Sparsely, Sage and Timely
By David V. MitchellWhere old prison counselors go
Correctional officers staging sometime-fatal gladiatorial fights between inmates at Corcoran State Prison. Guards at Pelican Bay State Prison aligning themselves with prison gangs and forming their own gangs.
California’s incarcerating more than twice as many people as any other state. Violence between inmates, staff, and visitors in California prisons jumping 73 percent during the 1990s. Prisons staffed by questionable people.
In the past 15 years, there have been so many scandals in the California prison system that any newspaper who wanted to do its own exposé could have a piece of the action.
Even this little paper with no state prison in its immediate readership area awhile back found it had part of the story – and not merely because several West Marin residents are incarcerated. This week, that story took a curious turn. Here’s what happened.
The furor began during a county Planning Commission meeting on March 14, 1994, when planning staff advised commissioners to legalize a college campus that had been built without permits on Wilson Hill Road in Chileno Valley.
Commissioner Ron Marinoff demanded to know why commissioners were being asked to issue a use permit to Les Carr, dean of faculty at Columbia Pacific University and owner of the site, after he had willfully disobeyed county ordinances and not yet abated all his illegal dwellings. "I can’t answer that," replied staff member Johanna Patri.
In 1993, Patri discovered the illegal campus of the correspondence college, which was then based in San Rafael, and contacted dean Carr. He wrote back, "For the record, no university educational functions or any other institutional functions are currently taking place or are intended to take place at 148 Wilson Hill Rd. ... for example, classroom instruction, weekend retreats, etc."
The Light, however, sent for Columbia Pacific’s 1994 catalogue which described the school’s "retreat center" in Chileno Valley as having "offices, seminar rooms, and short-term lodging for seminar participants." In fact, the facility’s phone number was listed as the "North Campus" of Columbia Pacific University.
This paper published a page from the catalogue beside Carr’s memo to the county. Asked about the dean’s obvious dishonesty, staff simply said it’s no crime to lie to county government. The late Planning Commissioner Jerry Friedman of Point Reyes Station, however, raged during the March 14 meeting. "I’m angry [of behalf of] people in West Marin," Friedman said, since they have to comply with tough planning regulations. "Then I come across something like this, and I want to throw up."
As it turned out, Carr’s past included a trail of misdeeds. Until September 1990, he had owned Oakland’s Highview Convalescent Hospital, but state health inspectors shut it down after concluding it could that as it was being operated it could kill or seriously injure elderly patients.
When The Light asked Carr what was asked what he was doing with his property on Wilson Hill Road, he said he was studying stress on horses. But as it happened, in 1990, the American Endurance Ride Conference had suspended him after he was accused of mistreating a horse named Astro Aries by trying to enter with in races despite sores; Carr was eventually reinstated but on a limited basis. In 1992, moreover, Astro Aries dropped dead during a ride in Nevada when Carr entered the horse in a second race soon after completing a 250-mile race. Although a grievance was filed against Carr, he was never punished for the horse’s death.
After for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education issued a stinging review of the Columbia Pacific and withdrew approval, a Marin superior court in 1997 ordered the college to close.
But the correspondence school, which had opened in 1978, continued to operate through March 2001 when the same judge issued a permanent injunction against the Columbia Pacific; fined it $40,000; and ordered it to inform alumni enrolled between June 1997 and December 2000 that they were entitled to tuition refunds.
"This whole thing was a giant scam and consumer fraud, and we wanted to stop them from operating," deputy attorney general Asher Rubin explained. "It was an empty shell. They used slick brochures and polished advertising and websites. They violated the education code, basically had a phantom faculty, and the curriculum was a joke. They gave you credit if you inhaled and exhaled." In fact, Rubin noted, one man received a doctorate after writing a dissertation in Spanish, which no member of the faculty could read.
Carr was "unprincipled," the deputy stressed, and with amazement noted that San Quentin State Prison was paying the con man ($55,000 per year) to counsel convicts. The Light repeatedly asked state officials how this could happen and was told that because Columbia Pacific and its operators, including Carr, had been tried in civil court, the rulings would not affect his prison position. Prison spokesman Vernell Crittendon, however, said that if Dr. Carr were to be convicted in a criminal court, he might lose his prison job because the Department of Corrections required him to maintain "professional integrity."
As soon as Columbia Pacific University closed in Marin County, it simply moved, reopening in Missoula, Montana. Deputy attorney general Rubin then said he would warn Montana authorities.
It’s unclear to outsiders what happened next, but in 2001 the correspondence college changed its name to Columbia Commonwealth and moved its headquarters to Jackson, Wyoming. The school secured a "private-school license" from the State of Wyoming and on its website claimed it had been accredited by the African Republic of Malawi. That claim, however, was later dropped although its website continued to say it operated "innovative distance learning centers" in Malawi, Malaysia, and Vietnam, along with "Columbia Commonwealth University-London." Whether some of these centers are much more than addresses is not clear.
I hadn’t thought about Dr. Carr or Columbia Pacific in years, but after the recent scandals at Pelican Bay State Prison, I spent about three hours Tuesday night on the web, tracking Carr and his schools around the world. I downloaded documents and checked his school’s faculty listings.
Then something odd happened. Wednesday morning, a man who identified himself as "Big John Stephenson" from Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, called to say he happened to have been searching the web the previous night and a found Light articles that mentioned his degree from Columbia Pacific.
Stephenson was unhappy with a 1997 story which quoted Louisville’s Courier-Journal, which described him as a 380-pound Kentucky politico who had his Columbia Pacific degrees fall under scrutiny when he attempted a power-grab in that state’s educational system.
There had been no power-grab, Stephenson insisted. He had been convincing elected Superintendent of State Education in 1992, but subsequently the position was made appointive. Had the Columbia Pacific degrees been used against him during the campaign? They had indeed, Stephenson said, and they were also used against him when he was a director of Motor Vehicles in 1982-83.
He said he resented the disparagement and responded that before he enrolled in Columbia Pacific, he had checked with the California Department of Education to make sure the college was licensed. The department told him it was, he said. (In fact, Columbia Pacific at the time had "approval" as a private-postsecondary institution from the State of California but was not accredited.)
All the same, said Stephenson, he wanted it known he had been enrolled in Columbia Pacific in 1981-82, well before a judge shut it down as a "diploma mill." Stephenson, acknowledged he had twice visited the supposedly non-existent Chileno Valley campus.
"I had no idea my wife and I spent the night ... in those rooms [that], I guess, they tore down," Stephenson said. And as for Carr’s successor college, Columbia Commonwealth? "If it is a phony operation, it should be shut down."
But I had one last question. Stephenson acknowledged having served as an unpaid "faculty advisor for four or five years" after graduating. How was it that he came to call me out of the blue the morning after I had spent several hours checking Columbia Pacific’s and Columbia Commonwealth’s websites?
When he found our website, he merely had been trying to find out where to send for a transcript, Stephenson replied. Had he had any dealings with Les Carr or his school in the past 24 hours? None at all, said the alumnus.