TULSA Okla.
The embattled president of Oral Roberts University asked for a second chance during an emergency meeting with the same faculty members who only days earlier gave him a vote of no confidence.
Richard Roberts told professors Wednesday that if he stepped down now, the public would think he was admitting to wrongdoing, said Donald Vance, a professor of biblical languages and literature, who attended the meeting.
Roberts, son of school founder and televangelist Oral Roberts, has been on temporary leave from the evangelical university, fighting accusations that he misspent university funds to bankroll a lavish lifestyle. He became the school’s president in 1993.
Oral Roberts, who recently returned from semiretirement in California to the 5,700-student school he founded, called Wednesday’s meeting.
The “no confidence” resolution, passed Monday, stated that the faculty approved the motion “without regard to the outcome of the current lawsuit against the university.” The faculty plan to distribute the nonbinding document to the school’s Board of Regents and the faculty assembly at an upcoming meeting.
The professors also voted “confidence” in Provost Mark Lewandowski’s “call for greater faculty governance and transparency of university finances.” In a third motion, the faculty asked to be involved in “determining selection criteria for and the actual selection of university leadership.”
