Local News in Brief : Black Faculty Decry Raffle
Black faculty and staff members at Cal State Northridge voted unanimously Thursday to disassociate themselves from the alleged grade-selling scheme involving two Pan-African studies department instructors, saying reports “shocked and saddened us all.”
“We distance ourselves from and find reprehensible the conduct which has been so widely reported,” said a statement approved at a meeting of 30 members of the Black Faculty and Staff Organization.
In another development, the state attorney general’s office said Thursday that it has opened an investigation of the United Crusade Foundation, the nonprofit organization that was to have received proceeds from the raffle.
The inquiry will try to determine whether donations to the foundation were improperly diverted from charitable purposes to individuals’ private gain, said press spokesman Duane Peterson. Civil penalties for mishandling charity money include fines and restitution, he said.
The statement by the black organization was drafted by Rosentene Purnell, a Pan-African studies faculty member, and CSUN associate personnel director William Watkins.
About 30 CSUN students have told administrators that Prof. Eleazu Obinna, founder of United Crusade Foundation, and part-time instructor Willie J. Bellamy, who does administrative work for the foundation, offered “A” grades to students in three field-studies classes who sold 20 of the $5 raffle tickets.
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