Julia Jensen: Welcome back to Demise Of The Crown. A story about a college in crisis, how it ended up there, and what it says about truth in this cut-throat world.

Colby McCaskill: On Saturday, August 27th, 2022, I moved into my freshman housing. It was a big deal. I remember having to say goodbye to my parents, having to introduce myself to these foreign guys in my new apartment. In the matter of a few hours, I was no longer living at home. But in a new highrise in Downtown Brooklyn. That night, I attended the welcome program, a typical new student orientation event. You know, the leader of the college gets up to speak. Tells you about how you made the right choice. How they’re so glad to have you. All that. That night was the first time I encountered Stockwell Day. In fact, for all scheduled visiting days — or what we call “Invisos” — for the 2022-’23 year, Stockwell Day was not President. No, no, no, no, no. Tim Gibson was. Tim Gibson signed most emails I received from the College. Tim Gibson spoke about what makes King’s so special during the Q&A panel. So an obvious question arose: Why is Stockwell Day the Acting President of my new college?

Julia Jensen: The news of Tim’s abrupt departure came as a surprise to many. And it wasn’t exactly good news. Many of us appreciated the former Brigadier General’s caring demeanor and stately yet casual presence. Popcorn with the president — at his apartment — had been a sort of cult classic event. I remember him giving a touching speech at the 2022 Sports Banquet, providing no reason for us to think a departure was imminent. On the other hand, Stockwell Day was an enigma. A Canadian politician running our college? How did that happen? 

Colby McCaskill: The truth about the matter, about why Gibson is no longer at King’s, about what Primacorp actually did at King’s, is one that took quite a bit of reporting to fully iron out. And it is quite complicated. Don’t worry, we’ll get into it. 

Julia Jensen: Just so you have an idea, though, on our little adventure in journalism this week we are going to make four stops. First we hear from one of the people on the inside of the Primacorp fundraising machine. After that, about the acquisition of the college’s first — and so far only — permanent real estate asset. Next, we hear about President Gibson and his premature departure from King’s. And lastly we hear from two students on the frontline of this crisis. Can they give insight into what the Primacorp merger was like? That’s all coming up.

Colby McCaskill: But before that, we just want to remind you of the finite-ness of our reporting. We simply cannot impart to you the full nuances and intricacies of this story in the time we have. So, while we strive to do the best we can in a reasonable amount of time, you can find more resources in the show description and linked in the transcripts as well. Without further delay, stand clear of the closing doors please. This is a truth-bound local DOTC train. Here is Episode 2: Primacorp. I’m Colby McCaskill. 

Julia Jensen: I’m Julia Jensen.

Colby McCaskill: And this is Demise of The Crown.

Colby McCaskill: So, last episode, we talked a lot about The King’s College. About how it first announced that it was coming up short on funds. That was a lot, if you hadn’t already guessed. Because, well, schools usually don’t announce budget deficits, period. It’s kind of one of the biggest PR disasters one can imagine. And on top of that, King’s itself has had a history of a tight-lipped administration. Probably most notably former President Gibson. We’ll get more into his story in act three. But for now, for much of this episode, and for our first act, we want to tell you how we got to that 2.6 million deficit. 

Julia Jensen: In mid 2021, on May 14th, around a year and a half before we knew about the deficit, King’s announced that it was entering into a, quote, “collaboration.” A, quote, “Fusion of strengths in pursuit of the Mission and Vision.” Endquote. Very official, and lots of big words.

Colby McCaskill: But we’re just gonna say merger or partnership. We want to protect your ears from our voices as much as possible.

Julia Jensen: The public narrative was that the partnership happened because Primacorp was successful. It had a long history of educational investments, and King’s was ready to grow even faster. The big plan, by the way, was a new online program. We’ll tell you more about it later. The Board of Trustees had been considering the partnership since at least February 2021.

David Bahnsen: And then I served on the board up until the very beginning of 2021, at which point I left the board. I believe that was February of 2021.

…

The DeVos’ incredible generosity had an expiration date before the Canadian option came up. 

…

I left the board well before that transaction was consummated, but it was in discussion phases.

Colby McCaskill: That was David Bahnsen, a previous board member for King’s, recounting the beginning of the Primacorp merger. As you may have picked up on, King’s had lost some major donors, Helen and Richard Devos, and William Lee Hanley. You’ll hear a little bit more about them soon enough. But for all intents and purposes, King’s did not publicly admit that they needed a lot of money. But remember, within two years King’s would announce that 2.6 million dollar deficit. To explore how it got this way, we are going to begin our trip with a conversation with a King’s Alum, an Ex-Primacorp employee.

Colby McCaskill: I'm here with Sophia Coston

…

I'm gonna give her the recorder…

Colby McCaskill: This is me, talking with Sophia, weeks after the semester ended.

Colby McCaskill: So first off, who are you?

Sophia: Great question. I learned the answer in many philosophy classes. My name is Sophia Coston.

…

I am a 2015 graduate of the house of Queen Elizabeth the first. I am a former admissions counselor in the office of admissions from the years 2015 to 2018. And I am a former Executive Director of Alumni Relations, title created and ended with me. 

Colby McCaskill: In the past few years, Sophia has entered, graduated, left, returned, left, returned, and once again left The King’s College. She’s seen it in its most populated eras. And also its most empty.

Sophia: I was always familiar with our Wall Street location, I was the first class who officially attended their full time. 

…

The fall of 2012 is when I entered, which was the first—I was there the first month we opened. I actually went a few weeks early because I happened to be in the city and they were moving in. I went to an Inviso, our visit weekend, in the Empire State Building. So I knew what it looked like.

Colby McCaskill: Sophia also worked for Primacorp when that merger went through. She's one of the few voices that have both the experience and willingness to speak about this part of the puzzle. I’ll let her take it away with her time as a student first.

Sophia: I had fairly reasonable expectations. I was really looking forward to college in general. I had four siblings who had gone to Christian colleges before. So I was kind of expecting maybe a little bit more of a typical residential feel. But quickly realizing, because we really don't have a true residence that we own, like a campus campus, that that would be shifted. That was not a big deal. I did not care about a football team. 

…

What was different was that, I think that there was a very high percentage of students who were classically educated, or at least had a background in public speaking in high performance. 

…

Almost every idea at King's was new. I remember thinking: Okay, in college, you have some backburner classes, right? That you just show up, do a little bit of work, and you kind of get by? Never. I never had that. What I assumed was my backburner class, which was New Testament, which I thought: That's fine. I've been to church all my life. I went to a Christian school. It's going to be super easy. Not one bit. My professor, Professor Rabinowitz, fabulous professor. He left, I think, after I graduated, but he totally transformed my understanding of Jesus and the Bible. I would consider it now like a seminary level class, but that was just very normal for King’s. And that was true of every single class at King’s.

