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Volume #104 | Issue #7 | Oct. 28, 2019 | depauliaonline.com
Strus on the loose
Federal probe raises questions about Board of Trustees protocols By Bianca Cseke Online Managing Editor
visit we played a game together and we got the chance to talk a little bit … Max and Eli [Cain] were my like my big brothers.” Strus’ journey from an under-recruited Division II player to a Big East conference star to now being on an NBA payroll
As Anne Pramaggiore, a member of DePaul’s Board of Trustees, remains involved in a far-reaching federal investigation into political corruption in Illinois, it remains unclear what exactly it would take for a trustee to be removed. Pramaggiore, who has been a trustee since 2010, left her position as CEO of Exelon days after the company was subpoenaed for all communications with State Sen. Martin Sandoval, who has been under federal investigation since September. As CEO of Exelon, which owns multiple utility firms such as ComEd and provides electrical equipment for all of northwestern Illinois, Pramaggiore was – and is still – involved with several boards, including the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the Art Institute. Pramaggiore is also heavily involved in giving political contributions, both directly from herself and through ComEd-Exelon’s political action committee (PAC). During the 2019 Chicago mayoral election, she donated to nearly every candidate – runoff candidates Lori Lightfoot and Toni Preckwinkle both received $5,000 – and she gave between $211.54 and $322.92 every two weeks to ComEd’s PAC between October 2012 and September 2019, according to Illinois Sunshine. For DePaul to want someone with as much civic involvement as Pramaggiore to be on its Board of Trustees makes sense, said Dave McKinney, a state politics reporter at WBEZ. How the trustees operate, are selected or removed and what happens at their meetings are unclear to the general public. Meeting minutes and bylaws are not available anywhere on the university’s website – including in its policy directory, which can only be accessed with a Campus Connect username and password. The Special Collections office in the John T. Richardson Library on the Lincoln Park campus holds all of these documents, including the original set of bylaws from 1946. However, any records less than 25 years old can only be obtained with written permission from the university’s Office of the Secretary. The secretary’s office did not respond to The DePaulia’s inquiry about trustee bylaws. However, according to the
See STRUS, page 26
See TRUSTEES, page 6
ALEXA SANDLER | THE DEPAULIA
Former DePaul men’s basketball forward Max Strus on the floor at Wintrust Arena during a conference match up against St. John’s on March 3.
Former men’s basketball star lands two-way contract with Bulls By Shane René Editor-in-Chief
A native of Chicago’s south suburbs, Max Strus only played for two seasons at DePaul, spending his first chained to the bench by NCAA regulations after transferring from Division II Lewis University. But in just two short years, Strus laid the foundation to become one of the program’s most compelling success stories in recent memory. Just days after signing a partially guaranteed contract with the Boston Celtics, the team waived Strus back onto the open market where he wasted no time putting ink to paper on a two-way contract with his hometown Chicago Bulls on Oct. 22, where he will see playing time in both the G-League and the NBA. “I think everybody at DePaul, and I think around Chicagoland, especially the south suburbs where he grew up, is probably really excited about the fact that he’s coming home,” Athletics Director Jean Lenti Ponsetto said. “It’s exciting for his family and his high school friends and certainly all of his DePaul fans and friends for him to be playing for either the Windy City Bulls or the Bulls, and to be able to continue to watch him play is terrific for everybody and especially for him to have that
support system around him too.” Over the past two DePaul men’s basketball campaigns, Strus was a key figure in the Blue Demons return to relevance in college basketball — the team’s “Superman,” as sophomore point guard Devin Gage put it after Strus poured in a thencareer-high 34 points against UIC last December. Playing for a program which has failed to cultivate much national attention in recent years, Strus’ hometown story fills a vacuum of DePaul men’s basketball players to make the jump to the game’s highest level directly out of college. Establishing a bridge between a college program and the NBA is a major selling point for the elite talent that drives the success of any NCAA program. Because Strus made a name for himself across the nation with highlight reel dunks and what, at times, seemed like weekly 30-point performances (he joins Mark Aguirre, George Mikan and Tom Kleinschmidt as the only DePaul players with five or more 30-point games) the DePaul brand started to reach a much broader audience. A broader audience means better recruits — recruits like DePaul’s highly touted incoming freshman forward Romeo Weems. “When I would come up for a visit I always see Max in the gym, getting shots up, rarely missing,” Weems said. “On my
PHOTO COURTESY OF EXELON
Max Strus hugs Head Coach Dave Leitao.