Amidst a series of desperate gestures to restore some semblance of leadership to the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, allegations continue to swirl around Robert Felner, the almost-Chancellor of that campus. Felner gently laid his candidacy to rest amidst the graveyard of fraudulent intentions after it became known that he was under investigation by the Federal Government for some shady accounting practices during his time at both the University of Louisville and Rhode Island. But beyond making an utter mockery of all his advocates in Wisconsin – the oblivious Search Committee could do nothing but sing his praises – what damage could Felner have done to Parkside?

The answer is far too much. Besides drawing comparisons to Adolf Hitler by faculty members on a Louisville blog (think a Lynyrd Skynyrd-loving Critical Badger), Felner never produced final accounting for 3 million dollars worth of grants from the prestigious Carnegie Foundation during a tenure at the University of Rhode Island. The sorry post-Felner hangover for Rhode Island lies in the fact that, if money was mishandled and a final accounting can never be produced, the school of education at said university can never receive funding from the Carnegie Foundation again.

On July 1st, the UW system issued a press release stating that it would privately investigate its own hiring procedures as a result of the embarrassing revelation that one of the its newly hired chancellors could very well have been a criminal. But the question is persistent – how could the Search Committee for Parkside not know Felner was under a criminal investigation? How could they not have known that he received a vote of no-confidence from the University of Louisville faculty – when all this information was readily available to anyone who simply ASKED AROUND?