University of Missouri arena name revoked

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Premise: Earlier this year, Wal-Mart heirs Nancy and Bill Laurie purchased the naming rights for the U of Missouri's basketball arena. Their choice of name? Their own daughter, Paige Laurie, who, by the way, was a student at USC and has no association with UM at all. As you can imagine, this did not sit well with most people in Columbia.

 

Well...

 

Source-o-rama

 

Benefactors find scandal gave new arena a bad name

 

When they named a University of Missouri sports arena after their daughter, billionaire Wal-Mart heirs Nancy and Bill Laurie pronounced themselves "very proud parents."

 

But this week, they found themselves stripping their daughter Paige's name from the building, after allegations that she paid a roommate $20,000 to do her coursework at the University of Southern California.

 

Elizabeth Paige Laurie, 22, graduated from USC this year. But her first-semester roommate, Elena Martinez, says Laurie hired her to write her papers, prepare her oral reports and even exchange e-mail with her professors in nearly every class she took for four years.

 

The Laurie family will say only that the academic record of their only child is a "private matter." But after the allegations aired on ABC's "20/20" on Friday, the family agreed--under pressure from students--to take Paige's name off the basketball arena at the University of Missouri in Columbia.

 

The Lauries had paid $25 million in 2001 to help build the arena. That bought them a luxury suite and the right to name the facility the Paige Sports Arena.

 

In Columbia, many students said the Lauries finally made things right on Tuesday when they gave up naming rights.

 

The notion of naming the most prominent building on campus for a 22-year-old heiress with no connection to the school had been widely resented. The cheating allegations angered the students even more, said Matt Sokoloff, a sophomore.

 

"The first day of every class here, they talk about academic integrity," Sokoloff said. "Now we find out that our arena is named after a girl who paid her way through college?."

 

The university announced the pending name change in a news release full of praise for the Laurie family, widely known as the Mizzou Tigers' biggest--and richest--boosters.

 

Nancy Laurie is the daughter of Bud Walton, the brother and business partner of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton. Forbes magazine recently estimated her fortune at $2.3 billion. Though neither she nor her husband attended Missouri, they have adopted the school as a favorite philanthropy.

 

"We continue to be grateful to the Laurie family for their long-time support," Chancellor Brady Deaton said.

 

The university board is to vote Friday on the proposed new name, Mizzou Arena.

 

`She was pretty picky'

 

Meanwhile, USC is looking into the alleged cheating.

 

"We want all our students to do their own work,"said Michael Jackson, the vice president for student affairs.

 

Jackson said that in his 25 years in academia, "I've never heard of possible cheating of this magnitude."

 

Martinez said this week she never intended the fraud to go so far. She helped her roommate with a paper in the first semester of their freshman year, she said, and happily pocketed $25 as thanks. But soon, she said, Paige Laurie was asking her to take over almost all her schoolwork.

 

Within months, Martinez dropped out of USC and returned to her home in Banning, unable to afford the tuition. She said Laurie continued sending her books and assignments--and e-mails critiquing the work she sent back.

 

"I rarely got a bad grade, but if I did, she'd say `This was horrible.'," Martinez said. "She was pretty picky."

 

Ex-roommate cooperating

 

Though Martinez had her own homework to do--she had started taking classes at Riverside Community College--she said she still did Laurie's assignments and accepted payments that added up to $20,000 over four years.

 

"I thought about quitting a lot of times, but I didn't know how," Martinez said. "I was dealing with someone really powerful."

 

And she enjoyed the challenge: "In a way, it was nice, because I was getting the quality education I had wanted."

 

Martinez wouldn't say what prompted her to come forward with the allegations now. The only explanation she offered was this: "I'd become uncomfortable with the whole situation." She has agreed to cooperate with the USC investigation.

 

Martinez said she's applying to transfer her community college credits to UCLA or California State University, San Bernardino. She already has picked out her major: communications.

 

"I liked the classes Paige took so much," she said, "I've decided to major in the same thing she did."

 

In the words of Nelson Muntz, "Haha!"