May 1, 2008 2 min read

The resignation of two top academic officials over a degree-awarding scandal should restore some credibility to West Virginia University, whose reputation has been tarnished over the affair. Provost Gerald Lang and business school Dean R. Stephen Sears, two key figures in the retroactive awarding of a master’s degree to Gov. Joe Manchin’s daughter, are stepping down. They had little choice after an independent panel concluded they were among several administrators whose “severely flawed” judgment smacked of favoritism.

How else could anyone explain why Heather Bresch, who works for the firm of top WVU financial benefactor Mylan Puskar, would get 22 of the needed 48 degree credits a decade after leaving school? The panel found that some of those grades were literally pulled from thin air, and that all of them weren’t even paid for. How should that make the many WVU alums and students in this area feel?

The panel also found that administrators relied too heavily on verbal assertions and that they caved in to real or imagined political pressure. However, it’s highly doubtful the same eight administrators would have even met Oct. 15 to decide the matter if the former student in question was one who lacked Bresch’s high-powered connections.

In addition to her boss being a big financial contributor and her father being the governor, Bresch counts new WVU President Mike Garrison as a longtime friend. Garrison says he doesn’t plan to resign because he had no involvement in the decision to award Bresch the degree.

But state Republican Party Chairman Doug McKinney, a WVU graduate, has called for all eight officials who attended the meeting to resign. And he appears to want Garrison out, too, advocating “a clean sweep of everyone involved in this travesty.”

The panel’s report did not accuse Garrison of wrongdoing, and the WVU Board of Governors has given him its full support. As the head of the university, though, Garrison can be expected to shoulder some of the responsibility for what occurs beneath him.

The Board of Governors should thoroughly investigate Garrison’s involvement in the Bresch affair before closing the book, lest the intrepid press eventually do that for them and wind up splattering more egg on the university’s face.

Garrison is correct in noting “this is a very serious issue.” It never should have happened in the first place, and careers have justifiably ended because it did.