you can read online about how problematic his presidency there was and also stuff on his very controversial hire at Murray Sate U.
Happy sleuthing! And looking forward to the next episode in this drama.
David Alexander is indeed Kern's brother. And, when the Alexanders were atop MSU, David received recognition as Alumnus of The Year. There is much more to tell, indeed. Thank you for your find at WKU -- we have been digging deep at WKU and MSU, and even have audio recordings from WKU of Kern's job interview. Do let us know anything you come across, but, meanwhile, we have a treasure trove of material which will soon be in our Installments! Kern and King treated MSU like it was their own personal corporation, and looted it accordingly. Then King continued his ways at CSULB. Everywhere we turn, documents are surfacing that are curiouser and curiouser. Do send us your tips!!!!
DeleteMurray State also has a lot of university governance docs online. The Board of Regents Minutes, vol. 78 discusses King Alexander's hire in 2001. The place sounds sort of weird, but I guess I have never been at a local college so don't understand the culture of that sort of place.
ReplyDeleteFind it at http://jpda.murraystate.edu/greenstone/cgi-bin/library.cgi
Brian, I am sure you know about this resources already, but others might be interested.
I went through twenty years of MSU BOR minutes, and have created a log which makes accessing and searching easier. Those archives are a feast of Kern/King corruption. And, yes, all this will be in a THUG Installment -- coming soon and fast! But -- here's just one hint about just one of many issues: you say MSU was a local college? In Kentucky? Then how come its African-American enrollment under Kern/King is barely 6%, mostly consisting of its sports teams? Yet Kern/King spent huge dollars successfully boosting MSU's enrollment from Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, ignoring Kentucky's demographics. Does that sound like a valid "local" approach for MSU to serve its local community? Again, just the tip of the iceberg about the Alexanders' doings at MSU, and then at CSULB. Every single day this scandal deepens. And THUG will soon explain all! Thank you so much for your comment and for listing the link -- all our readers should start digging into this!!! And, quite honestly, many of our most interested readers already know more than they realized and might want to start sending us tips! We are happy to do the leg work and the dirty work to ferret out the truth!!!
DeleteIf I'm not mistaken, Kentucky has about an 8% African American population. Also, there is a historically black university in the state. So the percentage at Murray State seems quite expected.
DeleteKern Alexander made his bones and a lot of money by selling Kentucky on the fact that various demographic populations were horribly underrepresented in terms of educational resources. When he got to MSU, his focus was solely on pumping up tuition, which is highest from international students. There was also graft involved. So the Asian and English Language Institute students pumped up his Asian numbers. Meanwhile, the African-American enrollment at MSU in his day would have been miniscule were it not for athletes. He did not raise the numbers or percentage during his years -- which, at a high point in 1999, was 513 "Black" students, or 5.75% of the total. Not entirely clear what "Black" includes; regardless, it's less than State average and certainly does not reflect a desire to broaden the University's demographic base or offer this excellent University's resources to everyone who might want to take advantage of them; all these numbers show is Kern trying to be competitive in sports. This is the "trickle down" reality of Kern's model, which King follows to a "T". They talk a good game, but, in the end, all they care about is bringing in more money by any means to pump up management costs, the students be damned. We have an Installment coming which details this. And I sincerely thank you for your comment and this colloquy -- it is vital if we mean to save University education in this country from profiteers, and give it back to the students!
DeleteThe Advocate has still not printed the many necessary corrections to the story they ran June 27th on Alexander, "Earning Respect." But they have released a somewhat corrected version to AP that other papers are printing, like The San Francisco Chronicle. That revised story still claims he implemented the Green Light student retention program at CSULB -- apparently several years before he even arrived there. But at least it no longer claims he played basketball with the UW-Madison Badgers in the 1990s.
ReplyDeleteApparently Alexander was appointed as a tenured professor at LSU but not in any particular department. Past chancellors and presidents have been full profs in departments such as history (Lombardi), public administration (Merget and OKeef), economics (Martin), business administration (Emmert), anthropology (Palm), mass communication (Hamilton), etc. In each case the faculty of that department reviewed the cv and voted to appoint them, which wasn't much to ask since they all had credible records. Alexander, apparently, is a tenured professor "at large," the Board of Supervisors finding a way to do whatever they want without input from people who know a lot more about universities than them.
