Defective Trojans, Harassing Hawkeyes: How Money Corrupts Campuses

pro·phy·lac·tic: 1. intended to prevent disease.

It’s too late for that at USC (University of Southern California, with Trojan mascot). The dean of the medical school was great at raising money and schmoozing with the rich and famous.

He resigned as dean in March 2016 — three weeks after a 21-year-old woman who told the New York Times she had been working as a prostitute allegedly overdosed in the dean’s hotel room. Police found methamphetamine in the room and talked with the dean but made no arrests. Nice guy that he is, the dean—an eye surgeon— later picked up his college-age hooker from the hospital—only to take her back to the hotel and continue the party.

More than a year later, a video surfaced last week. Taken in 2015 and 2016, they show the dean using drugs with much younger friends at several locations — including in the dean’s office at USC.

If the Trump administration wants to soft-pedal meetings with Russia, maybe they took a cue from the leaders of USC. Trojan leaders ignored an anonymous letter that tipped them off to this scandal. They did not respond until the photos and videos of the defective Trojan went viral. Yesterday, USC president lamely said that officials “could have done better.”

The root problem here is that USC has raised $6 BILLION in its current capital campaign. The medical dean was a fundraising rock star. Why let principles get in the way?

Meanwhile, Iowa has a mess on its hands, too. Two months ago, the University of Iowa agreed to pay $6.5 million to settle discrimination lawsuits filed by former a senior associate athletic director and her partner. 

Just like the USC president, the Iowa AD, Gary Barta, took an aw-shucks approach.

The Des Moines Register, upset with Barta, summed it up this way:

“On July 11, in his first public comments since the agreement was announced, Barta said he doesn’t feel, even in hindsight, that the department did anything wrong — at least nothing that would warrant a $6.5 million cashectomy. ‘We did what we thought was right at the time,’ he said. ‘We still believe that, principally, we were in the right.’”