This is going to be a long post, so bear with me.
History first. In the summer of 2011- and dates are fuzzy here (and you’ll see why soon) - “inaccuracies” were discovered in the stats being reported to the ABA and USNWR by the University of Illinois College of Law. For a detailed background, read the official investigative report, available here.
What supposedly happened is this. An assistant dean of admissions, Paul Pless, had been fudging the numbers for years. LSAT scores and GPA data for its incoming classes had been consistently inflated, with the effect being that it would artificially boost the school’s USNWR ranking. In the summer of 2011, something happened and the school was forced to go public about it.
The first firm date we know is this: August 26, 2011, when the university ethics office received information about these inaccuracies from the law school. But we can be fairly sure that there was much internal investigation prior to this date within the law school itself – it’s not as if the dean would have learned that the numbers were fudged and the next phone call he made was to the ethics office. So some time before August 26, 2011, the administration of the law school "found out" about Pless’s activities. A couple of months, perhaps?
The official investigative report dragged Pless through the mud, as did news reporting and commentary of this event afterwards, even investigating whether or not he stole money from scholarships for his own use. Amazingly (or literally unbelievably), nobody else was implicated in this immense scheme. According to the official report, this was Pless’s idea, his alone, and nobody else in the entire school – no professors, deans, administrators, nobody – had any idea what Pless was up to. The ABA sanctioned the school with a slap on the wrist, everyone agreed that it was just a lone wolf and nobody else was involved, and life returned to normal.
Now, you and I know that Pless was not acting alone. Plenty of law schools do this with their stats – they just haven’t been caught, or the fudging is too well hidden or subtle. Pless, who joined the admissions team right out of law school, was just too junior to start fudging the stats of his own accord right off the bat. No school would ever let a new law grad, unguided, simply report whatever stats he wanted to USNWR and the ABA. His work would have been supervised, he would have received advice from above in his early years in the job at least, and his would have been – unofficially, if not officially – approved by someone higher up the food chain. Fudging the stats is an order that comes down from on high, not from down below. To a law school, these stats mean everything.
Pless was used as a scapegoat by the law school, and Pless took the heat for the entire scheme. But for some reason – and I didn’t know what (until now) – he’s protecting those above him, keeping his mouth shut, tossing away his own law school career, and taking a massive hit for the team. Why?
Put yourself in his shoes. You screwed up by reporting false stats, and it’s gone public. But you were told to do it by higher-ups. You have the emails, the facts and figures, the who-did-what-and-when. And they’re making you take the entire blame? I’d be like, “Hellz no! (Ring ring) New York Times? Have I got a story for you!”
So here we are. False stats, reported August 26, 2013 to the university ethics office, and Pless took all the blame without complaint or excuse. Something's wrong.
A few weeks ago, someone in the scamblogosphere mentioned Pless – I forget why. But I decided to do some checking around. Pless is a realtor, as we all know, but on one site, he gives away a little too much information – one word too much, in fact. On his Trulia profile, he posts the following as his interests, and gives away a little piece of information that connects all the dots:
Married to a professor? Hmmm. I looked up Professor Stacey Tutt. Guess where she works. Yup, Stacey Tutt is a professor at Illinois University College of Law, the very same place that ruined her husband’s career. That alone is odd.
But look at those dates. She was hired in June 2011, right before the school went public with the stats scandal. Right at the time where Pless would have been in the dean’s office trying to work out a solution. The dean is worried sick because he knows he told Pless to fudge the stats. Pless is crying, perhaps, because how will he look after his baby daughter with no job and a wife who makes around $55K (as per the current vacancy for a managing attorney, her prior job at Prairie State Legal Services, which is hardly going to compensate for the loss of Pless's $130K salary at the law school)? The family relied on Paul's healthy salary, and a drop from a combined income of almost $200K to just over $50K would have been devastating.
So the dean – or Pless – has a great idea. Fire Pless and he’ll take the hit willingly. After all, Pless was involved in the scandal and will lose his job anyway. But in return for his silence, the school will hire Pless’s wife, Stacey Tutt, as an assistant clinical professor of some new clinic (i.e. the lowest kind of full time professor, more of a perk offered to attract a big name professor - the school throws in an assistant clinical professor job for the big name prof's useless JD spouse to boost up their combined compensation by a hundred grand or so, and the spouse gets a vacant little office to set up a clinic in and a meaningless title.) A nice salary and a fine replacement for Pless’s lost income. And she’ll be hired under her maiden name so nobody will guess that she’s married to Paul. Just don't expect a "plus one" invitation to the faculty Christmas party though. Perfect! Everyone’s happy. The dean keeps his job, and the Pless/Tutt family gets to avoid bankruptcy.
And all was well and good, with Paul selling houses and Stacey doing whatever she did as director of the Community Preservation Clinic, until Paul posted that he was married to Professor Stacey Tutt in an obscure online profile. Had the word “Professor” been omitted, nobody would know.
The dots connect rather well. The school needed Pless to keep quiet, and they bought his silence with a job for his wife. That’s the payoff that nobody figured out. That’s why Paul has kept his mouth shut.
