Case in Point:
Lessons for the pro-active manager

Last month we concluded our look back at 2013's ''events by category'' we linked here in Case in Point. We have been providing this monthly communication now for six and a half years. Case in Point has grown from an original e-mail list of about seventy recipients all on Auburn University's campus to a current distribution of more than one-thousand recipients in thirty-five states.

Since we have many new readers from our original distribution, this month we wanted to briefly discuss Case in Point's purpose. The purpose of this communication is two-fold: culture change and education. We believe that pro-actively managing risk makes a lot more sense than reacting to crisis and that we can learn from the events happening at other institutions.

Our suggestion in this publication is really very simple: scan the events by category and if you see items of interest to your area of operation, read the story and consider what you can do to pro-actively prevent a similar incident from happening in your sphere of influence. Institutions can implement many different programs to manage risk, but it could be the best program is a campus of well-educated, pro-active risk managers. Everyone on campus is managing risk, some are simply more conscious of the fact than others. We hope this month's survey of higher education helps you become even more of that type of leader and influencer.

M. Kevin Robinson, CIA, CFE, CCEP
Executive Director, Internal Auditing

Information Security & Technology Events

June 30, 2014: Identity thieves may have stolen the information of approximately 163,000 students, faculty, staff, alumni and applicants of Butler University, a school spokesman said. Police contacted Butler officials on May 18 to alert them to an investigation of possible identity theft, according to documents provided by Butler spokesman Marc Allan. The investigation originated in California, according to a letter send out by Jim Danko, Butler's president. The ''suspect had in his possession a flash drive containing the information of certain Butler University employees,'' the letter reads. (link)

June 27, 2014: Some College of the Desert students may have had their private information released as part of another breach in the campus' security. College of the Desert believes that less than 10 students were affected by the ''possible data security breach,'' which originated in the Financial Aid Office. (link)

June 26, 2014: The University of Southern Mississippi is investigating allegations that an employee accessed personal information of other employees on the Hattiesburg campus. (link)

June 24, 2014: Since 2005, the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC) has worked to document how technology affects individual privacy and to educate consumers on how to protect their privacy. As of April 25, 2014, the PRC had documented 727 breaches involving educational institutions involving more than 14 million records. (link)

June 16, 2014: Confidential information about more than 35,000 students enrolled at community colleges in Riverside County may have been compromised, the district said in a letter Monday. A database containing information including names, some social security numbers, emails, course schedules and addresses may have been breached when an employee mistyped an email address and sent it to an external email account, district officials said. (link)

June 11, 2014: About 1,900 current and former employees with California-based College of the Desert had personal information -- including Social Security numbers -- exposed in a spreadsheet that a worker attached to an email, without authorization, and sent to about 78 staffers. (link)

June 6, 2014: Think of it as an unintended ethics test for future lawyers. The administrator at the University of Virginia's School of Law who oversees the school's judicial-clerkship program, Ruth Payne, accidentally sent the wrong document on Wednesday to an email list for students seeking clerkships. Instead of details about how to get hired in Maryland, she attached a spreadsheet with details about all 155 students currently seeking clerkships. The spreadsheet included each student's grade-point average, class rank, political affiliation, and much more. (link)

June 6, 2014: A colleague of mine in the department of computer science at Dartmouth recently sent an e-mail to all of us on the faculty. The subject line read: ''Ban computers in the classroom?'' The note that followed was one sentence long: ''I finally saw the light today and propose we ban the use of laptops in class.'' (link)

June 4, 2014: Netskope today released the first study to estimate the financial cost of a cloud data breach. The study, entitled ''Data Breach: The Cloud Multiplier Effect,'' was conducted by Ponemon Institute and surveyed 613 IT and security professionals. The results prove that IT and security professionals expect cloud services to multiply the likelihood and economic impact of data breaches as they pervade the enterprise. They also reveal that the scope of usage and responsibility for securing cloud services remains largely unknown among IT. (link)

June 4, 2014: In light of national conversations surrounding Internet security, University of Minnesota technology experts say the institution could amp up its efforts in ensuring safe online practices. By expanding curricula and raising awareness, some say the University could play a stronger role in combating cyber threats on campus and throughout the nation. (link)

May 30, 2014: An estimated 50,000 people could be affected by a data breach in Arkansas State University's Department of Childhood Services, ASU officials said Friday. (link)

Fraud & Ethics Related Events

June 29, 2014: Embattled Blinn District President Harold Nolte, whose performance over the past four months has been scrutinized by faculty and college trustees, now faces accusations that he covered up alleged cheating by a star football player, according to documents obtained through the Texas Public Information Act and interviews conducted by The Eagle. (link)

June 26, 2014: A University of Maryland, Baltimore official resigned Thursday amid inquiries into allegations that he defrauded an Oklahoma university of more than $1 million in a previous job and diverted the money to businesses from which he financially benefited. (link)

June 24, 2014: They do things differently in North Carolina, at least when it comes to college sports scandals. The biggest academic-fraud controversy currently haunting NCAA Inc.--the fake-classes fiasco at the University of North Carolina--took a further bizarre turn on Monday, when a local prosecutor said he was leaning toward dropping a criminal charge against a central figure in the case. (link)

June 23, 2014: An employee at Hobart & William Smith Colleges is accused of stealing thousands of dollars from the IT (Information &Technology) Department.(link)

June 17, 2014: Ball State University has been the victim of not one but two investment fraud schemes, BSU's treasurer disclosed on Friday. And both investments were made by Gale Prizevoits, who was fired as the university's director of cash and investments three years ago. (link)

June 16, 2014: A 57-year-old Yale employee was indicted last week on charges that he ran a kickback scheme while he was working at the university, the U.S. attorney's office announced. According to the indictment, George Dobuzinsky arranged to receive tens of thousands of dollars in kickbacks while he was the project manager responsible for obtaining vendors to complete audio and visual projects on Yale's campus. Federal authorities said the kickbacks were paid to Dobuzinsky from 2005 to 2013. He took the payments in exchange for awarding the vendors additional work, the indictment alleges. (link)

June 11, 2014: It's common for professors, particularly those in the sciences, to partner with private industry for research. But the ethics surrounding such partnerships demand that they be disclosed -- at least for published research, with journal editors requiring academics to declare any possible conflicts of interest. (link)

June 9, 2014: A security guard for Guardian Guard Services, a third-party security firm hired by the Eastern Michigan University Convocation Center, was arrested after stealing money purses of choir members performing during Ann Arbor Huron High School's commencement last week. (link)

June 6, 2014: A star player on the University of North Carolina men's basketball team that won the 2005 national championship has stepped forward to confess that he stayed academically eligible only because he took fake classes and had others write his term papers. (link)

June 4, 2014: University of Arizona police are asking for the public's help finding gold after a thief snuck off from the school's planetarium with a golden nugget valued at $30,000, according to police. (link)

May 31, 2014: A former administrator at the University of California, Berkeley, has been charged with stealing about $90,000 in public money in order to pay for her children's private school tuition. (link)

May 30, 2014: The State University of New York will part with David Smith on Oct. 1, but not until the former Upstate Medical University president pays back $100,000 in income he received from an outside contractor without Chancellor Nancy Zimpher's approval.(link)

Compliance/Regulatory & Legal Events

June 30, 2014: A jaywalking rarely makes national news, but the arrest of Arizona professor Ersula Ore has done just that. What began as a walk home from teaching classes at Arizona State University ended with police charging the professor with assault. (link)

June 26, 2014: Seven University of Ottawa hockey players could launch a defamation suit after the men's varsity program was suspended in relation to allegations that some players sexually assaulted a woman during a team trip to Thunder Bay in February. (link)

June 24, 2014: By withholding records for more than a year after they had been subpoenaed, officials at Pennsylvania State University ''undoubtedly slowed the investigation'' into the former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, in a scandal that rocked Penn State in 2011, a new report says. (link)

June 24, 2014: Misspelled words and a falsified signature led to the arrest of a former Florida A&M University student Monday when he tried to submit a forged college transcript for admission to the Florida State University College of Nursing. (link)

June 20, 2014: In a continuing effort to curb campus sexual assaults, the Department of Education officially proposed a new rule Thursday that requires colleges and universities to compile statistics for incidents of dating violence, domestic violence and stalking. (link)

June 20, 2014: UCLA chemistry professor Patrick Harran struck a deal with prosecutors Friday that all but frees him from criminal liability in the 2008 laboratory fire that killed a staff research assistant.. Charged with four felony counts of willfully violating state occupational health and safety standards in the death of Sheharbano ''Sheri'' Sangji, Harran had faced up to 4 1/2 years in prison if convicted. (link)

June 19, 2014: Philosophy Prof. Peter Ludlow is suing Northwestern and top University officials for defamation, gender discrimination and invasion of privacy. The University acted ''with malice and with reckless indifference'' toward Ludlow's rights under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, according to the suit. Ludlow names University President Morton Schapiro and an NU graduate student as defendants in the suit, which was filed Wednesday. (link)

June 18, 2014: A former University of Tennessee pre med student lost her scholarship and was expelled from the program after she was falsely arrested for sexual assault. Now, almost 6 years later Amanda Hartley is trying to get justice. In 2009 she was wrongfully arrested in Knoxville after another woman accused her of committing violent sexual acts in her dorm room of a Georgia college. (link)

June 17, 2014: Syracuse University has dismissed a male professor who had a consensual relationship with a female undergraduate student. The faculty member, who SU has not identified, taught, advised and supervised the student during the relationship. It is the first time in decades a tenured professor at SU has been terminated through this process. (link)

June 14, 2014: An independent investigator has found that University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Police Chief Michael Marzion displayed ''inappropriate and unprofessional'' conduct when he traded Internet messages of a sexual nature with a student this spring. The investigator, former Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Gary A. Gerlach, concluded on Thursday that Marzion did not violate school policies involving discriminatory conduct during the exchanges between April 7 and 15. (link)

June 13, 2014: A sexual harassment case involving a former provost at Montana State University-Northern who is accused of repeatedly and inappropriately touching her male colleagues -- including the university chancellor -- is set to be heard next week. Northern's dean of extended learning, Randy Bachmeier, accuses the former provost, Rosalyn Templeton, of repeatedly touching him in a sexual manner. (link)

June 11, 2014: The Univ. of Alaska Fairbanks has been penalized $127,100 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture after 12 musk oxen died from malnutrition at the school's large animal research station earlier this decade.(link)

June 10, 2014: The University of North Carolina Wilmington has to pay more than $700,000 in legal fees in a civil suit involving one of its own professors, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. (link)

June 9, 2014: Baylor University has filed a lawsuit against the Baylor Alumni Association seeking to stop the group from using Baylor's name and licensed trademarks.(link)

June 4, 2014: Case Western Reserve University must award a medical degree to a student it had determined did not merit one because he lacked ''professionalism,'' a federal judge ordered this week. (link)

June 3, 2014: A decades-long policy that restricted students' freedom of speech on Virginia's 23 community college campuses cost state taxpayers $25,000. That's how much the state agreed to pay in damages and attorneys' fees to resolve a lawsuit that overturned the policy. (link)

June, 2, 2014: A federal complaint was filed last Thursday against Brown University, accusing the school of failing to expel a student found guilty of raping a fellow student. Lena Sclove of Amherst, M.A. was attacked during the summer following her first semester as a transfer student from Tufts University. She filed complaints accusing the school of violating the Title IX gender equity law and the Clery Act campus security law. (link)

June 2, 2014: Students of Paul Roof -- not to mention the many fans of his award-winning facial hair -- are outraged that he was fired Friday by Charleston Southern University. Roof, a sociologist there for the past six years, posted the news on Facebook and it was quickly picked up by newspapers in the Charleston area, where he is well-known. The problem, Roof says, is that the image (which illustrates this article) was used by Holy City Brewing on cans of beer. The cans weren't ordinary but were being sold for a charity event for Lowcountry Women With Wings, a group that provides education about ovarian cancer and support for women fighting it. (link)

June 1, 2014: The face of college sports may change drastically soon. That is because the State Employees Association of North Carolina has voted unanimously to admit student athletes from all 17 of the state's public institutions of higher education. Last month the AP reported that the National Labor Relations Board allowed students to unionize and demand greater benefits and possibly pay. (link)

Campus Life & Safety Events

June 24, 2014: Two students from Saint Joseph's College in Standish each pleaded guilty Tuesday to a charge of criminal use of explosives for throwing acid bombs out of their second-story dorm window in February. (link)

June 23, 2014: The University of Michigan is asking up to 300 returning undergraduates to move out of dorms to off-campus apartments to free up rooms for an unexpectedly large incoming freshman class. (link)

June 23, 2014: SMU's Rick Hart and Texas A&M's Eric Hyman run athletic departments that share a state, once shared a conference and still have enough in common to play each other in multiple sports, including football this season. But Texas A&M fans who land tickets to the Aggies' Sept. 20 game at SMU's Ford Stadium will have the opportunity to do something that is forbidden in their own stadium: Buy a beer. (link)

