Chuck Lillis, the original UO Board Chair, dies

The official UO obituary is here: Lillis was one of the rich businesspeople who worked with Phil Knight in the wake of the firing of President Richard Lariviere to transform UO from a poorly funded public university with a so-so sports program into a well funded sports program with a poorly funded quasi-private university.

Among the things not mentioned in his official obituary was Lillis’s role in the bankruptcy of Washington Mutual, at the time the largest bank failure in US history. Lillis was sued for trying to move money beyond the reach of creditors just before the bankruptcy. WaMu’s D&O insurance company paid out and then sued the WaMu directors, including Lillis, arguing that they’d failed to exercise their due diligence and that they should be personally liable. The lawsuits finally ended with a $37M payout from the defendants to the insurance co. There was another $49M for ERISA violations – meaning raiding employee retirement accounts, which Lillis had also been found guilty of doing at two other former companies.

As UO Board chair Lillis proudly showed his contemptuous attitude towards the faculty, at one point arguing for the abolishment of tenure. He initially refused to allocate time for the UO Senate or union representatives to speak at the board’s meetings and would not post the board’s scheduled meetings times or agendas until the last minute. Even the other Trustees were sometimes kept in the dark about major decisions. I remember one session where we learned of a vote on a major change in policy only by stealing copies of the freshly printed motion from the trustees’ tables during a break. Eventually the state legislature had to pass legislation requiring a modicum of transparency from the university boards.

He did show up at a Senate meeting once. The video has sadly been deleted, but I do remember him bragging about how he thought his children were happy that he’d made so much money.