Shortly after this tragedy, her friends and family established a restricted trust fund for the purpose of providing scholarships for law students. The fund, known as the Candise DuBoff Jones Memorial Fund, was to be administered by an independent board and the scholarships were to be based on merit and financial need and granted in the name of Ms. DuBoff Jones. Only interest from the fund, not the principal, was to be used, and there was to be a periodic accounting to the independent board.

A restricted account was established at Lewis & Clark College in 1979 and many donations were deposited into that account. Articles were published in, among other publications, the State Bar Bulletin, as late as 1984 for purposes of alerting interested parties to the request for donations.

In August 1988, Ms. DuBoff Jones’ brother Leonard DuBoff, who was a professor at the law school, raised questions with then dean Steven Kanter about how scholarship recipients were selected. Apparently, the independent board had never been formed and indeed, some of the income from the Candise DuBoff Jones Memorial Fund had been misused, possibly funding other scholarships at the law school or even misappropriated by the law school or college administrators.

Mr. DuBoff began to research issues surrounding the scholarship fund, including a determination of how much had been donated and the actual disposition of the funds. As part of that investigation, in January 1996, Mr. DuBoff wrote the college’s attorney, Charles Hinkle of the Stoel Rives law firm, seeking additional information about the fund. No adequate response was received and Mr. DuBoff once again sought the requested information. Although the scholarship had been awarded in 1987, 1988 and again in 1991, it did not appear that the scholarship had been awarded since. Nor was the scholarship mentioned on the law school's listing of scholarships and awards and the earlier scholarship grants did not comply with the terms of the scholarship arrangement. Mr. DuBoff then contacted the Oregon Attorney General's office about this matter.

During the course of the investigation by the attorney general’s office, the law school admitted that in March 1991 it abolished several restricted funds, including the one held in the name of Candise DuBoff Jones, depositing the money from those funds into the College’s unrestricted endowment. Neither Mr. DuBoff nor any other donor was informed of this improper commingling and breach of trust. On several occasions, money from the fund, as well as from the unrestricted fund into which the DuBoff Jones memorial restricted funds were deposited, was disbursed, and neither Mr. DuBoff nor any other donor of these restricted funds was advised of these improper disbursals.

This was particularly troubling to the DuBoff family since, in 2003, the then president of Lewis & Clark College, Michael Mooney, was investigated for and ultimately resigned over misuse of college funds, namely making an unauthorized $10.5 million loan to an oil technology company that he had a substantial personal investment in. The company ultimately went bankrupt. Similarly, the dean who was head of the law school during a portion of the time in question, Arthur Lafrance, had since been publicly reprimanded by the Oregon State Bar for unethical conduct not related to the fund. He, too, resigned as Dean. After the Oregon Attorney Generals Office's intervention, the college agreed to reinstate the fund and scholarships were again offered for the 2004 - 2005 school year.

Note: More revealing information will be appearing soon.

For more information about the scholarship and the application process, please contact the Lewis & Clark Scholarship Office.

Documents Related to the Scholarship Dispute:

Investigative Request to the Department of Justice
(6/10/2003, 4 pages, PDF, 427KB)

Demand Letter to Law School
(4/15/2004, 12 pages, PDF, 401KB)

Letter of Agreement
(12/15/2004, 2 pages, PDF, 34KB)

Letters from Scholarship Recipients: