A Piece of the Action

How a bright and beguiling budget analyst allegedly fleeced a showcase minority aid program at SFSU

A A A Comments By Matt Isaacs Wednesday, Mar 8 2000

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"Morris Head and Paul Mendez learned a lesson, a very harsh lesson. I think that lesson has spread throughout the institution of learning out there. But it happened. Morris Head and Paul Mendez just trusted her fairly well, and they just signed whatever was put in front of them, and that's how it happened. The program suffered. The university suffered. The students suffered."

Actually, the university as a whole has not suffered greatly -- SFSU, after all, has a $190 million annual budget -- but the Educational Opportunity Program has certainly felt the pain. If campus investigators are correct, and Luu, indeed, pilfered more than $200,000 over a two-year period, she drained 10 percent of the program's budget each year, without a bit of interference from the program's top administrators.

Paul Trapani

Nancy Luu's senior photo from Abraham Lincoln High School.

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Educational Opportunity Program
Official site of the EOP at San Francisco State University

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The university has rejiggered the management of the Educational Opportunity Program, but it will take awhile to repair the damage that has been done. The program has been knocked down a notch in the administration's eyes, officials in other departments say, and in this respect, Luu's alleged misdeeds continue to have their effects.

When Luu joined the Educational Opportunity Program in 1992, the office was nestled within the university's main administration building, a cornerstone of the campus. But after an earthquake retrofit of the building, the administration relegated the program's staff to the school's old humanities building, the most dilapidated, rat-infested structure on campus. The program's affirmative-action crusaders, once considered the heart and soul of the university, now work in cramped offices smelling of sweat. The department's new director, Rick Gutierrez, does not even have a desk; he has a table stacked with papers in a barren room.

The office has struggled since the university discovered the theft, he says. Last year, the administration unexpectedly cut the program's annual budget by $113,000. The university has brought him in to clean up the books, but the program has yet to regain the administration's trust.

"They count every penny," he says. "The scandal has had an effect, because now the administration can say, 'You survived without that money. Maybe you don't need so much.'"

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