The Racketeers of Academe

By Marilyn Dudley-Flores

The Racketeers of Academe

Sonoma State University's President Ruben Arminana's May 5th op-ed (p. B5) is another recurring example of coordinated bawling by CSU administrators about the state cutting the California State University's 23 campuses out of hundreds of millions of dollars. CSU presidents and its chancellor want parents and politicians alike to think that their cries are heartfelt, but there is very little heart in Arminana's message. It is really a threat, a stick-up in fact. "If you don't give us the money, we will turn away 10,000 students from the CSU." And, they will do it, too, to shake the state down.

Arminana specifically whined about a current 3.5 million dollar cut that would strike Sonoma State University. He reminded readers about a cut of $7.6 million over the 2002-2005 period. Do the math. That's a little over $11 million he's crying about. What he doesn't cry about is the many missing millions for which he is responsible.

What Arminana doesn't mention in his op-ed is the $5 million or more that SSU faculty have argued was fast-fingered away by Arminana and his lieutenants in the California Institute on Human Services affair (reported in this newspaper). He does not mention how that highly productive program was on the verge of leaving SSU because of how he was treating it. In typical Arminana fashion, he turned the tables on the CIHS officers by accusing them of malfeasance to cover up the complaints about him and his top officers.

Arminana also doesn't mention the continuing SSU faculty complaint about irregularities in the books at SSU that have gone relatively uninvestigated for more than a decade (also commented on in this newspaper). When good people at SSU suggested bringing a forensic accountant in to resolve questions about administrative malfeasance during the 2003-2004 academic year, they were disappeared from their jobs soon after on trumped up accusations. One of the casualties in that skullduggery was a young staff employee who had worked at SSU since his own student days there. Arminana did not do his homework on that ruse. It turned out that the employee was a relative of one of SSU's major private donors, a donor who had already given $5 million or more to the construction of the Green Music Center. That man will likely never give another dime to SSU.

To get rid of inconvenient employees, Arminana likes to use a couple of scams to ax the contracts of inconvenient faculty, staff, and even other administrators. The pattern is clear. They are either accused of a vague sexual complaint or impropriety or else some sort of robbery is implied. Many SSU employees have been so tarred since 2004. They are never faced with any actual accusers. And, despite the presence of their unions that are Davids to the CSU Goliath, they have no real recourse to grievance.

Arminana is not unique among CSU administrators. The Fresno State administration is another poster child of racketeering-style activities. Who can forget the many millions that court and out-of-court settlements have ordered be paid to three female employees wrongfully terminated because of vague smoke-and-mirrors excuses that touch on sexual goings-on?

Ruben Arminana is a master of ruses and so are his fellow CSU top administrators. The techniques they use are indicative of those used by professional union-busters. One example of one such CSU administrator is Mr. George Tejadilla. Tejadilla works in the CSU Chancellor's Office, having been hired away from his job as a lawyer for the U.S. Labor Department's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Program. Once someone who worked keeping university administrators' feet to the fire, he now works the other side of the street doing everything in his power to rubberstamp rejections of any CSU employees' complaints and whistleblowing. He does pretty well for himself, so well in fact that he is a principal in an airline, Cuba Travel Services (also dba as CTS Charters) that flies nonstop charters to Havana, Cuba and that has offices in places like Las Vegas, Florida, Puerto Rico, and, of course, Long Beach.

One wonders just how deep CSU racketeering goes? Only a proper investigation will tell, one that will let the dispossessed among CSU employees bear witness. On that day, the top administrators of the CSU campuses will need those millions of dollars they are trying to shake out of the state and a lots more besides. I did the math once. If the SSU alone were probed as a Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization (RICO), the damages to SSU employees harmed would be nearly one billion dollars.

More money does need to be routed to K-12 and postsecondary institutions in this state, but also what is needed is stringent state executive and legislative oversight over California's public colleges and universities, specifically the CSU -- the largest public university system in the world and the Enron of American Academe. It has been allowed to operate as a racket precisely because our elected officials have entrusted them to do their jobs with minimal oversight. As a result, the CSU has become a front for a type of academic mobster. Ruben Arminana sheds crocodile tears when he cries for more money from the state.

I was a professor. Before that, I used to be an investigative news reporter. The taxpayers of California are being robbed. Don't take my word for it. Google it up yourselves.

Bio. Marilyn Dudley-Flores was a Sonoma State faculty senator from 2002-2004. She is the CEO of OPS-Alaska, a think-tank based in Petaluma. In a former career, she reported on stories nationally for the Mutual Broadcasting System.