Update on campus news
During my last Daily Deac before spring break, I ended with this: “We’ll take the week off from the Daily Deac next week, since your students are gone, unless there is some sort of Big News that can’t wait.”
As if on cue, there was in fact some Big News.
You were probably as surprised as I was to see Wake Forest’s name in the news yesterday, linked to “Operation Varsity Blues,” the Department of Justice’s investigation into the influence of financial transactions and other activities to gain admission into top universities. Wake Forest volleyball coach Bill Ferguson was named in this indictment and placed on leave yesterday.
Dr. Hatch sent a message to the campus community – students, faculty, and staff – yesterday (you can read it here). A larger message went out today to the campus community as well as alumni and parents/families:
“I am writing today to address some of the most frequent questions I have received and to make abundantly clear that Wake Forest is considered by the U.S. Department of Justice to be a victim of this fraud. In no way has it been suggested that the University was involved in the deceitful practices, nor were any employees, other than Ferguson, accused of wrongdoing.” Read his full message here.
Some of you have asked me why I did not write a Daily Deac about this story yesterday, or why we did not email all parents/families. Because I feel like our loyal Daily Deacers know me – albeit virtually – here is my honest answer: this story was unfolding rapidly yesterday throughout the day. I wanted to make sure I had the right words, which sometimes takes time, and I was not able to get something written before deadline.
In addition, our office had done a lot of work with our campus partner offices last year to craft guidelines about when we will mass-email families, and when we won’t. Those guidelines are published here – scroll to the bottom of the page to see the exact situations we’d created procedures for. This kind of story didn’t fit neatly into any of those boxes. So for those reasons, the blog stayed dark yesterday.
I want you to have confidence that I advocate to give our families as much information as possible, in as timely a manner as possible, whenever possible. Unfortunately, that is not always possible. Thank you for your continued trust.