ReplyDeleteThat's amazing! Considering how low the bar is in departments like anthropology and public admin at LSU, you figure the BOS could have gotten his tenure approved in one of them. Even a C.V. with a lot of double dipping, self-plagiarism, and vanity press stuff, at least according to this blog, should be good enough for those types of departments.
DeleteSo King gets tenured without ever being peer reviewed, and Kern gets endless jobs and professorships without ever being peer reviewed. These guys sure know how to work the system.
DeleteFool us once, shame on them. Fool us so many times, shame on us. All this has inspired me to start some sort of blog to vet the C.V.s of all profs at LSU. That really should not be so much work, since most hide their C.V.s and there are only about a thousand profs. So possibly 100-200 will have C.V.s readily available online. I will check each one the way same you did Alexander's to see if the degrees claimed really exist, if the employment history is true, if the pubs really exist, if they are what is claimed in terms of peer review, if they are self-plagiarized, if the grants are reported accurately, if the order of authorship is accurate, if the PI claims are accurate, and so on. Getting rid of academic fraud needs to start somewhere!
DeleteI was just looking for the next installment. This is more fascinating than that Fox series, "Lie to Me". It really needs to be turned into a feature film or a TV series so we can see the faces and body language of the characters as the drama unfolds.
DeleteIs there a projected "release date" for the next installment?
Great idea -- do it! And The THUG Team and I would be happy to help in any vetting of academic C.V.s at any time! Just let us know. We are actually trying to find a way to systematize this. Meanwhile, at LSU, be forewarned: The King notoriously lowers peer review standards -- particularly publication. At CSULB, at least one high level academic administrator resigned rather than apply his standards. One department complained that he eliminated the list of acceptable publications and wanted review to be ad hoc, opening the door to self-publication, vanity publication, and nonsense like the Oxford Round Table. At the time, no one understood what he was up to -- shouldn't he have been raising the bar rather than lowering it? Same perplexity I had when he adamantly refused to go after the proven imposters in my department, even with absolute proof in hand from his equals in the administration at Columbia University. It wasn't until The King's C.V. finally reared its head at LSU that we all finally got it: he has no academic cred, himself. And the same is true of his father. Neither has been peer reviewed, neither has been promoted or tenured through a review process. (Daddy's never been tenured, as a matter of fact -- he never even got a "tenure by fiat" deal like his son got at LSU. Dad's deals have always been contracted outside the academic line.) So, LET'S VET!!! Let's give academia back to the scholars and students, and show the door to overpaid administrators and pretenders.
DeleteIRS mailed us what they say is an "interesting" package, in response to some queries we made about Alexander filings. The instant that package arrives and we prep its contents for posting, we will be publishing the next Installment -- 7C! We will also be contacting interested parties (ie, a certain University) to let them know what we found. Needless to say, we are waiting on pins and needles.
DeleteAlexander had a "peer" review and was given tenure in the College of Human Sciences and Education.
DeleteWho were his "peers" -- the inmates of Cellblock B?
DeleteActually they were tenured faculty members of Human Sciences and Education
DeleteMust be the Dept (School?) of Education within that college, then. He's not listed on their website under faculty, though, and there is nothing in their news items section either. Probably just an oversight....
DeleteLSU verifies degrees and employment of faculty at the time of employment. All the other stuff listed in all CV's is easily "fictionalized". Departmental tracking of citations helps reduce exaggerated publications.
DeleteYes, in theory LSU verifies degrees and employment as well as doing a criminal background check and so on. In practice, my impression is that the verification is cursory and LSU is easily duped. But let's see what happens with Brian's investigation? If the allegations he makes are proven and the Chancellor indicted then we can see that for the top position at LSU, verification is criminally inadequate. What are we to think therefore of the verification for other positions such as Assistant Professors?
DeleteIf he got tenure in Human Sciences and Education, that doesn't surprise me much because the new Dean of that college comes to LSU from Troy University, which is a good undergrad college but only has about ten graduate programs, all terminal masters degrees. There are no PhD programs at Troy. So the Dean of the college of Human SCIENCES comes from an undergrad and professional masters college, not a research university that actually does science. I guess it's just further evidence that LSU is on a quick slide from comprehensive research university to a regional undergrad-focused college. Alexander fits right in in terms of lack of credentials and experience in doing basic research and scholarship.