…

Because I will say, also, I was student body president in high school. I was National Honor Society president. I was not like a lame kid. I actually did my work. King’s still kicked me in the butt. It was just killer. 

…

But I really appreciated that this level, the caliber of excellence, found in students was really encouraging to me because I was sharpened by that. And by the professors. 

Colby McCaskill: So, King’s was a good experience, in the long term. But it was also extremely difficult. After she graduated, she returned to work for the college in in-house admissions department. This was in 2015.

Sophia: So I was hired in October, and I think I officially started in November, in the admissions department where I had a job as a student worker. So I knew the people, and I really liked them. And I loved King’s. But that love of King’s did not happen right away, as a student, it developed later. So it was a good, I felt like I had a good story on why I believed in King’s. Even though I didn't feel like I was the ideal King’s student. I still felt like I could still bring others that were probably more of an ideal student than I was.

…

I never wanted to sell my soul. And I still don't think I did. But it is hard to always sell basically a future. 

Colby McCaskill: What would selling your soul entail? 

Sophia: Probably lying about what it meant to me. And so and I'm like, the beauty of this job that I had was that I was reminded of what I was given as a student, as a graduate. I can go on record, everyone who's not my sister, my bridal party actually was from King's. From my house, from my graduating year, no less. The people I hang out with, we don't talk about King’s, but we happen to go there. And it was incredibly shaping. The ideas I have about God and family and politics, really core issues of my identity, was tremendously impacted from King’s. And I'm so grateful for that. But also, I got to talk about my incredible classmates. And that's why I think it was easy for me to switch to being alumni director, and I can talk about that later. But it was great to be an admissions counselor, because I got to say: Hey, my friend is on Broadway. I know her. And I know the success she has. My friends went to Yale Law School. I know exactly who's on the cover of our brochures. It's not a paid person. It's not this random, the most attractive person on our college. It's actually my friend, who is then a photographer for Esquire magazine. I got to say the names of these people. And that was really cool that it was so tangible to me, these outcomes, and they weren't made up.

Julia Jensen: What Sophia is saying is that she was kind of purified by the school, and so selling it to others was like selling a gym membership. In the long run, she knew it could be good for them. She could personally point to how it has been good for others in the past. Herself included. At the same time though, selling that gym membership came with risks. Even from her position as Admissions Counselor, there were some parts that were a little concerning. In keeping with the analogy, it would be like overpriced membership fees, pay-by-the-hour lockers, chronically dysfunctional toilets. Things that those on the inside knew about, but weren’t letting on to the outsiders. To sell her soul would be working for King’s even if the college’s vices outweighed its virtues.

Colby McCaskill: Can I just? Let me—let me just tell you about how I first found out. I was sitting in the office of this guy named Richard. He’s part of IT. A staff member at King’s. Pretty involved with my house. So we were talking on the record. I should mention, this was late March, almost two months after the Welcome Back Gathering. I was in the early stages of this project, so my questions weren’t as focused. I hadn’t really discovered the full narrative of why King’s was in this mess in the first place. We were eating Sticky’s Chicken. Throwing around ideas. And in talking about the staff and faculty and all the hullabaloo that was going down, he mentioned how the previous CFO had just retired. 

Richard: He left around September, this year. This past academic year. 

Colby McCaskill: Did he know about the Rightsizing?

…

Richard: No. He had been CFO here for probably since before I got here. Ever since I've been here, he's been talking about retiring. So he's been CFO for a long time.

Colby McCaskill: So it was a retirement thing? 

Richard: Yeah. And he just didn’t want to have to deal with the stress.

…

Yeah he’s been wanting out for a long time. He's only stayed on because he's been trying to keep King’s afloat for so long. 

Colby McCaskill: What do you mean for so long? 

Richard: Oh, King’s has had financial troubles for years. 

…

Colby McCaskill: Wait. Really?

Colby McCaskill: Can you hear that silence? That is me realizing that I totally missed something very big. King’s, apparently, has not been very financially sound for like a minute.

Julia Jensen: Sophia knew it too. But actually saw it way earlier than Colby did.

Sophia: Oh, gosh, I knew that as a student. 

Colby McCaskill: What gave you that impression? 

Sophia: Inviso. When I visited. 

Colby McCaskill: Oh, did they tell you that? Or was it?

Sophia: No! I mean, the fact that they restarted in the Empire State Building, like 14 years before I visited or less than that. I knew that this is not a stable institution. Wheaton College has been around since before the Civil War, where my brother went, they've got plenty of buildings. Billy Graham, I'm pretty sure, was their president at some point. That's a stable institution. This felt like a startup. But I wasn't concerned about that. Because I felt like I was in a mission then. And I felt like I was in this together with the school.

…

Colby McCaskill: They didn't make it explicitly clear: Our financial situation is a little up in the air? 

Sophia: No. No, no, no, no, but I just got the sense like that, though. The sense of: We're not established yet. And so it'll be a little rocky. But then I made friends with older students, and even former alumni right away that told us that we almost shut down a few years ago. While I was a student, I knew that. So I thought: We're not quite there yet. But it sounds like we're out of the thick of it. 

Julia Jensen: I just have to say, this is actually a very big deal. The more we asked this question, it seemed almost everyone knew, and readily admitted it. 

Dru: I mean, so I've been here 12 years, but there hasn't been a year where I wasn't worried about the financial model of King’s closing. 

…

David: There was never a time when I was on the board that financial issues were not pressing, were not upfront and close.

…

There’s been existentially threatening financial difficulties in the past. 

…

It’s definitely been a wild journey.

…

Ben: I knew that from Dawn Fotopulos that the school had never been financially independent or without the need of more backing. 

Julia Jensen: You see, that was not the impression we were given from the announcement of budget cuts Stockwell gave last episode. The story was: Outside forces have acted upon the college. It’s not the college’s fault. This was not the impression we got from the 2.6 million dollar deficit announcement. We were fighting against the world, not our own structure. And I get that. I mean, you can’t advertise your college as unstable. And yes, for many of you that already are familiar with this story, this is obvious. Of course King’s isn’t totally fine on the money side, but we always made it through. We’ve been bankrupt, we’ve been saved. And…perhaps…King’s got a little too comfortable because of this. 

Colby McCaskill: Put yourself in my shoes, in the shoes of our classmates. Alarm bells are going off. Who did I just give my money to? A college that hasn’t been operating on a sound financial model for years? Was I supposed to know that before I paid them? How bad of a problem is this? 

Julia Jensen: This is a big part of the story. Because this hasn’t been a part of the public narrative. And maybe it’s not supposed to be. But it definitely is part of the college’s reality. 

