Case In Point: Lessons for the proactive manager

Volume 16 Number 09 | September 2024

Quotable .....

“ Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure. ”

-- Confucius

In Case in Point, our goal is to keep you updated on the latest risks impacting higher education. As you may have noticed, the diversity of risk is massive, and even filing each story into a single category becomes a challenge. One risk area we have not discussed recently is emergency preparedness. The types of emergencies we could potentially see are wide ranging, but for most of us they would fall into a few categories: campus violence, weather, or chemical/biological incidents.

Last week much of our time at AU was spent watching Hurricane Helene as it developed in the Gulf of Mexico. It initially had a projected path that would have impacted our campus until late movement took the storm further east. Unfortunately for our neighbors in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina (and some others), they have had substantial damage and flooding that continues at this writing. The damage has been devasting for some institutions such as Appalachian State University and UNC Asheville.

It sends us all a sobering reminder of the importance of emergency preparedness. We had already begun an evaluation of our emergency response protocols and the related communication processes here at AU. Having the protocols is only the first step; we must ensure the entire campus community is aware of the protocols so that their actions are also driven by the institutional plan.

It is important for all of us to evaluate our plans for emergencies and ensure they are updated and well communicated. We owe that to our students, faculty, and staff. Our thoughts and prayers are with all those impacted by this storm.

We again invite you to review the events across higher education with a view toward proactive risk management. We welcome your comments and suggestions.

M. Kevin Robinson, CIA, CFE
Vice President
Institutional Compliance & Security
Office of Audit, Compliance & Privacy
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Information Security & Technology Events

Sep 24: Data Security: With the rapid pace of cloud adoption, organizations are quickly revolutionizing business operations but are having a harder time ensuring that systems are built and operated effectively and deployed with the proper cyber hygiene. Business growth experts say to move fast and break things but failing to implement appropriate cybersecurity controls simply doesn’t work because both the regulatory and threat landscape are evolving more rapidly than ever. Even before organizations embarked on huge digital transformation projects, most were behind in meeting regulatory compliance requirements because they relied on manual processes and tools, such as Excel spreadsheets and Word documents. Cloud adoption exacerbated those problems, leaving Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) to manage large portfolios of applications sprawled across multiple environments and networks. (link)

Sep 12: Ransomware: Addressing a ransomware attack is a costly process. Leaders are faced with sky-high recovery costs to restore computers, recover data and bolster their security systems to ensure they never fall victim again. But just how much are school leaders spending? In 2023, we saw a record-breaking number of ransomware attacks with 121 against K12 schools and higher education institutions, according to a new analysis from Comparitech, a cybersecurity and privacy product review site. That’s 50 more than the total recorded in 2022. Additionally, the average days of downtime caused by these attacks has also increased, from nearly nine days in 2021 to 12.6 days in 2023. (link)

Sep 09: Data Ethics: The rapid rise of new technologies in this century has meant that not only are we increasingly seeing new ways to collect data, but we are also seeing new things to collect data on. In 2008, the launch of Glassdoor.com gave management researchers and academics data that we’d never seen before. Previously, anonymous reviews and salary data from employees were hard to obtain. As scholars were given the insight to ask new questions or approach existing ones from a fresh angle, organisational research boomed. More recently, three major trends have created new opportunities for harnessing new data sources. (link)

Fraud & Ethics Related Events

Sep 26: Research Misconduct: A National Institutes of Health investigation has found research misconduct by one of its top neuroscientists, the agency said Thursday. In a statement, the NIH said the findings involve images in two studies co-authored by [the scientist], who in 2016 joined the agency’s National Institute on Aging as its neuroscience division director. NIH said images or "figure panels" that represented different experimental results were reused or relabeled in the publications. NIH said it would notify the two scientific journals of the findings "so that appropriate action can be taken." The scientist has long studied damage to synapses -- junctions where brain cells communicate -- in neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. (link)

