Want to get paid over $300,000 to do nothing but take a year off
after messing up your job? Then you can come work for the
University of California.
At least, that’s the message we got over winter break,
when UC officials announced the No. 2 person in their Office of the
President had violated conflict of interest policies ““ but
said they would do nothing but send her on a yearlong sabbatical
with $301,840 in her pocket.
That’s because the official ““ former UC Santa Cruz
Chancellor and UC Provost MRC Greenwood ““ resigned in
November when officials began investigating allegations that she
had hired a former business partner for a newly created management
position.
According to the terms of the separation, Greenwood would
receive three month’s paid administrative leave and a
year’s sabbatical, both at provost-level pay. She will also
return to the UC with a faculty post at the UC Davis College of
Agriculture at a salary of $163,800 per year.
And when the UC’s investigation found Greenwood guilty of
bad hiring practices, the worst officials could do (at least,
according to a UC spokesman) was remove her from being provost
““ which she had already done herself. In other words,
she’s not even getting a slap on the wrist.
Call us old-fashioned, but we believe that when you screw up,
you should be punished. Violating policies by hiring your buddy
might not be the end of the world, but it’s a severe breach
of integrity and should carry some sort of chastisement.
When UC students are caught turning in a plagiarized paper (or
even a paper with a plagiarized paragraph), they are essentially
read the riot act ““ and justly so. But standards seem to be
different in the UC’s upper echelon.
What’s especially ugly about the Greenwood incident is it
comes just after officials pledged to be more forthcoming and
careful with hiring and salary-related decisions. The pledge was
spurred by the revelation that the UC paid over $871 million in
extra compensation to top administrators and staff.
In fact, two days before the UC released its findings on
Greenwood, it trumpeted several reforms planned to “provide
greater oversight and understanding about UC compensation policies
and practices.” This included statements about how the UC is
a “public trust” and should be forthcoming.
But even as officials pay lip service to the “public
trust,” they aren’t giving us any reason to consider
them trustworthy. Along with the Greenwood announcement, the UC
also found that a second UC official improperly created a
$45,000-per-year position at UC Merced for Greenwood’s son.
(That official, Winston Doby, is on paid administrative leave.)
Though Greenwood has not been connected to that incident, the
streak of favoritism is striking.
Given that the UC entered into a severance agreement with
Greenwood in November, there probably wasn’t a way it could
ask for the $301,840 back a month later. But we struggle to see why
she was let go with such a generous package when she was under
investigation in the first place.
In a Dec. 19, 2005 statement on UC hiring practices, the
regents’ own chairman Gerald Parsky said, “While UC
must maintain its ability to compete with top universities across
the nation for outstanding researchers, teachers and
administrators, we must do so in ways that are transparent and
understandable to the public.”
“Understandable,” Mr. Parsky? We’re
baffled.