Colby McCaskill: I’ll hand it back to Sophia so she can expand on what the college’s money problems mean for her.

Sophia: Yeah, I think what is tough is that it's normal for admissions offices and have turnover. I felt like we were more so than other schools, which is really tough. I think I just think it is normal that other schools, you know, your admissions counselor is there only for a few years. But it just felt like we were constantly turning over. And that was really tough, because I felt like I was a senior person after being there for two years. Now, that's not true. There was always someone above me. But that was weird thinking: Hey, I think I'm 23 and in charge. That's weird. I remember being 21, recruiting a 19 year old, thinking: this is too close to home. I barely know more than you, I really don't. I bet you could drive better than I could, you know. This isn't okay.

Colby McCaskill: Also, Sophia wanted to go to Grad School, so she left the King’s admission department in 2018.

Sophia: I did. I applied to and got into Harvard, not because of a family connection. But because I thought: why shouldn't I be able to get in. All my friends, you know, are doing amazing things. And I still can't believe it happened. I have a degree. I'm really thankful that the people that I went to school with pushed me to be better. And I don't think I would have ever done that, if it wasn't for the excellence of the classmates I had that graduated from there.

Colby McCaskill: That could be the end of Sophia’s story. She went to a financially vulnerable school, but got through it. She put in effort to help it thrive, then moved on to bigger and better things. But…

Sophia: I did not intend to come back. It was kind of an accident. As is most things in my life. I was at a birthday party for a 10 year old. You know. And his father was on staff, and he was talking about the changes at King’s. And it was like: Oh, we're getting an outside consulting firm that's going to take over the departments that you love. And there, I think that there is a few opportunities for you to come back. And I didn't really think about it. But then, I had two other staff members who said: I think that we're actually going to have money now. I think we're going to actually have resources. And that's like, we always had a good product. And frankly, we almost always had good people selling that product and helping that project marketing that product. We just needed more resources. And that's, I thought: That's exactly right. And then this idea of like: Oh, we're actually going to pour into our alumni. That's all we need. We need an official focus to actually love them well. And then long term, we'll see investments. 

…

So I was hired by our consulting firm, Canadian company, Primacorp, to kind of restart relationships with alumni who have not really been cultivated well, over the years. We never had an explicit alumni department. We never had a person who did alumni relations exclusively. And it was very clear when I was hired for this position, I can give you more background, that I was not a fundraiser, but rather a relationship builder. 

…

Colby McCaskill: You came on as an Alumni Relation rep. What was a regular day for you?

Sophia: I started in August of ‘21. So I was there for a year and a half, about. I started, and they were still getting their legs because they had signed the agreement that spring. But nothing really was official, it felt like, until that summer. And so, for instance, technically my paycheck was King’s, because Primacorp needed to set up a corporation, which was later called TKC Operations. I don't think that TKC Operations was set up until, I don't know, October or November. So what they would do is King’s paid me, but they would bill Primacorp for my paycheck. 

Colby McCaskill: Little aside here. What Sophia is describing is TKCO. It was a business entity created to be the intermediary between Primacorp and The King’s College. This isn’t the most important, it’s just worth a mention in case you want to dig deeper into the economics of the situation. TKCO is mentioned in the college’s 2021 audit which is publicly available online, and linked here.

Sophia: Yes, I'd worked for King’s before, but I had also worked for other organizations whether nonprofit or for-profit, I guess. And I knew how onboarding was supposed to be. It was scrappy. 

…

So it felt disorganized. It felt very unofficial. I came back to King’s, but nothing was really set up well. Also, I realized later, TKC Operations was still not set up themselves. It was really in the process. So my orientation, for instance, was: I met with my boss, Scott Fehrenbacher, that day, and then that was kind of it. So I knew that I'm gonna get my bearings. But I didn't quite understand what my bearings were. And to be truthful, I never did. I quickly had to take on the role of planning homecoming, which I didn't really care about. But it became obvious that Primacorp was technically in charge of Homecoming. And it was a big budget event that no one really liked. And I had no idea how to do that. But also, I didn't have really support from Primacorp. And King’s didn't really want it anymore, which I don't blame them. But they also said that it needs to happen. So I, kind of for the first two or three months, I was just in charge of trying to plan Homecoming. And I really didn't care. I wanted some event, but I didn't like how we did Homecoming in the past, and no one was really jazzed about Homecoming. But it's also the big alumni event. But the problem was that we never had a good one or we had never had a good support system. Anyways, so that was a lot of my time at the beginning. But then, pretty much immediately after that, which was early November, my boss Scott, he went on a well needed vacation, and he went on an anniversary trip, which was really sweet. And we kept on talking about: Okay, after Homecoming, then we'll get started, then we'll start this vision. He came back from his vacation, November 29, or something like that. And he was let go. That was my lifeline. I had no direction after that.

…

So King’s, in my mind, King’s was in a precarious financial state when I had started in ‘21, with this particular job, but it became more apparent, basically, when they never fulfilled the promises that they had made. They were supposed to take over the Development Office, Advancement, and fundraise, but they never really did. I think they technically paid the salaries of the two people working there, but they never hired anyone else. And They promised that they would. Because you can’t fundraise…

…

…with one fundraiser and a support person. You can’t do that. So the fact that they didn’t do that was extremely concerning. They were supposed to hire a lot more people in marketing and in admissions, and didn't. Or they hired people in admissions, but they weren't the right fit. They only hired them for online. And we all knew that this online thing does not make mathematical sense. There was too many promises. So we all knew that that wasn't going to happen. They said: Oh yeah, we're going to get 2000 People in our first month. 5000 People in our first month. 10,000 people, of course, that wasn't gonna happen. It doesn't matter how much money you throw at it. You can't just create that. 

…

But then Scott left. I had bills to pay and Primacorp wouldn’t pay them. 

…

And then I sent the bill out of my personal account, because I was never given a credit card or a corporate account or a way to pay for things. Never. So I was paying for a lot of things myself, 

…

Also, I was never given a budget ever. I just asked: Hey, can I just do this event? They said: Sure. I said: How can I pay for this? And I was never gonna have an answer. And I had ideas of, let's start like alumni chapters in the country. Well, we need a budget for that. I was never given a way to pay for them. So I had ideas, but I couldn't ever execute them. Because they had to cost something. So it was infuriating for a year and a half. And I think I realized I was never gonna get a budget or money, probably a year in for sure. And so I would try different ways to do things without paying for things, or I would have other departments pay for them. So, so truly, career development, Matt Perman and I, he had an idea. He's like: Hey, I've got grant money. I don't know exactly how to use it. I said: Great. I'll take it all. And we did a co-event. It was awesome. Between graduating seniors and recent alumni. It was a networking happy hour. And it was amazing. And it worked really well. And I had great feedback on it. And I wanted to do that again. But I knew unless career development paid for it, there was no way we could do it. It was just really, really disappointing.

