WVU Students and Alumni for the Resignation of President Mike Garrison

In April an investigative panel determined that Heather Bresch, daughter of WV Governor Joe Manchin, was fraudulently awarded an eMBA degree.

West Virginia University, its alumni and current students have been the victims of these events. In the circumstances we call for WVU President Michael Garrison to resign.

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The following post-gazette news release is relevant:

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- West Virginia University administrators made a "seriously flawed" decision fraught with favoritism in awarding Mylan Inc. executive Heather Bresch a graduate degree she didn't earn, investigators said in a scathing report released yesterday.

Provost Gerald Lang said he would follow the recommendation of the investigative panel and the university's Board of Governors and rescind the degree.

The report by the five-member panel concluded administrators acted hastily, using ambiguous and incomplete information to award an M.B.A. degree retroactively in October to Ms. Bresch, the daughter of West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin.

The decision was made following a telephone conversation between the governor's daughter and WVU President Michael Garrison, a family friend and former business associate of Ms. Bresch, the report said.

The report concluded administrators falsified Ms. Bresch's transcript by adding courses to her record that she did not take and by entering grades "simply pulled from thin air." The actions reflected "failures of process and failures of leadership" at the state's flagship university, it said.

Top administrators "should have been more deliberate, more discerning and more detached in assessing the evidence that they had in hand," investigators said. "They should have hesitated to rely so heavily on fragments of self-serving, hearsay conversations that they could not and did not even try to confirm or verify."

Ms. Bresch issued a statement to The Associated Press, saying that while she continues to believe she did what was required to earn her degree, she will accept the panel's conclusion out of respect for her alma mater.

"To put this issue behind us is the best course of action for everyone," she said in an e-mail to The AP. "Therefore, while I am not waiving my privacy rights, I will not challenge action by the university implementing the panel's recommendations."

The investigative panel was formed after a Dec. 21 story by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette raised questions about how officials went about granting the degree, nearly a decade after Ms. Bresch left the program, despite official university records showing she was missing 22 credits in the 48-credit-hour program.

While the report portrayed Mr. Lang and business school Dean R. Stephen Sears as the main decision makers, it noted that the president's office "reacted immediately" on the basis of telephone conversations Ms. Bresch had with Mr. Garrison and also with his chief of staff, Craig Walker.

The Post-Gazette has requested records of Mr. Garrison's phone calls during that time under the Freedom of Information Act, but WVU has not provided them. The newspaper is suing the university to obtain those and other records withheld by university officials.

Records of Mr. Walker's phone lines indicate he and Ms. Bresch exchanged nine phone calls between Oct. 11, when Ms. Bresch called Mr. Walker to dispute the registrar's statement that same day to the Post-Gazette that she did not earn the degree, and Oct. 15, when Mr. Lang approved Mr. Sears' decision to award the degree.

The decision was made at an Oct. 15 meeting, called by Mr. Walker, that lasted less than an hour. The sentiment among those attending "was that a way should be found to justify the granting of the degree, if at all possible," the report stated.

Investigators believe those at the meeting, including four business school officials, were under "actual or perceived pressure to go along with this decision, not to 'rock the boat,'" the report states.

The investigative panel was chaired by WVU professor Roy Nutter. Other members were WVU professor Michael Lastinger, University of Pittsburgh law professor John Burkoff, Pace University economics professor Arthur Centonze and University of Missouri-Columbia management professor Lori Franz.

Their report was released publicly yesterday following a special meeting of WVU's Board of Governors. Board Chairman Steve Goodwin said members unanimously accepted the panel's findings "in principle."

The board said Mr. Garrison should accept responsibility for the university's actions....

Source: Thursday, April 24, 2008
By Len Boselovic and Patricia Sabatini, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette