 by Dr. Jeffrey Lant. Author's program note. The summer of '13 was blown out of town yesterday, winds gusting, the rains torrential, a whole forest of venerable oaks and maples cast down into the ancient soil of New England, a scene from Currier and Ives... or Norman Rockwell, the man from the Saturday Evening Post whose eye for gen-u-wine Americana was never wrong, cherishing as he did our stern verities and picturesque mores. Yes, fall has come to New England and with it whole brigades of eager-beaver students who come to crack the occasional book... and to attend the virtually non-stop parties that make Ol' P.U. such a satisfactory place to pass one's uninhibited, gloriously misspent salad days. Rah-rah-rah! These students, particularly the ones at places like Westfield State University in bucolic, entirely forgettable Western Massachusetts who attend an institution so little known that it and its glamor starved students couldn't even be forgotten, never having reached the eminence of "Where did you say you go to school?" Admit it, Westfield State University is a place you never heard of until recent events... that's ok. Even though I live just a hop, skip, and a jump from its hallowed halls I'd hardly ever heard of it myself... that is until its born-again adolescent president Evan Dobellle took over; a hot wire who never met a party he didn't insist on attending, never mind it was a couple thousand miles away. As for cost, no problem. He could authorize up to $500,000 without board approval; $200,000 with a university funded credit card. With so much virtual cash in hand, he was the chief cheerleader; masquerading as chief executive, his objective clear: let's parteeeeee. Thus he placed the hicks of Westfield State in the middle of the biggest scandal they have ever had since their inception in 1838. It is a scandal that should never have take place and wouldn't have taken place had the Board of Trustees not been asleep at the switch. For the truth is, the real scandal here is not that Evan Dobelle does the shocking, selfish, self-aggrandizing thing at every opportunity. That's what Evan Dobelle has specialized in throughout his roller coaster career. The scandal is that every time the board could have ditched Evan by the side of the road, their problem no more, they didn't act... thereby ensuring bigger and more costly problems to come, until the entire campus at Westfield State was involved, its esteemed trustees at each other's throats, politicians up to and including His Excellency Deval Patrick the governor, ordinarily so bored and distant from his duties we could easily forget we even have a governor... all these wasting time and money because Dobelle passed his day wasting time and money, for he was a past master of that razzmatazz. The music. Before we dig further into the matter of the beguiling, fast-talking, "Hi, it's me, Evan, your BBF" thing, I want you to watch a clip from the 1963 film "Cleopatra", the amazing and mind-bogglingly expensive movie featuring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Like Evan their objective was never to work; work is for other people; the people who don't know anything about how to live right, that being interpreted as the complete unwillingness to behave responsibly, to do the good thing, the right thing, the thing that will help the maximum number of people and inconvenience the least. It goes without saying that this is not how Dobelle thinks... or anyone whose universe begins and ends with ME FIRST... as his so obviously, so flagrantly... so totally and completely does. At this point, you should go to any search engine and find a magnificent film clip from "Cleopatra", specifically when the great (and greatly self indulgent) queen of Egypt sails down the Nile to meet the great (and greatly self indulgent) Marc Anthony... both pledged to secure and enjoy a world entirely focused on them, their wants the only ones that counted. Thus, as you watch this clip, think Evan Dobelle and how very lucky he was first to inherit, then to shape a pliable board of trustees so beguiled by Dobelle and whatever pop foolishness came out of his mouth that they allowed him every license, every privilege, the increasingly irresponsible Evan aided and abetted at all times by the board and its increasingly irresponsible members, their very timidity the most regrettable feature of all. For if Dobelle was already tainted when he arrived at Westfield, the university's board ensured he would get worse as he battened and grew fat on their very limited resources using for personal trifles and whims money clearly earmarked for educational programs and scholarships, in due course bankrupting them. As Massachusetts Inspector General Glenn A. Cunha reported it was all done "indiscriminately with little or no consideration" for its intended purpose. In pre-revolutionary France such people were branded with the single letter "V", for "Voleur". Unfortunately, our advanced civilization does not allow such directness or honest labeling. It is time to review the Board's many opportunities for curtailing the Dobelle parasite so destructive in every feature, fatal if not eradicated. Item: The board's presidential search program was clearly flawed. The board, of course, now says that Dobelle was the best of a crop of not particularly stellar candidates. In such cases, it makes more sense to appoint an interim president and re-open the search. The alternative chosen by the board put in office in 2007 a man whose entire career was shadowed by frequent, vivid, detailed and entirely credible reports of mismanagement and financial chicaneries. No doubt members of the search committee hoped Dobelle had changed his M.O. How naive! Does the leopard change his spots? And so the hot potato was kicked upstairs to the full board. Item: At this point it would have been easy to derail Dobelle's express towards the $250,000 a year job he coveted. A few phone calls to senior administrators, at say, his previous trough the University of Hawaii, would no doubt have yielded a bumper crop of doubts and hesitations... thereby saving Westfield from all the costly mistakes and errors which have followed. The trustees gambled, however, and Westfield lost. It was to become a habit, deleterious, out of control. Item: Given the fact that Dobelle was hired to raise funds for scholarships and for various educational programs designed to sharpen Westfield's edge in a very competitive market, wouldn't you think it advisable for the board to appoint oversight committees, the better to understand and guide the process, ensuring the desirable results? But this was not the sensible path they selected. Instead their policy here as elsewhere was "Let Evan do it"... and so the folly was well and truly afoot. Boards do this, of course, because they are composed of busy people and like the self-congratulatory kudos better than work and, besides, they reckon their president can walk on water... like he said he could. Ol' Evan is a caution alright and if there are no results, it surely couldn't be because he didn't know squat about fund raising, although he always talked a good game. And throughout it all, Dobelle squandered, all on that overworked credit card some over trusting worthies on the board gave him... as the bills came in, they worried. Evan never did. "It takes money to make money". "You've got to be patient." And the granddaddy of all, "Rome wasn't built in a day". It was malarkey, but the grandiloquent Evan could charm the shoes off your feet... and sell them back to you at twice their cost. What's more, you'd be glad to cough up, to help such an enterprising lad along. Problem is, this "lad" is now 68... and because of the high visibility scandal at Westfield, following tarnished records at other institutions, therefore unemployable... and that promises a real imbroglio. His quiet exit from Westfield, you see, is his last major asset, a cushion for his old age. Evan predictably says he won't leave; intends to stay forever. He would. He gets money from impoverished and hurting Westfield by the day. At this point a majority of the board wants him gone... but, incredibly, he still has his adherents, people still dazzled by Dobelle and his visions; (think Cleopatra's royal barge and its flashy opulence, all paid by credit.) What a show! Bit by bit this slow-moving, lethargic, irresponsible, timid board will get its act together and push the flagrant Dobelle to leave. He's a street fighter, however; he'll threaten a lawsuit citing irrevocable damage to his "reputation", as he did at the University of Hawaii, a very nasty business from which he emerged with millions. The board better get themselves a real good Boston attorney prepared for sturm und drang. Evan will in due course go... his saddlebags filled with whatever he can carry, including all the plastic cutlery in the cafeteria. He'll no doubt have the best reasons in the world for taking it. Some poor sap will believe him. Thus the phoenix that is Evan Dobelle may well rise again. After all, as P.T. Barnum once memorably said, "There's a sucker born every minute." Author's note. This is the second of a two-part series about President Evan Dobelle and the scandals in his administration at Westfield State University, Westfield, Massachusetts. For the first part, go to jeffreylantarticles.com and search on Dobelle, Westfield, etc |