Colby McCaskill: So Sophia was hired by Primacorp to be responsible for the alumni department, not to fundraise. But she wasn’t given direction or a budget. Or a boss really.

Sophia: Yeah. So I thought, well, I was very loyal to King’s, and I still am. And I still wanted it to succeed. And I thought, if there's anything I can do, I'm going to stay. Even though I feel powerless, I'd still like to stay. And I was saying that all in the summer. I went on maternity leave, and I came back and slowly people had left. And great people had left. Which is really too bad. Because, when you leave King’s, it's not because it's the first sign of trouble. The people that I knew, and loved, had left, had given years of their life, past what they were expected to. Even what was reasonable. They gave more than they needed to, months or even years of their time. And so, when I returned from maternity leave, what was really difficult was I was now being turned into a fundraiser, straight up. And it's not that I'm beneath that. It's not that it doesn't need that. But the problem is that that's when I felt like: Oh, I'm selling my soul. 

… 

Because now I don't believe in what King’s is doing. And again, I still believed in the professors and the students who were there. But I really didn't believe in the Primacorp influence. And the fact that, by that time, Tim Gibson was gone. So we didn't really have a president. I mean, it was Stockwell Day interim, but like, we didn't have a King’s person in charge. And that's when I thought: I have nothing to fight for, or very, very little to fight for. So it was heartbreaking. Because I so wanted there to be hope. And I felt like I couldn't do it as an individual. And the institution had very little hope. And then me, as just a worker, also, had little to give. So it was upsetting. I don't feel betrayed. But it does feel like there was so much lost. At best, there were missed opportunities. But at worst, it was a squandering of our resources.

Julia Jensen: What Sophia’s story says to me is that Primacorp came to patch the college’s deficit. And those on the ground hoped that they would actually do so. Primacorp was the solution. But the execution was far from perfect. In many ways it didn't even meet adequate. For Sophia’s role as alumni relationship builder, it felt like she couldn’t actually do her job. And when Primacorp needed more money — and needed it fast — she was turned into a fundraiser. She wasn’t building a network of previous students who could celebrate and remember their time at college. All her alum relationships were now avenues for money. And with not many other options to free her burdened conscience, she had to leave. Now, that decision to leave, to stop fundraising, to move to a different job, hasn’t been the only reaction. In fact, some have done just the opposite. We are going to dive into that soon enough. But first, we need to tell you more about some of the changes happening at King’s before Primacorp showed up. And for that, we’ve arrived at our second act.

Colby McCaskill: So, around the same time that Sophia decides to leave for grad school (this is 2018), the college made a big decision. Buying real estate.

Julia Jensen: Tim Gibson, remember he was the president of the college at that time, made the announcement just after the semester let out.

Colby McCaskill: The property? 102 Greenwich street. It’s a small, five story dormitory-style building in the FiDi. And here's the important part: King’s bought it for the not so small sum of 19,200,000 dollars. Yes, that’s almost twenty million. King’s had been looking for ways to capitalize on its growth in the 20-teens. With 102 Greenwich street, The King’s College had permanent roots in Manhattan. 

Julia Jensen: Then Chairman of the Board, a Mr. Timothy Dunn, said that the purchase was monumental. It was, quote, “another step forward for King’s in [an] execution of our strategic plan.” As with any kind of real estate the hope is that during its use, an improving economy is making that building more valuable. So, when the time comes when you’ve outgrown it, you can profit. Move to a bigger and better space. 

Colby McCaskill: This is a great idea, and a pretty sure-fire way of establishing King’s as a prominent school in New York City. In fact, Kimberly Thornbury, a previous vice-president of King’s, argues this is the solution. 

Kimberly: But the DeVoses clearly understood that broken business model, that property was the solution.

Colby McCaskill: Unfortunately, it just so happens that the investment in 102 Greenwich street. didn’t exactly go the way King’s hoped.

Julia Jensen: In all our reporting and researching for this project, we’ve come across three big points of interest in the story of this building: The King’s college’s only permanent location in its time in New York City.

Colby McCaskill: Okay, the first thing we need to talk about is where this building came from. In 2019, a year after first purchasing the building, the college announced that they were renaming it. What was formerly a street address was now DeVos Hall. This is the name you just heard Kimberly Thornbury mention. Kimberly Reeve also name-dropped DeVos in the deficit announcement. DeVos Hall was named after a pair of the college’s two mega-donors. Helen and Richard DeVos. Yes — the same family as former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Yes — Richard DeVos co-founded Amway. And after Helen DeVos passed away in 2017, and Richard in 2018, the college honored their contributions by naming their relatively new student dormitory after them. Now, the waters here have been kind of muddled. Usually, when a college names a building after a mega-donor, it’s because the donor donated the building, or gave the money specifically for that building. In fact, this is exactly what Stockwell Day said in his Welcome Back Gathering address in January.

Stockwell: One of our most significant donors ever, very, very significant, made a 10 year pledge. Which they beautifully fulfilled. And that was about half of all the donor money that we take in, in a year, every year, for 10 years. And they donated a business—or a building, which is a residence. I don't want to mention the family's name, because you can go down and read the family name on the door. DeVos.

Julia Jensen: This was also the common sentiment on campus, that the DeVos family gave King’s the building.

Alice: We got it for free. We got it for free as a gift from the DeVos Family. That's why it's called the DeVos Building. Yeah. They gave it to us. 

Colby McCaskill: In reality though, the building wasn’t named DeVos until a year after its purchase. This isn’t to say that the DeVoses didn’t heavily contribute to the funding of this purchase. They almost certainly did. But the idea that this building in particular was donated to us, or that the DeVoses has somehow decided which building to purchase, isn’t accurate. King’s hadn’t named it after them until more than a year after their deaths.

Julia Jensen: And that's the next thing. Why exactly 102 Greenwich street? Don’t get us wrong, there are a lot of ups to owning real estate. Even this building in particular. Instead of acting as the intermediary between the students and a third-party apartment building, King’s collected the student housing payments themselves. They could pocket the money. What a bump! It was really close to the campus in the Financial District as well. 

Alice: I think the location is worth it. It was literally a five minute walk. It was so convenient.

Julia Jensen: The official press release for King’s boasts that it is a, quote, “four-minute walk from campus,” endquote. It’s safe to say that the proximity was a big positive. But the building itself, that was less glamorous. Having toured it twice myself before transferring to King’s, the rooms were miniscule and the floors were notably slanted. Here’s Alice again, the woman you just heard from, talking about her time as a resident of DeVos Hall.

