by P.D. Lesko

FOODSTAMP RECIPIENTS are not allowed to buy beer or wine with their public food assistance money. So can someone please explain to me why Dr. Rose Bellanca, president of Washtenaw Community College, should use public money to buy herself beer and wine?

Matt Durr, a former WCC journalism student who went on to be hired by MLive to write about sports, published a piece on Bellanca’s expense account reports over the past three years. She has spent a boatload of money chowing down on the public dime. She has also used her college credit card to buy beer and wine for herself and others.

Ok. She has also used her college credit card to buy herself lobster tail and prime rib. Someone on food assistance can buy lobster tail and prime rib with public money. The one lobster tail and the single serving of prime rib had better be stretched to last, oh, say, a month. The average monthly SNAP benefit in Michigan for an individual is $194, according to the Michigan DHS.

Here’s the thing: WCC is funded by taxpayers to the tune of $48 million—$384 per $100,000 of taxable value. The graduation rate of students at the two-year college is low. Only five percent earn their degrees after two years and only 15 percent earn their degrees after three years. Under Dr. Bellanca’s leadership, county property taxpayers give over $3,800 per student enrolled (12,000), but that cost jumps to $25,500 per degree completion (1,800). At Alpena Community College the cost to property tax payers per degree completion (597) is $4,340 and the cost to county property tax payers per student enrolled (1,991) is $1,301. WCC has a student loan default rate of 21 percent. The number of students in default almost doubled between 2009 and 2011, the latest figures available from the U.S. Department of Education.

My point is this: Dr. Bellanca’s leadership is questionable from a variety of perspectives. She is setting a terrible example for her staff and students. Students are expected to behave honestly in college, to refrain from cheating, for instance. Faculty are expected to behave honestly, to refrain from plagiarizing the research of others. Staff are expected to behave honestly, to enforce and follow college policies and procedures when dealing with students.

Dr. Bellanca’s misuse of her college’s credit card to purchase beer and wine, despite a clearly-worded policy which forbids such purchases, is cheating, gaming the system for her own benefit. Trustee Chair Stephen Gill was quoted as saying he doesn’t take issue with Bellanca “having alcohol at some dinners.” Considering some of the dinners at which alcohol was paid for with public money were meals at which trustees were present, who can blame Dr. Gill for his full-bodied, oaked, earthy, crisp-with-a hint-of-fruit support of Dr. Bellanca’s oenophilia.

Dr. Bellanca is a community college president. She has lunch and dinner meetings. But a budget of $32,000 for business meals? Really?  She attends conferences. She hosts events for donors. However, as the Wall Street saying goes, “The Market can bear Bears and Bulls, but not Pigs.” Thumbing her nose at the per diem and P-card policies she is expected to enforce is shamlessly hypocritical. Using public money to buy herself and her friends (including trustees) lobster, prime rib, Sam Adams beer and thousands of dollars worth of wine is thumbing her nose at her own students who struggle to pay the costs of an education at WCC.

Alas, Dr. Bellanca has made herself the center of a controversy. That she can’t follow the rules that apply to her own use of her college’s credit card, leads to the perfectly appropriate question of what other rules she’s breaking or allowing others to ignore.