Jimmygate Needs Accountability

Later this year, two Harvard graduates will be tried on charges of embezzling $132,000 while heading "An Evening with Champions," the Eliot House ice skating show that benefits the Jimmy Fund, a children's cancer charity.

Jimmygate demonstrates the need for greater accountability for situations in which Harvard students are entrusted with such large sums of money. Harvard needs to develop some method for making sure that students with control over organization funds use their money responsibly and don't plunder those treasuries for personal benefit.

The University simply can't depend on the goodness of people's hearts to guard against the possible abuse of power. The two Harvard students involved had clean records, and were considered by classmates to be good people.

'Charles K. Lee '93, co-chair of the 1992 ice skating benefit, participated in the Big Brother program and worked at Memorial Church. Lee will be tried on 66 counts of larceny; if convincted on all counts, he would face up to 302 years in prison.

Since the scandal, the organizers of "An Evening with Champions" have made major changes in how they handle financial arrangements. These changes may be helpful to other organizations seeking to carry out reforms.

Virtually every aspect of financial record-keeping for "An Evening with Champions" has been changed. Larger payments drawn from the fund's accounts require additional signatures, including those of the Eliot House masters.

Last year, the program requested and received a Harvard internal audit to: make sure that all of its accounts were in order. The success of last year's fundraiser, which raised over $125,000 for the Jimmy Fund, can be attributed in part to the changes that were made.

The organizers of "An Evening with Champions" should be congratulated for taking these steps. The idea of requiring audits is appealing; comprehensive audits are one possible way of preventing abuses.

Harvard organizations with annual budgets in excess of a certain amount, perhaps those with budgets over $10,000, should have their financial matters looked into each year by an outside auditor.

Under this system, student groups would still keep their financial independence. Since the auditor would be an independent outside accountant or accounting firm, chosen and hired by the organization, the Harvard administration would gain no additional control over student organizations.

In addition to these conclusions about fiscal responsibility, the whole matter also gives rise to a few questions. First, there is the issue of sheer stupidity.

How in the world could anyone think they could get away with larceny on such a grand scale? If they stole $5,000, maybe no one would have noticed. If they had embezzled $10,000, perhaps it wouldn't have been detected. After all, the benefit raises well over $100,000 each year.

But when you steal $132,000, a very large part of the total money the benefit raised, how can you expect no one to notice? Can you really expect no one to get suspicious when you suddenly start throwing lavish parties, sporting suits from Barney's, and going on shopping sprees at Saks Fifth Avenue?

(Actually, if you live in Eliot House, the frightening answer to this question might be yes. "Perhaps he's just come into an inheritance," people might say.)

In addition, if you're going to steal all that money, wouldn't it have been a wise idea to at least cover your tracks? Not that we at The Crimson are well-trained criminals, but it just seems that common sense would dictate that if you commit grand larceny, you shouldn't leave a long and well-documented paper trail detailing your crime. Harvard students are a clever bunch--can't thieves come up with some clever way of hiding their misdeeds?

We await the trial of Lee and David G. Sword '93, the "An Evening With Champions" treasurer, with almost as much eagerness as the O.J. Simpson trial. But given the kind of evidence that prosecutors appear to possess, even Alan Dershowitz probably can't save them now.