On March 28, Iowa Wesleyan University, a private school in Mt. Pleasant announced they would be closing at the end of the school year, May 31.
They’ve made that threat before but this time it looks like the end of the headache.
Somehow in 2016 IWU secured a $26.1 Million loan from the US Department of Agriculture using real estate and other assets worth $19 Million as collateral.
They have made no payments and in December the monthly interest was reduced from $24,060 to $7,500, interest is accruing.
It’s unclear what the total amount of the ‘loan’ is now.
It’s unclear if Tom Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture and his wife Christie as a IWU board of trustee member played a role in the loan.
It’s unclear how Senator Chuck Grassley was involved while serving on the Agriculture and Judiciary senate committees.
And it’s unclear what happened to all the money and how and why they kept it secret from the public.
They’ve lost $ millions annually for years and there is no indication of any attempt to change course.
Even though they claimed indicators were trending upwards, they needed more money.
Chairman of the Board of Trustees said ”We have worked tirelessly to find solutions at all levels but to no avail “.
So the School President asked Governor Reynolds for $12 million from federal COVID relief funds, saying without the money the school would close.
Governor Reynolds was courteous enough to request an independent audit which reported back that federal funds would not solve the schools financial problems.
Neither could those federal funds be used for that purpose and President Christine Plunkett acknowledged Governor Reynolds’s comments.
The trustees are pillars of the community, they knew they could not get that money, but they needed someone to blame for their failure, Governor Reynolds.
Incredibly at a March 31 Town Hall with four area Iowa legislators, the trustee chairman shook his left hand at the legislators in true liberal fashion and scolded them for not supporting the school.
In a polite/professional manner, the panel reminded him that IWU had hired a president that closed a college in Vermont and then calmly flipped through the
pages reciting by year the millions in annual losses from the school’s operations.
The trustees have not acknowledged any responsibility for the school closing and beg the community for help with the transition.
Leland Graber
Wayland
