Records show Gearhart halted group meetings

University of Arkansas at Fayetteville Chancellor G. David Gearhart stopped holding regular meetings of his fundraising division’s leadership group a few days after a contested Jan. 14 meeting, university records show.

Former chief spokesman John Diamond has testified in a legislative hearing that Gearhart became angry at the January meeting and ordered Division of University Advancement administrators to get rid of budget documents and stop creating them.

Gearhart denied ordering anyone to destroy documents.

Gearhart and Diamond made the conflicting statements under oath to legislators on Sept. 13.

In a Jan. 25 email obtained last week by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Gearhart, who was acting as interim chief of the fundraising unit, canceled without explanation further meetings of the group. The meetings had been held regularly for years.

Gearhart declined to respond to the newspaper’s questions about the meeting cancellation, saying he “believes it would not be appropriate to comment while these issues are under investigation, no matter how sensational the allegations may be,” spokesman Mark Rushing said in an email.

But in a follow-up email to the newspaper, Rushing said that the meetings “were canceled because [Gearhart] thought in the interests of using his time most appropriately, he could accomplish more by meeting with various leaders with the division when they needed him” on an individual basis.

Agenda records show that Gearhart chaired Monday meetings of the group, called the University Advancement Committee. The group apparently did not meet Jan. 21, listed as the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

Then came the Jan. 25 email, sent by one of Gearhart’s assistants, Laura Villines, to 11 staff members, including the chancellor.

“We will no longer be having UAC [University Advancement Committee]meetings,” the email said. “Dave has asked that if you have specific issues, you bring those to his attention individually. I have removed the UAC meetings from the calendar.”

Through a university spokesman, Villines said Friday that she remembers that another Gearhart assistant, Gloria Sutherland, asked her to circulate the memo.

Rushing also sent a written response about the canceled meetings from associate vice chancellor for development Mark Power.

“As a senior leader within the division, I didn’t have any expectation that the chancellor would continue to lead the Advancement meetings - as he obviously has many other responsibilities,” Power wrote.

Former chief of fundraising Brad Choate told the Democrat-Gazette that the group had held weekly meetings since he took that job in 2008 and that Gearhart, who had headed the division previously, had held similar meetings.

“I thought they were worthwhile,” Choate said. “I was surprised when I heard he had canceled them.”