Prada bags a gift horse of another colour
Armchair Mayor column, The Kamloops Daily News, Saturday, Sept. 12, 2009
They say you should never look a gift horse in the mouth.
I’ve always understood this to mean that if somebody hands you the reins to a free horse, you don’t get all fussy about checking out its teeth.
Prada bags, however, are a gift horse of another colour.
Ask Judith Murray and Christine Wihak, the TRU bureaucrats who are hoping the Prada bags they accepted from a potential business partner in Malaysia turn out to be cheap knockoffs and not the real thing.
It’s doubtful, though, the bags are fake, since the guy who took them shopping during a trip to that part of Asia is said to be well heeled.
As a result of an anonymous letter to The Daily News about the visit to a Prada outlet, the two are under investigation to determine if there was anything inappropriate about it. I would predict it will be written off as an innocent mistake, and that the TRU brass will offer assurances it won’t happen again.
Gifting is not only a common occurrence, but very much a necessary part of doing business in Asia. TRU has obviously honed the practice over the past few years, but I well remember a visit to Kyoto Bunkyo University near Uji when TRU board chair Ron Olynyk was presented with a gift by the host university’s president during a luncheon.
An embarrassed Olynyk had neglected to bring a gift in return, not realizing the custom. I quietly slipped him a wrapped set of City of Kamloops coasters (you never go on these things without extras), thus extricating him from the jam.
Gift presentations are no casual part of the process — in fact, it’s often included on the written agenda for meetings arranged during such sojourns.
My favourite of all time was when Uji and Kamloops were celebrating the 10th year of their Sister City relationship and we wanted to give their City something special.
Coun. John O’Fee jokingly suggested we give them a moose head, so I went on CBC radio asking if anybody had one they didn’t want. A nice gentleman from the Kootenays kindly mailed us a beautiful specimen, which I presented to Mayor Kubota. We named it Thompson (my wife Syd’s idea) and It now hangs front and centre in the big lobby of Uji City Hall.
Another time, I lugged a miniature casting of the Overlanders statue all the way to Changping to present to the mayor there. That thing was a hassle to pack.
But, I suppose I digress. Ceremonial gift giving between governments or non-corporate groups is different than the kind involved in negotiating business deals. In the latter, there’s sometimes a perception that one favour deserves another.
In other words, there’s gift giving, and then there’s gift giving. The anonymous letter also objected to TRU president Kathleen Scherf, associate VP Cyndi McLeod, and international liaison manager Baihua Chadwick receiving “high end gifts” from the same guy, who owns a private college.
No elaboration is provided on those ones, but it’s likely they were part of the usual gift exchange process. That isn’t the same as being taken shopping and being invited to each pick out two Prada bags, which are likely to be valued at several hundred bucks apiece.
Regardless, though, guidelines are needed. TRU seems to have trouble with such things — you’ll recall not that long ago when some of its top administrators came under the gun for wracking up big bills for luxury hotel rooms during similar trips.
The university received the same letter we did (actually, we received two copies, one in the newsroom and one that landed on my desk) and, now that the media are onto it, is investigating.
With the amount of business TRU does overseas, and the obvious issues around gift giving, it’s kind of amazing the university hasn’t looked into it long before now.
In Murray’s and Wihak’s case, it would not have been insulting to explain to their host the perception issues around that style of personal gifting. At the least, they need simply to have turned the bags over to the TRU president’s office upon their return, and that would have been that.
Belatedly, there’s been a small flurry of gifts being surrendered by TRU administrators, including another Prada bag by Scherf.
While gifting is a big part of Asian cultures, perception is a big part of ours, and there are obvious, inherent problems surrounding it. In our part of the world, the lines between gifting and bribing can easily be blurred.
Ever since the serpent tempted Eve with a juicy apple from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, gifting has been under suspicion.
As gift givers and receivers, the TRU folks are pikers. Remember the Salt Lake City Olympics? When the bid organizers got nowhere handing out free Stetson hats to Olympics committee officials, they took it up a notch with free ski trips, real estate deals, and offers of cosmetic breast surgery.
Nobody’s topped that one.
I don’t believe for a minute that a few Prada bags could buy the support of TRU administrators, but protecting their integrity and credibility is paramount.
In a sense, TRU let them down by not having a crystal clear policy on what is OK and what is not. The institution, not they, should be embarrassed over this one.
mrothenburger@kamloopsnews.ca
ArmchairMayor.ca 
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