Interestingly, Stacey Tutt, back in 2010, was profiled in a little piece in Central Illinois Business, where she is quoted as follows:
Paul Pless
History first. In the summer of 2011- and dates are fuzzy here (and you’ll see why soon) - “inaccuracies” were discovered in the stats being reported to the ABA and USNWR by the University of Illinois College of Law. For a detailed background, read the official investigative report, available here.
What supposedly happened is this. An assistant dean of admissions, Paul Pless, had been fudging the numbers for years. LSAT scores and GPA data for its incoming classes had been consistently inflated, with the effect being that it would artificially boost the school’s USNWR ranking. In the summer of 2011, something happened and the school was forced to go public about it.
The first firm date we know is this: August 26, 2011, when the university ethics office received information about these inaccuracies from the law school. But we can be fairly sure that there was much internal investigation prior to this date within the law school itself – it’s not as if the dean would have learned that the numbers were fudged and the next phone call he made was to the ethics office. So some time before August 26, 2011, the administration of the law school "found out" about Pless’s activities. A couple of months, perhaps?
The official investigative report dragged Pless through the mud, as did news reporting and commentary of this event afterwards, even investigating whether or not he stole money from scholarships for his own use. Amazingly (or literally unbelievably), nobody else was implicated in this immense scheme. According to the official report, this was Pless’s idea, his alone, and nobody else in the entire school – no professors, deans, administrators, nobody – had any idea what Pless was up to. The ABA sanctioned the school with a slap on the wrist, everyone agreed that it was just a lone wolf and nobody else was involved, and life returned to normal.
Now, you and I know that Pless was not acting alone. Plenty of law schools do this with their stats – they just haven’t been caught, or the fudging is too well hidden or subtle. Pless, who joined the admissions team right out of law school, was just too junior to start fudging the stats of his own accord right off the bat. No school would ever let a new law grad, unguided, simply report whatever stats he wanted to USNWR and the ABA. His work would have been supervised, he would have received advice from above in his early years in the job at least, and his would have been – unofficially, if not officially – approved by someone higher up the food chain. Fudging the stats is an order that comes down from on high, not from down below. To a law school, these stats mean everything.
Pless was used as a scapegoat by the law school, and Pless took the heat for the entire scheme. But for some reason – and I didn’t know what (until now) – he’s protecting those above him, keeping his mouth shut, tossing away his own law school career, and taking a massive hit for the team. Why?
Put yourself in his shoes. You screwed up by reporting false stats, and it’s gone public. But you were told to do it by higher-ups. You have the emails, the facts and figures, the who-did-what-and-when. And they’re making you take the entire blame? I’d be like, “Hellz no! (Ring ring) New York Times? Have I got a story for you!”
So here we are. False stats, reported August 26, 2013 to the university ethics office, and Pless took all the blame without complaint or excuse. Something's wrong.
A few weeks ago, someone in the scamblogosphere mentioned Pless – I forget why. But I decided to do some checking around. Pless is a realtor, as we all know, but on one site, he gives away a little too much information – one word too much, in fact. On his Trulia profile, he posts the following as his interests, and gives away a little piece of information that connects all the dots:
Interests: When not helping clients buy or sell their home I enjoy spending time with my family. My wife, Stacey Tutt, is a Professor and very active in the community as a Board Member of United Way. We have a wonderful daughter and 300 pounds of dog in the energetic Duke and Ramsey.
Married to a professor? Hmmm. I looked up Professor Stacey Tutt. Guess where she works. Yup, Stacey Tutt is a professor at Illinois University College of Law, the very same place that ruined her husband’s career. That alone is odd.
Stacey Tutt
But look at those dates. She was hired in June 2011, right before the school went public with the stats scandal. Right at the time where Pless would have been in the dean’s office trying to work out a solution. The dean is worried sick because he knows he told Pless to fudge the stats. Pless is crying, perhaps, because how will he look after his baby daughter with no job and a wife who makes around $55K (as per the current vacancy for a managing attorney, her prior job at Prairie State Legal Services, which is hardly going to compensate for the loss of Pless's $130K salary at the law school)? The family relied on Paul's healthy salary, and a drop from a combined income of almost $200K to just over $50K would have been devastating.
So the dean – or Pless – has a great idea. Fire Pless and he’ll take the hit willingly. After all, Pless was involved in the scandal and will lose his job anyway. But in return for his silence, the school will hire Pless’s wife, Stacey Tutt, as an assistant clinical professor of some new clinic (i.e. the lowest kind of full time professor, more of a perk offered to attract a big name professor - the school throws in an assistant clinical professor job for the big name prof's useless JD spouse to boost up their combined compensation by a hundred grand or so, and the spouse gets a vacant little office to set up a clinic in and a meaningless title.) A nice salary and a fine replacement for Pless’s lost income. And she’ll be hired under her maiden name so nobody will guess that she’s married to Paul. Just don't expect a "plus one" invitation to the faculty Christmas party though. Perfect! Everyone’s happy. The dean keeps his job, and the Pless/Tutt family gets to avoid bankruptcy.
