University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff Chancellor Lawrence A. Davis Jr. was advised by unnamed parties not to grant interviews to the media until the results of an Arkansas State Police investigation are known.
UAPB spokesperson Tisha Arnold said that comments made by Davis in front of university students on Wednesday as well as during a meeting for university faculty and staff Tuesday afternoon precipitated the decision to separate him from the media until the completion of the State Police investigation. The investigation was requested by the prosecutor’s office in connection with a multi-year audit by the University of Arkansas System. The audit results were released Monday.
The U of A System audit investigated allegations of fraud and abuse of funds at the Harrold Dorm Complex and Living Learning Center between July 1, 2008, and June 30, 2010.
The Commercial was working with UAPB to schedule an interview with Davis prior to the decision not to discuss the audit results.
“The bottom line is nobody has stolen any money,” Davis said Tuesday. “No one has committed any crime. The only crime committed was leaving our students in that situation in those dorms as long as we did. No money is unaccounted for. No money is missing. Nobody stole anything.”
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Davis told the meeting of faculty and staff Tuesday that unsanitary and unsafe conditions at the Harrold Dorm Complex constituted a dire emergency that allowed him to use Title III endowment funds in a discretionary manner to renovate the facility.
U.S. Department of Education Title III Part A programs are intended to be used by eligible institutions of higher education to become self-sufficient and to serve low-income students.
“We hope that this will be a speedy investigation,” Arnold said.
U of A System President Donald R. Bobbitt on Thursday defended the findings of his audit team.
“We take the audit very seriously,” Bobbitt said in a statement. “The internal audit team is very experienced and conducted a thorough investigation. The auditors spent almost two years identifying issues and seeking documentation for transactions at the Harrold Complex. Clearly, university policies and procedures were not followed at the dorm, and the UA System is continuing to work to correct the problems uncovered by the audit.”
Arkansas State Police officials confirmed last week that a criminal investigation into alleged fraudulent activity related to the contents of the audit findings has been opened.
The U of A System audit findings include:
- $736,880 in payments related to payroll and purchasing orders did not go through the proper accounting channels and, consequently, the auditors could not verify that they had been spent properly;
- $4,219 from seven disbursements out of the university’s Title III Endowment Agency Account that Harrold Complex director Rita Ticey was unable to provide supporting documents for, with five of the seven disbursements totaling $3,619 as personal reimbursements to Ticey;
- State nepotism laws and university policies were violated;
- Standard payroll and vendor procedures were generally disregarded;
- Payroll issues including student workers who were overpaid or underpaid, students reporting working 12-hour days or work days without lunch breaks, student workers reporting long hours, including one who reported working 110 hours in one week, duplicate payroll payments to the same employee and other issues;
- Vendor payment issues including payments made to vendors whose existence could not be verified by auditors, vendors paid differently for the same job, vendors selected without going through the proper competitive bid process, a $25,475 payment made to the Athletic Department that Ticey could not explain and other issues.