Colby McCaskill: A little aside, sorry about the background noise in some of these next clips.

Colby McCaskill: But I'm getting a haircut at Zoe’s apartment right now. It’s 8pm. This is going to be really fast

…

Alice: The floors were made out of cement. So it's really cold in there. There was a hole in my wall. Right next to the air unit. You could see into the street. Yeah, I could fully see the street below. Yes. It was like where the air unit was installed with the air unit was slightly smaller than the hole in the wall. And so that gap there I could just and so it got really cold into the air unit had to like overcompensate in the winter in the summer.

…

But in the drains. Like if you opened up the drains or as black mold in the drains. So yeah, it wasn't the best living conditions. We also had to do laundry in the basement. And that was the scariest experience because it was like, you walk down the stairs, all the way down right Elevator downstairs, and you go down this hallway, and then you turn right. And then you go down that hallway. And then you turn right again. And then you go down that hallway and then you go into a room and that was the lunch unit. And there was no other rooms. So you're just walking down these weird long hallways, and any corner you turn you're like, there's going to be something. There's gonna be rats, there's going to be the IT from IT…clown, you know? I wouldn't be surprised if I saw anything. So that was also terrifying. And oh yeah, my air unit was also extremely loud. So I couldn't sleep.

…

The foundation was slanted, because of all the things that happened to it during 911. And so my ground, I can literally put like a race car and it would down or like my pencil under school roll all the way to the front of the door. From my window. 

Julia Jensen: This is what I was talking about before. I have heard this next part from multiple people and, honestly, it filled me with worry, sadness, and laughter all at the same time. 

Alice: It was fine. You just couldn't sleep one way because if you slept the way that your head was down-wards, then you'd wake up with a headache because all the blood would rush in your head. And then if you slept otherwise, fine. I know isn't that interesting. People will wake up sick and be like, Why am I sick? And they're like, Oh, you slept the wrong way. Like, Oh, shoot. I did.

Julia Jensen: And hey, Real Estate in New York is crazy. Anything with four walls, a roof and a window can be marked up to high heaven. We’re not just saying that this building isn’t luxury and so it’s not worth it. But there were even concerns from faculty and staff. Here’s Richard again.

Richard: And so pretty much what happened is all of our student development went to look at the building to give their opinion on it and our facilities manager went to give his opinion as someone who has to work on facilities and actually understands architectural layouts and structural reports, and all of them said: Don't buy this building. It smells like mold, and I wouldn't be surprised if it falls down at some point. And then they just bought it anyways. All of our people that looked at the building and said don't do this. It's a bad idea. And they just did it anyways, so I have no idea why they did that. And all the people who actually looked at it said: Don't do this.

Colby McCaskill: And, on top of that, Devos Hall had been purchased just a few years before for only 6,000,000 dollars. 

Julia Jensen: So when you add that all together, Devos Hall was a choice. A choice to buy property that had known imperfections. A choice to buy a visibly unappealing asset. In some ways, a good choice. In other ways, a bad choice. In nearly all ways, a risky choice. Because, remember, the hope is that your big expensive building stays intact so you can profit off it in the future. And sure you can write it all off as: EvErY nEw YoRk CiTy ApArTmEnT hAs ImPeRfEcTiOnS. But King’s bought the building for over three times the previous price. Okay, well how does this fit into the Primacorp story? It feels like this is just a rant. Lots of gabbing about how DeVos was not the best choice. Great question my dear listener. It is important because DeVos, despite all its shortcomings, is still Real Estate. In Manhattan. It can be seen, on paper, as a pretty enticing asset. And here is where Primacorp comes into the story. Because sure, Devos was maybe a bad purchase, but if you just hold onto it long enough, it may not turn out to be such a bad idea. You know, a little property to liquidate when things get tough. Cool. But within six months of collaborating with Primacorp Ventures, The King’s College entered into a line of credit. Using DeVos as collateral, The King’s College took out a loan of ten million dollars.

Colby McCaskill: And the company that King’s made that agreement with is Burnaby Investments, a subsidiary of Primacorp.

Julia Jensen: So, let’s just lay this all out here. King’s entered into a collaboration with Primacorp in May 2021. A few years earlier they had — let’s be nice — overpaid a little bit for a permanent dormitory. If they couldn’t pay, Burnaby Investments — or more specifically Primacorp — would get DeVos.

Colby McCaskill: This little situation is what we call the Bridge Loan. It's ten million dollars that King’s took out against DeVos in ‘21, and it means that the college still has to pay back that debt. Dr. Dru Johnson, you’ve heard his voice before, told me that faculty weren’t really filled in on this story until much, much later. 

Dru: Hey, there was this loan taken out against the DeVos building that we never heard, we only heard about that in February. And that was the first time we heard there was $11 million against that building. Hey, where did that money go? What did it pay for? Never got an answer. I take it back, we got an answer. The answer had nothing to do with the question.   

Julia Jensen: Dr. Kimberly Reeve did publicly allude to this reality when she spoke in January. But in a roundabout way.

Kimberly: So if we can sell DeVos, that will free up a million dollars approximately.

Colby McCaskill: Underlying that statement is the assumption that Devos is not worth over nineteen million dollars anymore. 

Colby McCaskill: Are they going to be able to sell it at a profit?

Richard: There's no way. Because of the market in the city. There's no anyone will buy that building for over 20 right now. The building's basically falling apart. The air rights, the building King’s doesn't own. The previous owner sold the air rights. So it's not like a developer could knock the building down and build something new.

…

Yeah, it's like: Who would want to buy that building? This in this market when everyone's trying to leave New York City and real estate prices are tanking here. And it's not like you can actually develop the land aside from building to its current height.

Julia Jensen: In actuality, it’s worth little more than ten. Let’s do the math together. 20-ish million dollar building. Loses a lot of value because of a bad economy, now it’s an 11-ish million dollar building.  Take away another 10 on a Bridge Loan, and what do you get? You just heard her say it, 

Kimberly: a million dollars approximately.

Julia Jensen: So…in the big picture, Primacorp in our story so far, has not just stymied resources and a vision for Sophia and her team. They’ve also been party to future fundraising stumbling blocks. Turning what could have been an integral foothold of establishing the college in the city, into a major liability. And on top of that, they’ve actively pushed out college administrators. Oh, right. We’re just arriving there now. 

Colby McCaskill: So you heard at the beginning of our ride this week from Sophia. She told us about the staff side of the Primacorp merger. King’s needed money. They looked to Primacorp to provide. And there was just not a lot of sound leadership. Now, I want to tell you about the administration side of the merger. About a year after Sophia joined the Priamcorp-funded Alumni Relations Department, Sophia decided to leave. One of the reasons? Tim Gibson, King’s President since 2018, was gone.