And all was well and good, with Paul selling houses and Stacey doing whatever she did as director of the Community Preservation Clinic, until Paul posted that he was married to Professor Stacey Tutt in an obscure online profile. Had the word “Professor” been omitted, nobody would know.
The dots connect rather well. The school needed Pless to keep quiet, and they bought his silence with a job for his wife. That’s the payoff that nobody figured out. That’s why Paul has kept his mouth shut.
Paul and Stacey - a charming couple
Interestingly, Stacey Tutt, back in 2010, was profiled in a little piece in Central Illinois Business, where she is quoted as follows:
I admire: My husband, Paul Pless. He has a quiet influence and can find a practical solution to what appears to be an unmanageable situation.How right you are, Stacey. How right you are.
This has appeared nowhere in the media. However, the University Ethics report, issued on Nov. 7, 2011 (prepared by Jones Day and Duff & Phelps under the direction of the University) mentions this fishy decision in a single footnote (below) (p. 104, n. 43).
ReplyDeletehttp://www.law.illinois.edu/content/aba/Nov7-UofI-FinalReport.pdf
"Pless’s wife was hired by COL as a clinical instructor beginning in the current academic year. (There are no COL policies prohibiting the hiring of the spouses of employees—Pless’s wife had previously worked in COL’s placement office; she has never been employed in the Admissions Office.) Smith and other COL administrators and faculty members considered this hiring during the preceding academic year (2009-2010). At times, certain COL personnel viewed the prospect of hiring Pless’s wife favorably based, in part, on Pless’s position and performance at COL. For his part, Smith expressed to faculty and administrators that the decision whether to hire Pless’s wife
would be made without regard to Pless or any desire to retain Pless. The investigation has not revealed any irregularities with respect to this hiring."
This is oddly-worded footnote that does not refer to Pless's wife by name. Moreover, Stacey Tutt is not listed as one of the 23 University employees interviewed during the inquiry. (p. 16)
Nice catch - I had overlooked this footnote. But it goes with the general theme of this affair, in that details are missing, names hidden, dates hidden, and it's all a little fishy.
DeleteI wrote the original post and then thought, perhaps there's an innocent explanation here. Perhaps Tutt's hiring had nothing to do with Pless, and Pless stepped down and made no fuss because he was being a gentleman and wanting to cause as little harm to his wife's legitimate career as possible.
Sure, that could be the case. And if so, then say so. There's nothing shameful about that. Make a statement, get everything out in the open and on the table.
But the fact that all of this has been so well hidden, even in the official report, makes me wonder why. What are they hiding? Why are they hiding it?
We all know how this game is played now, especially in the seedy world of law school administration. Pless and Smith made a deal, and somehow Tutt was a pawn in that deal. Either Pless told Smith that he'd tell all unless Tutt was hired, or Smith told Pless that Tutt would not be hired unless he shuts his mouth.
The report was a cover up to begin with, and details like this make it look more and more like a work of fiction.
I'd like to hear from some Illinois students - did you know that Tutt was Pless's wife? Anonymous comments are welcome.
It should be public record what they're paying her, no?
DeletePerhaps her salary is inflated due to the cover up?
Stacey L Tutt
DeleteDIR OF COMMUNITY PRES CLINIC
Law
1.00
$90,500.00
Champaign-Urbana
2012 - 2013
http://data.illinimedia.com/salaries/index
$90K to shut the fuck up?
DeleteThat works. I'd STFU for $60K in an easy clinic job where I don't do anything all day.
(And as an aside, this site works really well when everyone add their little pieces of research. This story is developing nicely.)
excellent work. you should report this to NYT's David Segal. we need more investigative journalism and active bloggers who make a difference, not those assclowns who drop 200k for the prestige of attending Columbia journalism school.
ReplyDeleteFor $ome rea$on, the university "forgot" to mention Stacey Tutt by name. Great work looking into this foul situation.
ReplyDeleteEvery time I see the grinning face of cunt Pless, I want to vomit. And his wife is no oil painting either.
ReplyDeleteI hope the poor kid didn't inherit Pless fatness and Tutt hideousness. But the poor kid will inherit a heap of stories about how her dad was a criminal fraudster and her mom was a whore professor raping students for loan money.
What a dirty family. They should both be ashamed of themselves, but of course they are not. No law school professor or admissions dean has any shame. They are like tobacco executives and gun manufacturers in their dissociation of their actions from the harm it causes to others. Pless will just go on eating, and Tutt will just go on getting more and more unattractive.
She should be fired as a matter of principle. Or step down if she had an honest bone in her body (which I'm sure contains a skeleton rather like that of the Elephant Man.)
Pless? He just substituted one form of scamming for another, as he is now a Realtor, robbing people of their home equity in an massive organized scam where nobody can sell or buy without using the services of the Realtor cartel. What a vile piece of dogshit that "man" is.
realtors are scams now? where does it end with you?
DeletePS I bought my first house without realtors. neither party had one. for my second house we used one because we didn't have time to do all the research ourselves. you do have a choice.
Great reporting, with serious issues introduced for the first time.
DeleteI do think the comment above is a bit mean and stretches the truth. For starters, a mother with young kids is going to age faster than some media bimbo. Nothing wrong with that.
OT, but yes Realtors are scammers.
DeleteWant to sell your house and have other agents bring buyers to the table? Better use a fucking Realtor or all the other agents in town will avoid your house like the plague. They work on commission. No commission as a buyer's agent? Then they're advising your clients to not view your house.
And 6% commission? For doing very little? That's a year's salary for most people, just for selling two houses (or one around here).
Realtors helped build up the property bubble, remember?
I guess its a little different in my state regarding realtors. Realtors search based on listings. Anyone can pay for and get a listing that can be searched by realtors. when I was trying to sell a house by myself, I paid for and had a listing. I was contacted by realtors. one did ask for a commission if they bring in a buyer. I agreed to 2% which is a pretty good finders fee. 2 others did not. perhaps is different in your state, but it works out without the "cartel" in my state.
Deleteand look, I responded to your comment without using a single curse word. how bout that?
and save the whining about the commission being more than some people make in a year. its simply pathetic.
ps. I am used to hearing that bush caused the property bubble, but you are the first to blame the realtors. I got to admit I did get a chuckle from that one.
DeleteOh, snap! Good reporting.
ReplyDeleteI said before that Pless does not deserve "Man of the Year" for his conduct, but my contempt flows up the chain of command for the most part. It's easy for a bunch of fat-ass ScamDeans and admins to sit around collecting dollaz for doctored stats while they have their minions do all the dirty work.
Then, when it all comes to light, they point their fingers with mock horror and dripping hypocrisy. I'm sure they sold Pless on all sorts of "stick with us, kid, and you'll be a made man, someday." This sounds like the kind of thing that happens in politics and finance, not oh-so-lauded-and-pedistaled "higher eduation."
Again, Pless is no hero, but he clearly "learned from the best" about blackmail while at Illinois Law.
Paul Pless looks like Francis, Pee Wee's nemesis, from "Pee Wee's Big Adventure."
ReplyDelete"I know you are, but what am I?!"
I figured Pless must've got something for his silence. Now we all know what he got. The admin of that school is shady to say the least. Look up professor and former dean Heidi Hurd (who hired Pless) and her husband professor Michael Moore. The latter defended torture at Gitmo. Moore made close to 300k a year back in 2008.
ReplyDeleteGood call, 6:29. "Ex-dean calls herself 'victim' of admissions scandal."
DeletePer Hurd, "I just know someday ... when we are kicking around in heaven, we will be able to drink and laugh about this the whole time," she says. "But to the extent that I have played a role in a scenario that should not have unfolded for you, I am beyond, beyond belief sorry."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-u_of_i_clout_hurdaug06,0,1170839.story
Yeah, but your grads will be drowning is debt-serfdom hell while you're clinking champainge glasses in heaven, thanks. Ha ha ha.
Prior, she mysteriously stepped down after five years of being Dean to focus on being a professor again. I thought being Dean was sweeter than being a LawProf, at least where salary is concerned.
http://www.law.illinois.edu/news/article/986
The TL;DR is: LOL at the scam.
Heidi Hurd's bio is hilarious. A lot of academic bulls**t and no substance whatsoever. Probably not that much different than your average liberal arts prof but at least those people aren't scamming students about the value of the degrees while pulling down $200k for their intellectual jerkoff sessions.
ReplyDeleteTwo thoughts. First, this reads like a plot line from The Sopranos or The Wire. Second, Pless is probably getting further pay-offs through his real estate brokering. If the university buys or sells property, maybe he gets an inside track at handling the transaction. Perhaps there is a public record of this.
ReplyDeleteThat would not surprise me.
DeleteThe overwhelming likelihood this is totally unrelated to the Pless scandal. However, I think it is worth mentioning that the University of Illinois School of Law Community Preservation Clinic, now led by Professor Stacey Tutt, has done outstandingly well in in securing grants from the State. It has, in fact, received two grants this year totaling $1,197,000.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.law.illinois.edu/news/article/2319
The article contains quotes from Dean Bruce Smith and Stacey Tutt.
Heck. There's a decent likelihood that her salary is even supported by those grants and she isn't taking student tuition money to get paid.
DeleteAll academia, 9:13, is a zero sum game. Had they not received the grants they would not have closed the program and they certainly didn't cut tuition after receiving the grants. They just shift money around to different areas and spend whatever they got their hands on. Cut the clinic by the amount of the grants, spend the money on the library or faculty instead.
DeleteThose grants would have been equally applicable in Tutt's prior position where she was arguably doing some good. She could have used that money for real work, instead of what it's being used for now which is bullshit research papers and all kinds of academic frivolity and waste instead of actually helping people.
DeleteNice one Stacey. You just fucked your clients over bigtime.
Good research and writing, one of the best posts yet.
ReplyDelete"Paul and Stacey"
ReplyDeleteBy Maurice Leiter
Said Stacey to Paul Pless:
"Please undress,
then mount me.
