New documents released

The Campus Democracy Coalition, a loose confederation of concerned students and student organizations, held a press conference this morning to release financial documents that were obtained through an open records request. The documents, and their meaning, are:
Time Log -- Russ Rueden This is Russ Rueden's time card from August 2006. It lists him as having worked ten days that month from midnight to noon. While this may be the case, there are obvious questions associated with this:

1. What was going on at that time that required working such hours and required 12 hour shifts?
2. Over the summer, the building closes at 10:00 p.m., and anyone who is in there after hours (allowable as an officer of a student organization) must contact Client Services (who act as on-site security for the building) and inform them of this. Do their records concur with this timecard?
3. The building is locked two hours before these shifts began. Did Mr. Rueden gain access after hours, or did he enter before his shift and choose to begin working at midnight?
4. It is possible to edit the file, so the time period may have been mistaken (and should have read noon to midnight instead of the reverse). Even so, it still means that he was in the office after hours, for which records should still be available from Client Services.

Time Log -- Jon Tingley This is Vice President Tingley's card from the same time period. This one shows important information. First, the EDIT tag is visible, which would allow people to edit the record. Second, there are, in most cases, exact times posted, as opposed to the neatly-rounded hours found on the previous card. This shows that this is likely a record of hours that was not edited after the fact, except for one or two possible places.

Time Log -- Samantha Prahl This is the most interesting of the time logs. Not only are all of the times rounded off, there are a large number of them recorded by hand. When asked about this, she claimed that those times represented days when there were over 20 people who needed to be entered into the system, which is more than it can handle. Therefore, on those days, she volunteered to not be included and record hours manually.

20 people maximum on the account seems like a reasonable number, but the claim that the limit was not only reached over the summer, but reached nearly constantly, begins to stretch the imagination. If this is true, then there are records of the 20 people who were clocked in on each of those days, and I for one would like to see them.

Summary of Executive branch pay August 2005 This is a summary of how much the four main Student Association officers and the Chief or Staff were paid in August 2005, under the Rueden administration. Note that, of these, the highest number of hours are attributed to Rueden and Prahl, more than double any other officer.

Segregated Fees Summary: Executive Wages This shows the amount of wages paid to the current executive officers as of October 18. Note that there are double entries for three officers, where two amounts are paid in the same month, and that each officer who has this double entry does so in a different month. Also note that the $1,680.00 that is claimed on Prahl's August timecard is annotated as September, suggesting that these listings are for the month after work is completed.

It is also worth noting that Ms. Prahl has already claimed $5,743.60 of the $9,000.00 annual salary available for the office of SA President. At this rate, her salary fund will be exhausted halfway through her term of office.

Segregated Fees summary: Legislative Wages This shows the payments to those members of the legislature who receive pay. Note that, just as in the case of the Executive branch, Speaker Rueden has already collected thousands of dollars in salary, and is on pace to exhaust his salary cap halfway through the term.

Segregated Fee Expenditures 2005-2006 This summary of expenditures and transfers has an interesting note on the fifth entry: $1,437.00 to AcerPrudens, the company at the heart of the Sandburg Halls controversy. My sources tell me that this money was authorized for AcerPrudens to create a website that was never finished by them. In another parallel to the Sandburg Halls Administrative Council scenario, there was a webmaster already on the payroll at the time.

In addition, there are large budgets for things such as printing, postage and travel. While all of these expenses may very well be justifiable, the pattern of the past mandates that all of these be investigated to avoid problems.

Interesting Observation

On the door to Union 394, the following note is posted:

AcerPrudens
is an anagram for
Rueden's crap

Need I say more?

The Administration comments

This was sent to all UWM students:

Dear UWM students, faculty and staff,


On October 21, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published a story about
UWM and the Student Association (SA), Student government shut down: UWM police investigating possible embezzlement.

Because we value and respect student government, we believe it is important to share with you the perspective of the UWM administration regarding current questions relating to the UWM Student Association (SA). Federal privacy laws restrict us from disclosing everything, but many facts can be shared about what has happened over the past month and a half.

