While at the University of South Carolina, new University of Utah President Arthur K. Smith killed a secret scholarship program that gave money to the children of prominent people, including the sons of U.S. Sen. Mark Hatfield, State Department official Lawrence Eagleburger and Smith's own daughter, Meredith Lee.
On Friday, University of South Carolina officials in Columbia released the list of about 270 secret-scholarship recipients whose names previously had been withheld. The identities of about 110 students, including Smith's daughter, had been released earlier with their permission.The scholarships came from public money controlled by South Carolina's former free-spending president, James Holderman. According to The Associated Press, in 13 years Holderman gave $1.6 million in financial aid to 381 students who were the sons and daughters of top state officials, federal officials and high-level university officials and faculty.
Holderman resigned last year after being criticized for his spending. He since has pleaded guilty to receiving extra compensation and pleaded no contest to tax evasion.
Smith last week became the 12th University of Utah president, leaving his position as the University of South Carolina provost. For nine months after Holderman's resignation, he was South Carolina interim president.
Smith told the Deseret News on Friday that when he was appointed interim president in May 1990 he announced that his daughter no longer would receive a University of South Carolina scholarship because he didn't think it was a good precedent to have a university president's child receive a scholarship. She had received a one-year, tuition-only scholarship.
At that point, he said, he hadn't investigated the scholarship program, which Holderman ran personally.
When he took over as interim president, Smith canceled the program. "I killed the program because of financial exigency. The university was strapped for scholarships," he said.
Smith then discovered in examining the scholarship's details, he said, that Holderman did not follow normal university procedures in awarding scholarships. No scholarship committee was involved. Hol-derman awarded the scholarships personally based on his own mix of criteria, Smith said.
Neither Smith as provost nor the university's chief budget officer knew the details of the scholarship program, reported Smith, who said his former boss ran the university with "a plantation mentality."
"There was no paper trail. It was not a well-run program," he added.
Meredith Smith, 20, a campus student leader who is continuing her studies in Columbia, had not applied for the scholarship but received a letter one day from Holderman saying she was a new presidential scholarship recipient, the new U. president said.
"She was thrilled," he reported of his daughter's response to the scholarship. But, he added, if he had the benefit of hindsight, he would have told her to refuse the financial aid.
Smith stressed that his daughter's scholarship was never a condition of his employment as provost nor a fringe benefit.
While Smith was interim president, the University of South Carolina did not release the scholarship list of all recipients, although some students approved the release of their names after being notified by the school. Smith said he, as interim president, received a directive from the federal government barring release of the names without permission because of a federal privacy law.
The current South Carolina president, John Palms, said he decided to release the rest of the names this week because "in this particular situation, I feel the privilege of privacy is outweighed by the public's right to know."
Palms called Smith earlier this week to tell him of the impending release of information.
The new U. president said he informed the U. presidential search committee of his daughter's connection to the scholarship program at their first meeting.
Utah Commissioner of Higher Education Wm. Rolfe Kerr confirmed Smith's statement. "He was right up front. He initiated the whole discussion," Kerr said.
The search committee was impressed by Smith's forthrightness and openness, the commissioner said.
Among others on the South Carolina scholarship list were the daughters of South Carolina State Treasurer Grady Patterson; a son of South Carolina Chief Justice George Gregory; actress Karla De Vito, whose husband, actor Robby Benson, taught at the university during the late 1980s; the son of Sen. Mark Hatfield, R-Ore., who received $11,350 over five years; the son of State Department official Lawrence Eagleburger; former South Carolina football player George Rogers, who won the Heisman trophy; and Scott Sayers, son of Hall of Fame football player Gayle Sayers, who received $8,326 over two years.