Mississippi University for Women President Dr. Jim Borsig was contrite yet firm during a Thursday news conference in which he minced no words explaining how a flawed hiring policy may have contributed to the embezzlement of roughly $30,000 from the MUW Foundation.
“We’re admitting we screwed up,” Borsig said. “I’m not here showing you a gold-plated process.”
Former MUW accountant Cynthia “Jeannie” Godbey, 46, of 106 Kirkside Drive in Starkville, was hired by the university in November 2009, shortly after MUW began using Lakeville, Minn.-based Verified Credentials to handle employee background checks.
At the time, the screenings were only conducted for full-time university employees who worked with children or in management. Godbey was an unusual situation, Borsig said. She began as a part-time employee of the Foundation and transitioned to full-time, but at no point did her position ever require an official university employment application or background check.
School officials had no idea that the woman hired to handle the Foundation’s $37 million endowment was a felon who had racked up several arrests and charges for financial misdeeds.
According to records obtained Thursday from the Hinds County Sheriff’s Office in Jackson and US Search, Godbey, using the name “Cynthia Jean Pigg,” was arrested in 1991, convicted of two counts of embezzlement and sentenced to five years in jail and five years of probation, but the jail time was later revoked.
In 1992, she was arrested and convicted with three counts of false pretense, for which she served three months in jail, and in 1999, she was arrested for violation of probation.
Last Wednesday, Godbey was arrested once more, charged this time with embezzling from the MUW Foundation, where she had worked for two and a half years until her dismissal in April, when an internal audit confirmed possible financial misconduct.
By that time, the Pennsylvania State University child sex abuse scandal had prompted many colleges across the nation to review hiring procedures, Borsig said, and plans were already underway to stiffen The W’s policy to require background checks for all benefits-eligible positions.
“I don’t want you to think it’s only about this position,” Borsig said. “Those changes had as much to do — and probably more to do, in my mind — with moving forward and making sure this campus community is safe and that we’re hiring people that we want to be part of this university community.”
He said an average of 60 benefits-eligible employees are hired at the college annually, but though the application process has changed, MUW will continue using Verified Credentials for the screenings.
University Counsel and Assistant to the President Perry Sansing said the firm has always performed well, and the quality of their work has never been an issue. They screened the applicants who were submitted by the college; Godbey’s position allowed her — and her troubled past — to slip through a loophole.
Borsig feels the university’s new hiring policy is now “ironclad” and will protect The W from far more than just embezzlement.
“We learn what we need to know before somebody joins this university community,” he said of the current process. “We value our reputation. We value our collegiality. And we get smarter every day.”
As the fundraising arm for MUW, the Foundation accepts monetary donations on behalf of the university and is privately incorporated and governed by a board of alumni and supporters.
Borsig said the alleged embezzlement involved expense reimbursements and did not affect scholarships or endowment money. The university is seeking reimbursement from its insurance carrier.
Godbey surrendered to the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Department July 18 and was released the same day on a $5,000 bond. Her trial date is Nov. 13.
Carmen K. Sisson is the former news editor at The Dispatch.
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