LOS ANGELES – Students are returning to a campus Austin Peay never left. The senior spent his last summer vacation investigating his soon-to-be alma mater, the University of Southern California, as a reporter for Annenberg Media.
A summer internship program called “The Beacon Project” paid Peay and five other students to look into USC, a campus plagued by so scandals in recent years.
“Because, I think you can’t make meaningful and significant change without revealing what went wrong and how it went wrong,” Peay said.
LAist eventually published his work: “USC Promised Transparency, So Why Is It Acting ‘Like The Kremlin’?” as his peers were ready to head back to campus.
In the article, Peay looked into the University’s response to five recent scandals:
- A former medical school dean accused of taking drugs and carousing with criminals
- A gynecologist at the center of the largest sexual assault investigation in LAPD history
- A basketball coach who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery
- The sudden dismissal of a popular business school dean
- The college admissions scandal, where four staff members are facing charges
Peay found that after each scandal, the university promised to investigate and release a report, but repeatedly failed to follow through.
“The school has made pledges of transparency…and in many cases they weren’t doing that,” Peay said.
In a statement, USC said:
“We must balance the commitment to be as open as possible with the privacy rights of those involved and take into account confidentiality issues related to litigation. We have applied what we learned, together with input from students, faculty, senior leadership and board members, to institute significant reforms across the university.”
To some faculty members, USC hasn’t gone far enough to change the structural and cultural problems that lead to multiple scandals – from staff members accepting bribes to the dismissal of deans.
“For any campus to have this many problems in the span of two years is, in my mind, unheard of,” said USC professor William Tierney, who is an expert on university governance.
Tierney is retiring after 25 years at the school. He said a lack of oversight created the perfect storm for scandal.
“There needs to be dramatic reform in the Board of Trustees, there needs to be dramatic reengagement in the academic senate, we need to rethink decision-making, we need faculty to be much more involved in the life of the university,” Tierney said.
Peay is back in class and can’t just walk away from his reporting.
“I think there’s more here,” Peay said.
In the spring he will be looking for a journalism job – with the letters ‘USC’ on his resume and inside his reports.