Trouble with $4.5 Million Donation

Now, here is a college story on accepting gifts from alumni:

The incident took place in California State University, Fullerton. An alumnus agreed to give $3m (rose to $4.5 Million with construction costs also rose), to the school toward the construction of a new building that would carry his name, but later on it was revealed that right after our contributor, Steven Mihaylo, made his gift, his company, Inter-Tel, pleaded guilty for postal fraud and antitrust violations that culminated in it paying a $8.7m. fine. Although Mr. Mihaylo was cleared of any personal charges, his argument saying that “it’s hard to keep track of everything while running a large company” seems pretty odd and funny.

The real interesting part in the emergence of this incident that, it has been investigated and made come on the scene by the studies of a group of students motivated by Hamid Tavakolian, a management professor at CSF who also believes that the donation should be returned. But, not surprisingly, the officials who had to take notice of such an event in the first place, do not agree with the professor’s views and have no plan to remove Mihaylo’s name from the still under construction building for the School of Business and Economics. The business school’s dean, by the way, Anil Puri, who is among the ones that reject a return, also sits on Inter-Tel’s board.

I look forward to the very first business ethics class, if there would any, in that business school. That’s going to be interesting. The professor is probably going to say: “Fellow business students of Fullerton; do not ever take part in a fraud or antitrust violation, that’s bad, but you can receive as much donation as you want from a firm or an individual that has been found guilty of such charges, that’s O.K.” Looks like a fair agreement isn’t it?

Relevant Links:
What’s in a name?
CSUF defends donor to business school