It’s been weeks since a prominent conservative institution has been rocked by scandal, so I suppose we were due for a story like this one.
Twenty years ago, televangelist Oral Roberts said he was reading a spy novel when God appeared to him and told him to raise $8 million for Roberts’ university, or else he would be “called home.”
Now, his son, Oral Roberts University President Richard Roberts, says God is speaking again, telling him to deny lurid allegations in a lawsuit that threatens to engulf this 44-year-old Bible Belt college in scandal.
Richard Roberts is accused of illegal involvement in a local political campaign and lavish spending at donors’ expense, including numerous home remodeling projects, use of the university jet for his daughter’s senior trip to the Bahamas, and a red Mercedes convertible and a Lexus SUV for his wife, Lindsay.
She is accused of dropping tens of thousands of dollars on clothes, awarding nonacademic scholarships to friends of her children and sending scores of text messages on university-issued cell phones to people described in the lawsuit as “underage males.”
The university, which reported nearly $76 million in revenue as recently as 2005, is reeling, despite denials from the Roberts family, which insists the lawsuit filed by three former professors at the school is “about intimidation, blackmail and extortion.”
There’s no shortage of serious accusations, but clearly that “underage males” angle stands out. Apparently, Mrs. Roberts, a member of ORU’s board of regents, “frequently had cell-phone bills of more than $800 per month, with hundreds of text messages sent between 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. to ‘underage males who had been provided phones at university expense.'”
The rest of the alleged improprieties are hardly any better.
* A longtime maintenance employee was fired so that an underage male friend of Mrs. Roberts could have his position.
* The university jet was used to take one daughter and several friends on a senior trip to Orlando, Fla., and the Bahamas. The $29,411 trip was billed to the ministry as an “evangelistic function of the president.”
* Mrs. Roberts spent more than $39,000 at one Chico’s clothing store alone in less than a year, and had other accounts in Texas and California. She also repeatedly said, “As long as I wear it once on TV, we can charge it off.” The document cites inconsistencies in clothing purchases and actual usage on TV.
* Mrs. Roberts was given a white Lexus SUV and a red Mercedes convertible by ministry donors.
* University and ministry employees are regularly summoned to the Roberts’ home to do the daughters’ homework.
* The university and ministry maintain a stable of horses for exclusive use by the Roberts’ children.
* The Roberts’ home has been remodeled 11 times in the past 14 years.
Lambert has more, including the observation, “[A]uthoritarian systems are extremely vulnerable to fraud, because authoritarian followers aren’t capable of providing checks and balances for their leaders.”
