An alert and regular reader sent me this article from last weekend’s New York Times: “Furor Swirls Over College Chief’s House,” which is about a controversy about the President of North Dakota State University’s new house that is strikingly similar to EMU’s infamous house controversy. The opening paragraphs:
Education officials in North Dakota called Friday for an audit on the construction of a house built for the president of North Dakota State University, who resigned last week amid mounting questions about the project’s huge cost overrun, to a total of more than $2 million.
Joseph A. Chapman, president of the public university, in Fargo, announced Wednesday afternoon that he would depart in January. In a telephone interview, Dr. Chapman, 67, said he had long planned to step down by the end of this academic year anyway, adding of his role, “It’s just not as much fun as it once was.”
The short article is interesting reading only in that the circumstances at NDSU are remarkably similar to the way things were here at EMU: the house is enormously over budget, it’s called “far outside the values of people” for being so grandiose, the president initially said it was the foundation’s idea, not his, but then it came to light that president was more involved than previously thought, etc. Heck, Chapman’s wife was even a “paid ambassador” for the university! The only difference is that Chapman seems to have done a heck of a lot more for NDSU than Kirkpatrick ever did for EMU.