Julia Jensen: If it wasn’t already clear Tim Gibson was a big part of King’s. He spoke during the visiting days, He and his wife Nancy had a daughter that graduated in 2016. The Gibsons were so involved that they even hosted an annual event I talked about earlier, called “Popcorn with the President.” Here’s one former student, Callie, saying more about that.

Callie: Because the past few years President Gibson, well, yeah, three years, President Gibson and his wife have poured into King’s.

…

He had popcorn with the President with all the houses and all the freshmen got to meet him and his wife and it was like at their home

Julia Jensen: EST actually did a story on this back in 2018 when Tim transitioned to the role of the college’s Official President. There's a cover photo of big table-top barrels of popcorn, each flavor labeled, and bowls of candies and snacks to mix in. Half way through the article, there's a photo of the Gibsons next to what looks to be about 20 students. The final line of the piece is isolated and emboldened. It’s a quote from Tim. “We just want you guys to feel like you belong, and you are a part of this and we care about you. We are just going to live life together.” How lovely. 

Colby McCaskill: As I said, I was never a student under Gibson, so I can’t personally attest that this character that comes through in these conversations or stories is objectively true. 

Julia Jensen: I can weigh in though—with my all-of-one-semester’s experience with the man. He was much more popular than many of the previous presidents. Not as flashy or scandalous as Dinesh. Nor as quirky as Thornbury. He just seemed like a nice guy. He cared about the school and actively participated in events. He was a welcomed and actually just an approachable presence if we want to be general about it.

Evan: Tim and Nancy, though they were the faces of King’s, more or less. A ton of people knew them. Tim Gibson was just not the college President that you barely saw, barely spoke to, you only saw on maybe at commencement or the big events. He was not that kind of President. 

Colby McCaskill: So we have an active President, of a pretty small school, that is all of a sudden gone. And I do mean all of a sudden. For the students on the ground, it was fast and unforeseen.

Olivia: So over the summer President Gibson was fired.

McCaskill: No, I know.

Olivia: I remember thinking my parents were freaking out a little bit too much over it. I was very confused about why this was such a big deal. The only thing I could piece together was that there were a lot bigger things happening that I didn't understand.  

…

Callie: I started seeing things move around and people leave and weird things, President Gibson. Because of my past experience working, I knew there was something there that they weren't saying and when he left, I knew that something was really wrong. 

…

Colby McCaskill: So tell me more about the red flags you saw because when Gibson left and what was it? August? Did you guys know about that? As students on campus?

Callie: No, we were told in an email. And that was the red flag.

…

Evan: So for him to not only leave, but leave without saying anything to any of the students. That was, that was weird. That was very out of character for him. So I immediately had questions. 

Colby McCaskill: Apparently, Mattilyn, The Student Body President who you heard from in Episode 1, she had no idea either. 

Mattilyn: last year, whenever they made the presidential switch, I had no idea, I found out in an email with all the rest of the student body. And so when that email went out, everyone turned to me with questions and I didn't even know that it was happening until the same time that they did. And I think there was an EST article that quoted me saying I didn't know.

…

David: Well, President Gibson’s departure troubled me, because the faculty was never told clearly why he was leaving. The faculty was told that he resigned. And the faculty tried to find out more about his reasons for resigning, and we did not learn anything. There were several attempts. Two faculty members and an administrator wanted more details about why President Gibson resigned. And we did not get any additional details. Except to say, what the faculty was told was that new circumstances led The Board of Trustees to think that new leadership was needed.

Colby McCaskill: EST’s most recent story also touched on this event. Our staff wrote that, quote, “the board pushed out King’s President Tim Gibson,” endquote. But it goes deeper than that.

Julia Jensen: Gibson, we ought to mention, is a retired Brigadier General. And from what I’ve gathered, he acted like one. Strong leadership. A sense of loyalty. A notable presence in any room.  

Colby McCaskill: He’s been described to me as someone who gives info out on a “need to know” basis. 

Evan: I didn't think that the college was struggling to make ends meet whatsoever when General Gibson was President.

Colby McCaskill: After King’s partnered with Primacorp, as we just heard, they pretty much dropped the ball on marketing, admissions, and development. Those were supposed to be Primacorp’s job. But the execution was weak. According to multiple sources who wish to remain anonymous, Gibson pushed back. Gibson stood up for King’s. He argued for Primacorp to do a better job running the college’s systems. Or, perhaps, to even run them at all. But, sadly, the CEO of Primacorp disliked Gibson’s passion for King’s. Actually, Gibson’s defense of the college was enough for the CEO of Primacorp to force Gibson to resign. By the way, we mean “force” as in refusing to pay for administrative services unless Tim would back down. So it really came down to deciding between Tim or Primacorp. And, as the adage often goes, don’t bite the hand that funds your school and pays for your educational existence. 

Julia Jensen: The CEO? It’s Peter Chung. Essentially the college’s Board had to make the choice between the current president, or the continuation of the Primacorp partnership. After spending a few months making plans for his replacement, Gibson was gone.

Colby McCaskill: Okay, we’ve arrived at our final act, the one in which we try to determine the overall relationship between Primacorp and King’s. 

Julia Jensen: Was Primacorp the college’s guardian angel, or its killer? That’s next. Don’t go away.

Julia Jensen: At this point, we are going to move from talking about one person in particular, to the whole school. As you’ll hear, Primacorp’s relationship with King’s is one of duality. A story of salvation. And also destruction. 

Colby McCaskill: There’s someone else I want you to meet while we’re talking about all this stuff. 

Colby McCaskill: We're sitting on a bench in Battery Park. I'm here with… 

Sarah: Sarah Bensinger. 

Colby McCaskill: Can you introduce yourself?

Sarah: Yeah. So I am Sarah Bensinger. I am a senior at The King's College. And I will be finishing my degree in August.

Colby McCaskill: So you’re both a student, and what other ways are you connected to King’s?

Sarah: Yes, so I am, I was the president of a house of Corrie ten Boom for the 2022-2023 school year. And I have been Development’s Assistant for about a year. So I work in the Development department. 

Colby McCaskill: Development is fundraising? 

Sarah: Development is fundraising and donor relations. And we also acquired Alumni Relations too.

Julia Jensen: This is exactly what Sophia was just talking about. The fundraising department and the Alumni Relations department collaborated heavily. They were the ones working to try to bring in as much cash as possible to fill that multi-million deficit.

Colby McCaskill: Gotcha. Can you tell me about your job in the fundraising department? Do you want to just spill? I have questions, but I kind of want to hand it over to you if you have things to say.

