BATON ROUGE, La.
The chancellor of Southern University’s Baton
Rouge campus abruptly resigned in the wake of a scholarship scandal.
In resigning, Dr. Marvin Yates, who had served as chancellor at the
largest Southern University campus for nearly seven years, denied any
wrongdoing in the scholarship irregularities that had drawn criticism
from a Louisiana state legislative auditor and from a legislative
committee. (See Black Issues, December 25.)
However, he did say that he could not overcome the negative
perceptions that were generated by media reports about the scholarship
problems.
After meeting with the board for two hours in an executive session,
Yates refused to comment on his reasons for stepping down. In a
resignation letter unanimously accepted by the board, Yates did not
specifically mention the scholarship program or the highly publicized
criticism that the program generated from the legislative auditor or
the Louisiana House Education Committee.
“While the media has been persistent in painting a misleading and
inaccurate picture in its coverage, I wish to state emphatically that
during my tenure as chancellor, I violated no university policies or
state laws in managing the university,” he said in the letter.
Yates is the second Louisiana chancellor to resign in the wake of a
scholarship scandal in the past fifteen months. Former Louisiana State
University (LSU) Chancellor William “Bud” Davis and his chief aide,
David “Sonny” DeVillier, resigned in the fall of 1995 after DeVillier
was found to have given some LSU chancellor’s scholarships intended for
minority students to White members of a fraternity.
