Investigators say dean made students do housework for scholarships

[sonomak]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/10/01/new.york.dean.servants/?hpt=T2

Investigators say dean made students do housework for scholarships
By the CNN Wire Staff

(CNN) -- Investigators say a former vice president and dean at a New York university forced students to cook, clean, wash clothes and chauffeur her family -- and threatened that their scholarships would be revoked if they refused.

An arrest affidavit unsealed by federal prosecutors this week alleges that Cecilia Chang required scholarship students at St. John's University to take out the garbage, shovel snow and cook food at her home in Queens, New York. "Chang threatened the students and placed them in fear that if they refused to perform these personal services, they would lose their scholarships and be unable to attend St. John's," FBI Special Agent Kenneth F. Hosey said in the affidavit. At the time, she was a vice president and dean with the authority to award scholarships, the affidavit said.

In addition to requiring students to perform household chores, Chang also asked students to conduct financial transactions and deliver cash to her at a casino, according to the affidavit. She was suspended from her job in January, according to the affidavit.

Last month, she was indicted on charges that she stole more than $1 million from the university, including $250,000 in funds that she allegedly diverted from a charitable foundation in Saudi Arabia.

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. What an awful, awful person!

[cliffordu]

2. I thought "OMFG!!! What are they accusing Howard Dean of now???"

:rofl:

[RZM]

3. This has happened before at the graduate level

The late Elizabeth Fox Genovese did the same thing at Emory -- forcing her graduate students to do various chores with the threat of refusing to sign their dissertations if they wouldn't go along. Ironic too, because she was considered a premier feminist scholar and she tended to single out female students for this kind of work (though I do imagine that a large number of her advisees were female, but still . . . )

[arbusto_baboso]

4. Is she related - however distantly - to Meg Whitman?