Sarah: Yeah, I’ll start at the beginning. I got the job over the summer, went through a pretty long interviewing process, and got the job. Started in August, remotely. I was hired by Tonnie Chen. who had been in the development department for a while. She started off in Admissions for King’s, and then transitioned into development. And was my boss, the Director of Development, at the time. She was fully remote, other than an hour a week on random days. So I kind of started off not really being trained very much. So I started in August remotely, she kind of gave me like a few random things to do, gave me the rundown. And then September, we started my formal training in person for about an hour a week. And then at the end of September, She asked if she could call me. I said: Yes. And so she called me  and told me that she was quitting and had gave me her two weeks notice. And at that point, it was just us two in the department, there was the Chief Development Officer, 

…

in charge of major gifts. And I had nothing to do with major gifts. I was just in charge of minor gifts. 

…

So she quit about a month into my training. I had about three hours, in total, of training when she quit. And basically, no one started replacing her. No one really did anything when she was gone. 

Julia Jensen: Remember, this also happened with Sophia and her boss. The senior person with the vision and experience was either let go, or left of their own accord. And so the less experienced person was now trying to figure their way out on their own.

Sarah: So a lot of random things were left up to me. So previously, my job was just taking phone calls and sending out thank you letters, and calling our donors who have given, and thanking them for their donations, and kind of talking and getting to know them. That's kind of what I signed up for. When she left, my job changed a little bit. I was now in charge of processing all of the donations that came in. And there are very specific ways that we do that. And I kind of had to just figure it out as I go along. I started having to run reports that I didn't know how to do. So I kind of just guessed on those too. Yeah, as well as doing all of my normal stuff. And then, in December, Tonnie officially left, she was helping me with a few things and answering a few questions. But then in December, Bridget Rogers retired and she fully left. So I came back in January being the only person in the entire department.

Julia Jensen: Okay, so that’s not the whole story. Sophia also had a student worker. Once Sophia left, the Alumni Relations merged with Fundraising, it wasn’t only Sarah. It was also Callie. Here she is again.

Callie: Yeah, so technically, I'm the alumni assistant. So not really supposed to be in development. But that's where we need help. So that's where I've just been working. And that happened pretty early on last semester, because Sophia Coston went on maternity leave. So Tonnie Chen and Bridget Rogers were kind of overseeing my position, and they work in development. So I just kind of got looped in with them helping Sarah Bensinger. So that's when my relationship with development really started going. 

Julia Jensen: Again, like Sophia, Callie’s alumni relations job eventually turned building relationships to eliciting funds.

Callie: That's kind of what my job has turned into. Before then it was really just keeping up with alumni. Reaching out, making sure our database is updated, calling alumni trying to get all the records straight. 

Julia Jensen: When the senior employees working for the Fundraising and Alumni Relations Department retired or quit, it was Sarah and Callie’s job to keep it running.

Sarah: I've been doing this since September, I've been the only person taking donations, processing them. I've been the only one. 

…

Yeah. So it was a little crazy. To be fair, it wasn't necessarily anybody specifically, it wasn't anybody's fault specifically. It was kind of like we were already so understaffed that they were already stretched so thin, that they didn't really know what else to do. So I kind of had to figure it out on my own. But luckily, January to February, Dr. Reeve got—Dr. Kimberly Reeve, she is…I’m pretty sure she's the chair of finance. She stepped in and asked me if I needed help. Thank the Lord for Dr. Reeve. She has been incredible. So she ended up being able to volunteer. This is completely—she's unpaid. But she volunteered and helped me in development. So she was in charge of reaching out to people that she knew and donors that she knew and major donors. So she kind of took a lot of Bridget’s responsibilities, and then some of Tonnie's too, and was able to kind of direct me and what I needed to do. Sheli Cline also stepped up and helped me. She volunteered as well to do that. She helped me a lot with the batching processes, which is how we process our goods, we process them in batches. So she helped me with that. And it was super great. So yeah, I got some support. Like January to February. We had a lady from Primacorp…

…

come in and try to help.

…

But she came in, tried to take over, didn't know what to do, and then left after a few weeks. So I had her for a few weeks, but she didn't really do much because she lived in Canada and was kind of MIA. But yeah, that's basically what I do now. Yeah, I am in charge of processing all the donations. I'm in charge of making all the reports. So I send all the reports to student development for you know, budgets for houses, I send reports to all of academics, I send reports to career development. Basically, I send reports, anyone who wants them, of what their gifts have been. And just stuff like that. And then I call everyone that's donated. And then I send thank you letters.

Julia Jensen: Sarah was one of the very small team on the inside of the fundraising system. But even then, she had no idea how much King’s truly needed.

Sarah: The funny thing is that I didn't know about it until everybody else did.

…

I found out about King’s financial situation in January, because of the fact that I was President. We had a President's meeting with Dean Leedy and the Willis’ and basically they just talked us through what was happening. 

…

I didn't know about any of this until then. I had had a few meetings prior, where the only thing I was told was: We are not in the position that we hope to be in. And I thought that was just kind of a minor issue. We could figure it out, that kind of thing. I had no idea that any of that was happening. I didn't know that the fundraising need was that large. And I don't think anybody did, I think that's the reason that I ended up getting so much help and support is because all eyes were on me now. I don't honestly I don't think that the whole financial situation would have happened, I wouldn’t have had any help at all.

Julia Jensen: Callie too. The only information she got was vague and limited.

Callie: I know that Primacorp did not hit their fundraising goals.

…

I do not know the specifics of it. Yeah, I just know it is not what we needed.

Colby McCaskill: Okay, I want to slow down here for a second. Let's take a look back at what we just heard about the inner workings of this merger. In order to fill the millions of dollars of fundraising revenue, Primacorp, the company responsible for this work, relied on a small group of employees. One, Sophia’s boss, was fired just a few months after the merger was announced. Sarah’s Boss quit. Another was moving into retirement. And Sophia left of her own accord. So two student workers, ignorant of the extent of the need, and the volunteer hours of Dr. Reeve, were really the official members that were tasked with raising this money. 

Julia Jensen: Did you just hear that? A few unknowing students and a professor’s free time were The King’s College’s entire fundraising team. They were the ones saddled with the long standing financial issues. They were the ones on the hook for the 2.6 million dollars. With Primacorp’s quickening departure, this small team of students and faculty were the whole fundraising department of The King’s College.

Colby McCaskill: Now we have to ask the question. What does this mean? And who is to blame? Is it a failure of the management to fill those slots? Or was it the students and employees just not doing their jobs? 

Julia Jensen: Who okayed this? Was it always this way? By their nature, these questions are hard to answer. We can’t know the intention and nuances of every aspect of this merger. What we can know for sure is these people told us that they genuinely wanted to see King’s grow. Flourish. And at the same time, they could see that even their continued efforts were not enough.

