Stephanie Forsyth knew the jig was up when they started asking about her new marble floors counter tops and backsplash. (h/t to someone who knows)
There's a saying in baseball. No, it's not "There's no crying in baseball." The saying is "Three strikes and YOU'RE OUT!"
Strike One was discovering in March, 2013, that Red River College paid for $205 golf shoes, and the new tires for her car, and even her driver's licence -- which led to some repayment and a lot of red faces. (h/t CTF)
Strike Two was the revelation in November, 2013, that the college covered the cost of rented tables and chairs for a party Forsyth held at her house for friends who were attending the wedding of somebody whose name is being kept secret by Red River. Forsyth paid back the cost, even though college officials said the expense was perfectly legitimate. (Once again, thanks to the Taxpayers Federation)
But how to explain how marble, bought for the remodelling of the Union Bank Tower into the Paterson GlobalFoods Institute, wound up in Stephanie Forsyth's house on Wellington Crescent? Impossible.
We've been through enough forced resignations to see through the "official" explanation for Stephanie Forsyth's sudden departure.
The Winnipeg Free Press reported that Richard Lennon. chairman of Red River's Board of Governors, said Forsyth approached the board in mid-August to discuss "moving on," and her departure took effect Sunday "by mutual agreement"."
He lied.
Let the facts tell the real story.
In late June, Forsyth's female spouse Debbie Scarborough told friends she had taken a job as executive director of South Okanagan Women in Need Society (SOWINS) in Penticton, British Columbia. She described it as an umbrella organization for transition house, safe homes, children who witness programs and other programs. She called it her dream job.
"Stephanie is staying in Winnipeg and at Red River College. We are doing the distance thing and commuting," she stated explicitly July 3.
On July 7, Forsyth, still expecting to keep her job, posted on her blog a policy change regarding application forms:
Continuing to Create an Open an Inclusive Campus
July 7, 2014
I am pleased to announce that Red River College has a new application form that is gender inclusive. Now, when prospective students apply for programming at RRC they will no longer be limited in their to choice to self-identify.
Students will now be able to select if they are male, female, another gender identity (this may include Aboriginal two-spirit, transgender, and other), and they may also choose to decline to answer as well.
http://www.stephanieforsyth.ca/
She was still using her Red River twitter account on July 13 when she retweeted some inane messages about flying cars, roll-up televisions, and hot weather in B.C.
Then sometime in the following three weeks the curtain came down on Forsyth's career at Red River College.
By the first week of August, citizen journalists in Winnipeg had been alerted to the granite trail, and were given the heads-up that "she will be leaving by the end of August."
The whistleblower had it pegged down to the exact date of her departure. More than a week before "mid-August", her fate had been cast. The only discussion she would be having with the board was how much their gross mistake in hiring her was costing the college.
On August 25, she retweeted a flurry of messages. Then her twitter account went dead.
https://twitter.com/rrcprez
Richard Lennon and the rest of the Red River Board of Governors have every reason to spin a phony story about why their prize hire is getting the bum's rush. They were alerted three years ago that she was bad news who thought she was above little peoples' rules, and for whom ethics was a mug's game.
That was when Forsyth did a favour for her friend Margo Goodhand, then-editor of the Winnipeg Free Press, by ordering her college minions to kill a talk show on the college-sponsored radio station after Goodhand complained that the show was upsetting her reporters by its criticism.
The gesture backfired bigtime when the show's supporters did some digging and discovered that Forsyth was controlling the station through a secret and illegal committee that reported only to her.
Once the CRTC caught wind of the scam, Forsyth scrapped funding for the station, killing it and eliminating the hands-on training given to radio broadcast students, and saddling Red River college with hundreds of thousands of dollars of the station's debt.
The Board covered for her during the radio scandal, and the golf shoes scandal, and the wedding party scandal. But in a city ridden with one construction scandal after another for two years now, the granite was just too heavy to hide under the rug.