Salm: Schemmel’s resignation raises one giant question

Former SDSU athletic director resigned last week amid allegations of improper expense reports. (AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi)

There’s a phrase that ought to be an embedded save string. It should come with every word-processing software package. Hell, there should be a key devoted to it on the keyboard. (In place of that vexatious INSERT key, maybe. Make that, definitely.)

Figurative drum roll, please:

“What the hell was he thinking?”

Humbling as it may be to confess a total lack of empathy, last week I was gobsmacked yet again by the incomprehensible behavior of a human being. In this case, that of (now former) SDSU athletic director Jeff Schemmel. Seems Mr. Schemmel requested reimbursement for travel funds he most certainly did not spend in pursuit of university interests. Instead, he was meeting a girlfriend for a few days of R&R.

Which is understandable. Not commendable, certainly, but you can see where he was coming from, or, more specifically, what he was going for. He’s married, but it happens, and it’s none of my business, none of yours, and none of the university’s.

But then he had to go and expense the damn thing, just to save a few hundred bucks. Now, God knows, we could all use another few hundred bucks. But Schemmel was earning $257,000 at SDSU and was not, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, in up to his eyeballs with anyone named “Fingers” or “Louie the Weasel.” So why risk it all for chump change?

What the hell was he thinking?

Almost an aside, but pretty close to on-topic, actually: A close acquaintance I trust was once a higher-up in the athletic department of a large university. He told me that one of the coaches was caught falsifying lunch receipts. The guy wasn’t just claiming they were business lunches when they weren’t — he had gotten hold of a blank receipt book from a restaurant, and over the course of a year he expensed about 50 non-existent meals. This was the coach of a major sport, at a major university; he was probably making better than $500,000. The university fired him for another, more public offense, and the coach went on to other universities and other scandals.

See related: SDSU athletic director Jeff Schemmel resigns amid controversy |  Hacksaw: SDSU’s Schemmel deserved a second chance |  More from Arthur Salm in Opinion

What the hell was he thinking?

You have to ask the same question of a multi-millionaire tax cheat. Now, let’s pass over the intensely moral argument that this is someone who made his stash by living and working in a society that provided the structure that allowed his fortune to be manifested in the first place, and that guaranteed — and continues to guarantee — the safety of his operation, his funds and investments, and his person. Therefore, it seems more than reasonable to assert that he owes that same society a considerable debt, which he should be delighted — no, I really mean delighted — to make good in the form of paying hefty taxes.

Arthur Salm is an SDNN columnist.

But we’re just going to let that go. No, the puzzlement here is, the guy’s already made his fortune. Why put it on the line — put a cartridge in the six-shooter, give it a spin, place it to the temple, and pull the trigger — in an attempt to hold on to a few thousand, or tens of thousands, or even tens of millions of simoleons that he doesn’t even need?

If (when) I make my big score, here’s a speech I’m going to make to my accountant, bookkeeper, CFO … whatever you call those people in charge of all the money, which is something I don’t really understand, which maybe goes a long way toward explaining why I haven’t made that big score. Anyway, here’s the speech:

“I’ve got mine now, and then some. And do you know what that allows me to do? It allows me to sleep at night. Not with a clear conscience, mind you, because if you only knew what I had to do to accumulate … Well, that’s neither here nor there.

“Anyway, the point is, I do not want to have to worry for one instant about the IRS, or the SEC, or even, for that matter, the WCTU.* Take whatever deductions I’m clearly and unambiguously entitled to, but in the end, I pay what I owe. No shady deals, anywhere. Nothing under the table, nothing around the table, nothing tucked away in a hidey-hole in a leg of the table. I’ve got a nice place here — do you like the atrium? I designed it myself — and I don’t want to have to enjoy it vicariously from a cell in a federal pen.”

But guys like him risk it all for a few dollars more. And some of them do indeed go to prison.

Or lose their $257,000 jobs and their reputations.

Just what the hell are they thinking?

*WCTU — Women’s Christian Temperance Union, founded in 1873, dedicated to promoting abstinence from alcohol, and the kicker to a verse in the Chad Mitchell Trio’s “The John Birch Society”: “Join the John Birch Society/There’s so much to do/Have you heard they’re serving vodka at the WCTU?”

Arthur Salm is an SDNN columnist.

Tags: Arthur Salm, athletic director, Jeff Schemmel, opinion, question, resignation, SDNN, SDSU

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 12:40 pm and is filed under Arthur Salm . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.