Sep 18: Plagiarism: University of Maryland President Darryll J. Pines announced Wednesday that he has requested an independent review of his research following accusations that he plagiarized a research paper more than 20 years ago. The accusations against Pines surfaced Tuesday in The Daily Wire. The article alleges that 1,500 words of a 5,000-word paper co-authored by Pines and published in 2002 were plagiarized from a tutorial website called "Surfing the Wavelets" that was last updated in 1996. Pines, a professor of aerospace engineering, was already part of the UMD faculty at the time his 2002 paper was published. Pines is the university’s first Black president, appointed in 2020. He is the latest in a slew of higher education officials who have been accused of plagiarism. (link)

Sep 17: Occupational Fraud: The former office manager of Dartmouth College’s student newspaper has been sentenced to 15 months in federal prison for stealing over $223,000 from the paper over four years. [The woman] was the office manager for The Dartmouth, the college’s primary newspaper, from 2012 to 2021. It is a nonprofit run by student volunteers and earns its money through advertising, alumni donations and investment income, according to court documents. Prosecutors said [she] had full access to The Dartmouth’s bank account, PayPal and Venmo accounts, and debit card, and stole money from the paper between 2017 and 2021, making unauthorized transfers from its accounts to others she controlled. (link)

Sep 13: Research Misconduct: The U.S. agency that investigates research misconduct by federally funded biomedical scientists has dropped a controversial proposal that would have allowed it to publicize previously undisclosed misconduct findings by universities. In announcing the first revision of its research misconduct policy in 20 years, the federal Office of Research Integrity (ORI) said it removed the draft provision in response to complaints from many institutions about "regulatory overreach" and possible "breaches of confidentiality." The changes are part of final rules announced Wednesday that reflect responses to more than 170 comments on a draft released last fall. (link)

Sep 04: Occupational Fraud: State Auditor Rob Sand says a recently dismissed University of Iowa employee "pocketed nearly a million dollars" by using public equipment and public employees for his own business. [The employee] was the manager of the Department of Physics and Astronomy Machine Shop. "He would have employees handle the work on university-owned machines while on the university’s clock," Sand said during a news conference in his statehouse office, "but $943,000 worth of payments-...ended up in his own bank accounts." According to the audit, [the manager] was having university staff do work for a company called Xometry, but directed Xometry’s payments into his personal bank account and an account linked to his business. (link)

Compliance/Regulatory & Legal Events

Sep 19: Lawsuit: The University of Maryland Global Campus’s agreement with online program provider Coursera to pay "service fees" based on the number of students who enroll in cybersecurity degree programs violates federal law, according to a new lawsuit, though the practice is allowed under Education Department guidance. Student Defense, a legal advocacy group, argued in the complaint filed in D.C. Superior Court that the university violated the D.C. Consumer Protection Procedures Act because the institution didn’t disclose the incentive-based compensation to students, and that the payments amount to a deceptive trade practice, which the D.C. law prohibits. At the crux of the lawsuit is 2011 Education Department guidance that exempts colleges and outside companies from the federal ban on incentive compensation, which refers to paying commission or bonuses tied to securing enrollment or financial aid. (link)

Sep 18: Discrimination Settlement: Penn State University will pay $703,742 in back wages and enter an agreement with the U.S. Department of Labor to resolve alleged gender pay discrimination against female employees. The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs found that, since at least July 1, 2020, Penn State allegedly paid 65 women employees less than men holding similar positions in facilities operations and maintenance, extension education, and senior administration jobs. In addition to paying the back wages, Penn State agreed to take steps to make sure its compensation practices and policies are free from discrimination. (link)

Sep 17: NIL: The University of Tennessee has a top-notch football team, record-breaking financials and another plan to use the former to build on the latter -- with an eye on the future. The university announced a 10 percent "talent fee" will be added to the cost of 2025 football season tickets, in preparation for the arrival of revenue sharing with college athletes. That, along with an initial 4.5 percent average increase, means Vols fans will pay 14.5 percent more on average for tickets next season. Judge Claudia Wilken of the Northern District of California declined to rule earlier this month on preliminary approval of a multi-billion dollar settlement in the House v. NCAA lawsuit because of language that would limit third-party name, image and likeness payments to athletes from boosters and collectives. (link)

