Joined at the hip

The UA’s shaky foundation

Just where does the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville end and its Razorback Foundation begin? That’s a question best addressed in the courtroom, but it should also be tackled in the court of public opinion, where We the People have every right to our say. For the answer involves the public’s money — a great deal of it. Just how much remains a mystery, perhaps by intent. For if the total amount involved can’t be determined, how assure that it’ll be used — every penny of it — for the public good, somehow, some way? It’s enough of a puzzle to cross an accountant’s eyes and leave tax lawyers debating from here to eternity.

Who knew that what started as a game for college boys would evolve or maybe devolve into a Big Business with all the commercialization and corruption attached thereto? Answer: Just about anybody familiar with leaving some things done and others undone. For there is nothing so innocent that it can’t be corrupted by those with an eye for the chance and means to substitute their own interest for the public’s. The myth of the college athlete was exposed years ago. But it doesn’t hurt to acknowledge its faults once again. That this whole charade is being performed in the name of education on UA-F’s campus only adds another ironic twist to what has become an old and sad story that repetition doesn’t make any more attractive.

How closely have the university’s athletic department and its supposedly private foundation been working? As closely as any other pair of conjoined twins. Examples abound, but just to cite a few of the more flagrant ones, reported over the last few weeks by the news hounds at Arkansas’ Newspaper:

Officials of the foundation helped interview candidates for jobs in the university’s athletic department, and got to provide their own judgments about which ones would make a better fit. The university was quick to shake it all off, like a concussed lineman, saying that the foundation “does not have any decision-making authority with respect to any University hiring decisions.” Hmmmm. Then the question must be asked: Why ask the foundation’s people to sit in on hiring interviews? Or is this something like editorial boards at other newspapers, where editors sit in on five or six meetings a day because they have nothing else to do? Is this just make-work for the foundation’s employees?

Also, a salesman of athletic tickets, employed by the university, offered to fill out a Razorback football fan’s donation paperwork for him — paperwork to accompany a donation to the Razorback Foundation.

Top officials of the foundation regularly sat in on the athletic department’s sessions to discuss strategy.

The director of the foundation sat in on a discussion about how to restructure a position in the university’s athletic department.

And those are just the findings this week as the investigating reporters on the other side of the room keep digging through emails. Since late last year, they’ve found other examples of how the university and its foundation are tied in knots, and are trying their best to keep the nosy public out of the public’s business.

Yet the officials over at the foundation claim to be exempt from the state’s Freedom of Information Act on the dubious ground that their foundation gets no public money. For those who have the patience just to follow the money trail, that threadbare line comes across as less of an explanation than a cover story.

A trove of emails found by using the state’s public-records law shows that the university’s staffers cooperate fully with their counterparts at the foundation on a broad range of everyday business and so pretty much erase any line that once might have existed between school and the foundation. Since sometime late last year Arkansas’ Newspaper has checked out some 22,000 pages of emails to determine whether the Razorback Foundation is the “functional equivalent” of the university’s athletic department — a key test of whether Arkansas’ open records laws apply to the foundation.

To quote John Tull, general counsel of the Arkansas Press Association, “there is no bright line rule for when an entity is so intertwined with a public entity so as to be found to be the equivalent to the public entity; it is a matter of degree but generally the more closely involved in decision-making it is the more likely a court could so find.” And anyone who denies the connection between the Razorback Foundation and the university has not been paying close-enough attention. It’s all there in the papers. For those with eyes to see.

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