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ONE student had to drive her son to the airport at 3am. Another had to deliver cash to her at a casino in another state.
Some had to clean and cook, take out rubbish and shovel snow at her home.
Cecilia Chang, who served as dean and vice-president of St John's University, was charged with forced labour and bribery, according to a complaint made public by federal prosecutors on Thursday.
This is not her first crime. She was also accused of embezzling about US$1 million (S$1.31 million) from the university.
Prosecutors said she used the money to pay for lingerie, casino trips and her son's tuition, the New York Times (NYT) reported.
Chang, 57, who was with the university for about 30 years and one of its top fund-raisers, was sacked in June after the embezzlement charges came to light.
She is wearing an electronic monitoring device as part of the bail conditions for that case.
As the dean of the Institute of Asian Studies at St John's, she had the authority to grant 15 scholarships a year.
The recipients, most of whom were foreigners, were told they had to work 20 hours a week under her supervision, the NYT report said.
The prosecutors said the students thought they would be doing work related to the university.
But she forced them to do menial tasks at her home.
She made it clear that if the students did not perform their extracurricular duties, they would lose their scholarships, which were worth at least US$5,000, the complaint said.
The loss of the scholarships might have forced some of the students to drop out.
Driver
According to the complaint, one student "drove Chang to the hair salon, to restaurants and to the airport".
"As a driver," it said, the student "was also responsible for taking out the garbage and shovelling snow at Chang's residence."
St John's officials said that the students who worked under Chang did not have to worry about losing their scholarships.
Ms Dominic Scianna, St John's spokesman, said: "If these allegations by federal authorities are true, Chang's treatment of some students and the environment she created are shocking and in complete violation of all this university stands for."
Mr Charles Kleinberg, an assistant US attorney, said at her bail hearing that in addition to the outrageous way she treated her students, she had them falsify documents.
She did not enter a plea or speak during the one-hour hearing. She kept shaking her head when prosecutors argued that she was a flight risk because she holds a Taiwanese passport.
Taiwan does not have an extradition treaty with the US.
Her lawyers argued that by surrendering on Thursday, she demonstrated that she would not flee.
They added that she was already wearing an electronic monitoring device as part of the bail conditions in the embezzlement case.
Her bail plea was being heard yesterday after Magistrate Joan Azrack said the former dean's US$1.7 million home and US$850,000 university pension were not enough to ensure she would stay in the country.
This article was first published in The New Paper.
