Ben Sasse Leaves University Of Florida Just Ahead Of The Auditors
A Republican in Florida turned out to be a huge grifter. No, not that Republican.
A little over three weeks ago, former Nebraska senator and smarm weasel Ben Sasse abruptly resigned his position as president of the University of Florida system. The reason he gave was that his wife was recently diagnosed with epilepsy, so he wants to focus on his family for awhile.
Fair enough! We wish Mrs. Sasse well, as she has a lousy history of health problems. But it would still be very interesting to know if and for how long Sasse knew that the UF school newspaper was working on a story showing all the ways in which, during his short 17-month tenure, he seems to have turned his office into one giant grift for handing out six-figure no-show jobs to his cronies. Because it is definitely the sort of story that would have students, faculty, support services employees, parents, and alumni standing outside Sasse’s office braying for his head, if he still had an office.
From UF student newspaper The Alligator:
Sasse ballooned spending under the president’s office to $17.3 million in his first year in office — up from $5.6 million in former UF President Kent Fuchs’ last year, according to publicly available administrative budget data.
A majority of the spending surge was driven by lucrative contracts with big-name consulting firms and high-salaried, remote positions for Sasse’s former U.S. Senate staff and Republican officials.
It is always good to remember that when conservatives whine that liberals have destroyed higher education, what they really are upset about is their belief that someone who is not them is getting to loot a public good. And why should some dang tenured history professor get to wet her beak instead of a former Senate staffer who lives in a different state?
Well, this was a state of affairs up with which boyish bullshit artist Ben Sasse did not put. He can be as cartoonishly corrupt as the next guy, with the added bonus that his history of holier-than-thou lecturing about the infallibility of his own principles makes the corruption even more cynical!
The Alligator has further details on some of Sasse’s hirings, half a dozen of whom came from his Senate office, so they obviously needed new jobs anyway. Convenient how that worked out.
For example, Sasse invented the job of Vice President for Innovation and Partnerships and hired his former chief of staff to fill it, at a salary of $396,000 a year, double what he had been making on Capitol Hill. And he didn’t have to move to Florida from the Washington DC area to take it.
Sasse also hired his former communications director to be UF’s new vice president of communications at a salary of $432,000 a year, which was $152,000 more than the guy he replaced was making after 30 years in the UF media relations office.
Sasse also invented a new job for his former press secretary, who became the UF Vice President of Presidential Communication and Public Affairs at $232,000 a year. Sadly for him, he was the only former Sasse staffer who had to move to Florida.
And then this:
The remaining three ex-Senate staffers — Raven Shirley, Kari Ridder and Kelicia Rice — served as presidential advisers to Sasse, though their specific duties remain unclear.
This writing thing was the wrong career choice. We should have instead attached ourselves like a remora to some powerful twerp like Ben Sasse. We could be earning a six-figure salary and still not have to put on pants during the workday.
Sasse also threw several million dollars at consultants from McKinsey to help him develop his “strategic plan” for the university’s development on his watch. Shockingly, no one seems to have any idea what UF got in return:
Sasse offered the only public glimpse of McKinsey’s work at UF last fall during “roadshows” of his strategic plan. Accompanied by slides displaying “sobriety data” provided by McKinsey, Sasse argued some faculty weren’t pulling their weight and had “quiet retired.”
Blaming a university’s problems on overpaid and underworked faculty while overpaying a bunch of your own buddies for bullshit administrative jobs is such a cliché. Our nation deserves hacks with better imaginations.
What happened at UF under Sasse somewhat mirrors all the fuckery that Ron DeSantis has visited on New College of Florida, much to the dismay of its faculty, students, and anyone else with a shred of common decency.
For the moment, Sasse has been replaced on an interim basis by his predecessor, Kent Fuchs, whom we’re betting more than a few people were wishing had never stepped down and opened up a slot for Ben Sasse in the first place.
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I'm in the UF Faculty Senate. We asked for documentation of ROI for the McKinsey monies and were ignored. (There are lots of rumors, though, of personal benefit to Sasse's political future.) We asked why those brand new administrators did not have to come to Gainesville like everyone else. We were told that lots of UF folks work from off-campus (it turned out those were Ag school faculty who live on the field stations where they do their research). We asked why the faculty have to turn in annual activity reports to justify their existence and their allegedly munificent salaries, but Sasse's best friends don't have to do anything, apparently. Crickets.
From UF student newspaper The Alligator:
Sasse ballooned spending under the president’s office to $17.3 million in his first year in office — up from $5.6 million in former UF President Kent Fuchs’ last year, according to publicly available administrative budget data.
A majority of the spending surge was driven by lucrative contracts with big-name consulting firms and high-salaried, remote positions for Sasse’s former U.S. Senate staff and Republican officials.
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Do you know, I think the REAL news here is that a STUDENT NEWSPAPER beat ALL THE REST OF THE NEWS MEDIA OF FLORIDA in reporting this story.
When I was a child, there was a television documentary series entitled, "Is Lake Erie Living or Dead?" This had a profound effect on me, a child who lived in Northern Ohio, in Cuyahoga County, the place that was named after the RIVER THAT CAUGHT FIRE.
Nowadays, we may well ask: Are the news media in the United States of America living or dead?
The answer seems to be: only Mostly Dead.
Thank God for student newspapers!