New Mexico Highlands Board Says Ex-President Rigged Hiring

New Mexico Highlands University and its Board of Regents say recently fired president Neil Woolf deployed improper hiring and procurement practices, mismanaged university finances, and retaliated against his employees, The New Mexican reported Tuesday. 

“President Woolf systematically and deliberately prevented that awareness by restricting and denying administrators and employees the ability to communicate material concerns, compliance issues, and financial irregularities to the Board through ordinary governance channels,” the board wrote in a May 27 letter to New Mexico state auditor Joseph M. Maestas, according to The New Mexican, which obtained a copy of the letter through a public records request and published it online earlier this week. 

Among other accusations, the university alleges that Woolf, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, created new positions for and preferentially hired people associated with the church, failed to investigate complaints of sexual harassment and aggressive conduct, made unauthorized financial commitments and sports-recruiting expenditures, destroyed university records, falsified documents, and signed unauthorized contracts—including one to outsource the university’s facilities management employees. 

“The suppression of reporting was not inadvertent, it was a calculated effort by President Woolf to insulate his conduct from Board oversight,” the 32-page letter says.

The newly publicized claims come amid an ongoing dispute between Woolf and the university.

The board sent the letter weeks after regents first placed Woolf on administrative leave with no explanation in early May. The board formally dismissed him without cause earlier this month, soon after Woolf filed a lawsuit against the board and the university, alleging that Chair Frank Sanchez directed him to steer $600,000 in state funds to a contractor who is also a friend. In addition to Woolf, the university has placed on leave or terminated at least nine other employees since May 1, without explanation. 

Woolf’s attorney, Nicholas Hart, described the regents’ letter as erroneous and retaliatory and said that Woolf intends to add it to his lawsuit against the university. Meanwhile, according to the May 27 letter, the university plans to launch an independent investigation of its governance issues in part to help determine if they warrant a report to authorities, including the police, accreditors, the New Mexico Higher Education Department or the Office of the State Auditor.