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The slow demise of an unaccredited Utah college with a conservative bent just became contentious.
The ousted founders of George Wythe University filed a $1.5 million defamation suit earlier this week against the school's current leaders, saying they have been unfairly smeared for financial and academic failings.
The Utah Division of Consumer Protection has given the school until August 2016 to close, so educators can wrap up classes for already enrolled students and administrators can gather the necessary academic records for state storage.
Administrators and advisers, including Diann Jeppson, Daniel Earley and Julie Earley, hope to find a group to merge with the university, arguing they have rid the school of the bad degrees approved by Oliver DeMille, the former chancellor, and the bad debt accrued by Shanon Brooks, the former president.
The suit, filed in 3rd District Court, says the George Wythe board, Jeppson and the Earleys know, or at least should know, that those accusations are false. DeMille and Brooks claim that these three are involved in a campaign "to publicly ruin" their reputations.
George Wythe University released a response Friday that in part said: "The allegations appear to be a bizarre and frivolous attempt to deny and halt our revoking of illegitimate degrees, and to prevent us from keeping the public informed. In some ways this may descend even below the level of a frivolous lawsuit."
DeMille, Brooks and a few others created George Wythe University, named for the nation's first law professor, in 1992 in the Cedar City area. The school focused its education around the classics studied by the Founding Fathers and the work of the late Cleon Skousen, a former FBI agent and Salt Lake City police chief who mixed his Mormon faith with libertarian philosophies to become a major figure in far-right politics.
Through the years, George Wythe U. has received the backing of Gov. Gary Herbert, former Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, and many state lawmakers.
The university's goal was to earn accreditation, though it struggled financially. DeMille and Brooks blame the Great Recession, while the school's leadership team says Brooks made some bad land deals. The school board split from DeMille and Brooks in 2009 and 2010, and, working with the Division of Consumer Protection, has identified roughly 90 degrees that have problems, mostly because students received too many credit hours for life experience.
The board has posted a series of statements online blaming DeMille, an author and public speaker, and Brooks, the president of Monticello College, another unaccredited Utah school, with a similar academic approach to George Wythe. The suit, filled on behalf of DeMille and Brooks, focuses primarily on these statements, though it also cites a Salt Lake Tribune article on the school's impending closure.
Beyond a $1.5 million judgment, DeMille and Brooks want punitive damages and filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to stop the school and its leaders from continuing to make claims against them.
The university offered this statement: "We will continue undeterred and not allow baseless, frivolous distractions to delay our cleanup progress."