Saipan University had no operational funds, no instructional materials, no library resources, and no functioning laboratory computers, said former Saipan University president Jullie Ulloa in federal court yesterday.<\/p>\n
Ulloa, who served as SU president from August 2003 until her resignation in October 2003, testified that while she was hired as president, she never had any authority on budget and financial matters; neither was she involved in advertisement and student recruitment in China last year.<\/p>\n
Based on her assessment, SU was not ready to operate as a postsecondary institution.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not ready. I asked for $1,000 to buy some educational materials [because we\u2019re obligated to teach the students] but he [Park] said that we didn\u2019t have the money,\u201d Ulloa said.<\/p>\n
She said she had no idea where the students\u2019 money went.<\/p>\n
Park showed no emotions during Ulloa\u2019s testimony, looking straight at her with a level gaze. From time to time, he would talk in an undertone to the person beside him. While giving her testimony, Ulloa would look at Park from time to time.<\/p>\n
SU collected $5,000 to $10,000 from each of the nearly 100 recruits from China. These students claimed that Park promised them a study and work program on Saipan, which did not materialize.<\/p>\n
Ulloa said it was extremely hard to face the complaining students because they presented payment receipts from Park but Park never furnished her office with those receipts. <\/p>\n
On the issue of misleading advertisement, Ulloa said she had raised it with Park a number of times.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw Chinese printouts. It had a picture of SU and its offerings. It\u2019s an inaccurate picture. And there\u2019s a lot of course offerings,\u201d she said, acknowledging that the CNMI State Board of Regents only authorized SU to offer reading, writing and conversational English, and computer laboratory.<\/p>\n
She said Park told her that any misleading information on the website would \u201cbe taken cared of,\u201d citing that it was set up in Korea. So during the state board\u2019s compliance check on SU on Sept. 11, she assured its members that the issue had been corrected.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told them it\u2019s already been taken cared of. When I checked the website, there\u2019s nothing there anymore,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
But to her dismay, she said that on Sept. 12, the misleading information popped up again.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s there. I [also] saw a lot of organizational charts, lots of names affiliated with SU that I didn\u2019t even know,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Ulloa testified that she wrote Park several times to air her concerns about SU but he never acted on them. <\/p>\n
She recalled that Park would even get upset whenever she faxed letters \u201cto different numbers\u201d overseas, including China. <\/p>\n
After receiving the first cycle of 53 students on Sept. 8, she said she advised Park not to bring in anymore students. \u201cWe\u2019re not ready to receive additional students,\u201d she said, since SU\u2019s operations had been paralyzed due to the absence of funds.<\/p>\n
Park, however, went right ahead and brought in eight additional students on Sept. 27 and 35 on Oct. 5.<\/p>\n
\u201cStudents were complaining, vendors were knocking to get paid,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The situation got worse, she said, when SU was evicted from its three-floor rented building in As Lito for nonpayment of rentals for three months. She said the building owner had wrapped the building with yellow tape while the students were in the classroom.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were asked to get out. The students got confused,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
That was the time when she said \u201cenough is enough.\u201d Ulloa resigned from SU on Oct. 15.<\/p>\n
Park replaced her with Jess Taisague, who served as president until SU was closed down late last year following the arrest of Park by federal authorities.<\/p>\n
Park is attending the trial with his lawyers, Pedro Atalig and Joseph Arriola.<\/p>\n
Ulloa is the fourth witness presented by the prosecution, headed by assistant U.S. attorney Patrick Smith.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saipan University had no operational funds, no instructional materials, no library resources, and no functioning laboratory computers, said former Saipan University president Jullie Ulloa in federal court yesterday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83727\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}