Relationship that caused Ted Carter to resign from OSU started when he was at Nebraska, report says
The scandal that took down former University of Nebraska President Ted Carter while he was at The Ohio State University has ties to NU.
That’s the conclusion of an OSU report that was released Tuesday.
According to the report, Carter met podcaster Krisanthe Vlachos while he was still NU president. They “appear to have met at a Veterans in Energy forum in Washington, D.C. in March 2023, when Carter was President of the University of Nebraska System and a keynote speaker at the conference,” the report said.
That was about five months before Carter announced his intention to resign from NU in August 2023. He left at the end of that year for the OSU job.
Carter resigned as OSU president last month after admitting to “an inappropriate relationship” with Vlachos.
The report does not mention any other interactions that Carter may have had with Vlachos during his time at NU, and NU officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
According to the report, Vlachos “had extraordinary access” to Carter while he was OSU president, including having at least 24 meetings with him and taking five trips with him.
The report also said at least 14 OSU employees received direct requests from Carter to assist Vlachos. Most of those employees did not agree and Carter did not press the issue further.
However, one employee who did help Carter in his efforts to assist Vlachos, according to the report, was former NU chief financial officer and interim president Chris Kabourek, who followed Carter to Ohio State in the fall of 2024.
According to the report, Kabourek helped to facilitate certain business relationships between Vlachos and OSU, including a podcast and an app.
Kabourek resigned from the university last week, although no reason was given at the time. He was hired two days later to be vice president and chief financial officer at West Virginia University.
Carter and Kabourek were the only OSU employees to resign as part of the scandal.
“We are grateful for the careful and comprehensive work that went into finalizing this report,” John W. Zeiger, chair of the OSU Board of Trustees, said in a statement. “Its findings regarding our former president are deeply disappointing, but it is gratifying the university’s systems and processes – and the people charged with implementing them – prevented misuse of Ohio State’s resources.”
