VCU to set up private tip line

Virginia Commonwealth University will set up a confidential help line to make it easier for a whistle-blower to stop an ethics violation such as the one that led to the improper awarding of a bachelor's degree to a former Richmond police chief.

The tip line will be set up next month by an outside vendor to ensure confidentiality, VCU faculty and staff members were told yesterday at a campus forum on ethics.

VCU President Eugene P. Trani said the controversy over the degree awarded to Rodney Monroe, now police chief in Charlotte/Mecklenburg County, N.C., should never have happened.

"It has done a significant amount of damage to the university's reputation" and could have been avoided had a single person spoken up, Trani said.

But Trani described it as "simply a one-off case" and read a letter from VCU's accreditation agency absolving the university of further action.

The ethics forum is one step the university has implemented as a result of its investigation, which found that Monroe was improperly awarded the degree after taking only two courses at VCU. Monroe had received his other credits primarily online from the University of Phoenix.

A spokeswoman for Monroe said yesterday that he has still not made a decision on whether he will return the degree.

Richard Bunce, VCU's executive director of audit and management services, said his investigation showed that any one of four people could have stopped the degree from being granted had they spoken up.

"And they failed to do so, or they chose not to do so," he said.

Trani said he was troubled by reports that some people were afraid to speak up before the degree was awarded in 2007.

"I absolutely reject that there is a climate of fear here," he said.

Contact Karin Kapsidelis at (804) 649-6119 or .