Sep 13: Lawsuit: A Lackawanna County judge ordered Penn State to temporarily halt an internal investigation into trustee Anthony Lubrano -- an investigation previously unknown to the public -- until a decision is reached involving Lubrano’s legal fees. In a lawsuit filed earlier this month, Lubrano revealed that he is being investigated by the university’s board of trustees in what his attorneys described as "retaliation for his exercise of his First Amendment rights." But the lawsuit in question is not related to the legality of that investigation; Lubrano’s attorneys argue the university’s bylaws require it to advance his legal fees since he’s launching a defense. (link)

Sep 13: First Amendment Lawsuit: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled Tuesday that University of Louisville officials must stand trial for firing Dr. Allan Josephson. The school fired Josephson after he expressed his personal views in a panel discussion on gender dysphoria. Josephson, professor of psychiatry and the chief of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology at UL since 2003, spoke on his own time and in his personal capacity at a Heritage Foundation panel discussion about how best to treat children experiencing gender dysphoria in October 2017, during which he disagreed with the idea that the best way to treat these children is to affirm their gender confusion. Less than seven weeks later, Josephson--who had significantly improved the division in his time as chief--was given an ultimatum: resign, or be fired from his position as division chief. (link)

Sep 12: Employee Conduct: The University of Mississippi’s vice chancellor for student affairs is on leave from her job after she and her husband were indicted on animal cruelty charges. [The couple] were served indictments Monday on 10 counts of aggravated animal cruelty and 10 counts of simple animal cruelty, court records show. The indictment against the couple describes dogs found starved to death on their property, one living bulldog mix "with rib bones and hip bones visible through skin" and other living dogs found chained or "confined in a cruel manner in a cage." (link)

Sep 11: Lawsuit Update: A federal judge dismissed the defamation charges in a lawsuit filed by Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino against the University, dealing a major blow to the embattled professor’s efforts to rehabilitate her reputation and win millions from the school. In a Wednesday ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Myong J. Joun partially granted Harvard’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, writing that Gino had failed to plausibly allege that the University defamed her, violated her privacy, or unlawfully interfered with her relationships with publishers. Still, Joun allowed one key plank of the lawsuit to proceed: Gino’s claim that Harvard breached its contract with her by subjecting her to disciplinary measures in violation of its own disciplinary and tenure policies. (link)

Sep 10: Discrimination Settlement: An Iranian-born research scientist who filed a federal discrimination lawsuit alleging a co-worker at the University of Alabama at Birmingham harassed her for nine years because of her ethnicity was awarded more than $3.8 million in damages Tuesday. Fariba Moeinpour, 62, said she was thrilled with the jury verdict, which was handed down in the Northern District of Alabama, and ready to restart her life. UAB, according to the jury verdict, was ordered to pay Moeinpour $3 million in damages. Moeinpour’s lawyer, Eric Artrip, said his client "put up with years of being called all sorts of terrible names." (link)

Sep 04: Title VI: Over the course of nearly a decade, Jewish students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reported more than 135 incidents of alleged antisemitism. In one, a student was reportedly targeted because he was Jewish, with the alleged attacker later telling him, "I wish my ancestors finished the job on you." In other incidents, an unidentified person threw a brick through a window of a Jewish fraternity house; another carved a swastika in a campus bathroom. Those are just a few of the incidents that the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights said Tuesday created a "possible hostile environment" for Jewish students that the university did not take effective action to address. (link)

Sep 03: Settlement: Michigan State University failed to obtain approval from the U.S. Department of Education for more than a dozen of its academic programs as required under provisions put into place after the Larry Nassar scandal, leading to millions in fines. In June, MSU and the DOE reached a settlement that acknowledged the university violated provisions of the Higher Education Act of 1965. The DOE found that financial aid provided to students in the unapproved programs totaled $2,761,502 and had to be paid back to the department by Aug. 1, according to the settlement agreement. The university had been put on "provisional standing" for financial aid in November 2019 following the Larry Nassar case, Bullion said in an emailed statement. As a part of that requirement, MSU had to gain approval for all new degree programs before it could give students in those programs federal financial aid. (link)

Campus Life & Safety Events

Sep 30: Natural Disaster: The University of North Carolina at Asheville canceled classes until Oct. 9 as the university and surrounding community recover from Hurricane Helene’s historic flooding, which wiped out roads, bridges and homes, largely cutting off western North Carolina. "Conditions at UNC Asheville are difficult," Chancellor Kimberly van Noort said in a message to the campus community Saturday afternoon. "Significant tree damage has occurred and parts of campus are inaccessible. Everyone is safe. Cell and internet coverage is nonexistent at this point." Appalachian State University in Boone and Western Carolina University in Cullowhee canceled classes for this week as well. (link)

Sep 27: Free Speech: An Israeli lawmaker invited to speak at a UC Berkeley School of Law forum on Tuesday was forced to move his remarks onto Zoom after the original in-person event was disrupted by protesters. Simcha Rothman, a member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, with the far-right Religious Zionist party, was appearing at an event titled Restoring Democracy: The Debate Over Judicial Reform in Israel organized by the law school’s chapter of the Federalist Society. Many of the protesters who attended the event were with UnXeptable, which, according to its website, is a grassroots movement dedicated to protecting Israel’s Democratic institutions. The group opposes a contentious movement to reform Israel’s judiciary, of which Rothman is a chief proponent. (link)

Sep 27: Free Speech: The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents voted to strip former UW-La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow of his tenure "with cause" in a unanimous vote Friday due to his continued creation of pornography. The vote came after a UW-La Crosse faculty committee unanimously recommended his removal for "unethical conduct" and a Sept. 20 hearing under the UW Board of Regents personnel committee. Under Wisconsin law, revoking tenure requires "just cause and can only be done after due notice and hearing." Gow announced retirement plans on Aug. 30, with plans to transition to a faculty position after the conclusion of the 2023-24 school year. He told reporters after the decision that he plans to sue because the Regent’s decision "violates their own commitment to academic freedom and freedom of expression." (link)

Sep 26: Free Speech: Wake Forest University announced Thursday that it would be canceling a campus lecture led by a Palestinian scholar and activist. Rabab Abdulhadi is a professor and founding director of the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies Program at San Francisco State University. She was scheduled to speak at Wake Forest on Oct. 7 for an event titled "One Year since al-Aqsa Flood: Reflections on a Year of Genocide and Resistance." In a message to the Wake Forest community, University President Susan Wente and Provost Michele Gillespie said canceling the lecture was a "conscious decision not to host events on this day that are inherently contentious and stand to stoke division in our campus community." (link)

Sep 23: Free Speech: The professor whose hiring ignited a recent protest at Austin Peay State University -- over his alleged connections to a website that promotes Nazism, racism and hate group activity -- has separated from the university. The university had not previously named the professor, who was hired into the Psychology Department this fall. Clarksville Now has previously reached out to [the professor] for comment. Monday afternoon, his name no longer appeared in the university directory or on Psychology Department program materials online. A website that tracks hate group activity has documented alleged connections between [the professor] and online sites and posts promoting extreme ideologies. Links to those findings were shared on the PeayMobile app, and APSU officials began investigating the matter. Several students have since dropped out of the professor’s Psychology courses in protest. (link)

Sep 23: Free Speech: The University of Pennsylvania is suspending a tenured law professor accused of making racist, sexist and homophobic remarks for a year with half pay. It is a significant sanction but one that falls short of the firing that some students wanted. The university issued a "public letter of reprimand" to [the professor] describing the terms of her suspension, which will begin in the fall of 2025 and which also includes the loss of her named chair and the loss of summer pay in perpetuity. Reacting to the suspension, Alex Morey, an official with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech group, said that Penn’s decision "should send a chill down the spine of every faculty member, not just at Penn but at every private institution around the country." (link)

