WESTFIELD – For more than a year rumors, fueled by anonymous letters and notes, have suggested that Westfield State University President Evan Dobelle has been spending university and Westfield State Foundations funds lavishly and inappropriately and those rumors have apparently reached the office of the state’s Inspector General.
The trustees of the university gathered for a special meeting last night in the Horace Mann Center on campus to consider a request from the inspector general’s office that the trustees direct their contractors and vendors, principally the university’s accounting firm, O’Connor and Drew of Braintree, to provide all their source material for an audit commissioned in October, 2012.
The IG’s requests asked that the trustees waive the university’s client privilege in regards to the audit information and trustees, led by Trustee Terry M. Craven, balked at the waiver but, after a closed doors meeting with legal counsel, agreed to cooperate with the request.
The trustees voted to direct its contractors and vendors, excluding legal counsel, “to cooperate fully with the office of the inspector general” with two dissenting votes.
One of those votes was cast by Craven, the first justice of the Suffolk County Juvenile Court, who said “I simply haven’t had the time to read the material and it’s not an informed vote by me.”
The other was cast by trustee James Ruberto, like Dobelle a former mayor of Pittsfield, also voted against the motion saying “I don’t think we have had sufficient time for the president, the foundation, the university itself to respond”.
The concerns which led to the meeting, voiced among other by Buzz Hoagland, president of the WSU faculty union, are centered on lavish spending by the university president which Dobelle says is well justified in his pursuit of a global university in Westfield.
Dobelle said that he welcomes the inquiry by inspector general because he believes it will put to rest the rumors which have been circulating.
He said that his expenditures are well spent in order to “globalize the institution” which he said is the faculty’s “number one” objective and said that the effort “costs money but we raise the money.”
“We take people to dinner who give us tens of thousands of dollars” he said and acknowledged that he sent professors abroad to Dubai and other foreign conferences and, closer to home, has also authorized funds to entertain groups of students who have contributed their time and effort to his bid to improve the school.
He said that perhaps other institutions do not follow the same practices but said “they didn’t hire me to be another president, they hired me to be a change agent and that’s what I do.”
