SEATTLE (AP) — University of Washington poets and professors were delighted when an Internet entrepreneur pledged $2 million for the school's creative writing program.
But more than a year later, they're still waiting for Ravi Desai to deliver on his promise. After spending $10,000 to celebrate his generosity, the university has received only $6,770.
Three other schools are also waiting for money promised by the 31-year-old Harvard graduate who holds an MBA from the University of Chicago, according to reports Saturday in the Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Desai, who lives near San Francisco, told the Times that the money will come.
But the designated recipients are beginning to wonder.
"I can tell you that all of us here who met him considered the possibility that his promises were, in fact, too good to be true," said Peter Turchi, director of the fine-arts program at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, which was promised $50,000 in January.
The University of New Hampshire still has not received the $1 million Desai pledged in 1999, said Donald Hall, head of the school's English department.
The University of Florida's development office has not received $2 million promised the same year.
Desai initially told UW officials he would pay his pledge with stock options earned from Scient, an e-commerce consulting firm, and TheStreet.com, a financial news Web site he served briefly as founding editor-in-chief and president.
But he left each company without stock options — departing TheStreet.com amid threats of legal action and parting ways with Scient after telling co-workers his wife had died of cancer.
In fact, his wife, Jennifer Call, now lives in California. She's divorcing Desai and says she never had cancer.
University of Washington officials are still hoping he'll come through.
"I know that obviously the dot-com world has been topsy-turvy over the past year and I don't know whether that's been a factor in this or not, but I think the university remains hopeful that the pledge will come to fruition at some point," Norm Arkans, associate vice president for university relations, told the Post-Intelligencer.