An article in today’s Wall Street Journal raises questions about the way Vanderbilt University oversees its budget and the spending of Chancellor Gordon Gee.
According to the article, Vanderbilt’s board of trustees did not review the university’s budgets for the first five years of Gee’s tenure. It says that some trustees became concerned that the board wasn’t keeping a close enough eye on the Chancellor. The concerns reportedly arose after the discovery that, without knowledge of the full board, chair Martha Ingram had disciplined Gee’s wife, Constance. Mrs. Gee allegedly kept and smoked marijuana for medicinal purposes in the university-owned Braeburn Mansion.
As a result, the paper says the board performed a governance review, which revealed unchecked spending on events at Braeburn mansion. The article goes on to say that an expense panel has been formed to monitor the Chancellor’s spending.
University spokesman Michael Schoenfeld says the article paints an inaccurate picture.
“The executive committee of the board of trust has approved all the budget expenditures, construction programs, everything else. The executive committee has the authority to act on behalf of the board, and it does. The executive committee meets frequently throughout the year, both in person and by phone, and Vanderbilt actually has very rigorous procedures for what gets approved by the board and all of those are followed scrupulously.”
Citing university privacy policies, Schoenfeld would not comment on the allegations that Constance Gee smoked marijuana in the mansion, or whether it played a role in any board decisions. He says the governance review was conducted in response to changing federal regulations. And he says that the move to create an expense oversight panel is just the latest step in a long-standing effort to manage university finances.
For full disclosure, Schoenfeld is also a member of WPLN’s Board of Directors.
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