To the editor:

On Tuesday, Sept. 2, attorneys for Paul Smith’s College replied to the petition filed by Scott Van Laer and the 3,000-plus-member alumni group against changing the school’s name in Franklin County court. Attorneys for the school claim that the 3,000-plus-member Facebook group is not “formally affiliated with the college or its alumni in any way.” I find this claim to be quite insulting to the thousands of individuals who have committed time, money and other resources to fighting this ill-conceived name grab. Since the vast majority of the group members are indeed alumni of Paul Smith’s College, this just further serves to disenfranchise these individuals from their alma matter and highlights the disconnect between the college Board of Trustees, its administration and the students, both past and present, who want their voices to be heard.

Attorneys for Paul Smith’s go on to state that the relief sought from the restrictions contained in the last will and testament of Phelps Smith are so necessary that to not have them altered presents an “unlawful, impracticable, impossible to achieve, or wasteful” burden upon the institution. As research into the college’s IRS 990s between 2005 and 2013 have shown, the claims of “dire financial need” are fabrications at best, if not just plain outright lies and manipulations of the truth. Only in two years during that period did the college suffer a loss: 2008 and 2013. These losses can easily be attributed to the financial crisis of 2008 (to which Sandy Weill was a major contributor), and in 2013 it is most likely due to the fact that there was nobody employed by the college that year in the position of vice president of enrollment. Overall, during the period from 2005 to 2013, the college showed a net gain of over $17 million. I believe that this hardly qualifies as financial dire straits.

The college has also strong objections to the alumni group being granted amicus curiae (friend of the court) status in the proceedings that are currently before Judge John Ellis in the Franklin County Supreme Court. Their main reason for this has been stated as being that this type of intervention is only warranted when “the parties are not making a full and adequate presentation of the issues, facts, and law.” Despite its claims to the contrary, it has come to light that the college indeed has NOT made a full or adequate presentation of the facts, and has rather obfuscated the truth and misrepresented the facts. For this reason, denial of amicus curiae would be highly inappropriate. I sincerely hope that Judge Ellis will not be swayed by the straw man arguments and manipulations of the facts that the college and its attorneys have been making, but rather he is able to see through the smokescreen of deceit that is being employed to accommodate an inappropriate request that is based on phony claims and untruths.

Sincerely,

Michael P. Heller

CEO, Eagle Bay Inn Corp.

Paul Smith’s College Class of 2003

Eagle Bay