Oh fuck, I can't breathe.
Get off, get off,
you fucking pig!
You're fatter than Brian Leiter!"
Said Paul to Stacey Tutt:
"Oh you dirty slut,
I'm gonna ram this cock up your butt.
Turn over, whore,
and beg me for more.
Uh, oh yeah, yum,
I'm gonna cum in your bum!"
Her asshole hurts,
he squirts, then withdraws,
his cock covered in her bowel dirt.
Then he asks, "ATM?"
She gobbles at his filthy cock,
but he slaps her away.
"No," we hear him say,
"I meant going to the ATM to
withdraw some of our stolen cash.
So put your panties on, you piece of trash."
Fucking awesome!!! Maurice Returns!
DeleteOk, I am not one for censure, but this garbage after the pretty decent piece of journalism above is really a detractor. A little moderation here and there is acceptable I think.
DeleteCan we have an anthology post of Maurices poems pleeze?
Delete2:16PM, get over yourself. Do you think law professors are saying 'well I was going to join in the scam movement but because of that poem I'm leaving'?
DeleteWe need to cause insult and offense because playing nice has failed, and always will fail when up against the greed if boomers/professors who are content to milk the system until it collapses.
More Maurice!
scoop!
ReplyDeleteDon't worry, kids, Illinois still has two (2) public law schools that are entirely ethical AND will get you employed as one of them money-makin' lawyer types.
ReplyDeleteThis is one of the best posts this blog has seen. The facts don't prove anything improper happened but it could hardly look more suspicious.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first heard about this story a couple of years ago, I instinctively knew there was a massive cover-up. To suggest that a low minion in the law school administration came up with his scheme on his own is akin to suggesting that a buck private in the Third Reich came up with the "Final Solution."
ReplyDeleteThis story connects the dots very well. I want to thank the author of this article for clarifying what the cowardly media refuses to expose.
P.S. I suppose there is no character fitness requirement to become a real estate broker. Now that I recall, even convicted felons can become real estate brokers. Good company to be in Paul.
Plausible deniability.
Deletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plausible_deniability
A shrewd executive knows not to give the order. Just to indicate what s/he wants done through hints and vague policy goals, and through the way s/he distributes rewards and praise to subordinates.
What happened to Nando's post on this subject? There was one on Third Tier Reality yesterday.
ReplyDeleteKind of confusing.
ReplyDeleteWas the wedding pic with the caption: "Paul and Tracey" a typo that no one caught?
Or is there someone else named Tracey?
In any event the page views for this blog seemed to have slowed way down.
With all due respect.
Confusing? Really?
DeleteTypo corrected. Sorry that single letter threw you for a loop - I know that understanding the scam is hard. Rampant lending with no controls -> Law schools taking advantage of said lending and raising their tuition -> Students getting ripped off and professors taking cruises to Hawaii. Difficult to connect the dots.
You're welcome to write for us if you're not satisfied with our content and page views. This is a community effort we spend many hours each week on, not a personal service that you're entitled to nitpick over like a master berating his slaves.
I'm tired of nonchalance. If you don't like it, join us or fuck off. End of story.
With all due respect, of course.
This troll has been reading us for awhile.
DeleteDid Nando puss out on us? The blogroll lists his post on this subject, but the post has disappeared from his blog.
ReplyDeleteNando?
I am 99% sure he's pulled the post to make it more hard hitting, and I fucking hope it's not the 1% where he's pulled it because he's not man enough.
Nando. Don't let us down. Smash that pig Pless in the snout for us, and punch his greedy wife Tutt in the snout and cunt for us too.
I think Nando "pussed".
DeleteCan Outside The Law School Scam really be the last man standing in this fight? The other scamblogs (see blogroll) are long dead, and now Nando is gone?
Pathetic.
Nando just was smart. This blog defames/ trashes an individual and his wife, violates their privacy, intentionally inflicts emotional distress on them, and Nando is a working individual, maybe with a decent credit rating, who in this case would have defamed private individuals as opposed to public law schools. Clearly he was opening himself up to potential legal consequences and backed off. Its easy for you anonymous types to hide behind your anonymity and your mountains of debt . . because when you are worthless, you are not worth going after.
Delete@936:
Delete1. What defamation? That requires false allegations of fact. The above appears to be interpretation and opinion based on known public facts.
2. What violation of privacy? That requires something to be, you know, private. This is all based on public information.
3. What IIED? That requires extreme and outrageous conduct. The only extreme and outrageous conduct is that which was undertaken by Pless, Tutt, Hurd, and the University of Illinois.
I don't know why Nando took down the entry, but the idea that he won't go after private figures is, uh, uninformed.
All of the information in this piece looks like it was in the public domain already, and there is nothing illegal about joining the dots or speculating about the reasoning why things were done.
DeleteTutt, in her capacity as a law professor at a public school, is a public official, therefore subject to scrutiny.
Pless, in his capacity as an ex-employee at a public school was also a public official and therefore subject to scrutiny.
