Ladies and gentlemen, let me welcome you to the corrupt world of Easleygate. We’ve got insider, back-room deals, corrupt administrators, and the parade of disgraced resignations that accompany every scandal. Our University is bogged down in a quagmire with this budget. Administrators have to cut 18 percent of the budget, a $92,622,776 reduction, while attempting to maintain the quality and breadth of our education. So naturally, we worry about Mary Easley’s five year, $850,000 contract. Screw worrying about $92 million and change — let’s focus on her .917 percent of that budget cut! All we need now is for investigators to find a recording of Chancellor Oblinger with 18.5 minutes suspiciously missing when discussing Mary Easley and her new position as executive-in-residence. Ah, but subpoenaed e-mail records from April and May 2005 indicate that former Gov. Mike Easley helped facilitate his wife’s hiring with former Chancellor James Oblinger, former Provost Larry Nielsen, and former Chairman of the Board of Trustees McQueen Campbell. Here’s a particularly juicy e-mail Campbell sent to Nielsen May 19, 2005 regarding Mary Easley: ”Great! The meeting obviously went well and I chatted with the Gov late last week and he says she’s very excited about it and he said if we take this seriously, which I assured him we were,  this could really be a great program for everyone involved. I think she can really take this program to a new level! Thanks for all your help to make this happen!” This is just a small sample of the sort of cozy, insider deals that helped Mary Easley land her position at the University. The rest of the e-mails released in response to the federal subpoena are even more damning. The e-mails released include a bevy of angry messages from various people calling for Easley’s resignation and talking points justifying her initial employment and subsequent raise. My favorite part? The part of Mrs. Easley’s hiring packet that covered nepotism and the big checkmark in the box indicating that no, the applicant did not use family ties to secure the job. Still, while these e-mails indicate an excessively cozy relationship between the administrators at the highest level of the University and the former governor, it is all but a layer of slime that rests atop the rotting heap of our institution’s problems. Yes, Mrs. Easley is getting $850,000 over the next five years and legislators have cut funding for more than half of her stated responsibilities. Yes, former Provost Larry Nielsen got a sweetheart deal for his resignation. And yes, former Chancellor Oblinger happened to resign on the same day that subpoenaed e-mails revealed former governor Mike Easley’s direct influence in his wife’s employment at the University. But the big issue remains: $92,622,776. The Easleys may have pulled a fast one on all of us, but now we have to face a budget crisis that makes alchemy look easy. Instead of turning common metals into gold, we have to find a way to keep the value of an N.C. State degree and education up while cutting away 18 percent of our budget. I’m not saying Easley should have stayed — she needed to quit before she could cause further damage to the University’s reputation. But we need to get down to the real business: the budget. 

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