SCC music profs told not to talk to detectives

The head of Scottsdale Community College’s music department has directed her professors not to speak with Maricopa County Sheriff’s detectives investigating enrollment fraud unless they have a court order.

In an e-mail Friday, Christina Novak told the music faculty members that the attorney representing full-time professors throughout the Maricopa County Community College District advised against voluntarily cooperating with the criminal investigation.

Novak declined to comment on the e-mail, citing the legal advice. Michael Napier, the MCCCD faculty association’s attorney, declined to comment.

Novak’s e-mail comes in response to the sheriff’s investigation, which began in January 2007 with raids at MCCCD headquarters and several campuses. Deputies seized boxes of records and numerous pieces of equipment, including desktop computers from Chancellor Rufus Glasper and some college presidents.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio wouldn’t give details of the investigation on Monday but said detectives haven’t noticed any significant resistance from faculty, as far has he knows.

The investigation began about two months after the Tribune published a series detailing cases of theft, enrollment fraud, gross mismanagement and nepotism throughout the college district.

Novak’s directions are far different from what the faculty association itself is saying.

Barry Vaughan, the association’s incoming president, said faculty members should answer detectives’ questions, but should also have Napier there to represent them.

Professors at the district’s 10 colleges have been on edge since the raids, Vaughan said.

Faculty members from a number of different campuses say detectives have been interviewing dozens of professors and students in recent weeks.

Arpaio declined to specify when the investigation might be done. “Sometimes these kinds of investigations take a little while,” he said. “We’re going to make sure we have all the evidence.”

Vaughan said detectives narrowed their scope to just falsified enrollments, which has added to the anxieties because that would mean the investigating is specifically targeting professors. Many of the professors detectives interviewed teach at SCC, Mesa Community College and Phoenix College.

They reported that detectives’ questions were primarily regarding class rosters.

“There’s the sense that, if anything does happen, it’s the faculty that’ll be hung out to dry,” said Vaughan, an MCC philosophy professor. “Is the district going to come out and defend them? No, that’s not their attorney’s job.”

Pete Kushibab, MCCCD’s legal counsel, declined to comment on the sheriff’s investigation and referred questions to Athia Hardt, a spokeswoman for the district.

“I don’t know any more than you do,” Hardt said. “There are rumors” about indictments.

Sheriff’s detectives focused on SCC’s music department from the beginning, the search warrants that authorized the raid show.

Two of MCSO’s investigative targets, Steven Meredith and Stephen Green, are former music professors at the college.

Green served as the music department’s chair until the district fired him in July 2006 for multiple improprieties; Meredith directed a performing arts program at SCC.

Internal auditors found that both were involved in enrollment fraud cases, where teachers, relatives and other employees signed up for classes only to protect them from cancelation.

Glasper fired two longtime college presidents – Larry Christiansen at MCC and Homero Lopez at Estrella Mountain Community College – just weeks after the raids. Christiansen and Lopez were investigative targets, according to the search warrants.

MCCCD’s governing board also instituted a raft of reforms intended to prevent future fraud, or at least ensure the district takes action when officials uncover misconduct. The Tribune series detailed how colleges routinely shifted troublesome employees to different jobs and did not notify law enforcement when auditors found evidence of criminal activity.