CSCU chancellor addresses p‑card spending, residency and planned policy changes in student Q&A

Chancellor Chang told the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities Student Advisory Committee on a Friday morning that media coverage of his purchasing‑card use and questions about his residency had become a distraction from students and that he was instituting changes to governance and purchasing practices.

The chancellor said the primary criticism of him was that “I spent about $30,000 in the past 3 years” on his state purchasing card, largely for meals and travel, and that while audits have found no criminal violations, they identified weaknesses that require policy fixes.

The chancellor’s comments came during a scheduled discussion with student leaders after several students raised concerns about how testimony was presented to the legislature and about broader changes across the CT State system.

Chancellor Chang acknowledged the optics of expensive meals while students face hardship. “I know it's a bad look for the chancellor to be out there having steak dinners while our students are going without in a lot of different ways. And that's on me,” he said. He told students the system has been audited by the state comptroller and reviewed by the auditors of public accounts; “both of them have found that no laws were broken, no policies were breached, but that there were material weaknesses in some of our policies that have to be addressed,” he said.

Chelsea, a CT State staff member who participated in the meeting, said some media accounts had conflated different payments. “The payment that they refer to, is actually the chancellor's rent for his lease,” she said, and she described other reporting as having “morphed beyond kind of the scope of focus on our students and have become more political.”

Chang said the system is adopting a much stricter purchasing‑card policy and additional controls. He told students the policy would be voted on by the Board of Regents: “that policy will be voted on at the board meeting next week. And, again, it's a super tight policy.” He also told the committee the system has already reduced the number of purchasing cards by about 18 percent and that further reductions and multiple levels of review are planned.

Students raised concerns about how testimony to the legislature was run, saying that when some students participated by Zoom and other institutions appeared in person it affected perceptions. Chang said legislators had preferred Zoom to make testimony equitable and efficient for the committee but that he would work to include more in‑person testimony when feasible.

Students also pressed the chancellor about structural changes announced for campus leadership. Chang described a shift by system leadership toward a multi‑campus president model for some regions, a change he said aims to reduce administrative overhead and reinvest savings in campuses and students. He suggested President Maduco be invited to discuss the reorganization directly with students.

The chancellor told the SAC he was “sorry that all of this activity leads to, taking focus away from the students,” and repeatedly said he accepts responsibility for the perception created by his choices. He encouraged student leaders to continue using their voices and offered to answer follow‑up questions and provide documents about the new policies once board votes are final.

The Student Advisory Committee asked that summaries of the proposed purchasing‑card policy and related Board of Regents discussion be shared with students after the board has formally approved them.