Why so many sympathizers here recently? Is this blog too hard on the scam? Should we back off a bit because the scam is only ruining the lives of at least 20000 law grads per year, each of who paid $100K at least? Should we back off this $2,000,000,000 annual robbery because we hurt a law professor's feelings?
9:36PM, you've read Nando's blog? All those pieces that personally attack leading law school figures?
DeleteGet out of your 1L torts casebook and maybe you will understand the realities of law a little better.
Intentional infliction of emotional distress?
DeleteShe's causing "intentional inflectional of eye-motional dick stress" in me. One of her eyes is hot, and my dick rises, then I look at the other eye which is all over the place and my dick droops, then up, then down, then up, then down, as my eyes flit from gaze to gaze. My dick is about to snap off at the root!
Nando has delivered a big addition to this story. Like a master at work, he was taking his time crafting a perfectly placed punch to Pless's piggy nuts and a kick to Tutt's snout.
DeleteNando does not disappoint. His fury is legendary, as is his ability to smash the scam to pieces. The guy will go down in education history as the Jesus in the bible of how law schools fell to pieces.
The realities are 6:58, if you go after somebody on the Internet, they can bring a cause of action against you, likely in their home town courts where they were defamed. Sure you can defend all you want, but chances are a Judge would let it go to the Jury. So at the least, you will need to come up with the money to defend yourself and potentially you face a judgment for lots of cash. You are not totally anonymous here. Even if you are hiding behind some proxies, its not impossible to get to you.
DeleteI am not insensitive to the plight of law students, new lawyers and the "scam" as you call it. But I am appalled by the lack of maturity and professionalism of some of you. Its clear to me that no matter how good the legal market, some of you simply never would have made it in our profession. To go after a woman simply because she took a job teaching clinical education at a law school evidences people who are the drugs of our society and probably never belonged in law school or any professional school to begin with.
Oh 9:15, how professorial of you! Two points of practical law for you though:
Delete1. We are lawyers, so we can defend ourselves for free. Your lawsuit threats only work in non-lawyers.
2. We want exposure, the school wants to hide this. You are mistaken in your belief that we are hiding and that the school wants openness and honesty. Do you think Tutt would sue and give us an avenue into all those juicy emails between her and the dean and Pless? Put her and her friends and family on the stand as witnesses? Set her and her husband and the school up as defendants in a class action lawsuit?
There's your theoretical classroom law, professor, and then there's actual law.
Plus truth is a defense.
9:15 has little understanding about how these actually play out, assuming there's an actual case here (and there really isn't).
DeleteAssuming you can navigate through anonymity subpoenas, jurisdiction, choice of law, and that pesky matter of pleading a real case, you've still got...wait for it...discovery.
Yes, discovery, that tiny detail they don't cover in your torts class because they focus too darned much on the elements of battery instead of teaching you how actual practice works.
No one of the would-be plaintiffs in this case wants to go to discovery. Why? Because the defendants would plead truth, which makes all sorts of things discovery-relevant. You think these people want to deal with subpoenas and records-production requests? You think the UI wants to spill details about its hiring practices?
Even if they go to discovery, you think this is a trialable case? A law school has a scandal, a quasi-journalistic outlet runs a story that probes into it...you think that's a winner? For real? Pless is thoroughly impeachable and the UI administration has a poor reputation in central Illinois due mostly to other scandals.
Even if they were to win, collection would be a total wildcard...and what, exactly, would they collect? What are the damages here?
Oh, and of course there's also risk in filing a lawsuit. Ever hear of anti-SLAPP? Illinois has one, and so the plaintiffs would have to face that issue. Then there's also Rule 137 sanctions, which, if I were at the defense table, would definitely get filed against the attorney if the MTD was successful.
And of course all that is ignoring that these facts don't give rise to a dignity tort. At all.
Its bad enough when you single out individual and castigate them on these boards, but to then bring their spouses into it and make offensive remarks about their looks . . . . no wonder some of you are unemployed. You are losers plain and simple. Pity you probably don't have anything to sue for.
ReplyDeleteHi Paul.
DeleteNo, she's fair game. If she were just a homemaker or in a unrelated industry, then we'd leave her alone. But she's a law professor.
Not just a law professor, but a law professor who obtained her job as a payoff for her husband's deliberate participation in the essence of the law school scam.
I take it you read the post. If not, perhaps you should.
Stacey Tutt is not an innocent third party here. She's at the heart of the scam herself as a law professor. Her income comes from nondischargeable law school loans taken out by law students. She will walk away with a paycheck each month, while her law students will walk away with a loan balance that is increasing faster than they will ever pay it off.
To be perfectly honest, Stacey Tutt is more culpable here than her husband. He had the dignity to quit and move on. She, KNOWING THE FULL EXTENT OF THE SCAM BECAUSE SHE'S MARRIED TO A SCAMMER, continues to work for the scam. as one of the key scammers - a law professor.
Do you think she doesn't know what her husband did? Do you think she doesn't know what she's doing now?
And do you think that knowing full well what he did, that she's some innocent party because she's female?
And yes, she's rather unattractive.