Sep 23: Campus Protests: At least 200 students and staff participated in a pro-Palestinian walkout on Thursday, led by UNC Students for Justice in Palestine. The 'Walk out for the West Bank' began at 12:40 p.m., and protesters began walking in and out of various UNC buildings starting at 12:52 p.m. Demonstrators hung papers outlining their demands throughout buildings, spray painting messages like "Free Gaza," "F[***] UNC" and "Israel is a terror state" on the walls of Carroll Hall and other buildings as they walked. They also walked outside of the UNC NROTC Naval Armory, vandalizing the outside of the building with spray paint and draping a Palestinian flag from the gun turret. The American flag that waves outside of the building was also taken down by protesters around 1:48 p.m. (link)

Sep 22: Assault: A student at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania who scratched a racial slur onto the body of a fellow member of the school's swim team is no longer enrolled there, the college newspaper reported on Sunday, citing an official statement. The perpetrator and the victim had previously been suspended from the swim team pending an investigation. It was unclear from the college statement whether the perpetrator was expelled or left the school voluntarily. The incident occurred on Sept. 6 at a gathering of the swim team where the victim was the only person who was not white, according to a statement the victim's family sent to the Gettysburgian on Friday. (link)

Sep 19: Campus Protests: The windows are fixed. The graffiti has been painted over. The political debates still rage, but Portland State University officials say they’re glad the library is once again open to the public. University officials this week reopened the Branford Price Millar Library for the first time in nearly five months, weeks ahead of thousands of students returning to campus for fall term. Repairs cost the university $1.23 million, spokesperson Katy Swordfisk said during a walking tour with reporters Thursday. That included things like painting, restoring windows and fixtures, and buying equipment that was damaged during the four-day occupation last spring by demonstrators protesting attacks in Gaza. It remains unclear how much of the repairs will be covered by insurance. Officials said that will be its own process. They’re also still finding remnants of the event. (link)

Sep 19: Free Speech: A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that a Memphis graduate student’s social media posts were protected speech after the University of Tennessee Health Science Center temporarily expelled her from the school over posts made to the student’s private social media accounts in late 2020. The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals determined that graduate student Kimberly Diei’s social media posts, which had no connection with the university, could not be used to threaten academic punishment. The decision reverses a lower court’s August 2023 ruling that dismissed the case, sending the case back for further argument. The case centered around a number of posts made on Diei’s personal social media accounts between 2020 and 2021. (link)

Sep 18: Free Speech: The Mercury, the University of Texas at Dallas student newspaper, is on strike. Staff with The Mercury announced the strike Monday to demand the immediate reinstatement of editor-in-chief Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez, who was removed from his position Friday by the school's student media operating board. Student Media Director Lydia Lum called the meeting to remove Olivares Gutierrez. In a letter submitted to board members, Lum alleged Olivares Gutierrez violated student media bylaws including holding multiple student jobs, causing budget overruns and not allowing Lum to perform her job. The paper's staff, meanwhile, says the top editor's removal is retaliation for critical coverage in the wake of the May 1 pro-Palestinian student encampment. (link)

Sep 16: Threats: University and college campuses in Springfield canceled activities and moved to remote instruction on Sunday after receiving threats of violence tied to false claims about the city's Haitian immigrants. Wittenberg University canceled all sporting events and other activities on Sunday and said classes will be remote on Monday. Clark State College also canceled activities, closed all its campuses, and will conduct instruction virtually for the week. The two schools are the latest victims after a series of threats against government offices, schools, hospitals, and other facilities. The city of Springfield was thrust into the national spotlight after former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, began sharing misinformation about immigrants in the city stealing and eating pets. (link)

Sep 12: Campus Protests: Rattled by a wave of student demonstrations in the spring -- resulting in more than 3,100 arrests nationwide -- colleges across the country spent the typically slow summer months crafting new policies on campus activism. The Chronicle reviewed nearly four dozen campus policies -- 29 at public colleges, 15 at private colleges -- that were created or updated since the spring semester to restrict the time, place, or manner of student protests. The new guidelines address the use of masks, amplified sound, and tent encampments, among other issues. (link)

