UConn Major Donor Settles Differences With School

The feud is over. What started with a major donor’s scathing six-page letter that was critical of UConn athletic director Jeff Hathaway, demanded millions of dollars back and a family name taken off a campus building, ended Friday in a flurry of statements from various parties.

The bottom line: Donor Robert G. Burton and his family are back in the fold. They have agreed to move past their differences and continue their longstanding relationship, according to UConn Board of Trustees Chairman Larry McHugh. McHugh and board vice chairman Tom Ritter met with Burton on Wednesday.

Burton, a 72-year-old printing and publishing magnate who says he has contributed more than $7 million to the school, said in a statement released by the university that he “came to the conclusion that I’m not going to let one experience change the relationship my family and I have with UConn.”

That experience was the hiring of a new football coach on Jan. 14. Burton was incensed over the hiring of Paul Pasqualoni, who was the head coach at Syracuse from 1991-2004, and addressed his letter to Hathaway with copies going to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, incoming UConn President Susan Herbst and McHugh, among others. Burton wrote that he was upset because he was not consulted on the decision.

That letter was obtained by The Courant on Jan. 25. In it, Burton expressed frustration with Hathaway’s handling of the search for a football coach and said that Hathaway “is not qualified to be a Division I [athletic director] and I would have fired you a long time ago.”

Burton was quoted in Friday’s release: “Unfortunately, my unmet expectations and displeasure with the process used to select the football coach left my family and me upset. This expectation was based upon various times during the past 12 years where my family and I were consulted on a number of issues related to the football program as UConn moved from a [Football Championship Subdivision, then known as Division I-AA] school to a [Football Bowl Subdivision, then Division I-A] BCS Bowl participant.”

Pasqualoni, 61, was hired to replace Randy Edsall, who left to take a job at Maryland after 12 years at UConn.

Multiple reports indicated Burton disliked Pasqualoni because his son, Joe, was not named captain while he played for Pasqualoni at Syracuse from 1997-2001. The Courant reported Burton preferred Steve Addazio, who, like Pasqualoni, is from the state but had been named Temple’s head coach three weeks earlier.