University recovering from scandals
Former NC first lady Mary Easley and university leaders fired over salary concerns
By SARAH WOLFE and ADAIR-HAYES CRANE
Hours after chancellor Doctor James Oblinger resigned on June 8, North Carolina State University officials fired former First Lady Mary Easley due to concerns about her position and pay in the University System.
Easley first began working at NC State in April of 2005 when, then Provost, Larry Nielsen created a job for her as manager of a speakers’ series. Nielsen created the job specifically for Easley and did not interview any other candidates. Easley’s starting salary was $90,000 a year.
Board Chairmen McQueen Campbell, a close friend of the Easley’s, was also involved in the hiring of Easley, sending emails to Oblinger asking him to “secure a job” for her.
Campbell has also been known to have often flown Governor Easley around the state and even to fishing trips in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. without reporting the expenses of gas, which exceeded the $4,000 a person can contribute to a campaign. Both Nielsen and Campbell resigned in May.
Easley’s job consisted of full-time hours nine months out of the year and she often spent less than six hours on campus a day, if she was on campus. However, trouble did not begin until last year when the Board of Trustees granted Easley an 88% pay raise, increasing her annual salary from $90,000 to $170,000.
This raise was not originally approved by the UNC system but later, Erskine Bowles, president of the UNC school system, agreed to the raise even though it violated rules of the system.
When North Carolina first began investigating Easley’s job on campus, Oblinger claimed to have nothing to do with the scandal and highly encouraged Easley to step down from her position. She refused, and was later terminated from the university.
However, files found on Oblinger’s computer said otherwise. E-mails between Oblinger and Campbell guaranteeing that the chancellor would secure a job for Easley surfaced and Oblinger claimed to not remember the exchange. After these surfaced, Oblinger stepped down, suffering a major pay cut from his position as chancellor to return to the University as a professor of Food Science.
Then the University appointed the “Interim” Chancellor Jim Woodward, a former chancellor of University of North Carolina at Charlotte and former teacher at NC State.
When Easley’s 88% pay raise surfaced in the public media, negative attention was immediately put on NC State. Since Easley was working for the university, it seems like every official associated with the school had something to do with the pay increase and the creation of Easley’s job.
When it came into the public’s knowledge that Easley was working irregular hours and would only sometimes pick up the phone or order a speaker for the university’s needs, it made it apparent that Easley should resign so that her association with NC State would not further allow the university to receive negative media.
The university officials, however, did act in an appropriate manner in order to take NC State’s image to from negative back to positive in the public eye. Campbell and Nielsen resigned in May 2009. Chancellor Oblinger resigned June 8, 2009. These officials felt that their resignation would be appropriate for the university as a whole so that the situation would be silenced. Since their resignation and with the investigation closed, the university is in the process of building their reputation back up in order to assure that a similar situation does not happen again at NC State.
Since the resignation of Chancellor James Oblinger in June, Interim Chancellor Jim Woodward has taken place of Oblinger. Woodward, who is the former chancellor of University of North Carolina at Charlotte, made significant changes to that campus, and is expected to make such positive changes at NC State as well. When Interim Chancellor Woodward began his work at UNC-C, there were approximately 12,900 students attending the school, by the time he left, there were over 20,000 students after all of the positive changes he made to the school. He also funded for a $350 million dollar building update as well as headed up UNC-C’ becoming a public research school.
After NC State hit the public media with Easley’s investigation about her job at the university, it has been made known that Interim Chancellor Woodward will make much positive change to the school in the middle of this crisis. “Chancellor Woodward will be leading NC State through a challenging period in which it will be rebuilding its leadership team and dealing with difficult budget-related decisions,” according to the alumni website for NC State.
Interim Chancellor Woodward will have a positive effect on this university as he heads the school out of a crisis that has been created over the controversy with Mary Easley’s firing as well as the resignation of Oblinger, Nielsen and Campbell.