At the outset, we want to emphasize that our concerns in this situation are not about the role of student governance, but rather about our obligation to ensure that all students are represented with accountability, transparency and adherence to state laws and policies. The UWM administration fully supports the right of students to independently govern themselves.

Two separate but related investigations are currently under way. Both commenced September 6, the same day a Sandburg Halls Administrative Council (SHAC) representative discovered the existence of the $10,000 check written from a SHAC account to an entity called AcerPrudens.

UNIVERSITY AUDIT

The first of the two investigations is one being conducted by the UWM Department of Internal Audit with assistance from the UW System Office of Operations Review and Audit. Its purpose is to determine whether student funds were used in adherence to state law and UW System policy. Following SHAC’s report of the $10,000 check written to AcerPrudens, the auditors reviewed SHAC’s financial records. SHAC cooperated fully with the auditors in this effort.

Related to the audit, on October 9, the Chancellor requested that the Student Association also provide UWM officials with access to its financial records, in particular those relating to an outside bank account for funds privately raised. Such an account, which does not contain state funds or segregated fees, is permissible under UW System policies.

Authority for the Chancellor’s request is found in UW System Financial Administration Policy F20 (which can be found online at www.uwsa.edu/fadmin/fppp/fppp20.htm):

All student organizations receiving Segregated University Fees (SUF) support along with any student organization using University facilities, must agree as a condition of such support or use, to provide financial records, if requested, indicating specific revenues and expenditures for the particular event for which they received SUF support or the particular event they utilized a University facility. If SUF is received for ongoing operations of an organization, the organization must provide financial records of their entire operation, if requested by the Segregated University Fees Allocations Committees (SUFAC) or the
Institution. An organization's failure to comply with a request for financial information may result in the denial of SUF support and/or use of University facilities.

On at least three separate occasions after October 9, UWM Director of Internal Audit Paul Rediske communicated with Student Association President Samantha Prahl regarding the university’s request to access all financial records relating to the outside account. On each occasion, while Ms. Prahl suggested alternatives to UWM’s review of the records, she clearly indicated that the Student Association did not intend to turn over SA’s financial records relating to the outside bank account.

In light of SA’s response, on October 20, UWM administration took action to deny continued access to the SA offices pending resolution of its request for SA records. Part of UWM’s concern has been to ensure that the records it is seeking would be secure throughout any further delay in SA’s response to the request.

Please note that UWM’s action to suspend SA’s access to university funding and facilities was intended to impact only SA. No other student organizations are affected by that action at this time.

On Monday, October 23, SA’s attorneys contacted UWM administration to cancel the scheduled meeting between SA representatives and the auditors, and to propose that the requested records be removed to SA’s attorney’s office for review at that location. This proposal was under consideration, but has since been impacted by recent events in the criminal investigation as outlined below.

CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION

The second of the two separate investigations is being conducted by the University Police Department for potential criminal violations pertaining to the previously mentioned $10,000 check.

The latest development in that case came on the evening of Monday, October 23, when University Police executed a search warrant upon the SA offices. The warrant for the search was authorized by a Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge after being briefed on the case.

As a result of the University Police Department’s gathering of evidence, it appears that at this time there is no reason to continue to deny SA representatives access to university facilities, and we will work with SA to allow the offices to reopen.

Previously in this investigation, on September 25, information gathered by University Police was presented to the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office, which then requested that certain additional information be gathered. As a result, on October 4, University Police executed a separate search warrant on a private residence, in addition to the warrant executed on October 23.

University Police will use the information gathered during the two searches to determine, along with the district attorney’s office, whether criminal charges will be issued.

We will continue to make every effort to keep the campus informed as future events surrounding the investigations into this matter unfold.


Sincerely,

Rita Cheng
Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs

I will be investigating this and commenting on this later.

UPDATE: 1:37 p.m., October 24
I will be attempting to read between the lines of this letter. The obvious part is that two separate but related investigations are happening. One is being done by the Internal Audit Division, and the other is a criminal investigation through the District Attorney's office. However, the search warrant in the criminal case has obviated the need for the lockdown of the SA office realting to the audit. This means one of two things:

1. The records of the "Private Account" believed to be in Union EG80 were not found there, thus making the lockdown meaningless.
2. The records were found and seized.

We will find out which is correct later.