Club Fritch

This is juicy.

TRENT HUDDLESTON’S LAWSUIT

Back in November, NewsOk reported that Trent Huddleston filed a lawsuit (available here in PDF) against ORU claiming that:

…he was ordered to falsely report thousands of dollars of assets as expenses, which allowed the Robertses (sic) to spend university money on their extravagant lifestyle without agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service realizing how the money was being spent. … [and that] he was forced out of his position because he refused to remain silent about “the fact the defendants were committing illegal acts.”

Key quote from the article:

On the day Huddleston was forced out, an audit initiated by ORU’s regents was set to begin.

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THE AUDIT

So about that audit…

The Executive Committee of the Board of Regents enlisted Miller & Chevalier (a Washington DC law firm) with the help of Pickens Snodgrass Koch LLP (an Arlington, TX accounting firm) according to this brief by the TulsaWorld. ORU has been urged several times to release the results of that independent investigation. Honestly, we forgot about it – thinking that once the report was complete, they’d publish it or there’d be a public outcry or everything would go to court before we had a chance to think about it; because most ORU stakeholders (alums and donors) mentioned looking forward to hearing (or reading) the results of that independent audit.

But here’s what happened: the Board of Regents heard the audit given verbally in early January 2008, and have said little else about it.

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THE POINT OF THIS POST

So here’s the juicy part:

Yesterday, Trent Huddleston’s lawyers filed a MOTION FOR ORDER COMPELLING DISCOVERY. Here is a link to what “Motion for Order Compelling Discovery” means and here is a link to a PDF of the actual motion.

Look on Page 4 of the PDF. It’s ORU’s RESPONSES TO PLAINTIFF’S REQUESTS FOR PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS in which the first request is a copy of the independent audit report mentioned above and documents which were used to support the report. Key quote:

Defendants do not have any documents responsive to this request since no such written audit report exists.

Wait. It was delivered orally, but… that’s it? Irony aside, if you paid one of the most highly respected tax law firms in Washington to audit your multi-million dollar organization, wouldn’t you want something in writing when it was all over? Even if it was just an executive summary affirming your financial wholesomeness? The fact that an audit of a large private university was completed and delivered without anything in writing, seems pretty suspicious (and doubly so under the pretense that it was undertaken to placate accusations of wrongdoing at the university). Or is oral-delivery-only common practice in situations where the audit report is not legally required?

The response goes on to say:

To the extent Plaintiff is requesting documents reviewed or utilized to provide any verbal report, Defendants object to this request as overly broad, unduly burdensome, and not reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of relevant, admissible evidence in this case.

We wish we could have used that one when some ORU profs asked us to write papers! DTF Notebook? Mass media analysis papers? Oh sorry, that’s unduly burdensome!

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THE BOTTOM LINE

If ORU ordered the audit, in order to exonerate itself publicly or as a means to address the problems being raised, then wouldn’t it be in their interest to offer as much public display as possible about how they’re following its suggestions? And wouldn’t they want to publicly publish its findings? Unless… *GASP* maybe those findings are incriminating after all! In which case we understand ORU’s reticence to implicate itself while in the midst of litigation. But of course we want truth and justice, and hope that those findings are made public one way or the other, whether or not they incriminate anyone.

Of course we’re making a lot of assumptions here, but the bottom line is that we’re just trying to do our best to draw conclusions based on the information ORU has made available. We’d love to hear new evidence from them that suggests there’s no underhandedness afoot.

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P.S. ORU has restructured their governance don’cha know.

P.P.S. Mart Green’s plan for ORU involves becoming a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, which requires its members to make available to those who request them annual financial statements and reports for any projects that involve fundraising.