User:Sarcasmboy/sandbox/Douglas-Rose Controversy

The Douglas-Rose Controversy, also referred to as the Rose-Douglas Controversy, was a political controversy that lasted from 1875 until 1881 in the state of Michigan. It stemmed from an accounting discrepancy at the University of Michigan but grew to encompass a public feud between various Protestant denominations, an investigation by the Michigan legislature, and a series of court battles that reached the Michigan Supreme Court.

Background
The controversy began with a routine audit of student laboratory fees at the University of Michigan. The Board of Regents passed a resolution in October 1875 that required the university's chemical laboratory to perform a quarterly accounting of all of the laboratory fees students had paid, consistent with how such accounting was done in other departments. Upon performing the first audit, the director of the laboratory, Professor Silas H. Douglas, found a discrepancy of $831.10 for the 1874–1875 school year. The student fees had been collected by an assistant professor, Preston B. Rose, who turned them over to Douglas for transfer to the university treasury. Rose repaid a portion of the missing funds immediately and took out a mortgage on his house to furnish the remaining $645 that November.

Further discrepancies dating back several years were found as the audit continued, and after university president James B. Angell informed the regents, they demanded Rose provide a deed of trust of his house as security against further losses. The regents' own investigative committee reported on December 21 that a total of $4,718.62 was missing.

Public controversy
The matter had become public knowledge by now, and Rose stopped cooperating with the investigation, professed his innocence to the regents, and demanded an impartial hearing. Instead, the regents found him responsible for $1,681.53 of the funds and suspended him from his duties. Between December and the end of the 1875–1876 academic year, the regents reinstated and then fired Rose, and two more committees found additional discrepancies that brought the total to $6,984.01. Records indicated Douglas was in possession of $1,174.65 of this; he claimed the records had been forged and an attempt by the regents to fire him failed by a four to two vote.

Religious and political allegiances began to shape the public debate. Douglas was well-known in the area, having been on the faculty since 1844 and served as mayor of Ann Arbor from 1871 to 1873. Rice Beal, the publisher of the Ann Arbor Courier, was an influential Republican in the state and, like Rose, a Methodist. Beal saw Rose as the underdog in a fight against Douglas, an Episcopalian, and used the paper to defend Rose and attack Douglas, the university, and Angell.