VOLUME 114, ISSUE 146
Former UNC employee misused funds
Athletics audit reveals personal gifts
BY SARAH RABIL
INVESTIGATIVE TEAM CO-EDITOR
A former University employee
misused athletic department funds
to buy personal gifts between 1999
and 2006, according to a financial
review by UNC’s audit committee.
Linda K. Rhodes, former execu
tive assistant to Athletic Director
Dick Baddour, bought $4,300
worth of personal gifts from
Johnny T-shirt, the UNC cloth
ing and memorabilia retailer on
Franklin Street.
An additional SB,BOO was spent
on unauthorized purchases, said
Phyllis Petree, director of internal
audit.
The audit committee could not
establish that these purchases
PLAYING WITH FOOD
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DTH PHOTOS/LAURA OLENIACZ
Sophomore Alex Mellnik tastes his cantaloupe caviar after cooking it in his Stratford Hills apartment kitchen. Mellnik, a physics
major, dabbles in molecular gastronomy, a technique which uses chemistry to give flair to normal foods, such as chocolate or cheese.
BY LAURA OLENIACZ
SENIOR WRITER
Electric-colored fruit juice in a clear
glass. Slices of Romano cheese cut from
a rubbery block.
That was before.
With a few chemical alterations, you
can eat your juice with a spoon in tiny
spherical droplets of rubbery film that
release flavor in a liquid burst.
As for the cheese it has that same
pungent smell and sharp taste —but it
looks a lot like sea foam.
Sophomore physics major Alex Mellnik,
a self-described hobbyist and sometimes
cook, has the know-how to make these old
foods take on new shapes.
He uses chemicals common to the
food industry to practice molecular gas
tronomy, the art form/science of using
Campus parking fines bring millions to schools
Lawsuit redirects
citation revenue
BY SHARI FELD
SENIOR WRITER
Asa senior last year, Mary Casale
evaded paying her parking fines so
often it became her specialty.
And it still is.
The alumna
got out of pay
ing all but one of
her 30 citations
last school year
and still hasn’t
PART 2:
AN ANALYSIS
OF PARKING
CITATIONS
ON CAMPUS
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were personal but said they “may
not have had a valid business pur
pose,” according to a December
2006 letter reporting the findings
to Chancellor James Moeser.
Baddour requested the indepen
dent financial review last year after
the department’s staff red-flagged
multiple old invoices from Rhodes.
“I felt that it would be important
for someone outside the depart
ment to ensure from start to finish
it was absolutely done in the right
way,” Baddour said.
Rhodes, 47, had been employed
at the University since July 1991.
She resigned October 13,2006.
She could not be reached for
comment.
Rhodes paid Johnny T-shirt
rudimentary chemistry to give foods
new textures and refined tastes.
Internationally renowned restaurants
and cooks use such techniques to give their
presentation some flair, and the cooking
trend has spread to home kitchens.
“It’s probably just tinkering with things,
you know?” said Mellnik, who has a his
tory of getting lost in crafty hobbies, such
as boat making and screen printing.
About once a week or whenever he has
time, Mellnik can be found at the stove of
his Stratford Hills Apartments kitchen.
The tools of his trade are mostly ordi
nary kitchen utensils: the blender, aspoon,
a strainer, a bowl and a thermometer.
Add to that some official-looking
bottles labeled “Xanthan Gum,” “Sodium
SEE FOOD, PAGE 8
paid the fine she got during a visit
to campus in October.
Tve actually had people (instant
message) me asking me to come up
with an excuse for them to tell the
ticket people to get them out of a
ticket,” Casale said. “If it’s a good rea
son, I’ll just tell them to be honest.”
Between appeals and warnings,
39.5 percent of the 198,378 cita
tions issued by the Department of
Public Safety between Jan. 1,2003
and Nov. 3,2006 ended up costing
violators no money.
