George Mason Students Sue School Over Funding From Koch Brothers
“Augustus Thomson, a current undergraduate, filed the complaint”
The Koch brothers should respond to this by rescinding every penny they’ve given to the school and donating the money somewhere else. If the students don’t want funding, fine. They won’t get it.
EcoWatch reported:
Students Sue University Over Ties to Koch Brothers
Accusing the state school of violating public records law, a group of George Mason University students and alumni brought a lawsuit to shed light on the support it gets from billionaire energy tycoons Charles and David Koch.
Augustus Thomson, a current undergraduate, filed the complaint on May 26 with the student-led group Transparent GMU, saying they have been waiting nearly two months for a response to their request for records on the school’s contribution and gift records from 2008 to 2012.
Specifically, the students seek documentation on whether the Kochs or their many charitable organizations, including the now-defunct Claude R. Lambe Foundation, communicated with the university about any fundraising activity, grants, contracts or gift agreements.
Transparent GMU has been around for only a year, but the group says its members have been advocating for greater transparency since 2014 “when they learned that public universities in other states had agreed to give private donors influence over curriculum development and faculty hiring decisions.”
The students are worried that GMU has a similar arrangement with the Koch brothers.
Tensions came to a head last year when GMU announced a plan to rename its law school for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, as part of a $30 million combined gift from the Charles Koch Foundation and an anonymous conservative donor.
The New York Times reported that Koch and foundations affiliated with the billionaire industrialist have pumped more than $50 million into GMU over the past decade.
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Comments
Donors fund specific uses all the time. It is time for these schools to suggest to the students they may be more comfortable at Missouri or Evergreen.
Why would this organization have any power how the school fund raises? They are free not to attend GMU. This is not a government entity where you can make a freedom of information requests.
Pull the cash and raise tuition rates while publicly blaming the butthurt students and alumni. Most students just want to graduate and get on with their lives.