Having legal experience with Pennsylvania’s unholy trinity of trusts: The Barnes, The Hershey Trust, and the Girard College Trust, it amazes me that two former chairmen of Girard’s Board of Managers could suggest that Girard and Hershey merge. Such a suggestion shows that they lack a fundamental understanding of their former roles as fiduciaries. But then they’ve had plenty of company when it comes to those entrusted with Hershey and the Barnes.
Trustees, by their very nature are entrusted with other people’s property, but with strings consisting of the dictates of the trust’s creator. I may have a lot of ideas of what should happen with this or that property, but unless I own it, my ideas don’t matter. So too with the authors of the article. In having chaired Girard’s Board of Managers they were entrusted with following the dictates of the school’s founder, Stephen Girard and were to act at all times in its best interests. Unfortunately, history has shown this not to have been the case.
The problem is, that when it comes to the unholy trinity, board members did not follow the dictates of the trust but acted according to their own whims. Often times they sat on their hands. For instance, the Barnes Board could not raise the small sums necessary for the collection to stay where Dr. Barnes wanted it; but miraculously was able to raise untold millions for the move. When it comes to the Hershey Trust, abhorrent practices at the school, together with the Trust’s spending pattern on Hershey Medical Center, regional economic development, other recreational amenities, and their own self- enrichment, make it clear that running and growing a school is anything but a priority. As is pointed out in his just published book, The Chocolate Trust- Deception, Indenture and Secrets at the $12 Billion Milton Hershey School , Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Bob Fernandez, points out a host of outrages that have gone unchallenged, as well as a very cruel irony. The Hershey Trust, the largest holder of Hershey stock, with a mission to help children, either can’t or won’t stop the company from sourcing chocolate produced by West African child slave laborers.
And when it comes to Messrs. Shoemaker’s and Scotese’s Girard College, that trust did not suddenly find its endowment “hit” on hard times. The board, appointed by the Judges of the Philadelphia Orphans court has operated like any other political patronage operation doling out OPM (“other people’s money”) to the favored few. Here to the College has been an afterthought.
As with the other boards comprising the trinity, I have no doubt that the Girard’s Board has an agenda wholly removed from dictates set forth by Stephen Girard. Given the gentrified nature of the neighborhood I am sure that developers salivate at the prospect of transforming the property for their own profit. It would make a great over-55 community.
The notorious Barnes Chair, Richard Glanton reportedly made the statement that it didn’t matter what the trust document said, it could all be changed by the courts. Unfortunately, with respect to the Barnes and Hershey that could not be more true. However, as noted by Messrs. Shoemaker and Scotese, when it came to Girard’s recent attempt to strip away the high school and boarding programs, Orphans Court Judge Joseph D. O’Keefe resoundingly said “no”. That refreshing decision was an important rebuff to trust board members everywhere sending the message that they should stop acting like kids in a candy store and instead get about the business with which they were entrusted; namely to run a school, not a political patronage system. Its that simple.