My Unreleased Stevens’ Legal Woes Piece

I wrote this piece the night it was announced that Stevens was being sued by the state’s Attorney General regarding financial improprieties. I don’t really know why I did not publish it that night but I was doing some house-cleaning in my writing folder and stumbled upon it. Keep in mind that this document has not changed since then so clearly more stuff has come out since I wrote it but I just wanted this out there.

Stevens Legal Woes

As a fifth year senior from the Stevens Institute of Technology, last night’s news of the legal proceedings of the misappropriation of endowment funds and excessive compensation were eye opening but should not have been very surprising to anyone within the Stevens’ community.

Stevens Institute of Technology has gone out of its way to try to ensure academic integrity on its campus with seminars and instructional exhibits on the consequences of academic dishonesty. In virtually every single classroom, there hangs up a sign stating the Stevens Honor Code with the quote, “The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.” One would think that an institution that has invested significant resources towards its Honor System would at the least be willing to open up its books in the face of these widespread allegations of improprieties.

I have a feeling Stevens doesn’t want this to be a prolonged, dragged out process as they have already highlighted in their briefing earlier for a private, confidential arbitration — which would be a huge win for the Institution but makes you wonder what they have to hide? It could just be a case of hiding bad PR for a private school that has developed international reaches over the past decade and the longer this is out in the media, the more it hurts their standing.

Anyways, here is an email that was just sent out the entire Stevens’ community regarding the legal action that was filed by the Stevens Institute of Technology Board of Trustees. Stevens definitely tries to make a very legitimate case that the Attorney General has overstepped her boundaries but is that enough justification to try and cover up their financial misappropriation of endowment funds and excessive compensation to people like President Hal Raveche.

I love how the following line appears in the first few pages describing Stevens. “It has forged relationships with foreign educational institutes which span the world, and it has become recognized as a significant partner to the United States government in the war on terrorism.” There is nothing more despicable than trying to imply a little fear of terrorism in lawsuits to try to win a case.

I really wonder how much this is political gamesmanship but you have to think this was a long time coming with the financial problems Stevens Institute of Technology has had in the past. It is a little ironic this was announced on the day that Stevens held a humanities forum on the corruption of Jersey politicians and politics.

Plenty of angry sentiments amongst the students from what I have gathered so far but I cannot say it is all one sided. Some people definitely do not like the timing of this announcement with an election coming up in about a month or so but we will see what kind of impact this really ends up having when all is said and done.

I would not expect this to be a speedy process but this certainly livens up senior year as if Hoboken did not already have enough going on.