Ohio State President Ravi Bellamkonda said university employees did a good job at stepping up to prevent inappropriate actions by his predecessor, Walter "Ted" Carter Jr.
Bellamkonda discussed the matter during an appearance Wednesday morning on WOSU's "All Sides with Amy Juravich."
Carter resigned as OSU president in March following a scandal where he gave inappropriate access to a podcaster. Bellamkonda was then tapped to lead the university. He was formerly the university's provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, leading OSU's AI Fluency initiative.
A report on Carter released by the university in April details his alleged wrongdoing, which included misusing his position and influence to give podcaster Kristanthe Vlachos university resources. Carter's alleged misconduct included securing a contract with the state's economic development arm JobsOhio.
Vlachos recorded her podcast at WOSU Public Media, but the university found the contract was appropriate and there's no evidence suggesting WOSU covered any costs associated with the podcast beyond providing complimentary office space.
However, with other dealings, the report found Carter and Chris Kabourek, former senior vice president for the Office of Administration and Planning, did misuse their positions.
Bellamkonda said he thinks the university and its safeguards worked well at catching Carter's wrongdoing.
"I don't think you can regulate your way to being a good person. I think the rules we have actually work really well, and we will obviously be open to doing that if we need to," Bellamkonda said. "But I think rules really worked, and that was the point of this report."
Kabourek, Carter's right hand man, also resigned amid the scandal and now works at West Virginia University. Bellamkonda said if Kabourek remained, the university would have taken action against him.
"We would have acted with Chris Kabourek probably, but I'm not aware of any others that we needed to act on," Bellamkonda said.
Bellamkonda touched on a range of other topics with Juravich, including the rocky past year for Ohio State. The university dealt with other scandals beyond Carter's resignation, including billionaire megadonor Les Wexner's connections with convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and an OSU professor with the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture and Society assaulting a cameraman who tried to question former OSU President E. Gordon Gee.
Shortly after Bellamkonda took office, the university reached a $100 million settlement with all but one of the survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of former Ohio State team doctor Richard Strauss.
Bellamkonda said there's been a great desire to get the lawsuits and Strauss scandal behind the university, and it just so happened that all but one of the remaining plaintiffs settled with Ohio State when he became president.
"It's very important to the university that we do right by them and get this behind us to the extent we can. It'll never make it all go away, but to the extent we can do the right thing," Bellamkonda said.
On Wexner, Bellamkonda said a university committee is still considering requests to rename buildings with Wexner's name on them. These include the Wexner Medical Center and the Wexner Center for the Arts.
Bellamkonda said a decision on that is still far off, but there will be an update soon on a request to rename OSU's Thompson Library. He said he expects a report with a recommendation on the request on his desk soon.
The library is named for the university's fifth president, William Oxley Thompson. The request cites Thompson's support of racial segregation.
Bellamkonda also commented on the Ohio governor's race between Democrat Dr. Amy Acton and Republican Vivek Ramaswamy.
Bellamkonda said his politics aren't "red or blue," but rather "scarlet and gray," like the university's official colors.
Bellamkonda said he will work with whomever wins the November election whether it's Acton, who earned her master's degree from Ohio State, or Ramaswamy.
Bellamkonda said he did meet Ramaswamy once in passing while playing tennis, but hopes to engage both candidates in discussions about higher education policy.