As a lawprof, she's a fair target.
DeleteAnother classically silly comment from Christopher Knorps.
DeleteStacey Tutti is a hag who lives off of poor law school graduates. Law school (and really graduate school where I attended) is a complete joke now. These programs merely serve to give academic morons who could not run a coffee shop or some really crusty old dinosaur a job. If you go to law school or any grad school now, you are a moron. For my field accounting, lots of the courses are actually taught by attorneys who cannot find law jobs so they teach tax courses, or they are adjuncts looking for money.
ReplyDeleteWe need the Red Army to come back give these bastards a beating and ship them off to Siberia.
By the way, Stacey Tutt is one hoola-hoop eyed jive turkey! Look at those eyes!
ReplyDeleteI thought it was just her head tilted to one side, but one of her eyes is like an inch higher than the other and misshapen.
DeleteMaybe through her distorted eyeballs, Paul Pless looks thin and handsome and we all look like skeletons or something.
Or maybe that's why she can be so "blind" to what her husband did and what she is doing right now.
Maybe Paul Pless slaps her around, and her misshapen face side is where he went too far one night and hit her with a baseball bat.
For the record, I fully believe that she was considered for professorship prior to all the stuff with her husband blowing up, especially since it's a clinical position and they actually need people from real practice land. And so I'm not sure it's entirely fair to say her job was a "payoff." It's not like she's totally unqualified. Granted that she's likely overpaid and participates in gouging students at high tuition rates, but we need professors with her background instead of the ivory tower elitist jackwads.
ReplyDeleteWhat damns the U of I and her is that they continued pursuing her employment after her husband's disgraces were revealed AND she accepted. Regardless of whether it was "payoff" or not, it's not proper for either party. An institution just threw your husband under the bus and you're going to go run their legal aid? Are you kidding me? You just had a scandal in the law school and you're hiring the wife of the guy you threw under the bus?
If some company treated my wife, mother, father, etc. in the way the U of I used and treated Pless, I would have to be a big-league shameless whore to work for that company, whether it was a "payoff" or not.
So yeah, Tutt is fair game, IMO.
Agreed. Perhaps not a payoff as such, and she probably was being considered for employment beforehand (although clearly with some influence from Pless because her resume is not professor material in the least, even clinical professor quality). So that's count one - hubby got her foot in the door.
DeleteCount two is that she probably knew what her husband was doing long before anyone else did and she kept that fraud quiet. Ok, so it's her husband, but really?
Count three, the biggie, is that the school tossed Pless under the bus (and to be honest I see Pless at the victim here), and then she continued to work for the school. Like you, had my spouse's employer tossed him under the bus, I would in no way continue to work there, apply for jobs there, or seek out millions in grant money for that employer. I would have said: "You screwed my husband? Ok, take your fucking job and shove it up your ass, and I'll take my grant money with me too."
And this leads to count four, which is that she is not standing by her man and making him tell all to save his reputation. I'd have been fine with them both just disappearing into history. But instead she is working for the people who raped her husband. She should have been his biggest supporter in clearing his name, or at least exposing the scandal for what it was, but instead she became part of the problem.
So she is fair game. In fact she is fairer game than Paul Pless because she just can't explain her actions with any excuse other than "yes I'm a complete bitch."
"But instead she is working for the ****** who raped her husband."
DeleteNo, they didn't rape him. They pretended to rape him, but in a covert operation they rewarded him by giving her a promotion.
The post at the top is more than fair, but some of the comments here about Tutt make me sick. It drives you crazy when scammers and scam-symps go after your attitude to divert attention from the objective facts about tuition, debt, deception, etc. So why go after her appearance and thereby divert attention from the objective facts about tuition, debt, deception, etc.?
Anyone who's against the scam is my friend and has a good heart, but I wish my friends were wiser about this.
Shut up, Big Nose.
DeleteI don't know how I feel about the mean spirited comments. They seem a little silly and a little fun. But they threaten to alienate people too. The bottom line is that these comments take away from the elite status of law professors. Publically ridiculing professors and striping them of their status will likely be the only punishment they receive for the wrongs they have done. Punishing these people also aids in the goal of lifting the veil on the true nature of higher education, so if legal educators are emotionally distressed by internet comments, they should cry themselves to sleep on their pillows stuffed with our money.
DeleteHi, 8:12 here.
DeleteOscar, I hereby decree that Mommy takes away your internet access for two weeks. You've been warned before.
And 10:13, you've got a good point, or a good question, in your comment. Who punishes the scammers and how? That's the heart of jurisprudence, directed to a good purpose. I think Brian the Professor needs to hear about this.
For all those 1Ls who are whispering about lawsuits, get a grip. The law schools want this to go away. Law schools have squashed (or tried to squash) every attempt at openness. You think that Illinois would let some ragtag group of bloggers have the ability to perform discovery on their files? Remember that lawyers don't scare lawyers, and the bloggers and scam victims generally hold law licenses. Imagine the massive resources of pro bono time available to rip a case like this completely open.
