Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Heather Bresch M.B.A. controversy


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. Since the article is moved, this should be now under WP:RFD.. (non-admin closure) - The Herald (here I am) 16:11, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Heather Bresch M.B.A. controversy

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Heather Bresch is - barely - notable. This controversy is anything but. The existence of this article blatantly violates WP:BLP and WP:UNDUE. The article needs to die. Guy (Help!) 15:13, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Education-related deletion discussions.  B E C K Y S A Y L E S  15:21, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions.  B E C K Y S A Y L E S  15:22, 25 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Can you please be more specific about the blatant violation of WP:BLP? Would your concerns be addressed if the article were renamed to eliminate her name? Lou Sander (talk) 15:30, 25 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep. The sources needed to establish notability clearly exist and they're cited.  That's really all that matters at AfD.  Msnicki (talk) 15:34, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep, or possibly merge with West Virginia University - Note that there is also a move proposal under discussion. The article has roughly 11 sources from three independent, reliable sources. It would seem to meet WP:GNG. The nominator has not explained why "this article blatantly violates WP:BLP" or why it's WP:UNDUE, but it doesn't matter, because those are content issues, not a notability issues.- MrX 15:36, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep Merge to History of West Virginia University. Vast amount of RS backing up the verifiability of this event. Passes GNG by a wide margin. IMHO, meets each criteria of WP:EVENT. Concerns about BLP seem overblown, since there's nothing controversial in either this pagespace or the Bresch article which isn't well cited with RS. No statement of personal misconduct in either page. After reading the linked move discussion, I'm also inclined to endorse the move proposal. While this incident involved the degree of one (highly visible) student, the impact and the sourcing points towards WVU as the more proper subject and move or merge target. BusterD (talk) 16:01, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete or possibly merge to WVU. User:JzG is correct: this is a blatant BLP violation and undue to boot. Most of this stuff has nothing to do with her--it's a WVU matter, an unseemly one, but it's their business. I don't know if she's barely notable or not; the Fortune accolades suggest that she should pass the test. How is this a BLP violation? Well, the material doesn't really relate to her, and by giving this material its own article we are suggesting that this is one of the things she's known for and it's such an important thing that like the Vietnam War and Amstel Beer it deserves its own article. I have little interest in figuring out if this was a hatchet job to begin with, or what the background of Jimbo's recent involvement is, or whatever--but this needs to go. A paragraph in WVU, a sentence, maybe two, in her biography, and NO redirect. Come on people. Drmies (talk) 16:34, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Of course the material relates to her. Did you read the article at all, or any of the sources like this one or this one. Any issues about WP:NPOV are addressed by trivially changing the title of the article, and perhaps tweaking some of the content.- MrX 17:00, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Drmies covered that w/ "a sentence" in her article. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:03, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete or merge to a UWV article, its a BLP problematic POV Fork ONEVENT and entirely unneeded as a separate article per Drmies. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:55, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete or Merge to the university article. As Drmies points out, it's mainly an issue concerning the university rather than the person, and as a standalone article it looks like a BLP/one event/undue problem. Squinge (talk) 17:15, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep now that it has been renamed. Squinge (talk) 09:15, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Merge to either the WVU article or the History of WVU article. Doesn't meet notability standards as a stand-alone event. Coretheapple (talk) 17:51, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Merge a condensed version to the History of West Virginia University as proposed above. Good call. bd2412  T 20:48, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
 * delete or seriously trim and merge. gigantic BLP issue.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom  20:49, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep but rename as per the article's talk page. Metamagician3000 (talk) 00:23, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of West Virginia-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 21:03, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Events-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 21:03, 25 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Schools-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 21:03, 25 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep per Msnicki. This is neither a POV fork nor solely WVU history, but a notable intersection of politics, medicine, academia, and business.  No, we don't like how the world works, but this is how it works, and we ought to allow the editors who collected several good RSes to keep their work available to those interested.  The comparison to Vietnam War is especially specious because very few articles are on such overwhelmingly notable topics - much more common are articles like SummerSlam (2003) (and don't even try to quote OTHERSTUFFEXISTS at me, because that article and many of comparable notability are featured as "Wikipedia's best work"!)  There are matters that mere peasants ought not dare look into or think about but how about we do it anyway? Wnt (talk) 00:49, 26 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment. I'm concerned about so many votes to merge.  The topic is certainly notable on its own so I'm concerned that the most likely reason to merge might be so that "balance" may be applied  result of any merge would be a call to "balance" the reporting with the rest of the article, meaning that this being negative information, it will be buried.  We should not be in the business of playing games to censor information we do not like.  Msnicki (talk) 09:18, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
 * No. Balance - does not deserve scare quotes from encyclopedia writers (or even Wikipedians), without balance, we have unbalance. Per WP:AfD merging is a valid outcome, not censorship! - which is an absurd claim considering merge results in material being in the encyclopedia.  As a matter of encyclopedic judgement, it's better in context, so merge (or delete per Drmies sound argument which is not censorship either). -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:19, 26 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Per WP:ATD-M, merge is a valid outcome when the article is "short and unlikely to be expanded" and, per WP:GNG, the topic is not sufficiently notable to justify a separate article but is still worthy of discussion in the context of a larger article. Merge is not a valid outcome when the topic is so clearly notable on its own and there is so much to say about it.  Msnicki (talk) 19:18, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
 * No, that's silly. Merge is a valid outcome when the editorial judgement is to merge.  Nothing about it is censorship. There is no such thing as deserving an article. See WP:ONUS and WP:PAGEDECIDE Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:51, 29 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Delete. What Drmies said. --Dweller (talk) 10:41, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete the "controversy" is not, in itself, notable enough to warrant its own article. Collect (talk) 12:34, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep per number of top executives at WVU brought down by it. Probably should be renamed to something without Bresh's name in the title, though. -- SarekOfVulcan (talk) 12:50, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep and rename per SarekOfVulcan's logic above. Either rename it or move it to something like History of West Virginia University. It contains good, well-sourced information about a coverup-style scandal. Maybe that is its main importance. The problem is where to put it. I'm thinking it relates 5% to Heather Bresch, 25% to WVU, and 70% to some combination of scandals in general and scandals in academia. It has similarities to the recent scandals at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where for many years athletes were credited with taking courses that they never took. A quick look at UNC articles doesn't reveal any mention of those scandals. There's an article on Academic dishonesty, but this sort of thing doesn't fit well there. This whole thing is like the Watergate scandal, except it resulted in top heads rolling at a university rather than a country. It is also in some ways like the Black Sox scandal, which has its own large article. Also Iran–Contra affair is a scandal with its own article. Maybe somewhere there should be a List of Scandals article or something. The specific category for the Bresch matter is Degree-granting scandals. That topic is related to, but not part of, Diploma mills in the United States. It's a puzzlement. Lou Sander (talk) 16:23, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep, sources indicate notability. Everyking (talk) 17:51, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep - This incident led to the resignation of a university president, an event of lasting historical significance. Merger either to the Bresch biography or to the President's biography would be UNDUE, merger to the history of the university would get lost or clutter the narrative. The incident is significant and the incident is notable in WP terms, passing GNG. Carrite (talk) 19:05, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
 * s/lasting/no obvious real/. Guy (Help!) 23:06, 26 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment - Sarek's idea to get Bresch's name out of the title is probably a good one. Carrite (talk) 19:06, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment Renaming issues are for discussion and consensus at article talk pages. XfD is for discussion of keep/merge/delete. --Dweller (talk) 13:59, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
 * In general, yeah, but sometimes tweaking a name makes all the difference in terms of whether a topic is perceived as a "personal attack page" or reportage of a notable historic incident. Such things do indeed come up in the course of deletion debates, they are germane, and particularly relevant here, I think. Carrite (talk) 23:50, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