DeleteThe new Dean actually has a PhD, from 2004. Don't laugh but it's in physical education or sports administration, depending on which of his bios you read. He did 2-3 years as an assistant prof on the tenure track somewhere and then leap frogs into administration. By 2008 he was a Dean and tenured full prof at Troy, 4 years post PhD. And since this year he is the same at LSU. Looks like another Alexander type wunderkind. Here is a link to his vita if anyone wants to wade through it -- http://trojan.troy.edu/healthandhumanservices/assets/documents/chhs/Vita_Damon_Andrew_(July-2012).pdf
DeleteThe college of Human Sciences and Education is largely a professional school -- social workers, teachers, librarians, and such. The Dept of Sociology is in the College of Humanities and social Sciences; they do the basic research. So Human Sciences and Education is probably a good fit for Alexander, with low expectations of creating knew knowledge but higher ones for practice, making his experience as a university administrator and constant tweeting #lsuprez as important as his pubs for T&P. Of course Brian and Donna are tweeting #lsuprez too, and its sort of surreal seeing the tweets for #lsuprez mixing the thug allegations and the bland tweets from the King wishing everyone a happy 4th and so on. You would figure the King would fight back, issue denials, sue for defamation, or something. Or that the local papers would take up the story and help to sort out the truth and its consequences. The sound of silence from the LSU "leadership" on this is embarrassing the LSU community. Brian has proven he is not just going away, so every day that goes by without a response simply looks like an admission of guilt by the King, Board of Supervisors, and other LSU administrators. The LSU Community wants closure on this one way or the other, and we want it by the beginning of the fall semester so we can get on with the work of saving LSU from total destruction.
DeleteThat makes sense. The chair of the search committee was Gaines Foster, Dean of the college of Humanities and Social Sciences. I would say the faculty of the college are glad he is retiring this year except that give current trends he will probably be replaced with someone with even less capable of wise stewardship.
DeleteI see one non-profit, of which Alexander is Chair of the Board and Para Secretary, missing from your table. Articles of incorporation are here -- http://www.foundation.csulb.edu/misc/incorp_articles.pdf
ReplyDeleteGlad you found this! Here's the scoop on the CSULB Foundation. For 60 years the school ran it illegally -- although none of us profs knew it at the time -- we only found out after they announced the "fix" in 2011. The Corp you found is part of that fix -- a new entity which split the Foundation into, respectively, a Research/Grant Entity and a Donation/Fundraising Entity. The fix was driven by the recovery act which finally caused there to be Federal oversight beginning in Fall 2008. At that point, the school slowly began to see they'd never done paperwork or anything else right going back to the 1950's when the campus evolved from a College to a University. But the non-compliance runs so deep -- every procedure, every everything -- the school is still to this day trying to come into compliance with all the laws and regulations. Alexander used the non-compliance to his personal benefit, because it allowed him "discretionary" use of funds with no auditing. It helped him accomplish all his cronyism and graft. On his way out the door this March 2013, he was forced to sign off on a sort of "consent decree" which promised to fix many of the problems that continued to plague the school's financial administration, even after the previous "fixes". This decree and the findings that led to it were totally buried and not publicized, but THUG will be publishing them. The bottom line is that LSU can look forward to Alexander bending/altering the rules to his benefit as he sacks the school.
ReplyDeleteSomeone should check to see if there's any connection between Alexander and Gov. Bobby Jindal. He would have never been appointed as President of LSU if there wasn't one. Could be that's what's behind the great SECRET SEARCH! and why LSU won't release the names of the other people who were secretly interviewed by phone and quick meetings in airports......just thinking......
ReplyDeleteThat seems unlikely, given that the Alexanders are more involved with the Democrat Party. Witness King's being called to consult on education at the Obama White House and Klint's run for Congress in Kentucky as a Democrat. Also, the IRS seems to have given a free pass to their nonprofits, unlike the extra scrutiny they targeted GOP groups for.
