Skip to content

‘No one saw it coming’: Dean’s arrest shocks Whitman community

Syracuse University’s Martin J. Whitman School of Management community is shocked following the arrest of the school’s former dean on charges related to prostitution, but not worried about its future as a top business school in the country.

“He seemed like a stand-up guy,” said Michael Shaw, a Class of 2016 Whitman alumnus. “No one saw it coming.”

Kenneth Kavajecz, 51, was arrested last week on a misdemeanor of patronizing a person for prostitution in the third degree in the town of Salina, the Onondaga County Sheriff’s office confirmed Friday. He is due to appear in the Town of Salina Court on Sept. 29.

The Sheriff’s Office said in a press release Friday that no further information will be released because the investigation is ongoing.

Kavajecz was removed Wednesday from his position as dean and put on administrative leave from his faculty position. Mike Haynie, SU’s vice chancellor for veterans and military affairs, will serve as the acting head of the school until an interim dean is named.

In a meeting with the Whitman community on Friday, shortly before further news on Kavajecz’s arrest was made public, SU’s Vice Chancellor and Provost Michele Wheatly declined to give a timeline on when an interim or permanent dean will be named.

Following the report of Kavajecz’s arrest, Kevin Quinn, senior vice president for public affairs at SU, released a short statement saying Kavajecz’s alleged behavior did not occur on campus and was unrelated to his responsibilities as dean.

In 2014, Kavajecz made $496,448, according to the latest tax forms available.

The Daily Orange reached out to numerous Whitman faculty and student organizations, but all of them either could not be reached for comment or declined to comment at all.

Harry Dittrich, a junior finance and accounting major, previously took a finance course with Kavajecz. Dittrich said he was shocked when he heard about the arrest Friday.

“He always seemed to be one of the most, like, stand-up, honorable guys,” Dittrich said. “He seemed to be a great fit to lead Whitman. Honestly, I couldn’t be more surprised about this.”

The former dean was not teaching any courses this semester.

Vatsal Popat, a second-year Whitman MBA student, said he was surprised to hear about Kavajecz being arrested on criminal charges but he is not rushing to judge whether he is guilty or not.

“People love him,” Popat said. “Like all of my friends and all of my classmates appreciate him because he has been a very nice person.”

Popat added that even though Kavajecz is gone, the incident will not negatively affect his career since his future depends on him as much as it depends on the school.

Kavajecz was instrumental in making Whitman more competitive and rebranding the school into a top-ranked institution. Under his leadership, Whitman climbed Bloomberg’s best business school rankings nearly every year, from No. 72 in 2013 to No. 23 in Bloomberg’s most recent rankings.

Shaw, the Class of 2016 Whitman alumnus, said the incident is unfortunate, but he is excited about the direction the business school is heading — a view held by many other Whitman students.

“So I have great faith that we’re going to keep rising in the same direction,” Shaw said. “So while I think it’s really unfortunate, I think we still have a bright future ahead of us.”

For Carter Morris, a freshman finance major, the arrest has not deterred his excitement to be at Whitman. Both his Whitman professors and Wheatly, SU’s vice chancellor and provost, have assuaged any fears he might have had about the his future in Whitman, he said.

“I’m confident they’re going to find someone good to replace him,” he added.

Marshall Ruffing, a sophomore finance major, is still coming to terms with Kavajecz’s arrest. Although he said Kavajecz’s arrest will not impact his own education in the short-term, his personal view on the former dean has changed.

“I mean, he is so experienced in the financial field and had such great education and this pretty much threw it all away,” Ruffling said.

6 responses to “‘No one saw it coming’: Dean’s arrest shocks Whitman community”

  3. Want to point out again that Bloomberg’s rankings were considered faulty by Bloomberg itself and they canceled them because they were too flawed.

    http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/inq-phillydeals/Does-Villanova-really-have-a-much-better-business-school-than-Wharton-.html

    If you attended the meeting Whitman held last Friday, you would have heard that the school and University themselves do not even cite Bloomberg’s ranking, choosing instead to cite US News and World Report’s ranking of Whitman–43rd. Citing the false and flawed Bloomberg ranking overvalues Whitman, but more importantly overvalues Kavajecz’s impact on the school.

    This information isn’t hard to find. A simple google search and a look beyond the first three links would find an article explaining Bloomberg’s decision to cancel. This really isn’t that hard.

  4. Two weeks ago the DO did a piece largely crediting Kavajecz for propelling the Whitman School to status as a “top-ranked business school.” Here, the DO finds multiple students gushing about how much they liked him. Yet it finds none who react by questioning why the “crime” of soliciting a prostitute — something the University, itself, points out did not occur on campus, did not involve members of the University community, and was “unrelated to [his] University responsibilities” — warrants what is effectively a professional death penalty??

    Two years ago, another prominent, public-facing SU employee was arrested for drunk driving. Today, he remains in his position.

    That’s probably appropriate–in general, employers shouldn’t be in the business of punishing employees for sins outside of work and which have little or no bearing on their employment. Punishment in such cases can and should be left to the criminal justice system.

    But here, it begs the question: why is a victimless “crime” relating to consensual behavior between adults treated as more serious than a crime where mere luck separates those who kill or injure someone from those who don’t?

    And even for those who believe soliciting a prostitute to be a legitimate crime, worthy of disciplinary action by an employer, how could it possibly rise to the level of warranting the most severe disciplinary action possible?

  5. You will spend your entire life watching men screw their way out of good jobs. Don’t do that 🙂

  6. No one saw it coming? Wow that is about as profound as when TV interviews neighbors and they say “nothing like this has ever happened here before”.

Leave a Reply