ReplyDeleteThat would be a goldmine. Access to law school personnel files and student admission records. That's what every blogger wants.
That's why Illinois paid for a law firm to conduct an investigation and then took its penalty willingly and quickly and rather privately. It wanted to keep it hidden, keep the details a secret, and make it all go away.
So shut up about intentional infliction of god knows what. The last place law schools or law professors want to end up is in court, because then everyone will see what charlatans and scammers they really are.
That's why it's so important to dig for these stories and connections. The entire law school machine is doing its best to hide the facts.
What did you expect? It is tit for Tutt strategy.
ReplyDeleteOn another topic for your consideration and discussion - Arizona State law school is going to build a new $120 building next year. They expect enrollment to increase 20 to 40 percent as a result:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/20130830asu-start-law-school-2014.html
A $120 building? Would that be one of those huts that they sell in the parking lot of Home Depot? If that is all that the law school can afford, we are really hitting them in the pocket!
DeleteThe building only costs $120? That's really not all that extravagant, to be perfectly honest.
DeleteWhat sort of building do you get for $120? Are they using Lego??
DeleteShame on them. What a bunch of parasitic freaks. ASU can't come anywhere near decent job outcomes, and they want to expand the scam?
DeleteSorry to be late to the party, but your Sherlocking is a bit behind the curve.
ReplyDeleteCommenters on ITLSS pointed out the Pless/Professor Tutt connection two years ago.
BLOOMINGTON - Bloomington Police said four men were arrested Monday in a prostitution sting at one local hotel.
ReplyDeleteThey say Douglas Tolbert, 56 of Braceville, William Hinshaw, 48 of Bloomington, Robert Borries, 51 of Farmer City and Paul Pless, 41 of Dewey were all arrested for solicitation of a sexual act.
All four were booked at the McLean County Jail. Police wouldn't say which hotel was targeted in the undercover operation.
Add this to the Pless story.. And the beat goes on..
I am very curious as to this arrest/sting for personal reasons..were all 4 men together or just all 4 got arrested at the same hotel?? anyone have answers??
Deletewhat was this police sting?? were all 4 men calling the same escort service or did they try and pick up hooker AKA undercover cop on street????
DeleteSo say what you want about Paul; he's an idiot. But, seriously, Stacey? That is just cruel. And who is the author here? And why so much interest? Because if you went to Illinois for law school, I am pretty sure you are going to know all I am about to say.
ReplyDeleteI graduated with Stacey and Paul from law school in 2003 and knew them both. She never took Paul's last name. And really anyone who attended Illinois law in the past 12 years knows about the two of them. Before becoming faculty, they were both very active alumni.
No question Paul has run into serious trouble here. And, no, I don't think he acted alone. Just opinion, but I believe that Paul and the former dean of the law school, Heidi Hurd, had an overly close relationship. Hurd did a lot of shady things while she was at the law school. I really think that it is her fault that our school's ranking is in the shitter now.
Not sure if you recall, but Paul's name was mentioned in the news back some time ago when another scandal broke and e-mails came out from Hurd to Paul instructing him to admit "connected" students. She was no ethics queen and I do believe that she was probably the one who introduced Paul to the idea of fudging the stats. And there was financial incentive for Paul to do it -- he got bonuses for increases in the law school's rank. While it is possible that Bruce Smith was being happily ignorant of Paul's behavior, I do not believe that he instructed him to do it.
So, while I do believe that when Paul began working at the law school, he was probably encouraged by Hurd to do what he did, I do actually believe that he acted alone after he knew how much money he was making. And after this whole prostitution thing, I think that it is pretty obvious that Paul certainly had the capacity to do it.
As to Stacey, I really cannot believe that she is being attacked like this. Because, like Paul, she was a grad of the law school, she had a relationship with the faculty and administration there for years. Check your hire date because I am 99% sure she was working there well before the scandal broke. She is a good person and is very dedicated to helping indigent people receive legal representation. I am pretty sure she worked in non-profits before law school and did a great deal of volunteer and clinic work in law school. All she has done post law school is public interest work. I know she had been petitioning the law school for some time for the creation of a new clinic prior to her being the head of it. She worked hard during law school for the creation of loan-forgiveness and public interest scholarships. She is a good caring person and being the head of a legal clinic is not a "cushy" job. Also, when new grads are being hired for $175K at big firms, how is 90,000 after 11 years as practicing as a lawyer some crazy salary? I am sure it is a lot lower than the other professors. Poor Stacey is dealing with raising kids by herself, being humiliated by her soon-to-be ex husband who is no doubt going to be an unreliable co-parent and you people are berating her. I am sure she has numbed herself to the humiliation but really, you all ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
New grads being hired for $175K at big firms? Are you sure you went to law school or know of the giant ponzi scheme that is law school? Lol
DeleteStacey is a lovely person who did a lot of work to help support the pursuit of public interest jobs during law school. It's sad that her marriage turned out that way but she was still very young when it did, fortunately. Truly a good person.
DeleteSo much of what you say is either inaccurate or a misinterpretation. Stacey is awesome and got really screwed over!
ReplyDelete