Sep 05: Hazing: As of Aug. 14, the Delta Tau chapter of Delta Kappa Epsilon -- or DKE -- has been suspended until Aug. 6, 2028, Dave Isaacs, a university spokesperson, said in an email. DKE was charged with hazing, endangering behavior and student conduct system abuse. DKE no longer has its registered student organization status due to the new suspension, Isaacs confirmed. On May 22, 2023, DKE was charged with a conduct violation for hazing and alcohol -- a violation that could include "use, underage intoxication, production, distribution, sale or possession" prohibited under law or university policy, according to the case file. Prior to May 2023, DKE was charged with hazing and endangering behavior Jan. 19, 2023 for an incident that allegedly took place in October 2022, according to one report on the Office of Student Life’s Student Conduct website. (link)

Sep 03: Free Speech: The University of Maryland has revoked the ability of student organizations to hold on-campus demonstrations on the anniversary of the Hamas attacks in Israel after at least one group reserved a location for a vigil commemorating Palestinian victims of the war. University President Darryll Pines wrote in a letter Sunday that only university-sponsored events would be permitted on Oct. 7 "out of an abundance of caution." The university faced pressure from Jewish groups and individuals to specifically ban a planned event hosted by the University of Maryland Students for Justice in Palestine. That group, in a statement Monday, said it would "not back down" and still aims to recognize the anniversary. It did not say whether that would include plans for an event Oct. 7 despite the university’s latest policy. (link)

Sep 01: Student Death: A motorcyclist has been arrested and charged in a crash that killed an 18-year-old freshman student who had just finished her first day of classes at the University of Delaware. On Thursday, Aug. 29, [a man], 27, was taken into custody at his home in Newark, Delaware. Investigators said [the man] was riding a motorcycle late Tuesday, Aug. 27, around 11:50 p.m. near the University of Delaware's campus in Newark. A University of Delaware police officer tried to stop [him] for committing traffic offenses on East Main and South Chapel streets, according to investigators. As [he] continued speeding, he struck Noelia Gomez, an 18-year-old freshman University of Delaware student who was walking in a crosswalk on West Main Street, just west of North College Avenue, police said. [He] also struck four other pedestrians on the sidewalk and a light pole, according to investigators. (link)

Sep 01: Racial Issues: A Columbia University task force set up to combat antisemitism on campus released its latest report on Friday, detailing numerous instances of harassment and even physical violence directed at Jewish students in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. The task force found "an urgent need to reshape everyday social norms" at Columbia and recommended changes in how the university prevents and responds to bias incidents. Since Oct. 7, the task force found, Jewish and Israeli students described being harassed with ethnic slurs and stereotypes, threatened and in some cases assaulted, and some said they were barred from certain student groups because of their Zionism. The task force heard from nearly 500 students, according to the latest report. (link)

Other

Sep 23: National Security: A House committee focused on threats from China argues in a new report that U.S. federal research funding had helped to advance Chinese technologies with military applications, fueling a potential national security rival to the United States. The report argues that Chinese partnerships with U.S.-funded researchers and universities have helped to propel Beijing’s advancements in fields like hypersonic and nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence and semiconductors, and that these developments may one day influence how the two nations perform on the battlefield. The report also recommends stricter guidelines around federally funded research, including significantly curtailing the ability of researchers who receive U.S. grants to work with Chinese universities and companies that have military ties. (link)

Sep 13: Antitrust Lawsuit: A University of California Los Angeles neuroscience professor has sued six major academic journal publishers, claiming in a proposed class action that they violated antitrust law by barring simultaneous submissions to multiple journals and denying pay for "peer review" services. Professor Lucina Uddin filed the lawsuit, opens new tab in Brooklyn federal court on Thursday against Elsevier, John Wiley & Sons, Sage Publications, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis and Wolters Kluwer. Scholarly journal submissions are reviewed by other experts in the author's field to vet their submissions for publication and comment on their findings. Uddin said that the practice of not paying scholars for peer reviews amounted to unlawful price-fixing. The lawsuit also said the publishers unlawfully agreed not to compete with each other for manuscripts, reducing any incentive to review and publish work more quickly. (link)

If you have any suggestions, questions or feedback, please e-mail Kevin Robinson at robinmk@auburn.edu or Robert Gottesman at gotterw@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.