Sarah: I think I did it as well as I could have given the fact that I didn't have any fundraising experience prior to this job whatsoever. Yeah, I didn't have any experience coming into this fundraising. My responsibilities in the beginning, I didn't need any because it was all just phone calls and emails thanking people for donating. I was on the end half of the giving process. So I think given the fact that I came into this without any training, didn't get a lot of training in the job, was a student worker, and was the president of the house. I did pretty okay. But I mean, it's difficult, you know, working so hard and wanting so much to reach that goal, and then it just not coming to fruition. But I mean, that's what you get for having a student worker being the only one in the department.

…

Callie: I know Primacorp, they tried. They tried and just what they were trying wasn't working.

Julia Jensen: Look, we are not trying to say that Primacorp is this big bad company that is solely responsible for the demise of King’s. While that may be the easier story for some, that’s just simply not the whole truth. As we’ve already heard, Primacorp was actually seen by much of the staff as the next stage of its growth. A stabilizing foundation. Remember what Sophia was saying the word around the campus was?

Sophia: I had two other staff members who said: I think that we're actually going to have money now. I think we're going to actually have resources. 

Julia Jensen: However, for those in the know, Primacorp was a force that actually wasn’t just stabilizing the college, but saving it from imminent closure. The truth is that after COVID, the deaths of major donors and the splitting of ways with others, King’s was on the verge of collapse while under President Gibson.

Colby McCaskill: If you’ve tuned out for a second, come back. We need you to hear this part. 

Julia Jensen: Remember how we said in act three how President Gibson was not the type of leader to be totally transparent? We’ve heard that again and again, and always in the context of the financial situation while he was president. For those not on a need-to-know basis, the fragility of the college was not alluded to, period. Primacorp was not brought in to grow the college —  but instead as a last-ditch effort to keep it open. One of the college’s major donor couples, the DeVoses, had just died. A few years earlier, another deep-pocketed donor, William Lee Hanley, had passed as well. And, as we’ll explore more in episode five, political affiliation had already distanced the donor base. In 2021, Gibson’s administration was on the verge of closing King’s. 

Colby McCaskill: As of now, that narrative is much more public than it once was. 

Callie: We got hit with COVID and all that we needed Primacorp. So if we didn't have Primacorp, there is a high likelihood that three years ago we would not be here.

…

Olivia: But also I don't really blame King’s for partnering with them because if King’s didn’t partner with them, they would have sunk years ago anyway.

Colby McCaskill: Dru told me that this part of the story, how King’s was essentially on its way out, was largely unbeknownst to the faculty. Stockwell was actually the one who let it slip. According to Dru, Stockwell, in a faculty meeting, said something to the effect of:

Dru: You should be grateful that this Peter Chung came in, this college would have been closed two years ago if he hadn't come in and financially rescued it. And the faculty member then challenged that and said: Wait a second, where is this college would have been closed two years ago? We've never heard this before. And if we had heard that some of us wouldn't have bought houses in the last few years...So everything was met with kind of a weird deflecting answer or: Hey, you guys are lucky to have jobs right now.

Julia Jensen: King’s, and perhaps more specifically Tim Gibson, kept the reality of the college quiet as best he could. And in this state, holding on by a thread, Primacorp struck a deal with King’s to fund the school. All the while, Primacorp banked on the prospect that King’s could become a lucrative investment.

Colby McCaskill: I mean, Primacorp is a for-profit investment firm. To them, King’s was a means to profit. Their big plan: build an online curriculum, and leverage the college’s brand for maximum enrollment. Even if the goals were perhaps a bit lofty.

Sophia: They said: Oh yeah, we're going to get 2000 People in our first month. 5000 People in our first month. 10,000 people,

…

Callie: I was wondering how it was going to work because King’s is a very, not online, institution. So I was like: Okay, they're missing 75% of King’s. The house system, and the events here, and the personal connections, and networking events and all this stuff. So I was wondering how well that would work out.

Colby McCaskill: But then, projected numbers seemed less and less feasible. Primacorp was confronted with the reality that King’s might not be a lucrative deal.

Sophia: And we all knew that this online thing does not make mathematical sense. There was too many promises. So we all knew that that wasn't going to happen.

…

Sarah: They thought they were gonna profit off of us, they thought they were gonna make a whole bunch of money. Because their whole thing they dumped millions of dollars into their online program.

Colby McCaskill: Millions?

Sarah: Millions of dollars into their online program. And that just didn't come to fruition because, I mean, we're an expensive school and a lot of our appeal is the fact that we are based in New York City and an online program can't replicate that.

…

Evan: Primacorp really wanted to upsell the college’s online dimension. And that's fine. But it just didn't work out. And it cost a ton of money.

Colby McCaskill: So when the opportunity for profit passed, Primacorp made the decision to pull out.

Julia Jensen: The best we could tell was that Primacorp was simply on the hook for the deficit. That was the deal that they came to with King’s. And so for King’s to even announce that it had a deficit publicly is a clear indication that Primacorp was no longer interested in covering that hole. That 2.6 million dollars? That is 2.6 million dollars that Primacorp was no longer interested in funding. That was only part of the systematic deficit that they had been patching up for a year. That 2.6 million dollars was money King’s had counted on from Primacorp. And with those funds restricted, they declared the gap for all to see, and hopefully for some to patch.

Colby McCaskill: Sarah said it in a way that really surprised me when I first heard it aloud. 

Sarah: Primacorp is the one that saved us.

Colby McCaskill: Yes. Upon Primacorp’s shoulders is the legacy of King’s. But also, on their hands, is the college’s blood. 

…

There is another, deeper, layer to this story, one that, when you pull it back, reveals the life and history of the person behind Primacorp and their merger with King’s. You’ve heard his name already. Peter Chung. He is not a side character, but a main plot point in the story of The King’s College’s future. But that’s next time on Demise Of The Crown.

…

Julia Jensen: A huge thank you to all who helped to put this project together. Including, but not limited to, Matthew Peterson, Producer of the Broadway And Exchange podcast. And Angelina Ispir, our social media coordinator.

Colby McCaskill: Myrian Orea is our Executive Editor. And, of course, big shout out to Rob Bruder of Postmillennial Media. That was his music you just heard. Phenomenal.

Julia Jensen: This show was produced and edited by me, Julia Jensen.

Colby McCaskill: And me, Colby McCaskill. Thank you to all who lended their voice and time for this project. Especially Sophia Coston, who conceived of this series, and graciously offered her insight.

Julia Jensen: Demise Of The Crown is a production of Empire State Tribune and the Broadway & Exchange Podcast.