To dispute a citation, offenders
can mail a written appeal, appeal
online at www.dps.unc.edu/dps Or
inside
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Kenan Stadium's student section, PAGE 4
MAJOR INITIATIVE Arab culture
studies becomes anew major, PAGE 6
PREGNANT POWER Panelists talk
about the politics of pregnancy, PAGE 7
www.dailytarheel.com
$4,300 and the athletic depart
ment S6O for items she admitted
were personal gifts, Petree said.
Some items were gifts from
Rhodes to co-workers or athletics
supporters but were still unauthor
ized, according to the letter.
The department absorbed the
remaining $8,720 cost of the
other unauthorized purchases,
Petree said. That cost is less than
two-hundredths of a percent of the
department’s ssl million budget
for the 2006-2007 fiscal year.
The department has reinforced its
financial controls, but Baddour said
there always will be process concerns
when a budget is involved.
“I’d never say I’m satisfied it
could never happen again, but I’m
also comfortable saying we have
safeguards in place,” he said.
Most of the questionable pur
Mellnik prepares cantaloupe caviar, which he
makes by squirting cantaloupe juice into calcium
chloride —a process called spherification.
appeal in person within 10 days of
receiving a ticket.
Casale cited such reasons as a
broken meter and a broken ankle
to get out of her myriad tickets.
“I just always had a reason for
why I got a ticket and then a legit
reason to get out of it,” she said.
A complicated lawsuit
DPS issued $4.9 million worth
of parking citations during the past
four years even though many of the
citations did not include a fine to
be paid.
But the University pockets only
chases between March 1999 and
December 2001 were mislabeled
as gifts from Baddour. The depart
ment’s financial staff did not initially
question the purchases because of
the mislabeling, the letter states.
The athletic department had a
long-standing departmental charge
account set up with Johnny T-shirt
that allowed employees to sign for
purchases. The retailer later would
bill the department.
The account was closed during
the audit, the letter stated.
Such accounts were com
mon between local retailers and
University departments with a need
for frequent purchases, said Martha
Pendergrass, director of materials
and disbursement services.
“The idea was to make it easy
for the local vendors to do business
with the University to increase the
a small portion of what it collects.
The outcome of a lawsuit filed by
the N.C. School Boards Association
in 1998 called for the majority of
parking revenue to be allocated to
K-12 public schools.
Universities can keep up to 10
percent of the money obtained from
parking fines to help recoup the costs
of collecting those fines, said Leslie
Winner, vice president and general
counsel of the UNC system.
But the universities have to front
the costs of enforcing parking rules
and evaluating appeals without the
monetary aid of parking fines.
“I think most campuses lose
city | pages
EXTRA, EXTRAVAGANZA
A Science Extravaganza shows
off New Hope Elementary
students' projects, part of an
effort to increase interest in
the sciences.
local spending,” Pendergrass said.
But the accounts were not easily
traceable in a review, she said.
Johnny T-shirt sent invoices
itemized requests for payment
directly to Rhodes, who did not give
them to the finance department to
be paid between January 2002 and
January 2006. The invoices were
not given to the financial staff until
July 2006, when it was noticed that
some were outdated.
The department’s normal review
process caught the problem, Petree
said.
Now the department is making
sure the problem won’t repeat, said
Martina Ballen, senior associate
athletic director for business and
finance.
“We just made sure that going
forward.... We might have some
thing in front of us that looks OK
Local improv
festival grows
DSI production
hits stages today
BY BENNETT CAMPBELL
STAFF WRITER
Call it the little festival that could.
The seventh annual Dirty South
Improv Comedy Festival will return
to Carrboro today and, as has been
the case each year, this one will be
bigger than the last. Those orga
nizing the six-day festival promise
it will be better, as well.
“We’ve gotten to the point where
we are no longer able to fly under
the radar,” said Zach Ward, the
executive producer for Carrboro’s
DSI Comedy Theater.