ReplyDeleteThey both went to Oxford University, of course, although with little if any overlap in terms of the timing, but there still might be connections of some sort from that, I suppose but don't know anything concrete. Jindal went to New College. Alexander?
The Alexanders are political whores. King and Kern both were tight as could be with the Republican leadership in Florida, and King lobbied Jeb Bush hard for a post there, an instant before winding up at CSULB.
DeletePolitical opportunism is a matter of perspective, of course, and hardly a crime. The ORT thing could be seen as fraud by some but the allegations have been around for a decade or more, the evidence readily available, and nothing seems to have stuck -- probably because it would be difficult for a jury of non-academics to understand the issue or why it is important. The accumulation of questionable filler on the King's C.V. through ORT self-publication does not seem to matter to a university system that has become increasingly controlled by administrators obsessed with money, power, and ego rather than scholarship, education, and public service.
DeleteEven the cynics would not be able to ignore it if Brian produces enough evidence of what he says is "40 million dollars in undeclared income" to open a formal investigation with all the resources and powers of the FBI behind it. That's the sort of thing everyone understands!
DeleteIf Brian ever provides evidence of the tax evasion he alleges, it will simply demonstrate that Alexander is a perfect fit for Louisiana. Higher education has always gotten the short end of the stick in Louisiana because its leaders tried to play by the rules, use facts and logic to argue for support, and generally behave like good citizens. Clearly that has not worked out so well for higher ed. Joe Nocera's column in today's NYT is instructive as to the real rules of the game in this state -- http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/opinion/nocera-justice-louisiana-style.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130709. So is Tom Aswell's latest blog post -- http://louisianavoice.com/2013/07/07/70000-job-monitoring-state-boards-commissions-went-to-a-director-of-bobby-jindals-re-election-campaign-committee-an-example-of-the-fox-serving-as-gatekeeper-to-the-henhouse/#comments . It's pretty depressing.
ReplyDeleteAlexander bio on page 197 of the new LSU football media guide (http://issuu.com/lsuathletics/docs/13guide/199?e=0/4035161) repeats some of the controversial claims you debunked in installment 5. LSU community of faculty and students looking forward to 7C. Please notify #lsuprez when posted. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteTHUGDATE UPDATES FOR YOU!!!!! Sorry for being off radar but we've been providing docs and having discussions with governmental authorities in order to get investigations started, and we were requested to hold back on posting certain things so as not to tip our hands. However, we are now clear on the role The THUG Team will play the rest of the way, and we will be publishing the balance of our Indictments, as well as new evidence which has fallen into our laps, much from our now 90,000 readers! That's right, we are up to 90,000 of you, and growing daily. So stay tuned for an official THUGDATE Installment this week, followed by Installment 7C and Installment 7D, and then Installment 8 to wrap things up. And, included in all that will be a rather earth-shaking announcement as to the future of CSULB. So much fun! If only someone would pinch us so we could awaken from this surreality. Meanwhile, here's a shout out to our new friends at Oxford U, at the Kansas City Police Department, at St. Lawrence U , at U Wisconsin, and folks in Kentucky and Zurich. Boy oh boy is it a small world when people start sharing information about a common topic. Hint hint. Whoever you are, you can surely run, but you cannot hide.
ReplyDeleteIs the NCAA in the loop as well? It would be a shame if the LSU Board of Supervisors had set up LSU for a Penn State type scandal and loss of eligibility by hiring Alexander.
ReplyDeleteI notice that you tweeted "LSU needs to decide how long to back Prez F. King Alexander as the allegations continue to mount." Good point, but please please distinguish between the LSU Board of Supervisors and other administrators and the LSU community of students and faculty. The student paper went to court to try to get secret docs related to the prez search. The faculty senate voted no confidence in the Board of Supervisors regarding this hire. Thanks for your hard work investigating and reporting, which is more than the Baton Rouge Advocate is doing.
ReplyDeleteRelated, Campusreports dot com alleged Graham Spanier is a career criminal who finally got caught. Members of the Defend-Little-Graham fan club might want to read Notes from the Academic Underground by Barry Roberts Greer. In it, they’ll find 'Spanierism at Oregon State University,' a well-documented chronicle of Spanier, who is married to an English prof, stomping all over the First Amendment rights of a writing instructor, then lying to cover it up.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on reaching 100,000 readers! That is about the same as the circulation of the Baton Rouge Advocate. Hard to believe they are still not covering this story (well, maybe not that hard to believe given their dependence on LSU sports coverage).
