The Forgery and Fraud at UVM

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In 1994, before Dr Stacey Young arrived in Vermont from UCLA, the Psychology 

Department at UVM applied for an NSF grant to refurbish the 4th floor of Dewey 

Hall.  Half of the funds were to come from the NSF and UVM was to provide 

matching funds for the remainder.  Then-Provost Thomas Tritton (now President 

of Haverford College) set aside $150K for this purpose.  Dr Young participated 

in the creation of this proposal by sending her CV data from California for 

inclusion in the application.  She may have agreed to have UVM sign her name 

to the grant; she does not recall.  UVM claims that she did.



UVM's Architectural and Engineering Services (A&ES) provided costing data for 

use in the grant application.  Ken Bean from A&ES provided the data and Rik 

Musty from Psychology wrote the application.  The NSF did not approve the 

grant, ultimately written for a total of $300K ($150K plus $150K).



In 1996, an attempt was made to re-apply for the NSF funding.  Tritton again 

set aside $150K in UVM matching funds, and Bruce Kapp from Psychology set out 

to write the new application.  It was only towards the end of this major 

effort that something strange came to light.  



When Kapp approached Bean for a new AE&S cost estimate, the numbers coming 

from Psychology were significantly different than those which Bean had 

provided originally.  Kapp had understood that the renovations could be 

achieved for about $300K, the amount specified in the 1994 application; Bean 

revealed to Kapp that the actual cost which he had estimated in 1994 had been 

$531K.  



With only $150K in matching funds available from UVM, Psychology Department 

Chairman Justin Joffe was forced to go to Tritton to ask for an additional 

$100K and explain that the application would otherwise fail.  Tritton was 

unable to provide the additional funding, and the 1996 grant application was 

dropped entirely.  Kapp was clearly angry with Musty because of all of the 

time which Kapp had wasted in the futile attempt to reapply for the grant.

 

It was at this point that Kapp explained to Young that the costing figures in 

the 1994 grant application had been made up. He stated that the actual cost to 

achieve the renovations was almost twice the money available ($300K).  He said 

so to Young.  And she said so to me, at that time.



It was during this 1996 exercise that Dr Young first discovered that her 

signature had been placed on the grant application, back in 1994.  It was a 

bitter surprise to discover virtually simultaneously that the document, which 

she appeared to have "signed", was also a "fraud".



Her signature on the grant application is written as "Stacey Young".  It could 

have been written as "Stacey Young/JLB" or as "Jon Bondy, for Stacey Young", 

but it was not signed in either of these fashions.  Thus, anyone reading the 

document would have believed it to be her actual signature. From my point of 

view, this is not a minor point: deception is the essence of forgery.



UVM has stated that Dr Young gave permission for her name to be signed to this 

grant.  Dr Young states that, although she may have given such permission, she 

expected to review the document before its submission.  However, she never saw 

the document either before giving permission or after the application had been 

submitted.  She was entitled to expect:



1) that she could review the document before giving permission to use her name;

2) that the document was accurate and legitimate; and

3) that the signature on the document would indicate that she did not actually 

   sign the document herself, and that the person who did sign could be 

   identified.



These are reasonable expectations, which are routine in well-run institutions.



Furthermore, there is no question that the signature on the 1994 grant 

application does not belong to Dr Young: she was not in Vermont on April 4, 

1994; the signature does not resemble her handwriting; and she always signs 

with her middle initial.



Beyond Dr. Young's surprise at her forged signature was her surprise that the 

grant included untrue information regarding future funding for her research at 

UVM.



All of this is very strange behavior if her signature had indeed been put on 

it with her permission.  Perhaps her permission, but not her knowledge? How 

could that be?



An additional puzzling aspect about this application is that, while Young's 

signature was forged, two senior, tenured faculty members (Bouton and Kapp) 

did not sign the application.  This was the case despite the fact that they 

were not only heavily promoted in the application, but they were also 

physically present at the time.  Why forge the signature of a new, absent, 

untenured, junior faculty member, when two senior, tenured faculty members are 

in the next room?  Quite puzzling.  Unless the people writing the grant did 

not want to get Bouton and Kapp involved for some reason.



It was at this point that personnel at UVM could have taken some action 

regarding this situation.  They could have notified the NSF, or they could 

have disciplined Musty, or both.  In so far as I have been able to determine, 

neither Joffe nor Tritton took any action to correct the situation.  Instead, 

both of them simply went about business as usual.  They covered up these 

events.  They certainly never apologized to Young.



