It has been said that the only survivors of a nuclear holocaust will be cockroaches and Cher. At this point, it might seem reasonable to add E. Gordon Gee to that list.
At a time when college leaders are being tossed out at the very first whiff of a scandal, the Ohio State University president appears impervious to controversy.
Over the course of his decades-long career in higher education, Mr. Gee has weathered athletics scandal, spending probes, and even jokes about his ex-wife’s smoking pot in the president’s residence at Vanderbilt University.
Through it all, the unflappable Mr. Gee, 68, has never seemed to stop smiling.
“If a cat has nine lives, then Gordon has 90,” said a former communications adviser to Mr. Gee, who worked with him on a number of controversial issues.
The latest tough headlines for Mr. Gee came from the Dayton Daily News, which determined that the globe-trotting leader’s wining, dining, and ever-present bow ties had cost the university $7.7-million during his five years at Ohio State’s helm, his second term as its president. (He also led the university in the 1990s.)
That tab comes on top of Mr. Gee’s $2-million compensation, which has made him the nation’s highest-paid public-university president for several years running.
The $7.7-million tally captures the president’s discretionary spending, which includes money spent directly on Mr. Gee for lodging and meals, as well as expenses related to the entertainment of donors, students, faculty, and staff at his home. The total includes $895,000 for gatherings at the Pizzuti House, the president’s mansion.
University officials say a good portion of the expenses are related to fund raising that benefits the entire institution. All of the expenses are covered by a discretionary endowment fund, not taxpayer or tuition dollars, the officials say.
“Since 2007, when Dr. Gee returned to Ohio State, the university has raised $1.6-billion in private funds,” the university said in a written statement. “During the past two years alone, his innovative thinking has helped the university generate an additional $1-billion in new resources to support its core mission of teaching, learning, and discovery. In supporting the work of the president, the university has reaped an exceptional return on its investment.”
That may be true, but there is no denying that the optics are bad. Mr. Gee’s tab includes $64,000 for bow ties, bow-tie cookies, bow-tie pins, and other related items that the president and others hand out for branding around his signature neckwear.
And then there’s the shower curtain for the guest bath, which ran $532, the Dayton Daily News reported.
Mr. Gee declined an interview request.
Apologies Aplenty
For any other college president, those headlines would probably stir up talk of resignation or dismissal. For Mr. Gee, it’s just another day at the office.
Mr. Gee’s former communications adviser, who asked not to be identified so he could speak candidly about working with the president, described Mr. Gee as a media-savvy public figure with skin as thick as a crocodile’s.
“There’s nobody better at the strategic apology,” the adviser said. “Many CEO’s would rather drink poison than say, ‘I screwed up, I goofed, I’m sorry.’ Gordon uses that approach to disarm and convert critics.”
Mr. Gee has issued plenty of mea culpas in recent memory. The president got in hot water last January, when he compared the job of coordinating the university’s several divisions to the Polish Army.
He then apologized to Polish people.
In November 2010, Mr. Gee took a jab at colleges in less-prestigious athletic conferences, suggesting that their opponents were “the Little Sisters of the Poor.”
He then apologized to nuns.
And who could forget his great gaffe four months later, in March 2011? When asked if he would fire Jim Tressel, the Ohio State football coach accused of covering up improper payments to players, Mr. Gee quipped that he was “just hopeful the coach doesn’t dismiss me.”
He then sort of apologized to everyone.
“My tongue spoke before my brain, and the minute I said it, I thought, What a stupid thing,” Mr. Gee told ESPN Magazine.
Since his first presidency, which began in 1981 at West Virginia University, Mr. Gee has hopped from college to college, earning a reputation as an ambitious eccentric. Over a span of more than 30 years, he has held the top job at five institutions, including West Virginia, the University of Colorado system, Brown University, Vanderbilt, and Ohio State, where he served from 1990 through 1997 before returning in 2007.
Mr. Gee’s travels through higher-education leadership are something of a double-edged sword. His supreme mobility bolsters his reputation as one of academe’s hottest commodities, while reinforcing the narrative that his loyalties rest with the highest bidder.
When Mr. Gee left Brown for Vanderbilt after just two years, he was harshly criticized for abandoning the Ivy League institution.
Mr. Gee then apologized to people at Brown. But he also asked that they acknowledge he was never a good fit.
Dogged by Expenses
The latest flap over Mr. Gee’s expenses at Ohio State has a familiar ring to it. During Mr. Gee’s tenure at Vanderbilt, the university paid more than $6-million to renovate Braeburn, the chancellor’s mansion. The tab for his frequent parties and personal chef exceeded $700,000 a year, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The Wall Street Journal investigation, which detailed efforts by Vanderbilt trustees to rein in Mr. Gee’s spending, carried another bit of tough news for the chancellor. Citing unnamed sources, the newspaper aired allegations that Constance B. Gee, Mr. Gee’s then wife and a professor at Vanderbilt, had used marijuana at Braeburn.
“It didn’t go over so well, but it was excused,” said Judson G. Randolph, an emeritus trustee at Vanderbilt. “First of all, it was not the chancellor; it was his wife, and she had a medical condition. That excuses it in part.
“That kind of stuff never did touch him,” Mr. Randolph continued. “I think people thought he was colorful and kind of out of the box, but a good administrator at Vanderbilt. I think most people would have liked to have seen him stay.”
Mr. Gee’s faculty, trustee, and student supporters often argue that his skills as an administrator and fund raiser make his occasional missteps tolerable. But it is also true that his well-developed persona contributes to his popularity. With his toothy grin, bow tie, and horn-rimmed glasses, Mr. Gee looks more like Orville Redenbacher than an out-of-touch “1 percenter.”
Teresa Valerio Parrot, a crisis consultant and principal at TVP Communications, said Mr. Gee’s physical vulnerability acts as a shield.
“It’s really hard to pick on an academic, bow-tie-wearing, awkward man,” said Ms. Parrot, who attended Colorado’s Boulder campus when Mr. Gee led the system. “You sound like a bully.”
The fact that Mr. Gee appears to be in the twilight of his career may also soften critics, Ms. Parrot said.
“People are willing to give him a pass,” she said. “Having said that, I think it would be difficult to justify $64,000 in bow-tie and bow-tie-related giveaways, and $500 shower curtains.”
Corrections (8/2/2016, 3:06 p.m.): This article originally misstated the dates of two of Mr. Gee’s gaffes. He denigrated colleges in less-prestigious conferences in November 2010, not in 2011. And he commented on the possibility that a football coach would fire him in March 2011, not in 2010. Both errors have been corrected.