 * There is a separate proposal to move the article, with much cogent discussion and much support at Talk:Heather_Bresch_M.B.A._controversy. There is another discussion also going on at Talk:Heather_Bresch, with a lot of discussion but not a lot of support or opposition expressed. It doesn't seem to be a great idea to have a concurrent discussion about deleting it, especially when the bulk of that discussion seems to revolve around the article's name. Lou Sander (talk) 10:05, 28 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep A notable event with excellent references. New England Cop (talk) 06:53, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Merge to the History of West Virginia University. If it stays, rename to West Virginia University MBA controversy. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:05, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep but rename This is a tough one. The sources clearly establish notability. The inclusion of Heather Bresch's name in the title is a BLP violation especially since notability concerns the actions and aftermath of what some university officials did. Merging would be a possibility if there were a good target, but I don't see one.  While notable, I don't think it belongs in West Virginia University or the History of West Virginia University. I agree with Anthonyhcole that it should be renamed as West Virginia University MBA controversy. --I am One of Many (talk) 06:37, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep but rename I've posted here and in other places about this article, and have followed all of them fairly closely. I agree with Anthonyhcole and I am One of Many that it should be renamed as  West Virginia University MBA controversy, and I think this is an easy call. The controversy is definitely notable by itself, so it should have its own article. The move removes BLP issues with Bresch. If it's moved to one of the WVU articles, it really gives undue weight to the incident with regard to the university and its history. Lou Sander (talk) 17:14, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
 * What do you mean? Are you saying there should be NO mention of this in a WVU article?  If these is such mention how will it overwhelm it, what critical information will be lost by merging this POVfork? Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:28, 1 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment. I'm sympathetic to those arguing to keep, but rename to West Virginia University MBA controversy based on BLP, but respectfully, I think the rename would be inappropriate.  I think it could be overturned in DRV if anyone chose to take it there.  Here's why.  First, I think Dweller is correct on the guidelines, that we consider only notability at XFD and the outcomes are keep, merge or delete.  Everything else is a content issue, properly the matter of other forums including article talk pages and move discussions, some of which have been reported to be underway already.  Title is content and this is just not the place where we decide content.  Second, the notable topic we can all find in the sources is not some vague controversy over West Virgina University's MBA program over the years and involving who knows how many MBAs they've conferred.  It is a specific controversy over a particular MBA conferred on the single individual whose name appears in the article title.  Even if we did decide content here (and we don't), I think there's a pretty good WP:COMMONNAME argument that the title we've got is the one we should have anyway.  We should keep the article and leave the question of title to the usual forums for content decisions.  Msnicki (talk) 17:33, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
 * You raise good points, but this case is in a gray area that is difficult to nail down. Articles are commonly rescued by changing content (e.g., stripping away promotional content).  So, I think if the title is a major obstacle to keeping the article, it should be renamed and then the name of the article should be put up for discussion if necessary.  I did a search on West Virginia University MBA controversy and it pulled up the relevant information, so I think it would not be so easy to make a WP:COMMONNAME argument against the title. --I am One of Many (talk) 18:10, 1 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Well, sure. And in fact, I'd go further to concede that if you compare searches (as suggested in WP:COMMONNAME), you would find additional support for your argument.  I got 184,000 hits for "West Virginia University MBA controversy" versus only 2,320 hits for "Heather Bresch MBA controversy".  (But how many of each are relevant?)  What I'm saying is that I think we could have a very rich discussion of the title and I could certainly be persuaded there might be something better.  But an AFD is not the place where that's likely to happen.  I think this is the wrong forum, especially as the article title has been reported to be under discussion already in the proper forums.  Msnicki (talk) 18:42, 1 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment: I have closed the RM, and the article is now at West Virginia University M.B.A. controversy. I don't spend much time at AfD, so please let me know if the move breaks anything. :-) As I described in the close, this is not intended to affect the outcome of this discussion.  Sunrise    (talk)  21:48, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks good move, and as stated in that discussion by me and other supporters of that move, it does not affect the delete/merge issue, so thanks again. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:21, 1 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Excellent! Msnicki (talk) 00:08, 2 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep, easily meets notability standards as currently implemented on Wikipedia; a notable event particularly for the fallout at the university, key individuals (e.g. president), etc. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 05:07, 2 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep – I agree with Nomoskedasticity: easily meets notability standards ... ; a notable event particularly for the fallout at the university; key individuals (e.g., President); etc.   Thanks.   Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 15:47, 2 February 2015 (UTC)


 * The original nominator claims that "Heather Bresch is - barely - notable." Huh?  You are either notable or you are not.  She has a Wikipedia article.  Thus, by definition, she is notable.   She is a CEO of a company.  She is part of this political family (daughter of a governor and senator).  How does the nominator support the idea that Bresch is not notable?    Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:10, 2 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.