In my ongoing attempts to get someone to take this issue seriously, I showed 

some of the relevant documents to my local state legislative representative, 

Edward Paquin.  He handed them [A&ES costing sheets and the grant application 

costing sheet] to the President of UVM, Judith Ramaley, a few weeks ago, 

asking her for an explanation.  I also wrote to the Governor (Vermont is a 

small state, and this actually can be quite effective!).  Governor Dean 

forwarded my letter to Ramaley, also asking for a response.



In a letter to me dated 15 Mar 99 Ramaley again repeated that "no unlawful 

activities" have taken place.  It is clear that she is aware of the problems 

relating to the grant, since she was handed the A&ES documents, but she still 

persists in claiming that no one at UVM has done anything wrong.  Perhaps she, 

too, is trying to cover up this situation.



It is disappointing to have to believe that people at many levels of UVM have 

tried repeatedly to claim that this situation is unimportant.  In the article 

which Sam Hemingway wrote for the Burlington Free Press [see Exhibit C], UVM 

also claimed that nothing was wrong.  Thus, this may not be a situation where 

a public institution made a single mistake.  This may be a situation where a 

public institution made a mistake and tried to hide the fact over and over 

again, for years, and at all levels.



Young was confused and hurt as she was repeatedly disciplined for seeming 

minimal problems in her laboratory while these crimes appeared to go 

unpunished.  Both the President of UVM and Provosts before her have repeated 

UVM's stance that "The University does not disclose information regarding 

individual personnel actions".  I hope you can understand that in this 

situation, even had Musty been disciplined in private, collateral damage to 

Young would have occurred because of the appearance of injustice.  It is my 

feeling that this University policy, while perhaps well intentioned, has the 

potential for doing much damage.



I enclose the following exhibits for your inspection:



Exhibit A consists of some of the materials which were delivered to me as part 

of my Freedom of Information Act request.  Among them are the Costing Estimate 

sheets produced by UVM's Ken Bean of A&ES in 1994. These pages demonstrate 

that A&ES felt that it would take over $530K to perform the proposed Dewey 

renovations.  Note that there is a single costing sheet (for the Cage Washer 

plus necessary renovations for clean and dirty cage rooms) which was, by 

itself, over $300K.  There never was any way that this project could have been 

achieved for anywhere near $300K.  Please note especially the sheet from Ken 

Bean's notes stating "Why doesn't the money add up?" He knew (in 1996) that 

something was amiss with the 1994 figures.  Further note that Bean may have 

written on some of the documents in 1996, as he prepared to revise the costing 

figures.  Some of the documents make more sense if you understand that they 

may not have been created entirely in 1994.



Exhibit B is a copy of some of the pages from the grant application as sent to 

the NSF.  In this version, the Costing Estimate as provided by the Psychology 

Department (Musty) has now come down to $300K.  All of the figures in the 

Costing table have been changed, and after spending a few hours with the raw 

(A&ES) data, I can find no pattern behind the changes.  That is, it does not 

appear that only a portion of the original costing sheets were used in the 

grant application.  



Furthermore, the application clearly states that the costing data came from 

AE&S, and it further states that all of the tasks which Bean costed were to be 

included in the grant. It appears that the Psychology Department reduced $530K 

to $300K when it submitted the grant application, but still stated that the 

estimates had been made by A&ES.  This statement appears to be false.



In addition, while the Office of Animal Care Management (OACM) approved the 

original plans and costs from A&ES, there is no indication that the OACM 

approved the reductions which the Psychology Department made. 



In so far as I have been able to determine, A&ES never agreed to these 

changes: clearly Bean was surprised by them in 1996. If I am interpreting 

these documents correctly, the costing figures submitted in the grant were 

intentionally lowered, and the grant was submitted with false costing data. 

This does not look, to me, like a minor typo: this looks like wholesale 

fabrication.  



Perhaps there is some other explanation for the discrepancies, but I am 

unaware of such an explanation.  So is Dr Young.  And so was Kapp.



Exhibit C is a copy of the newspaper article about this situation written by 

Sam Hemingway of the Burlington Free Press.



Exhibit D is a copy of my letter to Governor Dean; Exhibit E is the response 

of Judith Ramaley, President of UVM.



Exhibit F is a copy of the "Anonymous E-Mail".  I include it only because it 

is mentioned in Hemingway's article.







Jon Bondy

Cambridge  VT  05444