Forty years ago I was in the first semester of my freshman year at Westfield State College. I was accepted at UMass in Amherst and at Boston University, but I had to put myself through school, and the only way I could afford to do that was by attending one of the 4-year state colleges in Massachusetts.
I worked hard to earn my B.A. in Economics, and I am very unhappy with the trouble that is going on at Westfield State now, because of Evan Dobelle.
What Boston Globe reporter Scott Allen doesn’t say in the video is that these events are history repeating itself, because Dobelle went through this before, ten years ago at the University of Hawaii. The difference is that the board of trustees in Hawaii didn’t want to hassle with a lawsuit, and they decided to give Dobelle a generous settlement to make him go away.
Tom Foley signed Dobelle’s contract in December, 2007, when he was chairman of the Westfield State College Board of Trustees. Foley and I butted heads a few times — once almost literally — when Brad and I were freshmen. In 1995, when Foley was the top cop at the Massachusetts State Police, he obtained an arrest warrant for Whitey Bulger, but Bulger’s FBI handler, John Connolly, had tipped off Whitey that Foley was on his way.
Way behind on my reading, but I’d been wondering what your feelings were about this. If they weren’t aware of his history, they should have been. If they were aware, they should have been watching more carefully.