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Execs Spent $13,000 on Food, Gas
By Tom Corrigan — November 6, 2009 — News — Volume XLIII, Issue 4For an opinion on this issue, please refer to columnist Matt Sprague’s column.
Financial records obtained by the Review indicate that, over the course of their tenure as executives, former ASSU president Hershey Avula and vice president Mondaire Jones spent $13,000 on food and gas using ASSU discretionary funds.
According to one former ASSU official familiar with the executives’ spending habits, food was very often purchased for events that had little relation to official ASSU matters.
The majority of the expenditures on the part of the former executives were made from the ASSU’s Annual Discretionary Expense Account, a special reserve fund established by the Joint Bylaws of the ASSU and limited to $10,000.
Though the bylaws, the laws governing the ASSU’s finances, do not specify for what discretionary funds may and may not be used, they do forbid personal use of ASSU funds, stating, “All funds expended by the Association shall be used for the basic operating expenses of the Association, or for programs initiated by and under the control of the Association and its agencies.”
Despite the fact that discretionary funds are restricted to use for ASSU functions such as providing food for meetings, many of the over 300 credit card transactions detailed in the financial records were for relatively small monetary amounts.
Forty-five of the expenditures were for sums under $10, and 95 of the expenditures were for sums under $20. Almost all of these transactions took place at such dining establishments as Taco Bell, In-N-Out, McDonald’s, Subway, The Axe and Palm, Pizza My Heart, and Quiznos.
The records also detail nearly $1,500 of gasoline expenditures on the part of the executives, an amount that translates to roughly 5,000 miles of driving—5,000 miles presumably for official ASSU affairs.
Also of note is a transaction for $676.87 at Sundance Steakhouse in Palo Alto. The description listed for the transaction characterizes the event as “Dinner for 9.”
Furthermore, the financial records demonstrate that when the credit card-swiping executives depleted the discretionary expense account, the two began spending from another discretionary account set aside to fund the ASSU’s shuttle program.
According to ASSU Financial Manager Matt McLaughlin, the Office of General Counsel and Internal Audit of the University were notified and consulted regarding the expenditures. The internal investigation came to a standstill, however, due to the broad nature of discretionary spending and Avula and Jones’s claim that they were not able to recollect the specific nature of their expenditures.
Given that he is specifically concerned with the legal questions surrounding the expenditures, McLaughlin maintains that it is out of his purview to judge the ethical nature of the executives’ spending.
In an email to the Review, ASSU president David Gobaud stated that all of the financial transactions for the current ASSU executives are to be posted online at the end of every quarter.
Though all of the ASSU’s financial records are public information, financial data can currently be obtained only by contacting officials within the ASSU’s financial management system. The complete financial records obtained by the Review and referenced in this article can be viewed online at the Review’s website, www.stanfordreview.org.
For even more detailed records, please click here.
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15 Comments
Wow. That is unbelievable. I can’t believe this was just discovered. I can almost understand the $650 dinner at Sundance, but I can’t imagine why $10 purchases from Taco Bell are necessary at all. Good job Stanford Review! Nice detective work!
Investigative journalism at it’s finest. Way to expose the financial malfeasance. Serves as a great cautionary tale for our current elected officials, and a preventer of future profligacy in our ASSU.
This is so upsetting that individuals who were elected to represent the student body would waste funds that comes out of everyone’s pocket. It is also disappointing that the ASSU Financial Manager was not more effectively monitoring the Executive’s budget. I really hope that more is done in the future to prevent similar situations from occurring. Great job, Review!
As someone that would be considered as far left on most issues, I have to say that you guys are doing a good job in covering issues like student government corruption, “the race card” being played in situations where it’s not appropriate, and and other campus issues. While I will not agree with you guys on almost any national issue, I think increasing your focus on campus issues will ultimately result in a more productive discussion and increased readership. The more you move away from repeating the GOP, neoconservative, ultra-religious or Objectivist mantras and the more you move towards doing independent investigation and reporting, the more respect people like me will have for you. Democracy requires strong groups on both ends of the spectrum, and it’s good to see that Palin and Beck-style batshit insanity is not the only voice of the right. Keep up the good work.
Really excellent investigative report. Well done, Review.
Excellent investigative reporting. Especially in a time of cutbacks and careful scrutiny of ASSU spending, bringing to light wasteful and frankly shocking spending habits of our elected representatives is paramount. Great work. (Also, I would like to second BG’s comments.)
Please also refer to the response from current ASSU Financial Manager:
http://www.stanforddaily.com/cgi-bin/?p=1035656
I am slightly skeptical about this because after looking at the summaries posted, alot of the small amounts you guys are describing are all for the same day and I doubt that they went to Taco Bell, Pizza My Heart, etc. 20 times in a day. Also, where are the receipts for these purchases? The summary gives no info about where these purchases were made. I seriously doubt you guys made this up, but it does seem that there needs to be more prof of foul play.
Should’ve voted for Brett and Lakshmi…
The expenses made by Mr. Avula and Mr. Jones during the Summer of 2007 appear to be particularly shady. After a quick glance at the documents, reimbursements were made for things like “summer dry cleaning expenses,” “parking permit for the summer, to be able to do ASSU work,” and “food for campus living, due to summer ASSU responsibilities.” Were both Mr. Avula and Mr. Jones on-campus the summer of 2007, and if so, how many hours per week were they working on “ASSU functions”?
Either way, I don’t see why Mr. Jones and Mr. Avula thought it was OK for the student body to finance, for example, their dry cleaning expenses, summer groceries from Safeway, coffee from Starbucks and ice cream form Coldstone, or summer parking permits.
I wonder what repercussions this will have, come election season, for groups who endorsed Avula/Jones, including SOCC.
This is absolutely disgusting. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Good post mate!! Keep ‘em flowing!