ReplyDeleteYou seriously need a web designer, Brian. This website makes you look like you're trying to sell herbal medication made from some specious fruit outlawed in 2002.
ReplyDeleteGood luck.
Personally, I love the website design. It evokes an image of an academic rebel running off smudgy revolutionary pamphlets on a mimeograph machine in a poorly lit basement with ink concocted from scavenged industrial waste products. The rebel emerges from his hideout to throw digital bombs at #lsuprez with a regularity sufficient to make the state forces keep their heads down, smothering their bland message of calm normality. Their glitzy website design evokes nothing anyone cares about, its newspeak merely a soft drone in the background, attempting to distract the Tiger Nation with appeals to mindless nationalism and claims of sage authority. Whether the rebel cell or the state's Central Committee and Supreme Leader will prevail sure makes for a gripping story. And the raw design of this blog contrasting with the glitz of lsu.edu definitely gives the story the same type of David v. Goliath hook seen in many Hollywood blockbusters.
ReplyDeleteIt looks super silly, and you sound equally so. Though I welcome you to your guerrilla interpretation of Brian's goofy formatting.
ReplyDeleteI'm really starting to think Brian must have an ironclad case if the best that can be mustered against it is that his blog "looks super silly." And what does "specious fruit" mean?
ReplyDeleteThe LSU Board of Superrvisors is blowing $500 per day in fines for not releasing the records of the prez search, as below. So far that's $50,000 in fines alone to keep secret why they hired the King. I wonder what the big secret is?
ReplyDeleteJudge finds LSU Board of Supervisors in contempt for not turning over records
BY JOE GYAN JR
jgyan@theadvocate.com
August 14, 2013
THUG 8 being posted right now (tech stuff being handled -- posting should be up within the hour). THUG 9 coming next day (a bunch of new and amazing docs). THUG 10 (big announcement) early next week. Sorry about the long delay, but we've been meeting with investigative authorities who are now on the case and we did not want to do anything to undermine their inquiries. Let's just say that folks who work for places that are called by initials rather than names have been reading THUG, putting the pieces together, and following up to help us right the wrongs!
DeleteMy take is that the judge imposed the $500/day fine to force the LSU administration to put up or shut up. They already appealed the same judge's ruling that they have to make the applicants public but lost that appeal. So now they say they are going to appeal to the supreme court but so far have not filed. Hence the lower court judge's imposition of the fine. She is telling them to either abide by her original ruling and come clean with the dirty secrets now or appeal a case they lost because the law and the facts are clearly against them, lose yet another time, in a higher court, and pay an even bigger price in public humiliation, fines, and legal costs. If they ignore the judge, then either the LSU administration is even dumber than generally believed or they are hiding a secret so big and dripping with dirty slime that if revealed it would force their resignations. They are simply using the same strategy as Spanier-Sandusky-Curly-Schultz in the Penn State Scandal -- delay, obfuscate, lie, bully, and pray that witnesses will die and people will lose interest.
DeleteI read that story and it really illustrates the surreal world LSU's administration and its lawyers seem to live in. On the one hand they insist that the King was the only applicant so they don't need to make any other applications public. On the other hand they insist that only such confidentiality can ensure LSU attracts the best pool of candidates. So..., they mean a fantastic pool of one? Really?! They must be hiding something awful if they are desperate enough to spout such obvious idiocy....
ReplyDeleteBut I came here to read Seven C because I got a tweet that suggested the new docs had been posted. Where is it, though?
THUG 8 being posted right now (tech stuff being handled -- posting should be up within the hour). THUG 9 coming next day (a bunch of new and amazing docs). THUG 10 (big announcement) early next week. Sorry about the long delay, but we've been meeting with investigative authorities who are now on the case and we did not want to do anything to undermine their inquiries. Let's just say that folks who work for places that are called by initials rather than names have been reading THUG, putting the pieces together, and following up to help us right the wrongs!
Delete