June 20, 2014: Wentworth Institute of Technology officials sent out an erroneous schoolwide alert Thursday night saying there was a gunman inside a campus building and warning students to ''shelter in place.'' On Friday, school officials said that while there were reports of gunfire at an adjacent off-campus public housing development, there was never a shooter on campus. The college did not explain how the mistake occurred. (link)

June 18, 2014: A few months before graduation day for a program geared toward international lawyers, Northwestern University School of Law made a discovery that a prestigious institution of legal education might prefer to avoid -- that one of its students was a felon famous in Texas for falsely portraying himself as a lawyer. Officials promptly notified Mauricio Celis in March that he would be expelled for failing to disclose his history as a convicted legal impostor. That's when Celis sued Northwestern, causing several undeniably legitimate lawyers to get involved.(link)

June 13, 2014: University of Iowa officials say a video camera was found in a restroom this month in the information technology department's space. Steve Fleagle, chief information officer, sent an email to information technology staff Wednesday saying that a small video recording device was found June 4 in University Capitol Centre, a part of the Old Capitol Town Center. (link)

June 12, 2014: Stanford University will not expel a student it found to have sexually assaulted a classmate off-campus this year, rejecting the appeal of the victim who said the school had treated him too leniently. Instead, Stanford will allow the man to complete his senior year but withhold his degree for two years and prevent him from enrolling in a graduate program until 2016. (link)

June 9, 2014: A female student was found dead Monday morning at the new University of Houston football stadium, officials said. According to the UH Police, she was dead by the time construction workers arrived Monday morning. (link)

June 6, 2014: A lone gunman armed with a shotgun and knife opened fire Thursday in a building at a small Seattle university, fatally wounding one person before a student subdued him with pepper spray as he tried to reload, police said. A student building monitor at Seattle Pacific University disarmed the gunman after he entered the foyer at Otto Miller Hall, and several other people jumped on top of him and pinned him down until police officers arrived, police said. (link)

June 4, 2014: University of Texas officials removed ''poorly worded'' dress code signs Wednesday in the School of Nursing building that prohibit ''revealing clothing'' that ''distracts from the learning environment,'' such as ''short skirts'' after backlash on social media. The signs, which were posted in elevators in the School of Nursing building on Tuesday, focus on clothes worn by women and prohibit ''midriff-baring shirts, short-shirts, short skirts, low-rise pants and low-cut shirts that reveal cleavage.'' (link)

May 31, 2014: The commencement address is indicative of the disturbing evolution of higher education into an exercise in manipulative marketing, a place where the Ivory Tower is increasingly giving way to Madison Avenue. Colleges, embracing the concept that image speaks louder than accomplishment, have become adept at sales pitches, controlled messaging and brand building. At a time when many budgets and academic programs have been cut, they continue to invest in pursuits that superficially enhance their prestige without actually improving the quality of education. (link)

Other News & Events

June 30, 2014: Students at Martin Community College want the president of their school gone. More than 50% of them signed a petition asking the Board of Trustees to not renew Dr. Ann Britt's contract. They say Britt's apathetic attitude is ruining the school's future. (link)

June 23, 2014: The University of South Florida hopes to lend drones to students when the school's renovated library opens in the Fall of 2014. The drones will be part of the school's Digital Media Commons where students work on high end technology projects. (link)

June 18, 2014: The report, Tough Love: Bottom-Line Quality Standards for Colleges, was released today by the Education Trust, a nonprofit advocacy organization. The report highlights 300 underperforming colleges among for-profit, non-profit, public and private institutions. These underachieving schools include what Education Trust calls ''college dropout factories'' with six-year graduation rates below 15%, ''diploma mills'' where roughly three out of 10 student borrowers default on their loans, and ''engines of inequality'' that fail to enroll at least 17% of low-income students. (link)

If you have any suggestions, questions or feedback, please e-mail me at robinmk@auburn.edu. We hope you find this information useful and would appreciate hearing your thoughts. Feel free to forward this email to your direct reports, colleagues, employees or others who might find it of value. Back issues of this newsletter are available on our web site at https://www.auburn.edu/administration/oacp.

If you have any suggestions for items to include in future newsletters, please e-mail Robert Gottesman at gotterw@auburn.edu.

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