“This year we’ve actually
become one of the largest festivals
of improv comedy in the country,”
he said. “We’ve grown substantially
Notable DSI Festival performances
Thursday
10 p.m.—The Carrboro Arts Center
► Featured acts: Box 0' Bones
(New York City), Swayze (Ann
Arbor, Mich.), CHiPs (UNC) and
The Other Side (Wilmington)
Friday
7 p.m. The DSI Studio
► Featured acts: Let's Try This!
(Georgia Tech University), Project
Improv (Louisville, Ky.), Date Night
(Southern Illinois University), Papa
Fibonacci (Carrboro), Season Six
(Washington), Occam’s Razor
(University of Chicago) and The
Whethermen (University of Virginia)
9 p.m. Cat’s Cradle
► Featured acts: Upright Citizens
Brigade Theatre (New York City),
Bassprov (Chicago) and Horatio
Sanz (Saturday Night Live)
money,” Winner said.
The institutions cannot afford
not to enforce parking either.
“If we just quit collecting park
ing fines, there wouldn’t be any
incentive to obey the parking
rules,” Winner said. “I don’t think
the campuses have any choice but
to enforce, even if it’s a money-los
ing proposition.”
The court ruling mandates that
the 16 UNC-system schools turn
over at least 90 percent of parking
fines collected to the N.C. Office of
State Budget and Management to
SEE PARKING, PAGE 8
this day in history
FEB. 6,1951 ...
Only 67 students attend a meeting
to discuss a medical school tuition
increase. Representatives said the
hike would make the school cease
to be a good value.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2007
but to make sure we ask additional
questions if any little red flag goes
up,” Ballen said.
“We’re just tightening up con
trols in our office to make sure
those things don’t come up again.”
The archaic departmental
account system with retailers has
largely been eliminated. Only a few
accounts still exist, Ballen said, and
those are being phased out.
Next fiscal year, the audit com
mittee will re-examine the athletic
department’s finances in a follow
up of all special-request audits.
“We want to make sure things
are done correctly. Most things
are done the right way, so there
wasn’t a significant impact in that
respect,” Ballen said.
Contact the Investigative Team
Editor at iteam@unc.edu.
every year.”
The list of performers is evidence
of the giant leaps that the festival
has taken. Ward said the festival’s
first year brought about 35 people
to town. But this year, more than
400 performers from 70 national
acts are involved, and the highlight
of the week will be Saturday Night
Live’s Horatio Sanz performing at
Cat’s Cradle on Friday night.
Kevin Patrick Robbins, the
executive producer of the Toronto
International Improv Festival
who will be teaching improv
classes at the festival, said he also
is impressed with the growth the
festival has exhibited.
“When I was here before, most
everything was in Hamilton Hall,
with a few shows at Local 506,” he
said. “But now it’s at four or five
SEE DSI, PAGE 8
11 p.m. —The Carrboro Arts Center
► Featured acts: Girls Girls Girls
(Austin, Texas), The Shower
(Washington) and The Pearl
Brunswick (New York City)
Saturday
7 p.m.—The DSI Studio
► Featured acts: Jinx (Washington),
Lighted Pools (Haverford, Penn.),
Divine Improvidence (Sedona,
Ariz.), Baby Liberty (Carrboro),
Improv Nashville (Nashville, Tenn.),
Diversionary Tactics (Atlanta) and
The Oxymorons (Asheville)
11 p.m.—The Carrboro Arts Center
► Featured acts: Cathcart & Olson
(Chicago) and Death by Roo Roo
(New York City)
Full schedule available online at
www.dsicomedytheater.com.
A fine time parking
The dollar amount of fines paid, the
darker bars, compared to the total
amount of fines issued that year
$2,500,000
$2,000,000 j
$1,500,000 II! jj| i^
$1,000,000 Ipi ill 111 111
$500,000 H S flj JH
$0 .1
2003* 2004* 2005* 2006*
•Citations issued Jan. 1 to Nov. 3 of the year
SOURCE: DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY
DTH/REBECCA ROLFE
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