St. Olaf order issued

June 18, 2008

Here is an update on the St. Olaf radio station dispute from Elizabeth Stawicki, Judge clears way for St. Olaf to use some WCAL donations, MPR, June 12, 2008:

Rice County Judge Gerald Wolf has lifted some, but not all, of the restrictions on donations given originally to fund St. Olaf College’s radio station WCAL, which the college sold to Minnesota Public Radio in 2004.

The sale angered some donors, who objected to the college using money donated for the radio station.

In his order, the judge outlined how the college could use the donations.

Under the order, according to St. Olaf’s Steve Blodgett, the school can still use many of the funds for similar programming on the Web, including live Web broadcasts of daily chapel and worship services and recording and producing the “Sing for Joy” program.

While the judge acknowledged in his report that the sale of WCAL was not at issue in this case, he issued a sharp rebuke of the attorney general’s office for not trying to block the sale.

The entire order may be found here which includes the following language:

The Court recognizes that the sale of WCAL is neither before the Court at this time nor has it ever been before the Court. However, it is almost impossible to discuss the issues raised by St. Olaf’s Petition without first discussing the sale of WCAL and its aftermath.

St. Olaf sold WCAL over the objections of a group of donors (hereafter call SaveWCAL) and without first obtaining Court approval. The sales aftermath has created a host of problems for St. Olaf regarding what can the college do with the restricted donations given to support WCAL and its activities when it no longer owns WCAL.

St. Olaf continues to assert that the donated restricted funds it holds are endowments. However, under the applicable law, these donated restricted funds are actually a trust and St. Olaf is the trustee of the trust. Therefore, St. Olaf will need to comply with the legal requirements to which it is held as the trustee of the funds gifted to it for use by WCAL, regardless of the fact that St. Olaf no longer owns WCAL.

The Minnesota Attorney General is the watchdog of all trusts throughout the state of Minnesota. Deplorably, when St. Olaf made the decision to sell WCAL, no one from the Attorney General’s Office intervened to safeguard the trust. The Attorney General’s Office was notified by SaveWCAL of the pending sale yet they failed to do anything. The undersigned is absolutely mystified as to why the State Attorney General did not become involved in a sale of trust assets valued at $12 million when it is its statutory obligation to do so. Let’s hope this type of activity never happens again. * * *

The only watchdog looking out for the interests of the trust in this case was the Respondent, the non-profit organization SaveWCAL. SaveWCAL raised the alarm when they first learned of the sale of WCAL by St. Olaf, but neither St. Olaf nor the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office paid any heed to SaveWCAL’s warning.

Now, the Court is faced with a plethora of issues to unravel in the aftermath of St. Olaf’s unapproved sale of WCAL and the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office’s breach of its duties in this case.